Babyface Signs With Capitol, New Album Features Ella Mai, Ari Lennox, More

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorLive Nation has re-upped longtime CEO Michael Rapino to a new five-year contract that will see him earn $30 million year if he and the company meet performance metrics, according to documents filed with the SEC.While Rapino’s annual salary holds at his previous $3 million per year, the annual target cash bonus is climbing from $6 million to $17 million per year. The news was first reported by the Hollywood Reporter.Starting next year, Rapino will also be eligible for an annual grant of restricted shares valued at no less than $10 million.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorYG Entertainment has announced that K-pop powerhouse Blackpink are in the final stages of recording a new album that will be released next month. The album, the second full-length, “starts a continuous large-scale project which will extend through the second half of the year,” according to the announcement.The company stated, “A lot of Blackpink-esque music has been prepared over a long period of time.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorCardi B may not have released a ton of music in the past couple of years, but when she has, she’s made them count: Following “WAP,” her 2020 smash with Megan Thee Stallion, and last year’s “Up” comes “Hot Shit,” a truth-in-advertising new track featuring Kanye West and Lil Durk with a fiery beat from Memphis-born producer Tay Keith, who also co-produced Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode” and Drake’s “Nonstop.”It’s a true collaborative single, with each rapper taking a verse and super-spare production — consisting almost entirely of vocals and beat, with the occasional sound effects — and in the hands of lesser rappers it wouldn’t be anywhere near as strong.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorJohn Mayer — singer-songwriter, virtuoso guitarist, solo artist, member of Dead & Co and definitely the funniest speaker at Variety’s Hitmakers event last December — has signed with CAA in all areas globally.He has won seven Grammy Awards out of 19 nominations and since his 2001 debut album “Room for Squares”  has earned three No. 1 debuts on the Billboard Top 200, with the triple-platinum “Heavier Things” (2003), double-platinum “Battle Studies” (2009), and gold-certified “Born and Raised” (2012). He has sold an estimated 20 million-plus albums worldwide.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorR. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison in a New York court on Wednesday.Kelly, one of the most successful hitmakers of the 1990s and early 2000s, was found guilty of all nine counts against him in September, after a six-week trial revealed how he had used employees and intermediaries to lure fans and hopeful singers into sexually abusive and controlling conditions, including locking them in rooms without food or access to a bathroom for days.The 55-year-old singer, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was convicted of racketeering and eight counts of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting people across state lines for prostitution.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorLegendary rocker Alice Cooper, who should need no introduction, has signed with CAA to represent his touring in North America.He has sold more than 50 million albums over the years and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. His nightly radio show, “Nights With Alice Cooper,” continues to air in nearly 100 cities in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAs part of a big expansion of Shawn Mendes manager Andrew Gertler’s AG Artists, the company has signed fast-rising Canadian singer-songwriter Lauren Spencer-Smith and Arista’s JP Saxe, and Mendes’ longtime A&R Ziggy Chareton has joined as a partner on their management. Chareton will also co-manage Mendes.Gertler and Chareton have a long history together: They met in the early 2010s when both were interns in Atlantic Records’ marketing department.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorFast-rising 18-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter Lauren Spencer-Smith has inked with both Warner Chappell Music publishing and longtime Shawn Mendes manager Andrew Gertler’s AG Artists in partnership with Ziggy Chareton, Variety has confirmed. The news was first published in Hits.A native of Vancouver Island, the singer’s confessional, intimate songs like “Fingers Crossed” and her latest single “Flowers” have effectively set her on a track to be this year’s Olivia Rodrigo.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe BET Awards are officially a celebration of “Black excellence,” and Sunday night’s show featured blockbuster performances from Lizzo, Mariah Carey, Latto, Jack Harlow (who was joined by Brandy and Lil Wayne) and an elaborate tribute to Lifetime Achievement honoree Sean “Diddy” Combs that included an unannounced in-person speech from Kanye West.But for the second time in three years, the show coincided with galvanizing events in the United States: In 2020, it was George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police and the ensuing the Black Lives Matter protests, and this year it was the Supreme Court’s polarizing overturn of Roe v. Wade and the impending loss of a woman’s right to choose in many states in the country.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorTaraji P. Henson took a moment to be serious in her otherwise upbeat introduction to the BET Awards on Sunday night, delivering the first of three consecutive slams at the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorFollowing BTS’ announcement that they will be focusing on solo projects in the coming months, the group’s J-Hope announced on the Weverse platform early Saturday that he will release a solo album called “Jack in the Box” on July 15. The first single single will drop next week, on July 1.According to the official announcement, “Jack in the Box” lends voice to J-Hope’s aspirations to break the mold and grow further.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAbsence can make the heart grow fonder, and one of the ironies of the power-pop revival of the mid-1980s was how hard it was to find records by some of its main archetypes, even if those earlier groups had genuine hits: The brace of great early-‘70s albums and singles by Beatles-obsessed bands like Badfinger, Big Star and the Raspberries had been out of print for years and could only be found at specialty shops for exorbitant prices or as random junkshop jackpots.Even more ironically, one of the greatest albums of that ‘80s wave — Redd Kross’ “Neurotica” — suffered the same fate. It was released in 1987 on the short-lived U.S.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorGeneration Now, the Atlanta-based label imprint founded by DJ Drama, Don Cannon and Leighton “Lake” Morrison, has extended its joint venture partnership with Atlantic Records. The partnership launched in 2015 and labels have launched the careers of Jack Harlow, Lil Uzi Vert — who collectively have achieved a whopping 30 billion-plus streams globally — and many others.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor“Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia,” a symphonic work by composer Him Sophy and the first major such piece to address the Khmer Rouge genocide in the country, recently was released on Entertain Impact label.Sophy, himself a Khmer Rouge survivor, places the musical ritual of a Bangsokol – a traditional Khmer ceremony that accompanies Cambodian Buddhist funeral rites – within the form of a Western requiem.“When I composed the requiem,” Sophy says, “I relived the feelings I had during the Khmer Rouge times. It was Hell on Earth.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBeyonce just can’t make it easy: Just hours after she’d announced that “Break My Soul,” the first single from her forthcoming seventh solo studio album “Renaissance,” would be dropping tonight at midnight ET / 9 p.m. PT, it emerged on Tidal — yes, the streaming service co-owned by her husband, Jay-Z —three hours early.All of that noise notwithstanding, it’s the Beyonce jam fans have been waiting for: A driving dance track co-produced by the “Single Ladies” team of Tricky Stewart and The-Dream, with a plinking, insistent hook, a hot beat and a near-unintelligible, dancehall-like voice dropping in and out of the mix.“Release your anger/ Release your mind/ Release the time… Release the stress/ Forget the rest,” the voice intones.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorLincoln Center has announced a musical tribute to Greg Tate, a veteran music writer and musician and a ‘godfather of hip-hop journalism’ who died in December at 64.The performance will feature more than 30 members of Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, the group that Tate founded (head here for more information). “For this homecoming concert, curated and presented with The Tate Family at one of his favorite venues, more than thirty BSAC members will perform in celebration and tribute to one of the most essential voices in the history of 21st Century Avant Groidd music and thought,” the announcement reads.Titled
“More Than Posthuman: Rise of the Burnt Sugar Arkestra Mojosexual Cotillion”
An “Oh the Utter Negrocity of It All,” the tribute is one of three in Tate’s honor being held this summer: one last week at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and another, also featuring Burnt Sugar, on August 20 at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem as part of New York’s SummerStage concert series.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBeyonce will drop “Break My Soul,” the first single from her forthcoming seventh solo studio album “Renaissance,” tonight at midnight ET / 9 p.m. PT, the singer announced on social media Monday morning.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe music industry’s return to whatever passes for normal these days has been hit and miss, to put it mildly: Grammy Week, Coachella, and the first publishers’ week in three years have seen an uneven balance of caution and carelessness — some events have a relatively high percentage of masks and distancing, some have hardly any at all, and at each one you hear tales of how severe someone’s bout with Covid was or wasn’t, and that someone else couldn’t make it because they suddenly tested positive.The “publishers week” we’re referring to is the usual combination of A2IM’s Indie Week conference, the National Music Publishers Association’s annual meeting, and the closer, the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony, which is one of the most unique and memorable awards shows in the business — which is a parallel event to the Clive Davis pre-Grammy Gala in that it’s invite-only and features a number of once-in-a-lifetime performances. Not only is it the annual family reunion for the songwriting an publishing industry, over the years we’ve seen performances from  Neil Diamond, Drake, Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt, Justin Timberlake, Ariana Grande, Van Morrison, Cyndi Lauper, John Prine, Leon Russell, Elvis Costello and dozens of others, along with several completely unique homages: Lady Gaga singing Four Non-Blondes’ hit “What’s Up” to Linda Perry; Stevie Nicks belting “The Rose” to Bette Midler; Emmylou Harris performing Eric Clapton’s heartbreaking hit “Tears in Heaven” for the song’s co-writer Will Jennings; and one year, the evening ended with Billy Joel and Garth Brooks duetting at the piano in matching Stetson hats.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorGrammy Awards are one thing, but being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame is another matter — the inductees are decided by a relatively small group of songwriting and music-publishing peers and celebrated at an invite-only event, and it’s a tough crowd.It’s a sadly common assumption that female pop stars don’t write their own songs — even Taylor Swift, one of the greatest and most distinctive songwriters of the past 25 years, is often greeted with skepticism. So for Mariah Carey — who was mocked in a widely shared meme when she made a statement beginning with the words “As a songwriter” — to be inducted is a big deal.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorJapanese Breakfast, Wet Leg and Madlib were among the top winners at the Libera Awards on Thursday night, the American Association of Independent Music’s annual awards ceremony.The event returned in a hybrid setting, with people from the indie community gathering at New York’s Webster Hall to receive awards, catch a DJ set from Madlib (featuring a freestyle from Talib Kweli) and live sets from Sammy Rae & the Friends and others, while concurrently a livestream of performances from Japanese Breakfast, Brittany Howard, Jason Isbell, Helado Negro and Cautious Clay was played in a separate room at the venue. Also performing live at the event were Tré Burt, Canadian Brass and Adrian Daniel.