Morris Day Slams Prince’s Estate, Says He’s Forbidden From Performing as the Time; Estate Says Claim Is ‘Not Entirely Accurate’

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorKanye West has been barred from performing at the Grammy Awards due to his “concerning online behavior,” a rep for the artist confirms to Variety. Reps for the Recording Academy, which presents the Grammys, did not immediately respond to Variety‘s requests for comment on the claim early Saturday.West’s rep cited a report in the Blast posted late Friday claiming that the artist’s team received a phone call Friday night informing him he had been “unfortunately” removed from the lineup of performers for the show due to his “concerning online behavior.” While West was not among the first list of performers, which was announced on Tuesday, he may have been a planned performer.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorNearly five years after the release of their last album, “Everything Now,” the sixth studio album by Arcade Fire, has been confirmed for a May 6, 2022 release via Columbia Records.Titled ‘We,’ the album’s arrival is preceded by first single “The Lightning I, II,” and as a video directed by Emily Kai Bock, which can be seen below.Produced by longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich with the group’s Win Butler and & Régine Chassagne, and recorded in multiple locales including New Orleans, El Paso and Mount Desert Island, the album “paradoxically distills ‘the longest we’ve ever spent writing, uninterrupted, probably ever’ (per the band’s Win Butler) into a concise 40 minute epic – one as much about the forces that threaten to pull us away from the people we love, as it is inspired by the urgent need to overcome them,” the announcement reads.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorOn Thursday morning, Dolly Parton ventured into the belly of Fox News’ hotbed of propaganda and misinformation, “Fox & Friends,” in an attempt to set the record straight about her decision to decline her likely nomination into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.“Well, I didn’t feel exactly right about that,” she said, while being interviewed on the show along with James Patterson, who co-authored her new book “Run, Rose Run.” “Because my perception, and I think the perception of most of America — I just feel like that’s more for the people in rock music. I’ve been educated since then, saying that it’s more than that, but I still didn’t feel right about it.

Kate Middleton is thought to have ‘shed a tear’ after a comment from Prince Harry on her wedding day. Prince William and Kate married at Westminster Abbey in a ceremony in front of thousands of guests that was televised to millions of people around the world. However, they still managed to give the wedding a personal touch, thanks in part to the speech given by William’s best man, brother Prince Harry, at the reception.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorSlimkid3, Imani and Fatlip of the Pharcyde were never supposed to rap together again. After producing two classic ‘90s hip-hop albums — “Bizarre Ride: The Pharcyde” and “Labcabincalifornia” — the galvanizing West Coast hip-hop group crumbled and went their separate ways.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe family of legendary singer-songwriter Nat King Cole, one of the most important and influential musicians of the 20 th century, has entered into an agreement with Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group to manage and expand his legacy to new generations, the company announced today.Details of the transaction were not disclosed, beyond the fact that it “encompasses a broad range of rights from Cole’s legendary career including his recorded music, publishing, television shows, and name and likeness.”In the decades before his 1965 death from lung cancer at the age of just 45, Cole scored more than 150 singles across Billboard’s pop, R&B, and country charts and has sold an estimated 50 million-plus records worldwide. While best known as a crooner, he was a formidable jazz musician as well, and is best known for classics like “The Very Thought of You,” “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” “Unforgettable,” “Nature Boy,” “Stardust,” “When I Fall In Love,” “Mona Lisa,” “L-O-V-E,” and the holiday staple, “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).” As the announcement notes, Cole, who was born in Alabama in 1919, was subjected to all the barriers of the Jim Crow era, yet his success played no small role in advancing Black Americans’ presence in entertainment and public perception.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorMegan Thee Stallion and Dua Lipa are a formidable team, and award-winning video director Dave Meyers plays to their strengths in the clip for the pair’s new tag-team single, “Sweetest Pie.” Working a similar theme to the one from his video for Saweetie and Doja Cat’s “Best Friend” — hapless explorers of a science-fiction world stumble upon female characters with superpowers — this one turns dark quickly, as the explorers decide Megan and Dua are witches, try to burn them at the stake, and then suffer the consequences of their arrogance. Sure, it’s a not-terribly-serious, special-effect-filled music video, but it’s still a satisfying perspective during Women’s History Month.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAs more and more companies have cut ties with Russia in the wake of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, many have wondered why more music companies have not done the same.Early Tuesday, the U.K.’s performing rights organization, PRS for Music, said it has formally and immediately suspended its rights representation relationship with RAO, the Russian collecting society for musical works, “pending confirmation of its separation from the Russian Government and those individuals and companies on the sanctions lists.“We are also working with CISAC to consider the ongoing membership of Russian societies in the global network. It is not our desire to punish the Russian composer, songwriter and publisher communities who support peace, and we will work with the global community to identify opportunities to amplify the voices of protest.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAs the Prince estate slowly digs itself out of the legal and procedural morass that ensued after the legendary musician died in 2016 without leaving a will, a standoff between the estate and Morris Day, Prince’s near-lifelong friend and collaborator and frontman of the first Prince-spawned artist, broke into the open last week.At issue is Morris’ use of the name the Time, which an attorney for the estate claims it owns the rights to, citing a 1982 contract between Day and Prince. Day, who says his rights to use the name were never questioned by Prince himself over the many intervening years, blasted the estate on social media last week, and a rep shared the attorney’s letter, which proposes that Day license the name — presumably for a fee.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIt’s almost become a model in recent years: If a song’s a hit, the copyright-infringement lawsuits follow, and Dua Lipa was clobbered with two of them in four days last week. Her global hit “Levitating,” which has spent 68 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, has drawn two lawsuits from songwriters claiming the song infringes on their compositions, according to multiple media reports.The first was filed March 1 by a Florida reggae group called Artikal Sound System, claiming that Lipa’s song lifts from their relatively obscure 2017 track, “Live Your Life.” That complaint includes little specific detail beyond claiming that the two tracks are so similar that it was “highly unlikely that ‘Levitating’ was created independently.” In the second, more-detailed legal complaint, filed on March 4 in New York, songwriters L.

the Morris Day & The Time Facebook account.“However, now that Prince is no longer with us – Suddenly, the people who control his multimillion dollar estate, want to rewrite history by taking my name away from me, thus impacting how I feed my family. So as of now, per the Prince estate, I can no longer use Morris Day & The Time in any capacity,” Day said.Representatives for Prince’s estate contested Day’s characterization of the matter, however.

Prince is no longer with us, suddenly, the people who control his multi million dollar estate want to rewrite history by taking my name away from me, thus impacting how i feed my family. So as of now, per the Prince Estate, [I] can no longer use Morris Day & The Time in any capacity,” according to the post.A representative for the estate disputed Day’s post. “Given Prince’s longstanding history with Morris Day and what the Estate thought were amicable discussions, The Prince Estate was surprised and disappointed to see his recent post.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAfter what we’ve all been through in the past two years, every concert feels like a miracle, but a Dua Lipa show more than most. On the surface it might be easy to underestimate the heavy emotions associated with her “Future Nostalgia” album, which was famously released on March 27, 2020, just as the horrors of the pandemic were becoming clear: It’s a dance-party album that arrived at seemingly one of the worst possible times in human history for a dance party album, when there were no parties and the only dancing was done on our own.Yet instead of striking a sour note or seeming like a cruel taunt, it was many people’s escape, their comfort food, their crying blanket — a reminder not only of what we couldn’t have, but what we hoped to get back as everyone wondered, without exaggeration, when or if we’d ever be at a concert or on a crowded dancefloor again.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAmazon Music has announced that Phylicia Fant has joined the company as head of music industry partnerships, a newly created role. According to the announcement, she will identify and oversee strategic music partnerships and identify cross-entertainment campaigns for Amazon Music, She will be based in the company’s Culver City, Calif.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe “chopped and screwed” sound has become such a staple of hip-hop that most fans probably don’t even wonder where the slowed-down, stop-start sonic approach came from — and thus, the late DJ Screw, a.k.a. Houston native Robert Earl Davis Jr., is one of the truly unsung heroes of the genre.During the 1990s, he developed the revolutionary mixing technique from his Houston home, adding new rhythms to instrumental tracks, slowing them down and bringing in local rappers to freestyle over the tracks.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorCity of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the U.S., will honor Republic Records founders Monte and Avery Lipman (pictured above, R-L) at its 2022 Spirit of Life Gala in the fall. The prestigious award will be presented to them at a gala dinner — the first Spirit of Life Gala since 2019.According to the announcement, the Spirit of Life Award is City of Hope’s most prestigious honor and is presented to an esteemed community of industry leaders around the world who have made a significant commitment to improving the lives of others through the advancement of research and clinical innovation and the delivery of personalized, compassionate care.