Notorious B.I.G.’s $6 Plastic Crown Sells for Nearly $600,000 at Sotheby’s First Hip-Hop Auction

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorSpotify has announced the debut of its Weekly Music Charts, which includes an albums chart, a new move for the streaming giant. According to the announcement, the new charts include:All of Spotify’s charts will live exclusively on @spotifycharts Twitter and new charts will be added in the coming months.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorJared Smith is stepping down as global chairman of Ticketmaster at the end of the year.Smith, 42, has been with the company for more than 17 years, although he was just promoted to chairman in August.

coronavirus.

There have been another 6,968 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK in the last 24 hours, the government has announced.A further 66 people have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Friday.The numbers, accurate as of 9am on Friday, brings the total number of positive cases in the UK to 467,146.This brings the UK total to 42,268.Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies show there have now been nearly 57,900 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorGenrefication in the music world can involve fierce debates over whether an act’s art could be defined as — or confined — to such terms as heavy metal, alternative, deep house or trap.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorDaBaby and Roddy Ricch led the nominees for BET’s 15th annual “Hip Hop Awards” with 12 and 11 nominations respectively, the network announced. Drake and Megan Thee Stallion followed with eight nods each.

Donald Trump.Simon & Schuster announced Wednesday that Woodward's book will be going into its fourth printing, with total books in print to be 1.3 million copies. Featuring 18 interviews with President Trump, including one in which he acknowledges in February the potential severity of the coronavirus, “Rage” has topped Amazon.com and other bestseller lists since coming out Sept.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorSouth by Southwest, the giant annual music, film and digital festival in Austin, Texas that was canceled due to the pandemic just days before it was to begin in March, has made its first announcements for 2021: A digital festival, with “plans for a 2021 physical event.”The digital experience, “featuring conferences keynotes and sessions, screenings, showcases and more” will take place March 16 – 20, 2021; updates on the proposed physical event, which the festival is

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorOn Tuesday, October 13, legendary jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders will perform at a special concert livestreamed from Zebulon in Los Angeles to celebrate his 80th birthday. Called “Another Trip Around the Sun,” the concert will see Sanders joined by Azar Lawrence on sax, John Beasley on keyboards, Tony Austin on drums and Sekou Bunch on bass.

A plastic crown worn by the Notorious B.I.G. three days before his murder has sold for $594,750 in Sotheby’s’ first ever auction of rap memorabilia and artefacts.

A crown worn by the rapper Notorious B.I.G. in what is said to have been his last photoshoot has sold for nearly £500,000.

Rivals in life, the rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur were united for an auction at Sotheby’s last month, the first-ever dedicated hip-hop auction at a major international auction house.

Notorious B.I.G’s iconic plastic crown was sold for almost half a million pounds at a Sotheby’s hip-hop memorabilia auction in New York yesterday (September 15).The crown was worn and signed by Biggie, real name Christopher George Latore Wallace, in a 1997 photoshoot with Barron Claiborne, just three days before the rapper was shot and killed in Los Angeles.

hip-hop memorabilia auction — which featured a one-of-a-kind Def Jam Recordings jacket, a triptych of pioneering DJs painted by Fab 5 Freddy and Judith Leiber’s crystal-encrusted handbag inspired by a boombox — the crown’s original purchaser said he didn’t buy the royal-rig for its gold content and embedded jewels.“This crown is a novelty item; I bought it at a place on Broadway called Gordon’s,” said Barron Claiborne, a 57-year-old photographer who lives in Brooklyn.

By Dan FastenbergNEW YORK (Reuters) - It started out as just a plastic prop from a party shop but the gold colored crown that American rapper Biggie Smalls wore on the last photo shoot before his death could fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at Sotheby's first-ever hip-hop auction.After highlighting sneakers and handbags in recent years, Sotheby's in New York is dedicating its September auction to hip-hop culture, featuring some 120 lots that will include boomboxes, photos of Snoop Dogg and