Melvin Van Peebles, the groundbreaking filmmaker, playwright and musician whose work ushered in the “blaxploitation” wave of the 1970s and influenced filmmakers long after, has died. He was 89.

In statement, his family said that Van Peebles, father of the actor-director Mario Van Peebles, died Tuesday evening at his home in Manhattan.

“Dad knew that Black images matter. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what was a movie worth?” Mario Van Peebles said in a statement Wednesday (Sept. 22). “We want to be the success we see, thus we need to see ourselves being free. True liberation did not mean imitating the colonizer’s mentality. It meant appreciating the power, beauty and interconnectivity of all people.”

Sometimes called the “godfather of modern Black cinema,” the multitalented Van Peebles wrote numerous books and plays, and recorded several albums — playing multiple instruments and delivering rap-style lyrics. He later became a successful options trader on the stock market.

But he was best known for Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, one of the most influential movies of its time. The low-budget, art-house film, which he wrote, produced, directed, starred in and scored, was the frenzied, hyper-sexual and violent tale of a Black street hustler on the run from police after killing white officers who were beating a Black revolutionary.

With its hard-living, tough-talking depiction of life in the ghetto, underscored by a message of empowerment as told from a Black perspective, it set the tone for a genre that turned out dozens of films over the next few years and prompted a debate over whether Black people were being recognized or exploited.

“All the films about Black people up to now have been told through the eyes of the Anglo-Saxon majority in their rhythms and speech and pace,” Van Peebles told Newsweek in 1971, the year of the film’s release.

“I could have called it The Ballad of the Indomitable Sweetback. But I wanted the core audience, the target audience, to know it’s for them,” he told The Associated Press in 2003. “So I said Ba-ad Asssss, like you really say it.”

Made for around $500,000 (including $50,000 provided by Bill Cosby), it grossed $14 million at the box office despite an X-rating, limited distribution and mixed critical reviews. The New York Times, for example, accused Van Peebles of merchandizing injustice and called the film “an outrage.”

Van Peebles, who complained fiercely to the Motion Picture Association over the X-rating, gave the film the tagline: “Rated X by an all-white jury.”

But in the wake of the its success, Hollywood realized an untapped audience and began churning out such box office hits as “Shaft” and “Superfly” that were also known for bringing in such top musicians as Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes to work on the soundtracks.

Many of Hollywood’s versions were exaggerated crime dramas, replete with pimps and drug dealers, which drew heavy criticism in both the white and Black press.

“What Hollywood did — they suppressed the political message, added caricature — and blaxploitation was born,” Van Peebles said in 2002. “The colored intelligentsia were not too happy about it.”

In fact, civil rights groups like the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality coined the phrase “blaxploitation” and formed the Coalition Against Blaxploitation. Among the genre’s 21st century fans was Quentin Tarantino, whose Oscar-winning “Django Unchained” was openly influenced by blaxploitation films and spaghetti Westerns.

On Wednesday, a younger generation of Black filmmakers mourned Van Peebles’ death. Barry Jenkins, the “Moonlight” director, said on Twitter: “He made the most of every second, of EVERY single damn frame.”

After his initial success, Van Peebles was bombarded with directing offers, but he chose to maintain his independence.

“I’ll only work with them on my terms,” he said. “I’ve whipped the man’s ass on his own turf. I’m number one at the box office — which is the way America measures things — and I did it on my own. Now they want me, but I’m in no hurry.”

Van Peebles then got involved on Broadway, writing and producing several plays and musicals like the Tony-nominated Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death and Don’t Play Us Cheap. He later wrote the movie Greased Lightning starring Richard Pryor as Wendell Scott, the first Black race car driver.

In the 1980s, Van Peebles turned to Wall Street and options trading. He wrote a financial self-help guide entitled Bold Money: A New Way to Play the Options Market.

Born Melvin Peebles in Chicago on Aug. 21, 1932, he would later add “Van” to his name. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1953 and joined the Air Force, serving as a navigator for three years.

After military service, he moved to Mexico and worked as a portrait painter, followed by a move to San Francisco, where he started writing short stories and making short films.

Van Peebles soon went to Hollywood, but he was only offered a job as a studio elevator operator. Disappointed, he moved to Holland to take graduate courses in astronomy while also studying at the Dutch National Theatre.

Eventually he gave up his studies and moved to Paris, where he learned he could join the French directors’ guild if he adapted his own work written in French. He quickly taught himself the language and wrote several novels.

One he made into a feature film. La Permission/The Story of the Three Day Pass, was the story of an affair between a Black U.S. soldier and a French woman. It won the critic’s choice award at the San Francisco film festival in 1967, and Van Peebles gained Hollywood’s attention.

The following year, he was hired to direct and write the score for Watermelon Man, the tale of a white bigot (played by comic Godfrey Cambridge in white face) who wakes up one day as a Black man.

With money earned from the project, Van Peebles went to work on Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.

Van Peebles’ death came just days before the New York Film Festival is to celebrate him with a 50th anniversary of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Next week, the Criterion Collection is to release the box set Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films. A revival of his play Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death is also planned to hit Broadway next year, with Mario Van Peebles serving as creative producer.

There’s a lot of music stars at Billboard Latin Music Week 2021, but even among that rarified company, Daddy Yankee is a king. On Wednesday (Sept. 22) in Miami, the reggaeton pioneer and Billboard cover star sat down with Billboard VP/Latin Music Lead Leila Cobo for The Superstar Q+A with Daddy Yankee Presented By Samsung Galaxy.

Yankee touched on a number of topics in the wide-ranging interview, sharing stories from his come-up, reflecting on his role in creating reggaeton and offering career advice for the next generation. He also provided an update on his upcoming album, his first in nearly 10 years.

“I’m still working on it. No pressure. We’re almost at the end,” he said. “When it’s ready, I’ll let you guys know.” In the meantime, lead single “Problema” just sailed past one billion streams, and he’s executive producing a documentary on reggaeton. “That’s where I see me growing – an executive producer of movies, documentaries,” he shared.

From his 2021 Latin Music Week discussion, here are five pieces of career advice from Daddy Yankee.

Talent Is What Matters

Yankee pointed out that two of the biggest songs of his career were collaborations with artists who weren’t on career hot streaks at the time: “Despacito” with Luis Fonsi and “Con Calma” with Snow. “I’m always grateful to Fonsi for making me part of that song. Our friendship is what made that happen,” Yankee recalls. “When I saw Fonsi and the musical impact, I felt happy at what we were able to achieve, and he was able to bring his career back up. It’s a lesson. You don’t have to record with a new talent – you can still create really big things.” Similarly, when “Con Calma” hit, he says, “Nobody was thinking about Snow, but I said, ‘let’s do it.’

“We gotta work with new and established talent. That’s the goal: Just work with talented people. It’s not just recording with hot artists – which is nice and good – but do things that are unpredictable. Two of the biggest hits of my career were with people that were underestimated,” he says. “This is what happens when you underestimate a talent: You give them power.”

Don’t Whine

When asked to give rising artists advice, he asked Cobo, “You want my political answer or my real one? I don’t speak a lot because they tell me, ‘you can’t speak like that,’ but sometimes I want to.” Here’s his no-prisoners take: “The artists that are starting up and are being crybabies, I can’t talk to them. A new artist that is complaining, I leave. With all of the platforms now – we started with none of this – you starting now and you’re complaining? You’re a loser. You have so many things to connect to your public. You have to work.”

Don’t Worry About Relevance

“Music doesn’t have age. It’s infinite. That’s my philosophy,” he says. “There are legends that continue to make music for the love of it. I focus on enjoying the journey and the process. I don’t have a formula. We make the beat, the rhythm, and from there we continue.” And if it doesn’t land, there’s always next time: “If they like it, great. If not, we’ll work harder for the next one.”

Learn the Process

After having doors slammed in his face early on, he learned how to take the production and distribution of his music into his own hands, asking himself, “It’s part of the business, so how can I learn?” Being in charge of his own career means owning his masters, and that’s made each paycheck that much bigger. “Eventually when I distributed a CD that got into Billboard, I got the check and almost died,” he recalls.

Don’t Listen to the Haters

“A social network has a nice public and audience, but a whole ‘nother group think they have the truth — but they don’t,” Yankee says. “And sometimes they attack an artist.” But he keeps it in perspective, pointing out that if you’re racking up millions of streams but seeing some haters online, just remember that “they’re [in the] minority.”

Investors’ enthusiasm for newly minted Universal Music Group shares spilled over to Warner Music Group on Tuesday (Sept. 21), helping WMG shares climb as much as 13.2% to $45.57 before ending the day at $45 — an 11.8% gain.

Earlier in the day, during trading on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, UMG shares climbed 35.7% — from a conservative 18.50 euros reference price — to 25.10 euros, valuing the world’s largest record label at 45.5 billion euros ($53.4 billion). UMG’s first day as a standalone entity followed a spin-off from Vivendi SA, UMG’s full owner since 2006, as a means to capture the value that was hidden inside the French conglomerate. Upon UMG’s departure, Vivendi’s share price fell 66.7% on Tuesday.

Demand for UMG shares may have helped two more music companies: the share prices of French music distributor Believe SA and U.S. music rights company Reservoir Media increased 3.1% and 11.6%, respectively, on Tuesday.

Investors also appeared hungry enough for UMG to purchase shares of Pershing Square Holdings, which has a 10% stake in UMG, and drive its share price up 5%.

Sensing an opportunity, WMG’s owner, Access Industries, sold 2.34 million shares to Morgan Stanley & Co. on Tuesday for an unspecified amount. WMG could benefit from the added liquidity to the market. Although the shares represent less than 0.5% of WMG’s outstanding shares, WMG’s float – shares available for trading – represent about 19% of its shares, according to multiple financial sources. (UMG says its float is 42% of outstanding shares.)

For its part, WMG, which went public in 2020, has proven to be a reliable investment: before Tuesday’s surge, WMG shares were already 61% above the $25 IPO price. Going into UMG’s listing, four securities analysts gave UMG a 10% to 40% premium over WMG — meaning they believe $1 in WMG’s hands would be worth from $1.10 to $1.40 to UMG.

After WMG’s valuation rose to about $26.4 billion on Tuesday, UMG has a 14% premium over WMG. Using each company’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2020, UMG and WMG have multiples of 35.9 and 31.5 of value to EBITDA, respectively. Had WMG shares not grown on Tuesday, UMG would be worth a 28% premium over WMG.

The two companies’ values should be correlated to some extent: They are similarly structured – mainly record labels and music publishers – and affected by the same market forces. Both music companies benefit when Spotify and Apple Music spread the subscription model throughout the world. They will each earn royalties from emerging sources such as Peloton and TikTok, worth $235 million annually for WMG’s record labels, CEO Stephen Cooper said in the company’s Aug. 3 earnings call. Likewise, labels and publishers are almost equally exposed to global pandemics, piracy and competition from movies and other entertainment. If labels are at “the threshold of a new golden age of music,” as Cooper stated in WMG’s Nov. 3, 2020 earnings call, WMG and UMG will share the bounty.

There’s a chance the market misinterpreted UMG shares’ incredible run as a true measure of investors’ interest. First-day trading volume was only 6.8% of available shares, possibly because not enough Vivendi shareholders, who receive 60% of UMG shares through a one-off distribution, could satisfy investors’ demand. Once the market has more liquidity, supply will converge with demand, and the share price could better reflect UMG’s true market value.

UMG’s first-day market value was, however, well within analysts’ estimations. A dozen securities analysts estimated UMG’s value to be from $35.5 billion to $62 billion, with an average of $47.5 billion.

T.I. isn’t mincing words on his new song “F— Em.”

The track comes after news broke that neither the rapper (né Clifford Joseph Harris Jr.) nor his wife, Tameka “Tiny” Harris, will face charges stemming from a 2005 incident involving a woman who alleged that the couple drugged and sexually assaulted her in Los Angeles. Charges cannot be made because the statute of limitations expired after 10 years, according to court documents obtained by Billboard.

In the song, T.I. raps, “Listen, lying ass h-, better shut that/ Upset ’cause they ass ain’t up yet/ Listen, I ain’t never gave no f— about a b—h/ If i did, h-, give my f— back/ Listen, I never gave a f— about them/ Pretty h–s stay in my DM.”

He later says, “On my life, me and my wife run this city/ Can’t snatch these stripes, we don’t care what they talking about, f— them lies.”

Ahead of the release, T.I. teased a clip from the new “F— Em” music video. “As promised our official msg dropped at 1pm @worldstar GO SEE IT‼️ S/O @liljon  Every storm runs outta rain ‼️,” he wrote.

In a statement issued to Billboard by T.I. and Tiny’s attorney, Shawn Holley, regarding the couple’s recent legal outcome, the lawyer said, “Mr. and Mrs. Harris are pleased, but not surprised, by the District Attorney’s decision to dismiss these meritless allegations. We appreciate the DA’s careful review of the case and are grateful to be able to put the matter behind us and move on.”

Last year, a second woman accused T.I. and Tiny of sexually assaulting her in Las Vegas in 2010. Her case was declined due to the statute of limitations.

T.I. has since denied the allegations against himself and Tiny. In a recent podcast interview with Big Facts Live, he said, “Why, all of a sudden, after all of these many years of service to the community, decades of integrity and showing people who I am… I just become a creep to people. I ain’t bullsh–ting, bruh. Motherf—ers just want me to be a creep so f—ing bad. Like, my n—a, where that come from?”

Kacey Musgraves scores her first No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart (dated Sept. 25) as her latest studio effort Star-Crossed debuts atop the list with 47,000 copies sold in the U.S. in the week ending Sept. 16, according to MRC Data. It’s her second-largest sales week ever, trailing only the debut week of Pageant Material in 2015 (55,000; chart dated July 11, 2015).

Of Star-Crossed’s opening-week sales, a whopping 26,000 were sold on vinyl LP — marking the largest sales week for a country album on vinyl since MRC Data began tracking sales in 1991. Previously, the best week on wax for a country set, since 1991, was held by Sturgill Simpson’s Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 1: The Butcher Shoppe Sessions, when it sold 15,000 copies in its first week of availability on vinyl (Dec. 26, 2020-dated chart).

Star-Crossed also opens at No. 1 on Billboard’s Vinyl Albums chart, Musgraves’ second leader on the tally, following her last studio effort, 2018’s Golden Hour.

Of Star-Crossed’s sales of 47,000, physical album sales comprise 37,000 (with 26,000 on vinyl; 9,000 on CD and nearly 2,000 on cassette) and 10,000 via digital download.

Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now MRC Data. Pure album sales were the measurement solely utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.

Metallica’s self-titled 1991 album jumps from No. 63 to No. 2 on Top Album Sales following its 30th anniversary reissue on Sept. 10. The album sold 29,000 copies in the week ending Sept. 16 (up 1,365%), with all versions of the album – old and new – combined for tracking and charting purposes.

Iron Maiden’s Senjutsu falls from No. 1 to No. 3 in its second week on the list, with 16,000 sold (down 74%) while Aaliyah’s long-out-of-print self-titled 2001 album re-enters at No. 4 with 15,000 sold after its reissue on Sept. 10.

Olivia Rodrigo’s former No. 1 Sour falls 3-5 with 14,000 sold (down 27%) while ATEEZ’s Zero: Fever Part.3 debuts at No. 6 with 12,000 sold. A pair of chart-toppers are next, as Halsey’s If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power dips 5-7 with 9,000 sold (down 47%) and Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever falls 6-8 with 8,000 sold (down 31%). The latter surpasses Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album to become the third-biggest selling album of 2021 with 264,000 sold (ahead of Wallen’s 259,000). Taylor Swift’s Evermore and Rodrigo’s Sour are the Nos. 1 and 2 sellers, with 424,000 and 350,000 sold, respectively.

Hayley Williams’ Flowers for Vases / Descansos re-enters the chart at No. 9 – a new high – with 7,000 sold. Nearly all of the sales came from its vinyl LP release, which dropped on Sept. 10, following the album’s initial release on streamers and via digital retailers on Feb. 5. (The set previously spent one week on the list, on the chart dated Feb. 20, when it debuted at No. 59 from 2,000 in download sales.)

Rounding out the new top 10 on Top Album Sales is Drake’s Certified Lover Boy, which drops 2-10 in its second week with nearly 7,000 sold (down 86%).