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Leonard “Hub” Hubbard, who was the longtime bassist for The Roots, died after a long battle with cancer on Thursday (Dec. 16). He was 62.
His stepdaughter India Owens confirmed the news to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which reported that the cause of death was multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer he had first been diagnosed with in 2007, the same year he left The Roots. His wife Stephanie told Philadelphia’s ABC 6, which was the first to report the story, that Hub was hospitalized Wednesday night at Lankenau Hospital. She said that Hub was “energetic and mobile” days before, and then, suddenly things took a turn for the worse.
“It happened quickly. He didn’t suffer a lot,” she told the local outlet.
The Roots issued a statement on their socials Thursday afternoon and shared a black-and-white photo of their former member. “It is with the heaviest of hearts that we say goodbye to our brother Leonard Nelson Hubbard. May your transition bring peace to your family to your friends to your fans and all of those who loved you. Rest in Melody Hub,” the band wrote.
Born Leonard Nelson Hubbard in the bands’ Philadelphia roots, he joined the hip-hop ensemble in 1992, right when the group changed its name from Square Roots to The Roots, with founding members Tarik “Black Thought” Trotter, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and Malik B, who died in July 2020. That same year, The Roots moved to London and released their debut album, Organix, in 1993.
Hub went on to perform with the band for 15 years and record six more studio albums with the act, from their 1995 sophomore album Do You Want More?!!!??! to Game Theory in 2006. In 2008, a year after he left the band following his diagnosis of multiple myeloma, the bassist reunited with the group at The Roots Picnic for a performance.
The seven-time Grammy nominee won his first and only Grammy Award in 2000 for best rap performance by a duo or group with “You Got Me” by The Roots, featuring Erykah Badu and Eve. The band’s hometown Philadelphia chapter of The Recording Academy awarded The Roots with the Heroes Award in 2004. The chapter’s president Donn Thompson Morelli, otherwise known as Donn T, took to Twitter to commemorate Hub.
@RecordingAcad #LeonardHubbard #Rip #TheRoots pic.twitter.com/hpbCDmxnoJ
— Donn T (@Donn_T) December 16, 2021
In 2016, Hub sued his bandmates Black Thought and Questlove and their manager Shawn Gee by claiming they failed to properly compensate him from a deal that made him co-owner of the band before his cancer diagnosis forced him to quit The Roots in 2007, just one year before The Roots became Jimmy Fallon’s in-house band on The Tonight Show. His wife told ABC 6 that the suit had not been settled.
Aside from his work with The Roots, Hub scored Bertha Bay-Sa Pan’s 2002 indie film Face and the 2006 documentary Darfur Diaries: Message From Home.
He’s survived by his wife Stephanie, stepdaughters India and Onita Owens, and stepson Edward Owens.
Travis Scott is involved in a new effort to standardize safety measures at festivals across the U.S., a source familiar with the situation tells Billboard.
The embattled rapper, who is currently facing legal claims from nearly 2,800 Astroworld attendees after 10 people died and hundreds more were injured during his Nov. 5 performance at the festival, has spent the past three weeks working with The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) on an initiative designed to put new safety protocols in place in the festival industry.
The effort, which is currently soliciting participants for a working group, would mark the first time key stakeholders from multiple sectors — including government, music, public safety, emergency response, event management, health care and technology — have mounted a collective attempt to standardize health and safety measures at festivals nationwide.
According to the source, Scott has been reaching out to music industry leaders to secure their involvement in the endeavor. In a draft of a USCM agreement viewed by Billboard, “target participants” for the working group include Live Nation, AEG, Spotify and Apple as well as ticketing companies, record labels, management companies, talent agencies and the technology industry. Emergency preparedness, public safety and healthcare experts will also be approached.
Entitled “Ensuring Festival Safety,” the agreement notes that a comprehensive report based on discussions and research conducted among the working group’s participants and outside experts will be compiled between January and June 2022. The report will include findings and recommendations on issues including chain of command and authority, clear lines of communication, crowd management and monitoring, enforcement of health and safety protocols and the adoption of new technologies and innovations to help address safety concerns. Once complete, it will be released electronically to 1,400 cities and other relevant stakeholders and be made publicly available online at usmayors.org.
“It is our hope that this report serves as the new safety and security blueprint for all festivals,” the agreement reads.
USCM will announce the initiative at the 2022 USCM Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C., slated for Jan. 19-21, 2022. The final report and recommendations will be discussed during a subsequent USCM webinar, to feature select working group members and experts.
Within USCM, the report will be led by Reno Mayor and USCM’s vp strategy Hillary Schieve, who chairs the organization’s Tourism, Arts, Park, Entertainment and Sports Committee. USCM’s Mayors and Police Chiefs Task Force as well as its Criminal and Social Justice Committee will also help spearhead the effort.
In the wake of the Astroworld tragedy, safety and live events experts have noted multiple safety failures at the festival, including lapses in crowd management as well as the hire of inexperienced security staff amid a global labor shortage in the touring industry. In addition to Scott, Astroworld promoter Live Nation and other festival organizers have been named in the various lawsuits, which were recently consolidated into a single giant case.
Megan Thee Stallion and the Jonas Brothers have canceled their appearances at the Power 96.1 Jingle Ball in Atlanta on Thursday (Dec. 16) after members of their teams tested positive for COVID-19.
The sibling trio announced Thursday morning on social media that an unspecified member of their production crew tested positive for coronavirus, and that they would not be performing at the show, which is taking place at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena.
“We are extremely disappointed that we can’t be there with our fans in Atlanta,” the Jonas Brothers wrote on their Instagram Story.
Megan Thee Stallion also shared on Thursday evening that she was pulling out of Atlanta’s Jingle Ball after members of her team were exposed to COVID. “While I tested negative today, I’m not feeling well, and as a safety precaution, I won’t be able to perform at Jingle Ball in Atlanta,” the rapper tweeted. “I’m extremely disappointed to let my hotties down. Hoping to feel better tomorrow.”
The remaining acts on Thursday’s lineup include Black Eyed Peas, Big Time Rush, Tate McRae, Monsta X, Bazzi, Dixie D’Amelio and Tai Verdes.
Since late November, the 2021 iHeartRadio Jingle Ball Tour has made stops in Dallas/Ft. Worth, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C. The final show is scheduled for Sunday (Dec. 19) at the FLA Live near Miami/Ft. Lauderdale.
The news comes on the heels of other positive COVID cases hitting musicians, including Doja Cat, who shared earlier this week that she was pulling out of the remainder of the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball Tour after testing positive for the virus. Lil Nas X and Coldplay were also forced to drop off the U.K.’s annual Jingle Ball in recent days after unspecified members of their teams tested positive.
See Megan Thee Stallion’s cancellation tweet below and the Jonas Brothers’ announcement here.
We learned a few members on my team have been exposed to COVID. While I tested negative today, I’m not feeling well, and as a safety precaution, I won’t be able to perform at Jingle Ball in Atlanta. I’m extremely disappointed to let my hotties down. Hoping to feel better tomorrow
— TINA SNOW (@theestallion) December 17, 2021
When Dulce María heard the final version of what would be her first-ever collaboration with Marília Mendonça, she got chills.
“I would hear it over and over again,” the Mexican singer-songwriter tells Billboard, who on Thursday (Dec. 16) released her duet “Amigos Con Derechos” with Mendonça, the 26-year-old Brazilian sertanejo star who passed away Nov. 5 in a tragic plane crash. “To hear her sing in Spanish was really special because it was something she wanted to do in her career, and she had just started taking Spanish classes.”
Originally featured in her Origen album, which became the first set she released as an independent artist in October, “Amigos Con Derechos” is a country-tinged pop track on finding the courage to get out of a toxic relationship. It was the perfect song to sing with Mendonça, says Dulce, as she often sang about female empowerment and connected with women through her lyrics.
“The song, which I wrote along with Marcela de La Garza in 2010, was very much her style, lyrically and musically,” adds the former RBD member. “Sertanejo is like country, and out of all the songs on my album, this one is the that has the most folk instruments.”
Dulce and Mendonça’s respective teams had been in talks since August about the collaboration, which was proposed by Dulce’s team. “I was doing collaborations in Brazil and I suggested doing something with a big local artist that had the same vibe as my album and they said, ‘Marília is the top, and the most loved artist in Brazil right now.’ So we sent a request and she said yes right away.”
Four days later, Mendonça sent her two separate recordings of the track: one in in Spanish and one in Portuguese. “When I heard her versions I thought, ‘Wow she really made this song hers.’ So, I went in and added my vocals and it was so weird to have spent so many hours singing with her in a duet when she’s not longer here. But I still felt this special connection, although we never got to meet or talk.”
Dulce and Mendonça were supposed to jump on a Zoom call to flesh out details, but due to their conflicting schedules, their busy lives as recording artists and mothers to toddlers, the pair never got around to speaking — much less recording a music video for the duet, which Mendonça was willing to go to Mexico to make happen.
When Dulce heard the news of her passing, “I was in total shock. I didn’t understand why this had happened. She had a 1-year-old, I have a 1-year-old. As a touring artist and a mother, this impacted me greatly. And it was difficult for me to process everything that had happened just months before she died.”
She looked for answers to questions she would never get. “I finally understood that she had left this unique gift. She was a huge fan of RBD and even a fan of my character Roberta on the telenovela Rebelde, so maybe she said yes because of that. She didn’t need to collaborate with me, she was at the peak of her career. So, it wasn’t only a professional move for her, there was also a personal motive.”
After speaking with her team to discuss whether or not the collab should be released, all parties agreed to share one of her latest collaborations with her fans.
“Amid all this pain, she left us this gift that I want to share with all the love in the world, respect and honor for her. I especially want to share this song with her fans, everyone that loved her. And everyone that had yet to discover her because she was a woman with a beautiful voice but even a more beautiful heart.”
Mendonça was on her way to perform in the city of Caratinga when her plane crashed. All five passengers, including the plane’s crew, lost their lives in the accident. With more than eight million listeners on Spotify and more than 22 million subscribers on YouTube, the folk singer-songwriter, who began writing songs at the age of 12, had become one of biggest exponents of popular Brazilian music.
Stream “Amigos Con Derechos” below:
Northleaf Capital Partners will raise $303.8 million through the sale of bonds backed by music royalties of The Who’s Pete Townshend, country star Tim McGraw and other artists in Spirit Music Group’s wide-ranging collection of music rights.
The bonds will be backed by over 52,000 assets, primarily compositions but also recordings, that represent a sub-section of Spirit catalog, according to Ross Cameron, a partner at Lyric Capital Group, a private equity firm and Spirit’s financial sponsor. The sale is a “joint effort” of Northleaf and Lyric that provides “a replacement” for another debt facility, says Cameron, who co-founded Lyric in 2019 with managing partner Jon Singer, Spirit’s former CEO and current chairman.
The partnership with Northleaf, which invested $500 million in Lyric in October, “puts Spirit Music Group in a position to continue to do what they do best — service the writer community [and] be an independent publisher,” says Cameron. Lyric’s management-led buyout of Spirit used $350 million, including $280 million in equity by the Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners, to recapitalize the company.
While some publishing investors have sold equity in recent years to build war chests, the concept of securitizing music assets — selling bonds backed by music royalties — gained stature in 1997 when investment banker David Pullman sold David Bowie raised $55 million selling 10-year bonds backed by David Bowie’s publishing and master recording royalties. Pullman went on to sell bonds backed by the publishing assets of James Brown, the Isley Brothers, Ashford & Simpson, and the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting catalog. Bowie didn’t have great timing, though: U.S. recorded music revenues peaked in 2001, leading ratings agencies to downgrade the bonds, although they were paid off on schedule in 2007.
Northleaf’s bonds, which will carry an investment-grade A rating by Kroll Bond Rating Agency, should appeal to investors who increasingly see music royalties as safe and recession-proof assets. In just the last four years, independent companies such as Spirit, Hipgnosis Songs Fund, Concord Music Group, Round Hill Music and Primary Wave Music have raised and spent billions of dollars on primarily publishing rights. The major music companies, too, are snapping up songwriting and recording catalogs by the likes of Bob Dylan (Universal Music Publishing for between $375 and $400 million), Paul Simon (Sony Music Publishing for an undisclosed sum) and Bruce Springsteen (Sony Music for more than $500 million).
In its 26-year history, Spirit has amassed a catalog of over 100,000 songs, including 800 hits, featuring rocker Billy Squier (“The Stroke,” “Lonely is the Night”), jazz great Charles Mingus, T. Rex (“Get It On (Bang a Gong)”), James William Guercio (producer of albums by Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears), Graham Nash (of The Hollies and Crosby, Stills and Nash) and composer Henry Mancini (“Moon River,” “The Pink Panther Theme”). In the last two years, Spirit acquired the songwriting catalogs of Kara DidGuardi (hits by Pink!, Katy Perry and Carrie Underwood) and Ingrid Michaelson (“The Way I Am” and “Girls Chase Boys”) as well as some of McGraw’s master recordings.
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