Jhay Cortez earns his highest ranking yet on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart as Timelezz, his sophomore effort, arrives at No. 2 on the Sept. 18-dated survey.

“Making this album was a yearlong process because I want my music to be Timelezz and have longevity atop the charts like Famouz did,” Cortez told Billboard. “I’m building my own sound which will change the game musically.”

Timelezz is a follow-up to Famouz, the Puerto Rican artist’s debut studio album, which peaked at No. 5 in 2019. The album has remained in the tally’s top 20 in all but one of its 120-week (and counting) run, holding strong at No. 16 on the current chart.

Timelezz starts with 11,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Sept. 9, according to MRC Data. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.

Of the album’s opening-week total, 10,000 units derive from streaming activity. That represents 14.7 million on-demand U.S. streams of the set’s tracks.

A combination of reggaetón, trap and a nod to techno and EDM, the 17-track Timelezz was released Sept. 3 via Universal Music Latino/UMLE. While Famouz launched at No. 164 in May 2020 on the all-genre Billboard 200, Timelezz marks a big leap for Cortez, bowing at No. 70 on the current chart.

As Timelezz arrives, one of its songs debuts on Hot Latin Songs: “Ley Seca,” with Anuel AA, at No. 12. The album previously yielded four other tracks on the airplay-, digital sales-, and streaming-blended list, starting with “Kobe En L.A.” (No. 44 debut and peak, November), “Los Bo,” with Myke Towers, (No. 40 debut and peak, Jan. 21), “Christian Dior” (No. 28 peak, June 26) and “En Mi Cuarto,” with Skrillex (No. 22 high, Aug. 14).

Timelezz concurrently starts at No. 2 on Latin Rhythm Albums.

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Ozuna captures his fifth straight top 10 on Billboard’s Tropical Airplay chart, as “La Funka” debuts at No. 9 on the Sept. 18-dated ranking. The latest from the Puerto Rican arrives with only one day of airplay as the song was released Sept. 12, the final day of the chart’s latest tracking week.

“La Funka,” a Soca (soul of calypso) and Brazilian funk-tinged tune, logged 2 million in audience impressions in the U.S. in the week ending Sept. 12, according to MRC Data, the same date Ozuna premiered the song with a live performance at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

“La Funka” is Ozuna’s highest debut on the almost 27-year-old chart and follows the one-week ruler “Travesuras,” with an all-star collaborative team. Here’s a recap of his five top 10s:

Position, Title, Artist (if other than Ozuna), Date

No. 7, “Yo Soy,” with Pirulo, January 2017
No. 7, “Dile Que Tú Me Quieres,” January 2017
No. 1, “Sobredosis,” with Romeo Santos, April 2018 (10-week ruler)
No. 1, “Travesuras,” with Nio García, Casper Mágico, Wisin, Yandel, Myke Towers & Flow La Movie, March 6
No. 9, “La Funka,” Sept. 18

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On Tuesday (Sept 14), Nas rang in his 48th birthday with the release of his all-new music video for the collaborative track “Brunch on Sundays” featuring Blxst.

The song appears on Nas’ 14th studio album, King’s Disease II, which dropped Aug. 6 as the sequel to his 2020 King’s Disease album; the latter LP earned Nas the Grammy for best rap album last year, his first win from the Recording Academy after a total 14 nominations. His latest project, King’s Disease II, with “Brunch on Sundays,” peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and charted for three weeks.

In his star-studded new music video — captured at California hot spot Catch LA — Nas is seen enjoying an all-white-clad brunch alongside LeBron James, Swizz Beatz, Russell WestbrookCordae, Lil Rel Howery, his collaborator Blxst and more.

At one point in the music video, Lil Rel stands up to propose a toast to Nas, in which he says, “To one of the O.G.’s in the game, Nas. Man, lyricist, poet, a prophet, fam, you did it the right way, bro. Hit-Boy [is] in here … Let’s propose a toast to Nas. To better years, brunch on Sundays.”

As the song comes to an end, Nas raps, “To make it Sunday to Sunday, that sh– is deep.”

In an Instagram post he shared Tuesday announcing the new music video, Nas wrote, “Bday Brunch Vibes with my guys.”

Since the ’94 release of his debut studio album Illmatic, Nas has dropped 27 Billboard Hot 100 tracks, including two top 10 hits. In 1999, his album I Am… peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, where it charted for 25 weeks.

Watch the snazzy new music video for “Brunch on Sundays” by Nas featuring Blxst below:

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George Wein, an impresario of 20th century music who helped found the Newport Jazz and Folk festivals and set the template for gatherings everywhere from Woodstock to the south of France, died Monday (Sept. 13).

Wein, 95, died “peacefully in his sleep” in his New York City apartment, said Carolyn McClair, a family spokesperson.

A former jazz club owner and aspiring pianist, Wein launched the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954 under pouring rain and with a lineup for the heavens — Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and Lester Young. Louis Armstrong was there the following year and Duke Ellington made history in 1956, his band’s set featuring an extraordinary, 27-chorus solo from saxophonist Paul Gonsalves that almost single-handedly revived the middle-aged Ellington’s career.

Wein led the festival for more than 50 years and performers would include virtually every major jazz star, from Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk to Charles Mingus and Wynton Marsalis. Just in 1965, the bill featured Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Ellington, Gillespie, Davis and Monk.

“As a young pianist and club owner, he understood quality, worshipped the giants of the music, and created a revolutionary Festival format that offered the widest possible range of jazz to much larger outdoor audiences,” Marsalis said in a statement. “He loved telling stories about Bird, Duke and all of the greats, engaging in spirited debates on a variety of subjects, and was an optimistic supporter of young talent.”

The success of Newport inspired a wave of jazz festivals in the U.S. and Wein replicated his success worldwide, his other projects including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France. His multiday, all-star gatherings were also a model for rock festivals, whether Woodstock in 1969 or the Lollapalooza tours of recent years.

Critic Gene Santoro observed in 2003 that without Wein, “everything from Woodstock to Jazz at Lincoln Center might have happened differently — if it happened at all.” Wein “can justifiably claim to have invented, developed and codified the contemporary popular music festival,” Santoro wrote.

The idea for Newport came in part from locals Louis and Elaine Lorillard, who urged Wein to organize a jazz festival in their gilded resort community in Rhode Island. Elaine Lorillard, a socialite, complained that the summer scene was “terribly boring.” Her tobacco-heir husband backed her up with a $20,000 donation.

Wein had never known of a large-scale jazz festival, so, in the spirit of the music, he improvised — seeking to combine the energy and musicality of a Harlem jazz club with the ambience of a summer classical concert in Tanglewood.

“What was a festival to me?” Wein later said. “I had no rulebook to go by. I knew it had to be something unique, that no jazz fan had ever been exposed to.”

Wein didn’t only work with jazz musicians. In 1959, he and Pete Seeger began a companion folk festival that would feature early performances by Joan Baez and Jose Feliciano among others and track the evolution of Bob Dylan from earnest troubadour to rule-breaking rock star.

Dylan’s show in 1963 helped establish him as the so-called “voice of his generation,” but by 1965 he felt confined by the folk community and turned up at Newport with an electric band. The response was mostly positive, but there were enough boos from the crowd and conflicts backstage — Wein rejected the legend that Seeger tried to cut the power cables to Dylan’s amps — to make Dylan’s appearance a landmark in rock and folk history.

In his memoir Myself Among Others, Wein remembered confronting Dylan as he left the stage and demanding he return to play something acoustic. When Dylan resisted, saying he didn’t have an acoustic guitar, Wein asked for volunteers to lend him one and helped persuade Dylan to go back out. Years later, Wein remained moved by memories of hearing Dylan sing “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” a farewell ballad in more ways than one.

“It was a farewell to the idealism and purity of the folk revival,” Wein wrote. “There was no turning back — not for Dylan, not for anyone.”

The Newport festivals have led to numerous films and concert albums, notably Murray Lerner’s Oscar-nominated 1967 documentary “Festival!”, with Dylan, Johnny Cash and Howlin’ Wolf among the performers. Wein would later bring in Led Zeppelin, Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown and other rock and rhythm and blues acts. In 2020, when Newport went virtual because of the pandemic, Wein introduced Mavis Staples from his home in Manhattan.

Wein himself had been a pianist since childhood and he maintained an active music career, releasing “Wein, Women and Song,” “Swing That Music” and several other albums and making yearly appearances at the Newport festival with his Newport All-Stars band. He was named a “Jazz Master” in 2005 by the National Endowment for the Arts and received a trustees award from the Recording Academy in 2014. Years earlier, President Clinton brought his saxophone to the White House stage for a celebration of the Newport Jazz Festival.

Wein grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, his father a dentist with a gambling habit and an eye for his secretary, his mother a pianist of “passable skills” and heiress to a paper products fortune. As a teenager, he defied his family by inviting Black musicians to their home and in his 20s he dated a Black woman, Joyce Alexander, whom he married in 1959. Joyce Wein, who became his business partner and closest adviser, died in 2005.

Wein saw himself as just an “average middle-class, Jewish-American kid,” although one easily bewitched by music. He would remember attending a Benny Goodman concert and listening just a few feet away from trumpeter Cootie Williams.

“For the duration of the evening I stood alone, wide-eyed, at the foot of the stage,” he wrote in “Myself Among Others,” released in 2003, “oblivious to the sea of couples swirling around the dance floor behind me.”

Wein enlisted in the Army during World War II and twice escaped possible death: Hitler died in April 1945 as Wein and others were nearing the German front. Months later, he was spared being transferred to the Pacific when the Japanese surrendered.

He graduated from Boston University and started the Storyville jazz club and record label in Boston, where Ellington, Charlie Parker and others came. Wein even got to join some of the performances, including playing piano for a set by Holiday, whose regular keyboardist had not showed up.

The Newport festival lasted despite ongoing conflicts, whether objections from the locals in Newport, the declining appeal of jazz, or the demands and resentments of the musicians. In 1960, Mingus organized a rival festival to protest Wein’s alleged favoritism among performers and a riot at the Newport gathering led to Wein’s being sidelined until 1962. In 1971, the booking of the Allman Brothers Band proved disastrous when rock fans overran the festival grounds, even setting sheet music on fire, and brought about a decade-long exile from Newport.

Wein, once described by The New Yorker’s Lillian Ross as a stocky man “who seemed to be filled with controlled frenzy,” was a fighter who faced down racist officials in New Orleans and chastised Monk for waiting too long to take the stage in Newport. He was also good at math. He recruited Sinatra, Dionne Warwick and other popular singers to help support the jazz artists. In the mid-1970s, he was struggling financially and became among the first popular music promoters to work with corporate sponsors, notably the makers of Kool cigarettes.

In 2005, he sold his company Festival Productions Inc. to Festival Network LLC and took on a more limited role at Newport. Six years later, he established the nonprofit Newport Festivals Foundation to oversee the summertime events.

“I want the festivals to go on forever,” Wein told The Associated Press at the time. “With me it’s not a matter of business. This is my life.”

Ruth Olay, the statuesque jazz vocalist and recording artist who entertained Los Angeles nightclub audiences for nearly four decades, has died. She was 97.

Olay died Sept. 3 at her home in Desert Hot Springs, California, publicist Alan Eichler announced.

At a time when most jazz singers had deep, husky voices, Olay offered a melodious, high-pitched sound. “There is always, lurking behind the breezy, jazzy confidence, a strong hint of vulnerability and melancholy, of bedeviled romances and other items of fortune,” Charles Champlin wrote in the Los Angeles Times after she performed in 1987.

In 1951, Olay was separated from her first husband and raising their young daughter by herself when she left her job as secretary to Oscar-winning filmmaker Preston Sturges at Paramount Pictures to sing in San Diego with Black bandleader Benny Carter. It was her first professional engagement.

Although she was of Hungarian ancestry, Olay used the pseudonym Rachel Davis to avoid controversy — with her dark complexion and short curly hair, it was assumed that she was Black.

Later, while working as a singing waitress at the Cabaret Concert Theatre on Sunset Boulevard, Olay was approached by arranger Bill Hitchcock about making an album, and It’s About Time — released in 1956 on Zephyr Records‚ a new label financed by meatpacking heir Geordie Hormel — garnered her attention.

In November that year, she began a yearlong engagement at the new Ye Little Club in Beverly Hills, stepping in for jazz singer Abbey Lincoln, who had left for a gig in South America and recommended Olay as her replacement. She drew a nightly celebrity crowd that included Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.

She then took over for Billie Holiday at the Avant Garde club for $500 a week, headlining bills that included comedian Shelley Berman and the Matt Dennis Trio.

Olay also worked with comic Lenny Bruce at the Avant Garde and the Crescendo, where arranger Pete Rugolo heard her and then signed her to Mercury Records. Her first album for Mercury’s EmArcy label, 1958’s Olay! The New Sound of Ruth Olay, got her more fans.

She followed with a second Mercury album, 1959’s Easy Living, which paired her with Jerry Fielding’s orchestra.

Now appearing at top clubs around the country as well as at festivals in Europe, she recorded a 1960 live album from Mister Kelly’s in Chicago and subsequently recorded for the Everest, ABC-Paramount and Laurel labels.

Born in San Francisco on July 1, 1924, Olay moved to Los Angeles with her family while still an infant. Her mother was a classical singer who sang in the chorus of Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy film musicals and at the Hollywood Bowl, and her father was a former rabbi who eventually became head of research at Warner Bros.

Initially a piano prodigy, Olay in her teens worked as a secretary at 20th Century Fox and took singing lessons with Florence Russell, whose students included Dorothy Dandridge. Her love of jazz led her to the many clubs that lined L.A.’s Central Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard back in the day.

At a party, she met Ivie Anderson, the legendary vocalist for Duke Ellington who had come out of retirement and was singing on Sunday nights at the Streets of Paris club on Hollywood Boulevard. She performed for the first time in front of an audience when Anderson brought her up on stage.

“Every Sunday, Ivie would make me get up there,” she said in a 2000 interview. “Just by watching her, I saw how she stood, the attitude she had. And I made that part of me. She was magnificent; she was very kind.”

While working for Sturges, her shifts lasted 24 hours at a time.

“He always took me out for dinner,” she said. “If he didn’t, he ordered mounds of sandwiches from the Players Club that he owned up on the Sunset Strip. Shakers full of whiskey sours. Then he’d go into his office, because it was a 24-hour deal. I went into golden time. I lived on the lot. Slept on the lot. Another secretary would come in after 24 hours. We would alternate. It was a wonderful experience. I enjoyed it so much. He was a very special guy.”

At the end of her four weeks with Carter, she got her job back at Paramount. When Sturges realized she had left for a nightclub gig, he offered to write a comedy act for her. “But Mr. Sturges,” she said, “I’m not that kind of singer!”

In her heyday, Olay also sang on programs hosted by Jack Paar, Merv Griffin and Steve Allen and performed with Ellington on an all-star jazz show fronted by Jackie Gleason and on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

Olay cut back on traveling after she married agent Lee Magid in 1963 and had a son, but she continued to sing in clubs around L.A. as recently as the late ’80s, when she was a regular at the Vine Street Bar & Grill.

Survivors include her children, Amy and Adam.

This article originally appeared in THR.com.