Mariah Carey has departed Roc Nation and partnered with Range Media Partners for management, Billboard can confirm. Carey will work with Melissa Ruderman, her former rep at Roc Nation who joined Range Media in January. Variety first reported the news.
Carey’s move to Range Media follows a report in U.K. tabloid The Sun that the singer and Roc Nation founder Jay-Z fell out following an “explosive meeting.” Carey, who signed with Roc Nation in Nov. 2017, subsequently set out to quell the rumor by tweeting, “The only ‘explosive’ situation I’d ever ‘get into’ with Hov is a creative tangent, such as our #1 song ‘Heartbreaker.’”
Ruderman and Carey’s relationship goes back over 15 years, when Ruderman worked for manager Benny Medina and handled day-to-day management for Carey during the release cycle for her 2005 album The Emancipation of Mimi. During her five-year stint at Roc Nation, Ruderman helped execute several major deals for Carey, including two consecutive residencies at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, a TV deal with Apple and a publishing contract that led to the publication of the New York Times-bestselling memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey.
Carey has had a long list of managers over the years. Before signing with Roc Nation, she was with Stella Bulochnikov and, before that, Kevin Liles, with whom she signed in 2014 following the dissolution of her management relationship with longtime collaborator Jermaine Dupri. At various points earlier in her career, Carey was managed by ex-husband Tommy Mottola, Randy Jackson and Red Light Management.
Range Media Partners was launched in Sept. 2020 by former Entertainment One chief strategy officer Peter Micelli and a coalition of former CAA, WME and UTA agents.
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It’s been over two years since renowned music video director Nabil Elderkin premiered his first feature film Gully at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, and on Tuesday (June 8), he can finally take a deep breath once it’s finally out for the world to see.
Elderkin has directed dozens of iconic music videos for Kanye West, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Billie Eilish and more. But over the last few years, the Australian-American director and photographer has been working on his feature-film directorial debut Gully, which premiered in select theaters on Friday and is available on-demand Tuesday (June 8).
Gully follows a trio of troubled teens in Los Angeles played by Jacob Latimore (The Chi, Collateral Beauty), Charlie Plummer (Lean on Pete, Looking for Alaska) and Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves, Monster). The gritty feature film depicts how the three boys are byproducts of their ‘hood who “don’t really get to play astronaut and stick fight because there’s so much being demanded [from them],” says screenwriter Marcus J. Guillory. In spite of being subject to their respective cycles of violence and abuse at home, their brotherhood remains the most unfailing force in their lives, as Gully portrays a gutting picture of what it means to be a “ride-or-die.”
“Music videos was my film school,” Elderkin tells Billboard. Of course, he’s not the only music video director to transition into film: In 2019, two-time Grammy winner Melina Matsoukas, who’s helmed visuals for Beyoncé, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and more, made her directorial debut with the romantic crime drama Queen & Slim, starring Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith, among many other examples.
And he’s not the only one making a debut of sorts in Gully: Travis Scott makes his feature film debut with his small role as Derek, a video store clerk who observes a crucial scene in the boys’ destructive conduct. While Calvin (Latimore), Nicky (Plummer) and Jesse (Harrison Jr.) engross themselves in a violent video game that mimics the level of brutality they’re used to witnessing on the streets — which later becomes a motif as to how the boys center themselves in and interact with their surroundings — they unleash utter chaos in Scott’s store by casually tossing entire shelves of DVDs onto the floor. The “Sicko Mode” rapper, who’s synonymous with the word “rage” by way of his frenetic onstage demeanor, is irritated but not incensed in the way fans might expect to see him.
“He came through. There were moments where you could tell he was like [makes angry grunting noise], but he got into his mode,” Elderkin says. “He’s got a future in acting, for sure. Travis can act. Having him be in the film and be executive producer of the film is a blessing.”
Lipa, who led the at-home dance revolution during the pandemic last year with her disco-inspired album Future Nostalgia, takes charge with a completely different sound on the saxophone-driven rallying cry “Can They Hear Us.” Laced within the production of “Can They Hear Us” and Clark Jr.’s “We Stay Up” is the film’s score by Daniel Heath, who identifies the DNA of the soundtrack as a “beautiful” blend of the “hip-hop scattered throughout an intense film with lots of violence” with “something quite classical and orchestral and piano-based and string-based.” Before working with the “Levitating” superstar, whom he says “has got a hell of a voice,” Heath worked with another major artist, Lana Del Rey, on producing the orchestral version of “Young and Beautiful,” heard in the 2013 romantic drama The Great Gatsby.
“Nabil was super, super involved in the score as well. He was very interested in pushing sounds,” Heath tells Billboard. “There was this one scene toward the end where one of the lads was being arrested … and Nabil had an idea to come up with a sound that sounded like crying but in an instrument. So I recorded a solo violinist, and we called it a ‘cryolin’ instead of a violin. And the violin just made these sort of beautiful weeping sounds.”
Adds Elderkin about Heath’s work scoring the film: “I wanted to make it feel like the different emotions and parts of the movie and feel natural and have it come out of the places that it would come out of naturally, like a speaker or headphones, and be interweaved into the film as the sonic tapestry rather than just put music behind things. I don’t want people to get taken out of the film with a song coming in, you know what I mean? And Daniel does what he does beautifully, [which] is find that balance of complementing what’s on the screen.”
Elderkin juggled wearing even more hats on Gully by also serving as executive producer of the soundtrack, which on the business side required dealing with a taxing amount of rights and clearances over six months, but on the creative side was “one of the most exciting experiences I’ve had.”
On the soundtrack, LA-bred artists Ty Dolla $ign, ScHoolboy Q and B-Real link up on “Blacks N Mexicans,” which B-Real starts off with a testimony about how white people divided two of the most prominent racial communities in the metropolis. Three tracks down, fellow local Buddy maps out gang violence and persuades his peers that it’s not the life they really want to live (“You are not a killer, I can see it in your eyes,” he raps) in the twinkling Hit-Boy-produced track “Murderer.”
“There was even people that aren’t on the soundtrack — Cordae, Joey Bada$$ — people that were there, ready to do things, [but] there’s only so many songs you can put in,” Elderkin explains. “I’m so grateful to have all the artists that I’m friends with and some that I’ve worked with creating something for the film that was real special and touching. I wanted that music to emulate, feel like LA or feel like what the youth would be feeling or wanting to hear from each scene.”
When Guillory wrote the script 15 years ago, he had one distinct album that’s colorfully inked around his arm act as his personal writing soundtrack: Miles Davis’ 1970 double album Bitches Brew.
“That’s what I wrote Gully to, that album. That is the only thing I listened to when I wrote that. I wasn’t listening to hip-hop. It was bumping out in the street. So I could definitely dig what Daniel [Heath] was doing,” Guillory says, explaining how crosscutting the hip-hop and classical elements of the music in Gully ran parallel to the script. “The juxtaposition is very important. Even when we have a moment where Calvin [Latimore] and them are talking feel like iambic pentameter, taking an animated character and giving them what I call heightened language in certain moments juxtaposed to what you would normally hear in the ‘hood.”
Guillory’s upbringing in the South Park neighborhood of Houston and experience living in Morningside in South Central LA at the time of writing Gully in 2006 shaped the story and told it from the point-of-view of its intended audience: kids living in rough neighborhoods “mired in poverty and low expectations” who aren’t involved in gangs, drugs or anything else stereotypically depicted in the “‘hood narrative.” And with Nabil’s music video work reaching the same people, paired with his ability to naturally blend in the elements of their East 43rd Street and South Avalon Boulevard shooting location, Gully became a product of the people, by the people, for the people.
“The cool thing with Nabil’s visuals, just with the music video stuff, he was tapped into the same demographic too. So we were both creating content for the same demographic. It wasn’t a hard reach for us to figure out what they would wear, what they would say, what they would be doing,” adds Guillory. “But you know what was cool for me? Man, the people that I wrote it for, the people that Nabil shot it for, they get it. And I feel so good about that…. I’ve been getting hit up, like my dudes in Houston was like, ‘Kids was sneaking in [to see Gully].’ Yeah, that’s for y’all.”
Gully is currently out in theaters and on demand. All proceeds from the film’s merchandise will be donated to Surf Bus Foundation, which empowers inner-city youth to have a healing connection to the sea.
Natanael Cano knocks himself out of the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Regional Mexican Albums chart as A Mis 20 debuts at No. 1, replacing Corridos Tumbados on the June 12-dated ranking. The latter spent 31 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 since it bowed atop the list dated Nov. 16, 2019.
Cano’s sixth studio album starts with 5,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending June 3, according to MRC Data, mostly stemming from streaming activity. It registered 6.9 million on-demand streams of the album’s tracks in its first tracking week.
The Regional Mexican Albums chart ranks the most popular regional Mexican albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. 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.
The 11-track A Mis 20 was released May 28 via JHRH/Warner Latina and earns Cano his second No. 1 on the tally. The 20-year-old becomes the first act to oust himself from the top since Christian Nodal’s Ahora pushed Me Dejé Llevar from the lead in May 2019.
Corridos Tumbados’ 31 weeks at No. 1 remains the third-most on the chart following only Selena’s 97-week reign with Amor Prohibido and Nodal’s Me Dejé Llevar (73 weeks at No. 1).
A Mis 20 concurrently debuts at No. 9 on Top Latin Albums, Cano’s highest start since Corridos debuted at No. 5 (No. 4 peak). The latter is in the list’s top 30 in its 83rd week.
Back on Regional Mexican Albums, A Mis 20 becomes just the third album to debut at the summit in 2021. It trails Eslabon Armado’s Corta Venas (Jan 2-dated tally) and Cano’s labelmate Junior H’s $ad Boyz 4 Life (Feb. 27-dated list).
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A troubling trend of gun violence leaked into Miami-Dade County’s south end early Monday morning when police said a disturbed gunman shot and killed his girlfriend and her son and … Click to Continue »
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Deputies responding to a 911 report of a shooting early Sunday morning found a man with multiple gunshot wounds in the driver’s seat of a Toyota SUV, according to the … Click to Continue »
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As the high-profile public corruption case revolving around former state Sen. Frank Artiles continues to play out in court, the no-party candidate accused of being paid and recruited to run … Click to Continue »
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Wynwood has art, restaurants, bars, offices and apartments — but few tourist digs. That’s about to change. Mr. Krymwood, a 76-room hotel, is coming to 176 NW 28th St., adjacent … Click to Continue »
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ATLANTA — A College Park police officer was injured early Saturday morning while attempting to confront a teenager driving a stolen SUV when the boy drove into him, running over … Click to Continue »
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The Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, Barry Gibb and 71 other prominent British musicians joined a campaign by artists and songwriters pushing for a larger share of streaming royalties from platforms like Spotify and YouTube — and closer scrutiny on the major labels’ hold on the market.
The call by the 74 musicians comes two months after a group of more than 150 artists — including Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox and Chris Martin — sent the same letter to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson calling for the British leader to change U.K. copyright law so that streaming revenues would be treated more like radio revenue.
The new push by British artists to show solidarity in their quest for fairer compensation also comes as a Parliamentary body — the Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) Committee — is set to release recommendations after an inquiry into the music streaming economy that concluded in March.
The letter’s signatories are calling for a government referral of the multinational corporations that wield “extraordinary power” over the music business to the U.K. competition enforcer, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which can act against businesses engaging in anti-competitive behavior.
Over 75 artists including The Rolling Stones add their names to the #FixStreaming call.
It’s time for @BorisJohnson to put the value of music back where it belongs – in your hands.
The U.K. Parliamentary probe has seen major labels’ dominance of the market emerge as a central issue. The first stage of the inquiry concluded with government minister Caroline Dinenage saying she would support a referral of the three biggest music companies — Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music — to the CMA.
The committee expects to publish their report next month before Parliament breaks for its summer recess, although a date has not been announced. Ministers will then have eight weeks to respond, and although they aren’t obliged to enact its recommendations, they are expected to engage with them.
During the inquiry, bosses from all three major labels faced hostile questioning from DCMS committee members over how labels pay out streaming royalties to creators. Senior execs from Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music and YouTube also appeared before members.
The musicians are pressing for a change in the U.K.’s 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, which would see music streaming classified in the same way as radio and TV broadcasting. Songwriters earn on average 50% of radio revenues, but only 15% of streaming receipts, the signatories say in their letter to Johnson. If a re-classification were to happen, streaming would be subject to the principle of equitable remuneration, which guarantees royalties to performers on recordings.
Currently, music streams are covered in most international markets by a “making available right,” meaning that only copyright owners receive payments, which they then share with featured artists according to the terms of their contract. Unlike royalties for U.K. television and radio, session musicians do not typically receive a share of streaming royalties.
The major labels strongly oppose any change to copyright law around how streaming is classified. The labels have said that a move towards equitable remuneration would result in a substantial loss of earnings, reducing their ability to invest in new acts. It could also hamper the ability of rights holders to negotiate licensee agreements with streaming services, they say, by making it harder for them to walk away from negotiations.
The renewed call from British artists also comes after the World Intellectual Property Organization said in a report last week (June 1) that streaming should start to pay more like radio.
The WIPO reported noted that global recorded music revenues have grown six consecutive years to a total of $21.6 billion in 2020, even growing substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. “This streaming-fueled success has not trickled down to performers, especially non-featured performers,” the report said. “The more global revenues surge, the harder it is for performers to understand why the imbalance is fair—because it is not.”
“This letter is fundamentally about preserving a professional class of music-maker into the future,” Tom Gray, founder of the #BrokenRecord Campaign, one of the U.K. organizers, says in a statement. “Most musicians don’t expect to be rich and famous or even be particularly comfortable, they just want to earn a crust.”
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The Kennedy Center Honors are among the most prestigious awards in arts and entertainment, but the annual TV show long ago became formulaic and staid. The show desperately needed a makeover. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the producers to make some changes.
Because of COVID regulations and best practices, parts of the show were shot outdoors, parts were shot in a semi-covered pavilion, parts were shot indoors. The result, which aired Sunday on CBS, was the most enjoyable installment in years, much fresher and less static. The changes provided more than just a change of scenery. They reinvigorated the show, now in its 43rd year. (At least something good came out of this long ordeal!)
Here are the 10 best musical moments from this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.
10. Yo-Yo Ma, a 2011 honoree, performed J.S. Bach’s “Prelude from Cello Suite No. 1″ in tribute to current honoree Midori. Yo-Yo Ma was one of two past honorees who were enlisted this year as performers. The other was James Taylor, a 2016 honoree, who performed Garth Brooks’ 1992 hit “The River” as part of the show-closing tribute to the country superstar.
9. Grammy winner Sturgill Simpson performed “House of the Rising Sun” in tribute to Joan Baez, who covered the traditional folk song on her 1960 debut album.
8. Current Tony nominee Aaron Tveit (Moulin Rouge! The Musical) and three-time Grammy winners Pentatonix teamed to perform “Step in Time” from Mary Poppins and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” from the 1968 film of the same name. This was part of the tribute to the ageless Dick Van Dyke, who starred in both films.
7. Grammy winner Rhiannon Giddens with fellow fiddler and banjo player Dirk Powell paid tribute to Baez by performing “Silver Dagger,” the opening track from her 1960 debut album.
6. Tony winner Anika Noni Rose performed “Out Here on My Own,” the plaintive, Oscar-nominated ballad from Fame. This was part of the tribute to Debbie Allen, who portrayed dance teacher Lydia Grant in the 1980 film and went on to play the same role on the 1982-87 TV series and serve as the series’ principal choreographer.
5. Vanessa Hudgens performed the Oscar-winning title song from Fame, also part of the tribute to Allen. The rousing Dean Pitchford/Michael Gore song was inspired by the hits of the era by Donna Summer. This number would simply not have been as effective if Hudgens and company were confined to a stage. The song was made to be performed outside (as it was in the original film). Hudgens was joined in her performance by the rest of the company from the Allen segment: Rose, Ariana DeBose, Vivian Nixon, Tiler Peck, Demond Richardson and the Debbie Allen Dance Academy.
4. Jimmie Allen excelled on two of Brooks’ early hits: “The Thunder Rolls” and “Friends in Low Places.” It’s never easy to cover another artist’s signature song, and “Friends in Low Places” has been that for Brooks pretty much since he released it in 1990. The Dewayne Blackwell/Earl Bud Lee song was letter-perfect for Brooks’ persona. Turns out, it suited Allen pretty well too.
3. Emmylou Harris and Mary Chapin Carpenter paid tribute to Baez by performing three songs long associated with the singer, including the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” (from Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2, 1963). Harris and Carpenter also performed the title song (which Baez wrote) from her 1975 album Diamonds & Rust and Steve Earle’s “God Is God” (the opening track from Day After Tomorrow, 2008). Harris is overdue to be a Kennedy Center Honoree. In a rarity, the Baez segment did not include her biggest hit, a 1971 cover version of Robbie Robertson’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
2. Kelly Clarkson performed “The Dance,” the standout ballad from Brooks’ 1989 debut album. It’s a given, after a couple of years of “Kellyoke” segments, that Clarkson can sing anything. But she can really soar when she tackles a superb song like this Tony Arata ballad. The first minute or so of her performance was a cappella, before a pianist joined to provide still-spare accompaniment. She’s good.
1. Gladys Knight closed the show by performing “We Shall Be Free,” which Brooks co-wrote with Stephanie Davis and released in 1992, when its live-and-let-live stance regarding gay rights was considered much more controversial than it is today. Knight excelled on the song. She has long bridged the gap between soul and country, having a hit with Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night” in 1972 and teaming with Vince Gill on the opening track on the Rhythm, Country & Blues album in 1994. Memo to the Kennedy Center Honors selection committee: Knight, a star since 1961, really deserves to be an honoree. They don’t call her the Empress of Soul for nothing.
The next Kennedy Center Honors will presumably be staged, and air, in December as the show returns to its normal schedule. (This show was the one that would normally have aired in December 2020.)
At the end of the show, Gloria Estefan, a 2017 honoree who was hosting for the second time, said that next time they would probably be back in the Kennedy Center Opera House. The producers might want to think twice about that. As Sheryl Crow, another likely future honoree, once sang, “A Change Would Do You Good.”
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