by Howard Campbell

[KINGSTON, Jamaica] – Christmas is in the air and Dean Fraser is feeling the vibe. On November 20, reggae’s premier saxophonist combines with Tad’s International Record to release a Yuletide album with a Rastafarian beat.

Nyabinghi Christmas is the title of the veteran musician’s first seasonal album which hears him doing standards like When A Child is Born, Virgin Mary and Merry Christmas, instrumentally, to traditional Rastafarian drumming.

“Wi want di Jamaican family to sit down an’ listen to Christmas songs, Jamaica style. It’s really a simple vibe,” said Fraser.

For an authentic rootsman feel, he brought in percussionists Congo Billy, Hector Lewis and Denver “Feluke” Smith for the 16-song album. Nyabinghi Christmas was the last project Smith worked on; he died in September from colon cancer.

Other popular songs on Nyabinghi Christmas are Long Time Ago, Feliz Navidad and Auld Lang Syne. Fraser and crew also re-work popular Jamaican staples like Santa Ketch up Inna Mango Tree and Christmus A Cum mi Waan mi Llamma.

Though many Jamaican artists embrace the Rastafarian faith which does not recognize Christmas, several acts have recorded Yuletide albums and songs with great success. Among them Boris Gardiner with The Meaning of Christmas, Home T’s Mek The Christmas Ketch You in A Good Mood and Carlene Davis’ Santa Claus (Do You Ever Come to The Ghetto).

The post Dean Fraser’s Yuletide Album Comes with a Rastafarian Beat appeared first on South Florida Caribbean News.

When The Voice contestants Carter Rubin, 14, and Larriah Jackson, 15, went face-to-face for the knockout rounds on Monday night (Nov. 16), they blew their coach Gwen Stefani away with their perfectly harmonious rendition of Meghan Trainor and John Legend’s “Like I’m Gonna Lose You.”

“I’m gonna quit now,” she joked after the jaw-dropping performance, knowing that she eventually had to choose one of the contestants to send home.

“Every second that goes by I keep changing my mind. Larriah was a one-chair turn, and then we get into rehearsals and Larriah blows us away,” she began thinking out loud. “You have already lived a whole life at 15 years old and Julia [Michaels] saw that in you, that you were singing from your heart. Carter, you have this incredible voice that you can do all this stuff with, and you’re just getting started. To watch you perform the way you did, you just had a lot more confidence in your body language.”

After a lengthy pause to decide between her “magical” young contestants, Stefani ended up choosing Rubin. “Ultimately, Carter has more of a unique sound to his voice and a unique gift being so young and a male,” she explained.

But she couldn’t give Larriah up just yet, pressing her “save” button as the 15-year-old walked off stage. “Since rehearsals I have not stopped thinking about you,” the pop singer said. “You have so much to give to the world, I just feel it!”

Watch the full performance below.

Halsey is thanking Mac Miller for giving her the strength to leave a relationship that was taking a dark turn.

She discussed the rapper’s death on Dax Sheppard’s Armchair Expert podcast, calling his accidental overdose in 2018 as a “turning point” for her. “This is a terrible thing to say because I think it puts a positive connotation on a heinously tragic event, but it gave me the courage and the faith to leave the relationship I was in,” she said. “It gave me that real f–king reality check that I needed and I think it probably did the same for a lot of other people too.”

“I was lucky enough to be in a position where I was like, ‘Okay, cool I’m not ruining my life yet,’ but I never would’ve expected some of the people that I know and loved and lost—to see them go down that path so aggressively and so rapidly,” she continued. “I kind of recognized the spiral early and was like, ‘Alright, now I know.’”

While Halsey didn’t reveal who she was referring to, she shared that drugs were an issue in the relationship. “As a result, my currency of expressing love with them became doing drugs with them,” she explained, and added that “there was a lot of infidelity in the relationship too. It was like if I don’t do it with you, you’re going to go do it with someone else and then probably f— them and I’m going to take you back anyway because this is what we do.”

Only after she left the relationship, she was able to work on getting sober and managing her bipolar disorder. “One of the first steps of doing that was removing myself from a situation where there’s a literal chemical interference,” she said. “I’m going to remove myself from that, figure out what my baseline is and then kind of fix it from there.”

Creatively, Halsey shared that she’s “making some of the best stuff I’ve ever made right now, because the dark stuff doesn’t disappear, it’s just easier to access at an arm’s length now.”

Listen to the full episode here.

Bell Biv DeVoe and Nelly will each perform a medley of hits from their multiplatinum debut albums on the American Music Awards. The three-hour show is set for Sunday on ABC. The announcement was made on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars on Monday (Nov. 16), where Nelly is a semifinalist on season 29 of the hit show.

Bell Biv DeVoe will perform a medley of its first two singles, “Poison” and “Do Me!” Both songs reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1990. Both were featured on the trio’s album, Poison, which reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200. The album was at the forefront of the new jack swing movement that combined elements of traditional soul and R&B with hip-hop.

Bell Biv DeVoe, which consists of Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins and Ronnie DeVoe, first appeared on the AMAs in 1991 performing yet another hit from their debut album, “B.B.D. (I Thought It Was Me)?” The trio has won three AMA trophies.

Nelly is set to perform three songs from his blockbuster 2000 album, Country Grammar: “Hot S**t (Country Grammar),” “E.I.” and “Ride Wit Me.” All three songs made the top 15 on the Hot 100. Country Grammar topped the Billboard 200 for five weeks and has been certified diamond by the RIAA. Like BBD, Nelly is a three-time AMA winner.

These bookings show the influence of the surprise hit Verzuz, which has demonstrated the degree of fan interest in vintage R&B and hip-hop.

Two current hip-hop superstars, Lil Baby and Megan Thee Stallion, will also appear on the show. The number of rap/hip-hop categories on the AMAs jumped from three to four this year, reflecting the music’s sustained popularity. (The number of Latin categories surged from one to four, reflecting that genre’s explosive growth in recent years.)

Taraji P. Henson will host the AMAs, which will be broadcast live from The Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles for the 14th consecutive year.

The talent lineup also includes the previously announced Bad Bunny with Jhay Cortez, BTS, Dua Lipa, Jennifer Lopez and Maluma, Katy Perry and Shawn Mendes.

The AMAs bill themselves as the world’s largest fan-voted awards show. The show is seen in more than 200 countries and territories.

Nominations are based on key fan interactions, including streaming, album and digital song sales, radio airplay and social activity. These measurements are tracked by Billboard and its data partners MRC Data and Next Big Sound, and reflect the time period of Sept. 27, 2019, through Sept. 24, 2020. The winners are determined entirely by fans.

The 2020 American Music Awards is produced by dick clark productions, which is owned by MRC Entertainment, the same company that owns Billboard. Amy Thurlow, Barry Adelman, Mark Bracco and Linda Gierahn are executive producers. Larry Klein is producer.

Follow the AMAs on social (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube), online at theamas.com and ABC.com, and join the conversation by using the show’s official hashtag, #AMAs.