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A Blackstone-led group of investors is buying a majority stake in Citrin Cooperman, which owns one of music’s most important valuation firms. The Financial Times has reported that this deal gives the target an enterprise value of $2 billion. As part of the transaction, Blackstone is acquiring New Mountain Capital’s stake in the firm.
As the music industry’s catalog market grew red hot over the last decade, Citrin Cooperman has become a leading expert, helping buyers and sellers determine the value of musical IP. Its Music Economics and Valuation Services practice is co-led and founded by Nari Matsuura. It is also co-led by Barry Massarsky, who joined the firm after it acquired his own company, Massarsky Consulting, in 2022. The team’s many clients include power players like Hipgnosis Songs Fund, Primary Wave and Reservoir Media, and it has reportedly overseen roughly 750 catalog valuations worth more than $15.5 billion between 2021 and 2022 alone.
But the firm does far more than just music catalog valuations. Founded in 1979, Citrin Cooperman is a trusted advisor to more than 15,000 clients globally through various tax advisory and accounting services.
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In late 2023, Citrin Cooperman was involved in a controversy surrounding its client, Hipgnosis Songs Fund. At the time, Hipgnosis announced that it would cancel a planned quarterly dividend payment to shareholders, due to a decision it said was made by Citrin Cooperman to reduce its expectations of retroactive payments from the Copyright Royalty Board’s Phonorecords III ruling by more than 50%, which it called an “industry-wide” issue. Billboard spoke to other catalog owners at the time who disputed the claim that this was “industry-wide,” saying there had been no recent updates regarding Phono III and that it seemed like a situation unique to Hipgnosis and Citrin Cooperman.
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. is serving as financial adviser to Blackstone in the transaction, while Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP are serving as its legal advisers. Guggenheim Securities, LLC is serving as lead financial advisor to New Mountain and Citrin Cooperman, with Koltin Consulting Group serving as an additional financial adviser to both parties. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, Zukerman Gore Brandeis & Crossman, LLP, and Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP are serving as legal advisers to New Mountain and Citrin Cooperman.
Alan Badey, CEO of Citrin Cooperman, said of the deal, “We are excited to have reached an agreement for Blackstone to invest in Citrin Cooperman as we enter our next chapter of growth. Blackstone will help us make additional investments in expanded service offerings and technology as we deliver on our continued commitment to best-in-class firm culture and providing an exceptional client experience. We thank New Mountain for their years of partnership in helping to build and support our business.”
Eli Nagler, a senior managing director at Blackstone, and Kelly Wannop, a managing director at Blackstone, said, “The Citrin Cooperman partners and staff have done an exceptional job making the firm a leader through an unwavering commitment to excellence and client service. We are excited to invest in the business to help it continue to provide the highest quality offerings moving forward.”
Andre Moura and Nikhil Devulapalli, managing directors at New Mountain, added, “We are proud of our successful partnership with Citrin Cooperman, and we thank the management team, partners and staff of Citrin Cooperman for all we have accomplished together over the last three years. We look forward to seeing Citrin Cooperman continue to thrive for the benefit of all its clients and stakeholders.”
Two of country music’s most unfiltered, visionary artists —Jelly Roll and Eric Church — will close out 2025’s annual Country Radio Seminar in Nashville by teaming up for an unscripted, intimate conversation.
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The event will take place on Friday, Feb. 21, as the two CMA Award-winning artists close out this year’s radio-focused seminar, which runs Feb. 19-21 at the Omni Hotel in Nashville. The annual seminar features a mix of radio and music industry-focused panels, networking events, concert, label luncheons and the annual New Faces of Country Music Showcase. (Jelly Roll was a featured performer in the New Faces of Country Music showcase in 2023, while Church was part of the showcase in 2007.)
Last year’s Country Radio Seminar featured conversations from artists including Lainey Wilson, Trisha Yearwood and Megan Moroney.
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“We are thrilled to have Eric Church and Jelly Roll close out CRS 2025,” RJ Curtis, Executive Director of CRS, said in a statement. “Their ability to connect with fans and push the boundaries of the genre makes this session a perfect culmination of this year’s seminar.”
Jelly Roll recently earned his first all-genre Billboard 200 chart-topping album with Beautifully Broken, and was nominated for entertainer of the year at the 2024 CMA Awards. Last year also saw the Antioch, Tenn., native launch his Beautifully Broken headlining arena tour and play his first international tour dates. He appeared at the Kids’ Choice Awards and on WWE, and teamed with MGK for the collaboration “Lonely Road,” as well as with Post Malone for the song “Losers” as part of Posty’s F-1 Trillion album.
Earlier this year, following the devastation of Hurricane Helene, which impacted Church’s home state of North Carolina, he released the song “Darkest Hour (Helene Edit)” and teamed with Luke Combs, Billy Strings and more to hold Concert for Carolina, a benefit concert that raised more than $24 million for hurricane relief efforts.
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Looks like Kanye West is still a tad bit bitter about his billion-dollar breakup with adidas, as the polarizing music icon has once again launched an attack on his former business partners and decided to throw some shade at designer, Jerry Lorenzo in the process.
Last night (Jan. 7), Yeezy took to his Instagram page and for no apparent reason (at least not to the general public) rehashed his drama with the three-stripe brand in a lengthy post in which he took issue with the fact that when people google “Yeezy” they’re directed to the official adidas website. Taking it as a sign of disrespect, Kanye called out adidas for the shady business practice (though it does make sense) and reminded them that he was the man that took their sneaker brand to new heights during his eight-year stint.
“When you google Yeezy.com the adidas site comes before the Yeezy site. Members at adidas Stop doing this. Stop doing your moves to hold me back. Our partnership is done. You’re a 60 billion dollar company that froze my accounts. Now I’m back on my feet (no pun intended) and I’m not going to stand for this (no pun again). I did phenomenal work for you guys and because I stood up for myself y’all tried to intimidate and oppress me.”
Referring to when he tweeted that he was prepared to go “death con 3” on the Jewish community, Kanye felt that he was standing up for himself when he and adidas were having internal issues, and they used his antisemitic tweets to punish him writing, “everyone remembers I had major issues with adidas because of design theft and oppression before ‘the tweet.’”
Continuing to rant, Kanye then took aim at adidas’ current top notch designer, Jerry Lorenzo, and basically called him a fake friend who rode his coattails throughout their relationship saying, “side note y’all know Jerry was corny and disloyal for doing work with adidas after the way they handled things. I still showed up to his show that was a copy of my Hollywood bowl show being the so called bigger man, but I’m never doing that again for no one. It’s Yeezy over everything. Everyone that ever took a picture next to me that had their own clothing lines and agendas everyone knows they was acting like they were my friends to promote they weak ass fake Yeezy lines. They never wanted to truly work for the king. They wanted to use the king [to] Get paid more than they would get paid anywhere else.”
To be fair, many sneakerheads agree that Kanye helped make adidas a force again in the sneaker game, as his drops were just as highly anticipated as anything Nike and Jordan had on their calendar. At times people were more amped about the new Yeezy’s than they were about the latest Air Jordan release.
Unfortunately, his antisemitic statements and far-right ideology alienated much of his fanbase and supporters, and now, here we are.
As of yet, neither adidas nor Jerry Lorenzo has responded to Kanye’s Instagram post.
Check out Kanye’s latest rant below, and let us know your thoughts on his statement in the comments section.
Many bands that rose to prominence in the ‘80s have turned into oldies bands, tied to a moment in history and profiting from fans’ love for nostalgia. Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith of Tears for Fears haven’t fallen into the stagnant rut that has captured so many of their contemporaries. More than four decades after forming in Bath, England, in 1981, Tears for Fears is producing some of its best material.
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Orzabal and Smith began their creative resurgence in 2022 with their first studio album in nearly 18 years, The Tipping Point, which reached No. 1 on Billboard‘s Top Album Sales and Top Alternative Albums charts. In October, the band continued its hot streak by releasing four new songs as part of a live album, Songs for a Nervous Planet.
“It’s because we care,” Smith tells Billboard‘s Behind the Setlist podcast when explaining the caliber of the band’s recent songwriting and recordings. “We don’t want to do bad work. We still have a desire to get better. I don’t think that’s ever going to leave us. We look at other artists and still wish we were that good. That will never leave us, because we’re never going to become that good, I don’t think. There’s always going to be someone that’s better than us, without question. So when you still have that desire, you’re going to continue to do good work because you are continuing to try and achieve something better than you’ve done before. And that’s what keeps us going.”
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Songs for a Nervous Planet is the audio complement to a live concert film, Tears for Fears Live (A Tipping Point Film), that was given a brief release in theaters in October before being made available online. Recorded at the FirstBank Amphitheater — a former quarry that provides a spectacular backdrop — in Franklin, Tenn., the film captures the band performing at the top of its game. “Everyone that had come to see the show said it was amazing,” says Smith. “We get a limited view of it because we’re looking the other way. So we agreed to record it. And the reason being that we felt the band was the strongest they’d ever been — or we had ever been, should I say. And we were playing great. We sounded great. We were singing better than we ever had, playing better than we ever had. So it seemed like a good time to do it.”
The four new songs make Songs From a Nervous Planet, as Smith puts it, more like an EP with 18 live bonus tracks rather than a live album with a few new songs. “The record company wanted us to do a couple new tracks,” says Smith. “We felt that was kind of a way of saying, ‘Add some throwaway tracks.’”
Instead, they went into the studio and emerged with “four tracks that we felt really strongly about,” says Smith. The Songs for a Nervous Planet opener, “Say Goodbye to Mum and Dad,” perfectly captures the political and environmental tension of the day (“It’s no life, this island of fear/ When tomorrow comes, we’ll brave the wild frontier”). “The Girl That I Call Home” is a love song for Orzabal’s wife with a catchy melody (“Princes adore you/ They cower before you/ You’re the girl that I call home”). The stirring “Emily Said” is classic Tears for Fears: a complex song structure that doesn’t distract or become superfluous.
To Orzabal, the new songs “hold up brilliantly” to the band’s deep catalog of beloved songs that includes “Mad World” from the 1983 debut The Hurting and “Shout” from the U.S. chart-topping 1985 album Songs From the Big Chair. He’s particularly proud of “Astronaut,” a song that mixes disillusionment with a space travel theme (“I don’t belong here/ I got one eye on a different world”), which didn’t make the cut for The Tipping Point. “It didn’t quite fit, for whatever reason just didn’t feel right,” says Smith. “A lot of these things are not easy to articulate, because it’s just a feeling you have of what works, what doesn’t work.”
But “Astronaut” was “perfect” for Songs for a Nervous Planet, says Orzabal. “The whole imagery of the astronaut and the field of sunflowers [seen on the album cover], the continuity in the videos with the astronaut and his girlfriend, always featuring them, is superb.” In a couple decades, he adds, “Astronaut” will be “a huge hit for someone — not us, but for someone.”
Listen to the interview with Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith in the embedded Spotify player below, or listen at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, PodBean or Everand.
Bad Bunny may be a global hitmaker, but at times, he still feels like a rookie. That’s what the Puerto Rican superstar (real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe during an interview in which he spoke about his latest album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, and how he’s been reflecting on his own career and life now that he’s been in the industry for a decade.
“I’ve been reflecting about my whole life, my history, and also about my career, when I’ve been doing all these years, I’m about to turn 10 years in the industry,” he told Lowe. “And that’s f–king crazy because sometimes I feel that I’m a rookie, this is my first year! This is my first album to me.”
Debí is Bad Bunny’s sixth studio album, and it’s a celebration of Puerto Rico and the sonic heritage that has influenced his music. The 17-track album, released Sunday (Jan. 5), includes collaborative efforts with Chuwi, Dei V, Omar Courtz, Pleneros de la Cresta and RaiNao — all Puerto Rican acts. Throughout, he takes traditional Afro-Puerto Rican styles such as plena and jíbara, and fuses them with contemporary reggaetón and synths.
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During the interview, he also revealed that his favorite track is the third one on the set, titled “Baile Inolvidable,” which was recorded with young musicians from Escuela Libre de Música. “It’s a song that I have in my mind for maybe two years. The whole composition, the whole song, it was in my mind way before the song was created,” he expressed.
Benito also spoke about aging, and recalled a dark moment in his life. He shared that in his 20s, he felt depressed.
“I remember when I turned 20, I was depressed. I thought that I was I was going to die. It was the end of my life. I was, Oh, my God, I’m 20! I’m a f–king old man! I’m about to die! This is the end! I remember,” he said. “I’m just learning not to think too much and just trust in the life and God and the process and everything and enjoy the moment. But now I’m 30, people start to ask you, ‘Are you going to marry? Are you going to have kids?’ You start to think, ‘Am I wrong?’”
Check out the full interview above, in which Bad Bunny also reveals whether he’ll be touring in Europe this year.
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The year 2025 is shaping up to be one hell of a year for sneaker aficionados across the globe as Nike is bringing back many of their classic Nike and Jordan silhouettes and now we’re getting word that another grail will be joining the fray as the Air Jordan 4 “Cement” is gearing up for a marvelous return.
According to Highsnobiety, the classic Air Jordan 4 colorway has been added to the very long list of classic Nike’s returning in this new year and luckily for us OG sneakerheads, there isn’t much hype behind it… yet. News of the return broke when the Zsneakerheadz account released teaser pics of the upcoming drop and revealed a tentative release date of May 24, 2025. Needless to say sneakerheads were hype as the last time these released it was back in 2016.
Per Highsnobiety:
Yes, nine years since its last retro, the Jordan 4 “White Cement” is back again — and looking wonderfully classic, I’ll add.
Early looks of the model reveal a design that looks almost exactly like the OG pairs, from the crisp white leather uppers to the speckled “cement” details to the Nike Air branding on the heel.
Believe it or not that “Nike Air” brand on the heel instead of the Jumpman logo goes a very long way with sneakerheads. Just sayin.’
Check out pics of the upcoming Air Jordan 4 “Cement” below and let us know if you’ll be looking to pick up a pair or two when they release on May 24th. We’re looking to get at least three pairs.
Brandy is ready to share her life’s story. The superstar revealed via People that she is set to publish a currently untitled memoir this fall. The story will delve into her early life in Mississippi, through launching her debut self-titled album at 15 years old and the experiences she’s had throughout her acting and music […]
The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week, for the upcoming Billboard 200 albums chart dated Jan. 18, 2025, we look at whether new releases from Lil Baby or Bad Bunny can unseat a reigning blockbuster that dates back to 2022.
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Lil Baby, WHAM (Quality Control/Motown): One of the biggest names in music at the turn of the 2020s, Atlanta rapper Lil Baby has been less dominant on the charts the past couple years but still draws a good deal of attention every time out. On Friday (Jan. 2), he released his new set WHAM – not named after the ‘80s U.K. duo who just hit a new peak of No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 with the holiday staple “Last Christmas,” but an acronym standing for Who Hard as Me – with 15 brand new cuts, including features from fellow ATL superstars Future, Young Thug and 21 Savage and other big names like Travis Scott, GloRilla and Rod Wave.
The set is off to a strong start on streaming – particularly on Apple Music, where it continues to litter the top 100 of its real-time chart five days after release, while also claiming the No. 1 spot with the Future and Thug teamup “Dum, Dumb and Dumber.” It should also be helped by sales of the set’s deluxe digital edition on Baby’s webstore available for $4.99, which boasts four new songs not currently available on DSPs, including another Future collab in “99.” (He also has a standard CD available for purchase at his webstore, along with a couple “Fan Packs” that include additional merch, offering a discount on the CD if you buy the merch along with it.)
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It should all add up to WHAM having a pretty good chance to make it big on the Billboard 200 next week. If it can claim the top spot, it would be Lil Baby’s fourth consecutive visit there this decade, after previously hitting No. 1 with 2020’s My Turn, 2021’s Lil Durk teamup The Voice of the Heroes and 2022’s It’s Only Me.
Bad Bunny, Debí Tirar Más Fotos (Rimas): Another one of the biggest stars of the early 2020s, Bad Bunny dropped his new album Debí Tirar Más Fotos (I Should Have Taken More Photos) on Sunday (Jan. 5). The 17-track LP – which contains just a handful of collaborations, and none with household-name artists – has been hailed by critics as a “homecoming” for the artist born Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, who spends much of the set dabbling in genres native to his home country of Puerto Rico like salsa and plena.
Fotos has seen robust early returns on streaming, though it has yet to produce a clear breakout hit, and neither of its advance tracks (“El Clúb” or “Pitorro de Coco”) made much of an impression on the Hot 100 upon their release. The album is also currently available for physical release, with only a digital version available on his webstore and iTunes for $4.99. Its debut numbers will also certainly be dampened by the set’s Sunday release, which means it will be missing two days’ worth of consumption from its first week of tracking.
Still, Bad Bunny will always be a factor in the Billboard 200 albums race when he releases a new LP. Like Lil Baby, he has sent his last three albums this decade to No. 1 on the chart: 2020’s El Último Tour del Mundo, 2022’s Un Verano Sin Ti and 2023’s Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana.
SZA, SOS (Top Dawg/RCA): SZA’s R&B sophomore blockbuster SOS had already been a 10-week No. 1 on the Billboard 200 from late 2022 to early 2023, and one of the most acclaimed and beloved albums of the first half of the 2020s. But at the beginning of this year, SOS returned to the top of the chart, thanks to a boost provided by the release of its deluxe edition, titled LANA. The re-release featured 14 totally new cuts (as well as the previously released Hot 100 top 10 hit “Saturn”), including “30 for 30,” a collaboration with her upcoming stadium tour co-headliner Kendrick Lamar.
The set has now reigned on the Billboard 200 for the first two chart weeks of the calendar year, with six-figure units posted in each frame. Those numbers will likely slip a little in the third week of release for LANA, but considering SOS remained one of the top-streamed albums for years after its release even before she dropped the deluxe edition – it was still No. 15 on the Billboard 200 in the final chart week of 2024 – it should still be a very strong performer on the chart next week, and hardly a low bar to clear for either Baby or Bunny.
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Lawyers for Donald Trump are scrambling to block the final investigative report by Special Counsel Jack Smith from being released, calling them “failed cases.”
The legal team for President-elect Donald Trump sent a last-minute request to Attorney General Merrick Garland to halt the “imminent” release of the final report by Special Counsel Jack Smith claiming it would be a “bad-faith crusade” on the part of the Biden-Harris administration, and further arguing that Garland should fire Smith. This request was reportedly made after the team had the chance to review a draft of the report “in a conference room at Smith’s office between January 3 and January 6, 2025,” which Smith was scheduled to file with the Department of Justice at 1 p.m. “Because Smith has proposed an unlawful course of action, you must countermand his plan and remove him immediately,” the letter from Todd Blanche and John Lauro read. U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon would ultimately block the release of the report for now in a motion.
Smith had requested that the election interference case against Trump related to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol be dismissed in November after Trump won the presidential election. “The Department’s position is that the Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated,” he wrote in the motion filed with U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who oversaw the case in Washington D.C. “This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant.” The case against Trump and other co-defendants in Florida where he was accused of hoarding classified government documents and refused returning them to the government, was dismissed by Judge Cannon, who has made decisions favorable to Trump in the past and was appointed to the bench by him in his first term. In her decision at the time, she ruled that Smith’s appointment as Special Counsel was “unconstitutional.”
Garland has stated that he would provide lawmakers with a copy of the report once Smith has filed it with his office, and in an overnight brief, Smith noted that Garland’s office would probably not release it until Friday morning (Jan. 10). In Cannon’s motion to block, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals would first review the emergency appeal by Trump’s lawyers. However, it does not distinguish between the two cases and allows for the court to also review the Department of Justice’s counter-appeal to Trump’s legal motion.
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Source: Prince Williams / Getty / Nelly and Ashanti
We know you care. Legendary spin the block couple, Nelly and Ashanti, are getting a docuseries at Peacock.
Deadline exclusively reports the music superstars will be the focal point of a docuseries fresh off their secret marriage and the birth of their first child.
According to the website, the series will be filmed and produced by Nelly, Ashanti, and Critical Content, the company behind the Netflix documentary Sly and MTV’s Catfish. It will follow the celebrity couple. The Haynes will also executive produce alongside Jenny Daly and Oji Singletary at Critical Content Studios.
Deadline also reports the series has been filming for the past few months, but no did not share when we can expect to see the series on the streamer.
Nelly & Ashanti’s Love Timeline
Nelly and Ashanti’s legendary love story began in 2003 and ended in 2013 before a chance encounter during the VERZUZ event (remember those?) between Fat Joe and Ja Rule when they were both brought in as special guests to participate in the music battle.
In April 2024, Ashanti confirmed what we all knew: that she was pregnant with the couple’s first child, born in July. We also learned the couple, without much fanfare, got married in December 2023 in Missouri.
The upcoming docuseries will mark Nelly’s return to television. He starred in 2014-2015’s Nellyville, which lasted for two seasons on BET, and the Kevin Hart-led mockumentary Real Husbands of Hollywood. The “Country Grammar” rapper also starred in Adam Sandler’s The Longest Yard remake and an episode of CSI: New York. He also showed off his dance moves when he competed in Dancing With The Stars.
Ashanti was also bit by the Hollywood bug, starring in movies like Resident Evil: Extinction and series like Army Wives and Love & Listings.
Will you be tuned in? Let us know.