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A Grandma & A 25-Year-Old Tie for Best New Artist at 2022 Latin Grammys

Angela Alvarez is 95 years old. Silvana Estrada is 25 years old.

Both do acoustic-leaning music that’s bound to the traditions of their respective home countries: Cuba for Alvarez, Mexico for Estrada. On Thursday night (Nov. 18), the two met on the stage of the 2022 Latin Grammys, tying to win for best new artist.

Estrada, who has been lauded as one of the bright new voices of Latin music, was a big favorite to win the award. As for Alvarez, the evening was an emotional conclusion in her very unlikely quest for not only a Latin Grammy, but one in the best new artist category at age 95.

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Voters’ vacillation between a long career ahead and the thrill of honoring a career found late in life was evident in the voting results.

“I didn’t prepare a speech,” said a tearful Estrada, who grew up with luthier parents and writes exquisite songs. “But as a woman, this award was already ours, especially with this woman by my side. It’s important to represent for the new generations, that they know it’s worthwhile to fight.”

Estrada, the first Latin artist signed to indie Glassnote Records, ended her speech with a thank you to her parents, “For teaching me that music is worthwhile and that one has to live life with happiness.”

Alvarez was not tearful when she gave her prepared speech. With eyes and voice clear, she methodically thanked a long list of people, including actor and director Andy García, for taking her to this moment.

She ended by specifically thanking her grandson, standing beside her.

“He was the one who helped me get here,” she said (her grandson was the person who encouraged Alvarez, at 95, to record her music). “And I want to dedicate this award to God, and to my beloved Cuba, which I will never forget. And to those who have yet to make their dreams come true, know that although life is hard, there’s always a way out and with faith and love everything can be achieved. I promise you, it’s never too late.”

The audience gave both a standing ovation.

Drake & 21 Savage Agree to Take Down Fake ‘Vogue’ Cover Following Condé Nast Lawsuit

Drake and 21 Savage‘s fake Vogue cover is no more.

After publisher Condé Nast hit them with a lawsuit for promoting fake cover story in the heralded magazine to market their new album, Her Loss, the rappers have “voluntarily ceased and desisted” from all uses of the Vogue cover and trademark as well as the name, image or likeness of editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and any false or misleading statements concerning the magazine to promote the album. This includes taking down all public displays of the fake cover, including online and social media posts and any physical copies. Importantly, all of those actions were required under a temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge on Nov. 10 backing up the publisher’s lawsuit.

The new document, filed in New York federal court on Thursday (Nov. 17), notes that Drake and 21 Savage agreed only to take down the image “to avoid unnecessary cost and expense” while they continue to fight the case. The filing explicitly noted they were not “conceding any liability” or “wrongdoing” in the matter.

The fake Vogue cover was one of several fake promos for Her Loss, which dropped Nov. 4. These so-called deepfakes also included sham appearances by the rappers on NPR’s Tiny Desk series and The Howard Stern Show.

Though Tiny Desk greeted the stunt with good humor — even inviting the rappers to appear on the show for real — and Stern joked about the incident on his SiriusXM series, Condé Nast was less than amused. In a complaint filed Nov. 9, the publisher’s lawyers characterized the stunt as a “flagrant infringement” of the company’s trademark rights, designed to exploit the “tremendous value that a cover feature in Vogue magazine carries” without actually being granted that privilege. The suit demanded an immediate injunction forcing the rappers, along with Drake’s PR agency Hiltzik Strategies, which was named as a co-defendant, to cease all uses of the “counterfeit cover.”

On Nov. 10, the Condé Nast lawsuit was followed by a temporary restraining order issued by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who ruled the fake cover was likely violating the publisher’s trademarks because Drake and 21 were “misleading consumers” and “deceiving the public.” Notably, such restraining orders are only granted to plaintiffs who are deemed likely to win their case.

One particular point of contention outlined in the complaint was an Instagram post by Drake teasing the fake cover story, in which the superstar personally thanked Wintour for the honor. In the suit, Condé Nast’s lawyers wrote that Vogue and Wintour in fact “had no involvement in Her Loss or its promotion, and have not endorsed it in any way” and that the publisher did not “authorize, much less support,” the release of “a counterfeit version of perhaps one of the most carefully curated covers in all of the publication business.”

The lawyers went on to write that the deep fake was so convincing that several media outlets reported that the cover was in fact real, adding, “The confusion among the public is unmistakable.”

As the legal drama continues to unfold, Drake and 21 Savage may argue that the fake media blitz was meant as a parody of the way media and artists work together to promote album launches; in some circumstances, laws allow for the proliferation of such spoofs without repercussion. That may be a difficult argument to make, however. As Condé Nast noted in its lawsuit, the fake Vogue issue disseminated both online and physically represented “a complete, professionally reprinted reproduction” of the magazine, with “no indication that it is anything other than the cover of an authentic Vogue issue.”

Condé Nast did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest filing.

Carlos Vives & Camilo Give Special Performance of ‘Baloncito Viejo’ at 2022 Latin Grammys

One of the best performances of the night at Thursday’s (Nov. 17) Latin Grammys included four artists onstage: Carlos Vives, Camilo, best new artist nominee Nicole Zignago and one of the best new artist winners, Silvana Estrada.

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The four artists took the stage to sing a gorgeous version of Vives and Camilo’s “Baloncito Viejo.” In a soulful performance that united two generations of musicians, Vives, Camilo, Zignago and Estrada — who shared the best new artist win with Ángela Álvarez — gave the audience a new, more instrumental version of the song that marked Vives’ and Camilo’s first-ever collaboration.

Over the summer, the tropo-pop track peaked at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Latin Airplay chart and is up for record of the year, song of the year and best pop song at the awards show.

Bad Bunny leads this year’s list of nominees with 10 nods. Mexican songwriter and producer Edgar Barrera followed closely with nine nominations. Other top nominees include Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro with eight; and Christina Aguilera, Jorge Drexler and Tainy with seven.

The Latin Grammy Awards — which “promise to honor the legacy, celebrate the present and embrace the future of Latin music, with deliberate consciousness, paying-it-forward to the next generations of music creators,” according to a press statement — were held Nov. 17 at the Michelob Ultra Arena at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, and aired live on Univision.

Silk Sonic Scores Again as ‘After Last Night’ Hits No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay

Silk Sonic reasserts its might on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart as the duo’s “After Last Night,” with Thundercat and funk legend Bootsy Collins, ascends to No. 1 on the list dated Nov. 19. The coronation gives the pair, comprised of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, their fourth champ from their first five singles.

“After Last Night” rises from No. 3 after a 12% gain in weekly plays that made the single the most-played song on U.S. monitored adult R&B radio stations in the week ending Nov. 13, according to Luminate. The track evicts Tank’s “Slow,” featuring J. Valentine, after its two weeks on top.

As noted, the new champ is the fourth No. 1 for Silk Sonic out of five singles since the duo’s first release in early 2021. The pair first reigned on Adult R&B Airplay with debut effort “Leave the Door Open” for 13 weeks in April – June 2021, returned to the summit with third single “Smokin out the Window” for one week in January 2022, and ran up another 13-week stay on top for fourth release “Love’s Train” in April – July of this year. Of their first five singles, the only one to miss the top slot was the second, “Skate,” which peaked at No. 4 in October 2021.

Four of the five tracks, sans “Love’s Train,” all originally appeared on Silk Sonic’s An Evening With Silk Sonic album upon its release in November 2021 (“Train,” released in February 2022, was added to the album’s digital and streaming versions.) An Evening With Silk Sonic debuted at No. 1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and Top R&B Albums charts, leading the former for one week and the latter for two terms.

With all four No. 1s now on the album, An Evening With Silk Sonic is only the second album to generate four Adult R&B Airplay No. 1s. Toni Braxton’s self-titled 1993 LP was the first, thanks to the chart-topping runs of “Another Sad Love Song,” “Breathe Again,” “Seven Whole Days” and “You Mean the World to Me” between September 1993 and March 1994.

As Silk Sonic also contributes to Mars and Anderson .Paak’s individual chart accounts, “After Last Night” gives Mars his eighth career No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay, while Anderson .Paak notches his fourth. Thundercat claims his first champ on the list with his first entry, while Bootsy Collins earns his first leader with his second appearance on the 29-year-old list, after “Don’t Take My Funk” featuring Catfish Collins and Bobby Womack, stopped at No. 32 in 2011.

Elsewhere, “After Last Night” rides its adult R&B momentum to push 19-16 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, which measures songs by audience listenership from both adult R&B and mainstream R&B/hip-hop stations. There, the song improves 6% to 7.5 million in audience in the week ending Nov. 13. The rebound brings the song within two places of its No. 14 peak thus far, achieved four weeks ago.

Alicia Keys’ ‘Santa Baby’ Bows on Billboard’s Top Holiday Albums Chart

Alicia Keys’ first seasonal effort, Santa Baby, jingles onto Billboard’s Top Holiday Albums chart (dated Nov. 19) as the list’s highest debut of the week, arriving at No. 19. The 11-track effort is Keys’ first independently released album after a career in the major-label system, first with J Records and then RCA. The download and streaming editions of the album are exclusive to the iTunes Store and Apple Music, respectively, while the physical album is widely available to all retailers.

The set bows with 3,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Nov. 10, according to Luminate, with traditional album sales powering 74% of that sum.

Meanwhile, Keys’ cover of “Please Come Home for Christmas,” from the Santa Baby project, enters at No. 27 on the Adult Contemporary airplay chart – her seventh visit to the list.

A second debut joins Santa Baby on Top Holiday Albums as Switchfoot’s first Christmas release, This Is Our Christmas Album, enters at No. 400 (1,000 units). Coincidentally, both include covers of a pair of classics: “Christmas Time Is Here” and “The Christmas Song.”

Elsewhere on Top Holiday Albums, Michael Bublé’s Christmas crowns the chart for a 37th nonconsecutive week (rising 2-1 with 13,000 units; up 107%), while the various artists compilation A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector jumps 10-2 (a new peak) as holiday streaming programming kicked into gear post-Halloween in the chart’s tracking week of Nov. 4-10.

The Top Holiday Albums chart ranks the 50 most popular seasonal 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 units 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. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram. The seasonal Top Holiday Albums returned for another festive season with the Oct. 22-dated list and will continue as part of Billboard’s weekly chart menu until it dashes away in January 2023.

Nicky Jam Performs ‘El Perdón’ Alongside Scholarship Recipients at 2022 Latin Grammys

Nicky Jam is lending a hand to the new generation of musicians.

The superstar sang his hit “El Perdón” alongside Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation scholarship recipients Xavier Cintrón, Valentina García, Nicolle Horbath and Sergio de Miguel Jorgequera — who are all performing for the first time at a Latin Grammys ceremony.

“Those that know my story know that music saved my life and from many things. And if it wasn’t for music, I probably wouldn’t be here tonight sharing with you all,” the chart-topping artist said before announcing the creation of a new scholarship and thanking the Latin Recording Academy for letting him be part of this special moment. “I want to thank Latin Grammys for letting me be part of this project and donate this scholarship for young people. I’m so excited, the scholarship is called Nicky Jam and I’m helping these new artists to do great things and be great global artists. God bless you all.”

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Bad Bunny leads this year’s list of nominees with 10 nods. Mexican songwriter and producer Edgar Barrera followed closely with nine nominations. Other top nominees include Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro with eight; and Christina Aguilera, Jorge Drexler and Tainy with seven.

The Latin Grammy Awards — which “promise to honor the legacy, celebrate the present and embrace the future of Latin music, with deliberate consciousness, paying-it-forward to the next generations of music creators,” according to a press statement — were held Nov. 17 at the Michelob Ultra Arena at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, and aired live on Univision.