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Raised in the Philly hood, Meek Mill never attended an Eagles game growing up, much less tossed footballs inside the team’s practice facility.
Given the chance to show off his arm, the 35-year-old rapper and philanthropist lined up some area kids and had them go deep on the same field where the best team in the NFL trains. Meek Mill short-armed a wobbly pass that sailed about 20 yards and was hauled in by a kid to resounding cheers.
Let’s just say Jalen Hurts’ job is safe.
“He’s almost as unathletic as I am,” Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin teased Meek.
Meek Mill and Rubin shared laughs Tuesday (Dec. 13) at an outing arranged to brighten the day for children from families caught in the criminal justice system. Rubin, who recently sold his stake in the Philadelphia 76ers, co-founded the Reform Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to probation, parole and sentencing reform in the United States. Meek Mill, whose well-publicized prison sentence for minor probation violations became a lightning rod for the issue, is co-chairman of the organization.
His case grabbed the attention of criminal justice reform advocates after a judge in Pennsylvania sentenced him to two to four years in prison for violations of his probation conditions in a decade-old gun and drug possession case. He was incarcerated for months before a court ordered him released in 2018. Meek Mill successfully resumed his recording career and recently held a 10-year anniversary concert that celebrated his debut album Dreams And Nightmares. He’s been a big opening act of late, performing the title track and underdog anthem before Eagles games and at the World Series.
“I’ve got purpose on top of everything I’m doing,” Meek Mill said. “Before I went to prison, of course I was famous, of course I was making money feeding my family, but the purpose I have now, it actually started from the way people supported me.”
Meek Mill formed a friendship with Rubin and the billionaire became an ally in freeing him from prison. While Meek Mill was in prison, activists, celebrities and demonstrators rallied in 2017 for his release. “When I seen that with my own eyes, that type of support, which I never had in my life, I wanted to make sure I give that same support back to the world,” Meek Mill said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Born Robert Rihmeek Williams, he is now free of the court supervision he’s been under most of his adult life.
To their credit, years after Meek Mill’s release, the rapper and the mogul have remained steadfast in advocating for criminal justice reform. The Reform Alliance said the group has been responsible for 16 bills passed in 10 states that resulted in changes to probation and parole laws. Meek Mill was even honored in 2019 in his hometown of Philadelphia for his work as a criminal justice reform advocate and as a musician.
“We’ve actually created a pathway for 650,000 people to get out of the system already,” Rubin said. “And we’re just getting started. It’s hard to make change.”
Meek Mill and members of the Eagles including Darius Slay, Jordan Mailata, coach Nick Sirianni and general manager Howie Roseman mingled with 35 kids, took photos and ran combine drills. The kids signed honorary one-day contracts with the team.
“You’re all 12-1 for the day,” Sirianni said.
The kids moved across the street to the Wells Fargo Center and quizzed Philadelphia 76ers coach Doc Rivers on the usual hoops-themed topics. Allen Iverson or Steph Curry? Who’s your favorite player? But there were more serious inquiries about how to land internships and how to push through in a life that can be littered with hardships.
“You have the right to happiness and to smile and do everything you want in life,” Rivers told the kids. “These people here, Meek, Michael and everybody back here are here to tell you that there’s people in your corner. We’re going to fight for you. Fight for your families to make sure that one of you may be sitting here some day giving the same speech. Or one of you can be a doctor, a lawyer, an athlete. Whatever you want.”
Megan Parke spent almost three years in prison and gave birth to her son, Amir, while in jail. She was freed when he was 2½ years old and the family has settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Parke was on probation and hit with a technical violation, which in Pennsylvania means she had specifically violated one of the terms of her probation plan. Parke, who still has two years left on probation, said she was lucky the judge didn’t send her back to prison. She said Reform has offered her resources that could aid her and her case should problems arise in the future.
“That’s him right there,” she said, pointing at the 5-year-old boy running around the NFL complex. “He’s just so excited. These days just really mean a lot.”
Those memories are part of what it’s all about for Meek Mill. He missed Eagles games as a kid but once attended on a school trip a taping of The Randall Cunningham Show. “That was a highlight I’ll remember forever,” Meek Mill said. “With kids, I’m always doubling back, make sure I touch back to the people just like myself.”
Twenty years ago, Red Hot released the album Red Hot + Riot: The Music and Spirit of Fela Kuti, a tribute to the great Nigerian musician Fela Kuti who succumbed to complications related to AIDS five years earlier in 1997 at the age of 58. Fela was more than a musician. He was an activist and spiritual leader who fused American funk with African rhythms to create Afrobeat, which is more popular today than it was during his lifetime. Red Hot was invited by the Kuti family to produce the album with access to his publishing and master recordings (courtesy of Knitting Factory Records who had recently acquired his catalog).
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The project kicked off with a superstar session brought together by Questlove led by D’Angelo and Fela’s son Femi Kuti. The musicians were a mix of Femi’s band Positive Force and the Soulquarians who often backed D’Angelo and Questlove (notably James Posner and Pino Palladino) along with Nile Rodgers, Macy Gray and others covering the song “Water No Get Enemy.” The idea for the project began with a conversation with Questlove at sessions for an earlier album – Red Hot + Rhapsody – where the Roots were collaborating with Bobby Womack on “Summertime.” Quest suggested that Red Hot should do a tribute album – track by track – to Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On, but we couldn’t clear the rights. Fela’s death and music was in our head, so we went back and suggested taking the Riot title and making an album raising awareness about AIDS in Africa.
The next session we produced after “Water No Get Enemy” was Baaba Maal covering Fela’s “Trouble Sleep.” We had built a studio, Fun Machine, run by Andres Levin, in the office on Spring Street where Red Hot’s sister company had grown to be a successful digital studio. You could see the World Trade Towers from the studio the day we recorded: September 10, 2001. They weren’t there the next day. Because of the struggle keeping the company going in the aftermath of 9/11, Andres copied the sessions onto disc so I could listen to them at home. I carefully saved all of them as well as the ProTools sessions. Because of that, the 20th anniversary release of Red Hot + Riot not only puts it on streaming platforms for the first time but also two hours of bonus material — including the acoustic Baaba Maal session and a cover of “Sorrow Tears and Blood” by Bilal, Common and Zap Mama that was never finished back then, but completes the album twenty years later.
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From the first Red Hot album, Red Hot + Blue, we included African musicians and talked about the terrible impact of the HIV pandemic on the Continent. But it was hard getting people to pay attention to the issue and to African music at the time. A Fela tribute wasn’t the obvious choice back then that it is now. It was an uphill struggle to get label support and the right mix of artists to do it. But we did.
Red Hot projects have always been hard to pull off. The music industry is charitable but doesn’t often support charity records that compete with commercial releases. When we did Red Hot + Dance, we got caught up in the struggle between George Michael and his label. It was hard to get Nirvana to donate a track to No Alternative and even more difficult to deal with their label, who didn’t let us use the band’s name on the packaging or marketing materials. Ironically that became our best marketing strategy of all time: the album with the hidden Nirvana track. But our struggles are nothing really compared to what it has been like for people with AIDS or the LGBTQ+ community.
Fortunately, over the past few decades, things have improved in the U.S. Medication allows people to live with HIV (thanks in large part to activists at ACT UP and TAG that that Red Hot helped fund in the early 1990s) and just recently two people who identify as lesbians were elected governors for the first time. But sadly, that’s not the case in much of the Global South. It’s shocking that HIV infection in sub-Saharan African remains at roughly the same level as when we released Red Hot + Riot in 1992. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 71% of people living with HIV, a devastating reality where 75% of global HIV related deaths and 65% of new infections occur. Of the 38.3 million people living with HIV worldwide, 27.3 million are in Sub-Saharan Africa; 7.8 million of the 27.3 million infected people are in South Africa including about 6.3 million young adults and children. To put that in context, 11% of humans live in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it accounts for over 71% of the global impact of AIDS in terms of infections and mortality.
The stigma around men who have sex with other men, women’s lack of resources and agency and the vilification of sex workers and drug addicts has inhibited progress to aid the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Often ignorance is used to distance the culture from topics like intimate partner violence, sex education, the LGBTQ+ community and women’s lack of agency and access to care. Unfortunately, young women and girls bear the brunt of the impact from cultural silence and their pain and misfortune is passed onto future generations. The HIV/AIDS epidemic’s root is the intersection of structural and cultural setbacks in awareness, acceptance, understanding and treatment. Music hasn’t been able to change that – even supercharged with Fela’s Afrobeats and activism – but it remains a powerful force to raise awareness and make people reflect on the devastation of this preventable disease around the world.
According to the CDC, AIDS in Africa peaked in 2002, the year Red Hot + Riot was released, at 4.69 million people infected the prior year. Now, 20 years later there remains over 25 million people infected with HIV on the Continent. To put that in context, the total number of COVID cases in Africa is projected to be about 4 million, with around a hundred thousand deaths. The estimated annual deaths from AIDS in Africa in 2018 was 470,000. In a global context, worldwide deaths from COVID to date is the tragic number of 6.61 million people. Over 40 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses.
In “Water No Get Enemy,” Fela Kuti embodied a philosophy larger than his music. “If your child dey grow, a water he go use/ If water kill your child, na water you go use.” Fela symbolically compares an institution to a parent who continues to use water after their child drowns. Regardless of setbacks, the community must continue to provide solutions for our social ailments. Fela conveys that living necessities are non-negotiable regardless of circumstance. The charge to support vulnerable people fighting against global pandemics is non-negotiable.
We cannot let the silent continue to suffer. “Ko s’ohun to’le se k’o ma lo’mi o,” Fela writes. “There is nothing you can do without water.”
Annie Lennox has pulled together a group of the world’s most iconic female artists for an international auction to support her charity’s work to economically empower and end violence against women and girls. The event from The Circle charitable organization will take place during the upcoming Global 16 Days of Activism and feature one-of-a-kind signed and handwritten lyrics from Billie Eilish, Brandi Carlile, Lennox, Alicia Keys and Angelique Kidjo.
The lyrics will be offered to the highest bidders and through sweepstakes draws for a $10 entry fee (or the equivalent in local currency.) “I have long believed that music can build bridges and bring people together and it is wonderful to see these phenomenal female artists stand side by side with women and girls around the world facing and fighting gender-based violence,” said newly enshrined Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Lennox in a statement announcing the auction.
The Music Icons auction and prize drawing will be held live from Tuesday (Nov. 22) through Dec. 5, with the auction ending on Dec. 5 at 11:59 GMT; the deadline for sweepstakes entries is 11:59 GMT on Dec. 15; click here for full details on the items up for auction and how to bid or enter the sweepstakes.
Among the items available to bid on at press time are signed and hand-written lyrics to the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” Eilish’s “Your Power,” Carlile’s “Right on Time,’ Kidjo’s “Agolo” and Keys’ “Fallin’.”
“This is an incredible chance to bid for items of music history in the making,” said The Circle CEO Raakhi Shah in a statement. “We are so grateful to Alicia, Angelique, Annie, Billie and Brandi for their outstanding generosity and supporting women facing violence and abuse around the world. I would just encourage any music fan to go to the website and get bidding!”
According to a release, The Circle’s “16 Days Challenge” will feature a series of creative fundraising activities themed around the numbers 1 and 6 to make the global “16 Days of Activism” campaign against gender violence. The Challenge will run from Friday (Nov. 25) through Dec. 10, with The Circle’s supporters encouraged to find hundreds of creative ways to raise funds, from “dancing non-stop for 16 hours or inviting 16 friends to a life-changing lunch, to walking 1.6 miles for 16 days or forfeiting a daily coffee and donating the money saved for 16 days.” Click here to donate from anywhere in the world and see some prompts about getting involved.
Just like snow flurries and seasonal Starbucks cups, a sure sign of the holiday season is GRiZ‘s annual week of holiday giving, 12 Days of GRiZMAS.
The jam-packed charity initiative returns to Detroit Nov. 29 for its ninth year, and just like always, includes 12 days worth of wholesome fun for a great cause. 2022 GRiZMAS programming will feature painting, karaoke, a dodgeball tournament, yoga, ice skating, rollerskating and — in keeping with holiday tradition — will close with a pair of GRiZ concerts at Detroit’s Masonic Temple happening Dec. 9 and 10.
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These shows will feature Dirtysnatcha B2B Carbin, Canabliss, Khiva, fellow Michigander Wreckno, and of course the event’s namesake producer. Tickets for all 12 days worth of events are currently available online.
GRiZMAS’ hub is the GRIZMAS Workshop located in downtown Detroit at 1265 Griswold Street. This space will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily during the 10 Days, and will host workshops, offer GRiZMAS merch and generally serve as the event’s nexus of good cheer.
Proceeds from GRiZMAS go to Seven Mile Music, a Detroit-based nonprofit that raises awareness and money for music, art and coding programs for the inner city youth of Detroit.
“We ended up working with Seven Mile music because their founder was living in [Detroit neighborhood] Brightmoor for three years and giving music lessons himself,” GRiZ, the Detroit native born Grant Kwiecinski, told Billboard in 2021. “He was working in the community, working with community leaders and going door to door giving piano lessons. Seven Mile did the work to understand what the community needed. That’s exactly the kind of energy we want to align with.”
Since launching in 2014, GRiZMAS has raised more than $400,000 for Detroit charities. 2022 donations can also be made online.
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The all-star charity album Good Music to Ensure Safe Abortion Access to All debuts at No. 1 on Billboard’s Compilation Albums chart and also bows at No. 9 on Top Album Sales.
The 49-track set sold nearly 8,500 copies in the U.S. in the week ending Oct. 13 according to Luminate – the largest sales week for a non-soundtrack compilation album in two years.
The benefit album boasts music from Death Cab for Cutie, Fleet Foxes and Pearl Jam, among others, and was exclusively available via Bandcamp’s webstore for one day only, on Oct. 7, as a digital download. According to a press release, the album’s net proceeds will benefit non-profit organizations working to provide abortion care access to all: Brigid Alliance and NOISE FOR NOW (who are working with Abortion Care Network).
The last time a non-soundtrack compilation album sold more in a single week was two years ago, when the last Good Music charity album, Good Music to Avert the Collapse of American Democracy, Volume 2 debuted at No. 10 on Top Album Sales with 13,500 sold (Oct. 17, 2020 chart).
Good Music to Ensure Safe Abortion Access to All also debuts at No. 8 on Top Current Album Sales and in the top 40 on Independent Albums, Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums.
Good Music additionally enters at No. 151 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart – the highest debut by a non-R&B/hip-hop compilation in over a year. The last such set — again, excluding soundtracks — to bow higher was A-list-loaded rock tribute set The Metallica Blacklist, which debuted at No. 132 on the Sept. 25, 2021-dated chart (peaking at No. 103 on the Oct. 16, 2021 chart).
In 2020, the two Good Music to Avert the Collapse of American Democracy albums raised over $600,000 for voting-rights organizations (according to the Good Music organization).
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. 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.
Compilation Albums ranks the week’s top-selling compilations by traditional album sales. Top Album Sales and Top Current Album Sales tally, respectively, the overall top-selling albums of the week, and the top-selling current (excluding older, or “catalog” albums) albums of the week.
Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums rank the week’s most popular rock and alternative albums, rock albums and alternative albums, respectively, by equivalent album units. Independent Albums reflects the week’s most popular albums, by units, released by independent record labels.