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Marsha Ambrosius is setting up shop for one night only with Billboard at Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City tonight — but you don’t need to be near Manhattan to tune in. Featuring songs from her new album Casablanco and beyond, the nine-time Grammy nominee’s performance at the famed jazz club will be […]
Attending Burning Man is an investment. There’s the $575-plus needed for a ticket; more for the flight or long drive to Nevada’s remote Black Rock Desert, where the event takes place each August. There’s the money for food, outfits, a bike and the many other supplies needed to survive in the barren setting. Most attendees take time off from work, including a few days on the back end to get home and recover. It’s hot, dusty and often mentally, emotionally and physically draining. A lot of people love it; others say they’d never go, and some simply don’t have the resources to make it happen.
But while the Burning Man Project’s famous mothership event is happening this week (Aug. 26-Sept. 2), another 85 official global Burning Man events, called “Regionals,” have long offered people around the world a chance to Burn more locally. In 2023, 93,000 people attended these global Regionals. There’s Kentucky’s Singe City; Michigan’s Lakes of Fire; and events in Arkansas, Utah, Virginia and approximately 70 other U.S. sites. The biggest Regional, AfrikaBurn, draws roughly 10,000 to Cape Town, South Africa every April. Taiwan’s Turtle Burn launched in 2019. Each July, roughly 400 people gather in the Romanian forest for RoBurn.
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Burning Man 2024 has made headlines for not selling out for the first time in years, with tickets usually very difficult to get. (Sources close to the event estimate that roughly 10,000 tickets went unsold this year, bringing the attendance number down to approximately 70,000.) But while many Burners say the extreme heat of 2022 — when daytime temperatures reached 106 degrees — and the headline-making rain of 2023 are reasons many veteran Burners are taking this year off, Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell also points to the generally soft festival market, and to the Regionals.
“The goal has always been to decentralize this, because Black Rock City was never going to have the capacity,” Goodell says. “And with travel challenges, the cost, the heat — it isn’t for everybody. But when I meet people that tell me, ‘Are you f–king kidding me?’ [in regard to going to Black Rock City], I’m like, ‘Well, where do you live?’”
Goodell and Burning Man Project — the San Francisco-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that produces Burning Man and supports the global Burning Man community — has been directing Burners to Regionals since 2007, when the first official offshoot launched. Regionals had been germinating since 1997, when representatives for Pershing County, where Burning Man is held, sent organizers a huge bill for county services at the end of the event. Groups of Burners offered to fundraise, including one based in Austin, Texas. The internet had just come online, so Goodell created austin@burningman.com to help facilitate the fundraiser, and the first Regional group was born.
“Then I did New York, Canada and Seattle,” she says. “The internet allowed people to leave Burning Man and say, ‘Where are the other Burners?’”
As it turned out, with the global Burning Man network growing in tandem with the growth of the main event, they were everywhere. Soon, groups of Burners were meeting up across the country, placing glowsticks on bar tables to identify themselves and, in doing so, living out the Burner philosophy that it’s not just an event, but a culture that can exist anywhere.
Argentina’s Fuego Astral
Courtesy of Ignacio Roizman
Ignacio Roizman has traveled to Black Rock City from his home in Buenos Aires, Argentina many times over the years. Wanting to help bring Burner culture back home, he co-organized Argentina’s Regional, Fuego Austral, in 2016, when two groups of Argentinian Burners who’d been gathering for meetups joined forces to put on a multi-day campout.
“It’s very expensive to get from Argentina to the U.S.; you need a visa, you need the supplies,” Roizman says. “It’s basically an economic and logistical challenge.”
The most recent edition of Fuego Austral, in February, brought roughly 1,000 people to a swath of verdant farmland four hours outside of Buenos Aires. Like in Black Rock City, there was art, music and the ritualistic burning of a man made from wood. (In the past, Israel’s Midburn has set fire to both a man and a woman.)
“The biggest difference between Regionals and Black Rock City,” Roizman continues, “is the intimacy you can create in a space where you have 1,000 people instead of 80,000. By the end of the week, everybody knows each other.” Most Fuego Austral attendees have never been to Black Rock City, although Burners from countries like Brazil, Israel and the U.S. have flown in to attend.
Representees from The Org (as Burning Man Project is called in Burner parlance) advise Regionals on how to organize, with a few primary requirements. One is that events start small, with Goodell saying that even 1,000 people is too big for an inaugural year. Organizers need to have gone to Black Rock City at least once. Like Black Rock City, Regionals must allow children.
“We have a team that decides if the intention is in the right direction and if the people are skilled enough to do it,” says Goodell. “We’ve taken permission away when events looked more like a rave.”
Aspiring Regionals must also abide by Burning Man’s 10 Principles, the social guidelines for existing at a Burning Man event; these rules were in fact created in 2004 as a response to the Regionals. When the Regional network was taking shape in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, Goodell put groups on an email thread with late Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey, who answered their questions. Over time, the Principles — which include radical self-reliance and leaving no trace — developed as, Goodell says, “a direct response as to what kind of guidelines would help facilitate a Burning Man event.”
“One of the first questions was, ‘Why can’t we do vending? We want to be a Burning Man event, but we want to sell hot dogs or whatever,’” Goodell recalls. Harvey’s response spurred a discussion that ultimately created the “gifting” and “decommodification” Principles, the latter of which states that “our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising.”
The Org also offers practical support, helping Regionals write press releases or find an attorney if legal advice is needed. They step in if a death happens at a Regional (which has happened a handful of times over the years), provide advice on creating a business entity like an LLC and, Goodell says, “sometimes go in to help with drama.
“Different cultures deal with different problems differently,” she adds. “The folks in Sweden, for instance, lean towards more socialist solutions when making decisions. Parts of the United States might be more hierarchical.”
Argentina’s Fuego Astral
Courtesy of Ignacio Roizman
In a more obvious way, most Regionals look very different than Black Rock City, which is famous for its barren environment. For many, this singular landscape is what makes Burning Man Burning Man.
“We’ve asked ourselves that a lot,” Goodell says of whether the intensity of the desert defines the event. “When I first joined the organization, I asked Larry, ‘Why the Black Rock Desert?’ He said it was a practical thing; that when you’re in nature and forced to reflect on yourself and your role in nature, you can see how small you are. Plus [the environment] makes you band with others for your own survival.”
The philosophy here is thus that Burning Man is not defined by being caked with a layer of dust, but being in the middle of nowhere. (To wit, Spain’s Regional, which takes place in the Monegros Desert, is called Nowhere.)
“Through the evolution of the Regionals, we’ve discovered you really should be as remote as you can, but it can be green rolling hills,” Goodell says. ‘You should not be walking to a store or gas station. To me, that’s more important than the weather being hard.”
A Las Vegas Regional she attended was visible from the road, which, she says, “was a negative.” Miami’s Love Burn, which takes place on the city’s Virginia Key, also has “a lot of challenges” given that attendees can Uber there and stay for a day. Goodell says these shorter experiences are “just not as transformative” as a multi-night event.
But Regional organizers do find ways to build in challenges. Fuego Astral requires attendees to be dropped off at the front gate and then walk across the sprawling site to get to their camp, which makes it so, Roizman says, people “have experienced that sense of overcoming a challenge.”
But while Black Rock City is remote, given that tens of thousands of people arrive there and build a bustling and often very noisy city, it’s not an ideal setting for those who prefer country life.
“Black Rock City has a culture that’s sometimes very urban,” Goodell says. “A lot of people will tell you they’d rather go to Michigan’s Lake of Fire that has 2,500 people instead of 80,000, because they live rural.”
A young Burning Man staffer recently attended Lake of Fire, which happens in Rothbury, Michigan, to help The Org figure out why young people aren’t going to Black Rock City in high numbers. “She feels like the cost is one of the reasons,” says Goodell, who teared up when seeing photos of lights reflecting on a lake at Lakes of Fire in a way that reminded her of Black Rock City. “You don’t have to go to Black Rock City to be touched, create new community, collaborate on art and be together.”
Goodell says for her it’s especially satisfying to see Regionals develop in places like the former Eastern Bloc, where creativity has often been stifled by socio-political circumstances. She says while the Russian and Ukrainian groups are both currently “a bit stunted” because of the war, people from these countries are in attendance this week at Black Rock City. Israel’s Midburn, the second largest Regional after South Africa, typically brings 10,000 people to the desert, but scaled down to about 1,500 this year due to the war. The Thai and South Korean Regionals are produced largely by expats, although Goodell says that “we really would prefer locals produce the Burning Man culture and not the traveling expats.”
The goal with the Regionals is simply to keep growing them. This past April, the European Leadership Summit Gathering happened in Talinn, Estonia and brought 30 staffers and 200 Burners from Europe and beyond together for panels and networking. Estonian Burner and Summit attendee Pille Heido says the experience provided the education and inspiration to “make sure people don’t just focus on that one event in the desert in August, which is great, but make sure there’s other things you can do outside of it as well.”
Goodell says additional funding for Burning Man Project would help spur the Regionals network, with South America and Asia being regions “that could use more encouragement.”
But where this money will come from is, she says, “the 10-million-dollar question.” While Burning Man Project raised $8 million in 2023 through ticket sales and philanthropy, “We’re absolutely at a point where we’re going to need to have a conversation about the longer-term method.” Goodell says a donation model “is the next bridge. Someone who doesn’t go to Back Rock City might still give $250.”
But while that evolution of that issue is yet to be seen, Goodell says Black Rock City being down in population this year is, in a way, a sign of health. “We’re proud of the fact that people are like, ‘I went to my Regional this year, so I’m taking a year or two off.”
Want to be a “Presley for a Day”? Here’s your chance. You and three of your closest friends can undertake a seven-hour insider experience at Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.
Before you get your heart set on the idea, we should warn you that this day doesn’t come cheap. The Presley for a Day Tour is $6,000 for a group of up to four people. (We tried to brace you so you wouldn’t get “All Shook Up,” though you may still choose to mark this one “Return to Sender.”)
A portion of the proceeds from each tour will go to support local Memphis charities through the Elvis Presley Charitable Foundation, with additional proceeds supporting Graceland’s ongoing commitment to the beautification, preservation, and enhancement of Presley’s home and grounds.
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Launching Sept. 6, the new Presley for a Day Tour will be limited to only eight guests per day and provide access to some of the Presley family’s favorite places on the Graceland grounds for the first time since it opened to the public in 1982.
Guests will have the opportunity to enjoy access to the family’s favorite activities with golf cart rides around the grounds, a horse photo op and guided walk through the home’s front pasture, and a “high-end dinner” at the newly renovated Moriah’s House, which is said to offer stunning views of Graceland’s landscape from the back pasture. (Moriah’s House was named after Lisa Marie Presley’s pony, which was once housed there.)
The Presley for a Day Tour is just the first of many events, tours and expansions that will be announced over the next three years as Graceland prepares for the 50th anniversary of Elvis’ death on Aug. 16, 1977. The legendary star was just 42 at the time, and had been famous for half of his life. His death, in the era before Entertainment Tonight and TMZ, before the Internet and social media, still set off shockwaves. Presley had been a superstar on records, in films and on TV for 21 years, with tremendous highs, a few lows, triumphant comebacks and a tragic end that is still hard to accept.
The culmination of Graceland’s “On the Road to 50” will be Elvis Week 2027, when Graceland hosts the largest gathering of Elvis fans from around the globe.
The Presley for a Day Tour is a seven-hour experience for a group of up to four people (two tour groups per day available) that includes:
Personalized Concierge Service: Concierge will work with guests to plan out their experience before arrival.
Personal Tour Guide: Guests will have their own personal tour guide throughout their entire experience.
Guided Tours: Tours of Presley’s Memphis entertainment complex and Elvis’ Airplanes with their dedicated guide, plus exclusive photo opportunities and special “white-glove artifact experiences.”
Golf Cart Transportation: Guests will be chauffeured around the Graceland property on a golf cart by their guide and treated to an outdoor tour of the mansion grounds.
Graceland Stable Tour & Horse Experience: Tour of the Graceland Stables before a guided walk on a horse through Graceland’s front pasture and photo op with horse with Graceland Mansion as a backdrop.
Access to Moriah’s House: Guests will have access to this newly restored space, located in the Graceland pasture, to relax and enjoy dinner, while taking in views of Graceland Mansion and surrounding grounds.
Elevated Dining Experience: High-end meal at Moriah’s House while enjoying views of Graceland from the enclosed deck. From Southern BBQ favorites to gourmet delights, this exclusive dining experience will be tailored to guest preferences.
Graceland Archives Experience: Guests can get a glimpse into the archival work that goes on behind-the-scenes at Graceland — from conservation work on one of Elvis’ sequined jumpsuits or cataloging one of the more than 90,000 photos.
After-Hours Graceland Mansion Tour: After their meal, guests enjoy a guided after-hours tour of Graceland Mansion with exclusive photo ops and white glove experiences.
Exclusive Swag Bag: Each guest will receive a bag of items (valued at more than $450), exclusive to Presley for a Day Tour guests.
For an additional fee (!), fans can stay overnight at Graceland’s resort hotel, The Guest House at Graceland, and enjoy such treats as banana cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, a favorite of the king. A specialty suite package offers personalized service, including breakfast-in-room service any time of day, charcuterie and champagne upon arrival, turndown service, plus a private midnight movie screening in the Guest House Theater. (Elvis starred in 33 movies – 31 in which he acted, from Love Me Tender in 1956 to Change of Habit in 1969, followed by two concert documentaries.)
Presley for a Day Tours are now available to book for dates starting Sept. 6 through January 2025 at Graceland.com. Find details here.
Graceland is open daily for tours and offers a variety of tour options. More information can be found at www.Graceland.com.
While KCON has long been heralded as the Mecca for K-pop fans, a new party that launched amid the 2024 Los Angeles date could also make it a must-attend for those in the industry as well.
What was meant to be a night to celebrate K-pop ended up being a cross-industry collaboration event hosted by Day 13, a new joint venture merger between K-pop and marketing expert Jenny Zha with Keith Kawamura, the anime and gaming marketing veteran who is also CEO of 3i Productions. Following KCON LA’s second day of concerts on Saturday, July 27, artists, execs, and influencers were on their way to downtown LA hot spot Hatch.
Notable attendees included KCON performers like K-pop star and American Song Contest winner AleXa, as well as Mikha of the Filipino girl group BINI — both of whom enjoyed bites and drinks in the roped-off back section of Hatch with friends like The Kelly Clarkson Show producer Jasmine Stephen, songwriter Vanessa Jefferson whose love of K-pop has been long documented by her sister Lizzo, and Henry Jiang of OfflineTV who talked to AleXa about their interest and collaborating in the game space.
“With the inaugural Day 13 industry party, we wanted to bring everyone together to create more avenues for ideation, and establish a longstanding tradition that can give way to even more exciting cross-collaboration projects,” Zha reflects to Billboard. “Subcultures like K-pop and anime are so pervasive it’s now part of mainstream conversation — especially at the forefront for key stakeholders behind-the-scenes.”
A host of journalists, publicists and other media figures that long worked in the K-pop space were also in attendance. Lively discussions included the extra effort being put into ILLIT’s comeback single, ATEEZ’s recent move to United Talent Agency, excitement and inquiries about TITAN CONTENTS’ first girl group AtHeart (originally revealed on Billboard), a K-pop act’s upcoming song collaboration in partnership with Netflix, a new K-pop artist’s signing with a U.S. PR, gripes about working with and guesses about the future of one major Korean agency, as well as tons more juicy tidbits to compete with Hatch’s wagyu and wasabi skewer.
Also in attendance was award-winning actress and dancer Krystal Ellsworth (who blew up in India after starring in the 2017 flick Heartbeats that was shot in the country). Brian Chau of CAA was in the house, linking up Konami and Bandai Games over drinks to explore how talents could be further integrated in a convo about video gaming industry.
Influencers like “The Transition Guy” Jonny Tran (930,000 TikTok followers) and Twitch streamer iGumdrop (with nearly 300,000 Twitch followers and 450,000 Instagram followers) were seen connecting with members of Sony’s Santa Monica Studios — producers behind the God of War franchise – for collaboration opportunities.
When Nate Bargatze set the attendance record at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena last year, the comedian quickly figured out how to ensure his milestone stood: “I stole one of the chairs from Bridgestone,” he told Jimmy Fallon. “I have the record, so if I take one of the chairs home, no one can break that record.”
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Bargatze need not have resorted to such measures, joking or not, as he is seeing an attendance surge that has him breaking records and filling arenas across the country on the Be Funny tour, which started in January 2023 and has sold more than 1 million tickets.
In Billboard’s Mid-Year Boxscore Report, Bargatze’s outing ranked as the No. 1 comedy tour, ahead of those by fellow comics like Adam Sandler, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. For overall ticket sales, Bargatze came in at No. 12, narrowly behind such acts as P!nk, Coldplay, Madonna and U2. But he is likely taking home a much bigger percentage of the gross: Unlike music acts, who aim to net 30% of the gross, comedians in general have a much lower overhead and generally net between 50% and 60% of the gross, according to industry sources.
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As impressive as the numbers are, even more staggering is the rapid growth Bargatze, 45, is experiencing more than 20 years into his stand-up career. His 2023 shows averaged a gross of $240,000 from 3,612 tickets sold per show, according to Billboard Boxscore. As he progressed from theaters to arenas, his 2024 shows have averaged $781,000 gross from 11,429 tickets per show.
Bargatze is still digesting the boost in his popularity, which he attributes to social media, word of mouth, his specials on streaming services — including “Hello World,” which debuted last September on Amazon Prime Video — and, especially, hosting Saturday Night Live in October, which created “a giant, giant leap” in his career, he says. “It was my first kind of thing really on [a mainstream platform] and it just sent it to a completely new level.” (Bargatze’s “Washington’s Dream” sketch was the second most watched SNL sketch of the season, with more than 9.4 million views, according to NBC.)
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In an election year that feels increasingly mean and polarizing, Bargatze’s humor is decidedly apolitical, clean and relatable. His storytelling, delivered in a low-key, deadpan manner, is observational. If there’s a butt of the joke, it’s usually him and his feigned cluelessness.
The response he gets from the people who come to see his family-friendly shows assures him he’s on the right track. And for those times when he thinks “maybe I need to say something” or speak out on an issue, the appreciative feedback he gets from fans who feel uplifted by his gentle humor convince him he does not. “The world is serious. There’s plenty of people and information. You can go get whatever you want to go get. You do not need me to also add to that,” he says. “What I believe I need to do is be entertainment that you can go to as an entire family.”
In fact, he says some of his favorite moments are when he looks out into the audience and sees multiple generations sitting together. “I love when I can see a family sitting there, and if I start talking about my age, I can see the whole family look at the dad or look at the mom,” he says. “And when I talk about my parents, see them look at the grandparents. I love the connection that they’re like, ‘That’s you’ or ‘That’s me.’ That’s the best part.”
Appealing to a multi-generational audience is one of Bargatze’s greatest strengths, says Joe Schwartz, comedy touring agent at United Talent Agency, who has worked with the Brillstein Entertainment Partners-managed Bargatze for more than 10 years and handles his bookings with fellow UTA agent Nick Nuciforo. “The style of comedy that he’s doing lends itself to being so broadly appealing,” Schwartz says. “That gives him such a major advantage over a lot of the other stand-up comedians working today.”
As Bargatze hit new tipping points — such as the Amazon special or hosting SNL — UTA planned accordingly when rolling out tour announcements, knowing the exposures would bump up demand for tickets. But the demand has exceeded even their initial expectations, with Bargatze often playing every day of the week but Tuesday, and sometimes playing more than one show a day on the weekend. “We were holding additional dates where necessary, making sure the show times were at the hours that we knew would be best for that multigenerational audience,” Schwartz says. “We don’t do 10:00 p.m. shows in these arenas. We do shows at 4:00 p.m. after he sells out the 7::00 p.m. because we found that his audience prefers that.”
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Even during the COVID shutdown, Bargatze built his audience, first through drive-in shows and then 2021’s Netflix special, The Greatest Average American, which he taped outdoors (complete with the whirl of helicopters interrupting his set). He received his first Grammy nomination for the special’s comedy album companion.
Through it all, Bargatze has stayed focused on his craft, making incremental gains, preparing for when his big shot came. “You never know when all the eyes are going to switch over to you,” he says. “I’ve done this now for 21 years, so you just kind of keep doing what you’re doing — and then when the eyes end up hitting you, you need to be ready,” he says.
With an exhausting schedule, Bargatze also realized a number of years ago he needed to take better care of himself if he wanted to reach his goals. “I stopped drinking in 2018. I was starting to sell clubs out, and so we’re about to go to theaters [and] I wasn’t able to drink like a regular person.” he recalls. “I knew, ‘Alright, well, if I want to go to the level I want to go to, I have to get this out of my life or I’m not going to be able to get to that level.’ And I’ve seen that now, with even the training and the food.”
Bargatze grew up in Nashville and honed his comedy skills living in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York before moving back to Tennessee several years ago.
The son of a clown-turned-magician, Bargatze absorbed show biz tactics, though he didn’t realize it at the time. “My timing definitely comes from my dad,” he says. “He was working on his magic all the time. Even at home, he was doing it. So, subconsciously, you’re taking it in, like, ‘Well, if you want to be great at something, you have to do this all day long.’”
Though doing magic didn’t appeal to him, stand up did. And once Bargatze began stand up, “I was pretty exposed to already be kind of obsessed with it,” he says. “If you want to get to a high level, I mean, you have to be obsessed with it — you can’t just kind of have your foot half in. The longer I do it, the more I realized how much it was good for me to see that through my father.” His dad often opens Bargatze’s shows and frequently travels with him on the road, as does his mom.
His singlemindedness has always been apparent, says Schwartz. “For as long as I’ve been working with Nate, he has been so driven and so singular in what he has wanted to do. He has just devoted all the time and effort to becoming a great stand-up comedian. He has truly mastered the craft.”
In conversation with Bargatze that devotion to his technique is obvious. He intensely and thoroughly talks about the contrast between playing arenas on this tour, where he can draw out the jokes for his one-hour set, and then having to get back into the late-night television mindset to prep for Saturday Night Live by practicing in New York comedy clubs to come up with his tight, 8-minute opening monologue.
When Bargatze first began playing arenas several months ago, he utilized a traditional setup, with the stage at one end — but quickly changed to an in-the-round configuration to have a closer connection to the audience.
With the stage at one end, “the [audience] is so far away from you and it’s very easy for them to feel disconnected. But the round really changed everything because I’ve cut the distance in half from the farthest person,” he says. He also increased the size of the screens and put TVs on stage so even when his back is to people sitting in the front, they can see his face. “Comedy can work in arenas,” he says. “Weirdly, it can even work better. In a 2000-seat theater, you can’t see my face that great. But in an arena, I play to the cameras.”
He also adjusts his cadence each night. “When you’re doing the arena, it’s like music. My timing is based off their laughter, and it changes according to where you’re at. Every night, it’s a little different,” he says. But he also likes the challenge: “To keep 20,000 people’s attention, I love it. I love how hard it can be. You’re on kind of a tightrope. You’ve got to keep them intrigued the whole time. It’s amazing.”
The Be Funny tour ends Oct. 18. A streaming special filmed April 13-14 at Phoenix’s Footprint Arena will premiere this fall, and a companion album will come out through Capitol Comedy. Bargatze is the first artist signed to the new comedy imprint started by Universal Music Group Nashville.
Bargatze will take several months off from the road while he works on developing other projects, though Schwartz promises he’ll be back in 2025 with “the biggest, most impressive tour he’s ever done.”
Much of Bargatze’s time off from touring will be spent building out The Nateland Company, the umbrella content company geared toward producing family-friendly entertainment that he launched in October. Already off the ground is The Showcase, a six-part YouTube series filmed at Zanies Comedy Club in Nashville featuring up-and-coming comics, as well as three full-length comedy specials directed by Bargatze. The Nateland Company also houses Bargatze’s The Nateland Podcast, which is in its fourth year, and Bargatze has his eye on developing scripted tv and film projects.
Ultimately, Bargatze is aiming for a career and a production company that builds on his nice guy, everyman stand-up image, where fans know what to expect no matter how big his universe expands and what roles he may take on next.
“I tried to do auditions at the beginning and it’s hard. I can [only really] be me. And so if you don’t want this, then it’s not going to completely work out,” he says. “I see Adam Sandler and [Sandler’s production company] Happy Madison … I love that, where Adam Sandler goes and he’s him. You know what you’re getting when you’re in his world. He did Uncut Gems, and he can do all that other stuff and maybe there will be stuff like that down the line, but I gotta get some stuff on the board. The only thing I’ve really had is Saturday Night Live as a thing outside of stand-up comedy. So, there’s a lot of things that I need to get on the board and get moving forward.”
As he builds the Nateland empire, Bargatze feels confident that the audiences he plays before every night prove there is great demand for the kind of humor he and his fellow like-minded comics provide. The proof of concept is there in his hundreds of sold-out shows around the country. “This direction is working, so I want to keep going in this direction,” he says. “I’m in every town in America, and I’m just telling you, it seems to be working.”
After years of waiting, training and preparing, the world’s most skilled athletes are off to the races with the 2024 Olympic Games after a spectacular Opening Ceremony on the Seine in Paris Friday (July 26). The festivities began with each participating country’s athletes sailing in on boats in a parade down France’s famous river, and […]
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The two-week event kicked off July 24.
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A billboard along the four-lane highway that runs from King Khalid International Airport across the desert into Riyadh features the smiling faces of the Kingdom’s founder, King Abdulaziz and its current ruler King Salman, as well as the stoic visage of a third, Muhammad bin Salman, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, colloquially known as MBS. “Our real wealth,” the sign reads in Arabic, as well as English, “is in the ambition of our people.”
A second billboard advertises the event I’m here to see and features the images of another three men who could, in their own way, be important to the future of the rapidly changing country: Marshmello, David Guetta and DJ Khaled. They are among the hundreds of artists who in 2022 flew in from around the world to perform at Riyadh’s third annual Soundstorm, a dance-music-focused mega-festival that drew more than 150,000 people a day, including myself, to a site the size of Coachella.
This year, the festival is drawing more superstars to the region, with Eminem, U.K. rock legends Muse, Jared Leto’s band Thirty Seconds to Mars and dance titans Richie Hawtin and Marco Carola set to headline Soundstorm 2024 this December 12-14. Many more acts will be announced in the coming weeks, with this fifth edition of the festival marking the first time all of these phase one artists, outside Carola, will perform in the country.
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Another act that made its Saudi Arabia debut at Soundstorm is Metallica. At the 2023 festival this past December, flames shot from the festival’s massive mainstage — dubbed “Big Beast” — into the cold desert air as the band’s singer James Hetfield demanded “Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire!” while the crowd roared. Like the country’s electronic scene, the Saudi Arabian metal community once existed entirely underground, with secret shows happening at empty highway rest stations. In this new era of Saudi history, Soundstorm drew one of the genre’s most popular bands of all time to Riyadh. In the crowd, fans made devil horns with their hands and thrust them into the night sky as Hetfield yelled “Burn Riyadh, burn!”
This past December, Soundstorm — its scale matched only by longstanding dance festivals like Tomorrowland and EDC Las Vegas — also featured headliners including Calvin Harris, Will Smith, 50 Cent, Swedish House Mafia, David Guetta, H.E.R., Travis Scott and J Balvin, and followed an annual industry conference, XP Music Futures, that featured a mix of global and local music executives discussing AI, emerging artists, climate action and more.
This past May, the festival’s parent company, MDLBEAST, kicked off a series of day-long workshops for groups of roughly 30 people from the local music scenes in Kuwait, Tunisia, Oman and Saudi (last year they also hosted workshops featuring a music production course by Afrojackand a primer on artist management) and they’re gearing up for the next XP conference ahead of this December’s festival.
MDLBEAST, which is leading the charge on music-related endeavors in Saudi, also operate a members-only club in Riyadh similar to the Soho House — Beast House, which also houses a recording studio — and a Riyadh nightclub, Attaché. Saudi’s first opera house is currently under construction nearby, with an arena and art museum also forthcoming.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Johnny Greig/Getty Images
British DJ and event producer Megatronic, whose Femme Fest event hosts shows by female-identifying artists and has been at the conference since its first year, says the event “is going to grow and be an important part of the fabric for the Gulf Region in terms of putting music out to the rest of the world.” She says international music industry figures have been moving to Saudi Arabia from Dubai — where she also lived for six years — because “Saudi is fresh; it’s vibrant compared to Dubai… in 10 years it might squash Dubai.” It’s also possible that with war affecting Israel’s position as the Middle East’s leading dance music destination, Saudi Arabia could rise up in its place.
This was all inconceivable less than a decade ago, when playing music in public was punishable by the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Activities like dancing, public hugging and gender mixing were also prohibited, until bin Salman stripped the religious police of much of their authority when he rose to power around 2016 and launched his national development project known as “Vision 2030.”
As part of that plan, Saudi Arabia has been working to broaden its economy from oil dependency — the state-run ARAMCO posted $121 billion in profit in 2023 — to encompass businesses like sports, technology, tourism and media and culture. That includes getting into the music business, which the country is doing the way it does everything: Fast, and on a grand scale, with no expense spared.
In 2018, Saudi’s General Entertainment Authority announced plans to invest $64 billion — more than double the value of the entire global music industry in 2023, according to the 2024 IFPI Global Report — into entertainment over the next decade. In 2020, the country formally launched the Saudi Music Commission, with British music trade association executive Paul Pacifico joining as CEO in January 2023.
The hope is that Saudi Arabia will develop a music business that can generate jobs, turn regional artists into stars, help the country present a more modern face to the world and unlock the Middle East as music’s next big growth market.
“Over the next few years, it’s going to be all about building the structures that allow people to express themselves creatively,” Pacifico said at a November panel about the Saudi music business at LA3C, an event in Los Angeles run by Billboard parent company PMC. “And building platforms that will enable Saudi artists to tell their stories in a way that will be heard around the world.”
Music execs from companies across the business have flown to Saudi to assess the opportunity. In June, Saudi media company SRMG partnered with Billboard to launch Billboard Arabia and in December debuted its website and two global charts: The Billboard Arabia Hot 100 and the Billboard Arabia Artist 100, showcasing the most popular talent in the Middle East and North Africa regions.
The 2024 IFPI Global Report found that total MENA revenues rose by 14.4% in 2023, following a 26.8% jump in 2022 that marked the world’s third-highest growth rate. According to the IFPI, streaming revenues accounted for 98.4% of the region’s market in the last year. While Saudi Arabia does not yet have its own collecting society, MDLBEAST Publishing was announced in June to support artists across the MENA region, partnering with U.K.-based publisher Sentric to provide global support with admin services like royalty collection.
Fans attend the perfomance of Dish-Dash DJ music artists during the Soundstorm 2022 music festival, organized by MDLBEAST, in Banban on the outskirts of the Saudi capital Riyadh on December 1, 2022.
Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
Pulling a traditional society into the 22nd century gives the country elements of the surreal. The image of the three royals from the highway billboard stares out from all over Riyadh, from banners on the sides of buildings to the Starbucks kiosk in my hotel lobby. In the room, an arrow on the ceiling points to Mecca — a common symbol at hotels across the Arab world to give Muslim visitors direction for prayer — and a live feed from the Great Mosque there plays 24 hours a day on the hotel TV. Other channels offer news, Middle Eastern soap operas and a falconry tournament. A U.K. woman here to work on the festival tells me that she, but not her male colleague, was escorted out of the hotel gym by staff — though hotels here are free to determine their own policies.
During my weekend at the rave, I’ll see a woman in a hijab dance to hip-hop and a tent where attendees observe the call to prayer while the music stops. I’ll be offered party drugs in a country where even alcohol is illegal and hear Fat Joe onstage demanding “what’s love got to do with a little ménage?” in a place where I’ve been advised to keep my ankles and elbows covered.
“This is all a huge change socially,” says Courtney Freer, visiting assistant professor of Middle Eastern studies at Emory University. Saudi women have only been able to drive since 2018. Over the last decade, the Saudi royal family has eased and in some cases eliminated other restrictions on women, including the requirement to wear a hijab, although many still do, often for their own cultural and religious reasons. Women can also now travel outside the country without a male guardian. Human Rights Watch senior women’s rights researcher Rothna Begum says that for some women, particularly the middle class, these changes are “significant,” even in some cases “life changing.”
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia formally opened to non-religious tourists in 2019, and it now takes only about 10 minutes to apply for a visa online. This past spring, the Saudi Tourism Authority web site FAQ was updated to declare that “Everyone is welcome to visit Saudi” in response to the question “Are LGBT members welcome to visit?” (This answer also asks that “they follow and respect our culture, traditions and laws as you would when visiting any other country in the world,” although it doesn’t specify them.) Other questions include “Is Saudi Arabia safe?” (“very”), “Is alcohol available in Saudi Arabia?” (“no”) and “Is it possible for women to wear swimsuits in public?” (“On public beaches, visitors are expected to wear modest clothing.”)
Partying with tens of thousands of strangers at a massive rave about 40 minutes outside of Riyadh is, apparently, perfectly fine.
But despite the new freedoms, there are still constraints. Free speech is not protected, and while the country has no written laws on sexual orientation, judges often use Islamic law to punish homosexual activity and sex outside marriage, and even advocating for gay rights online can be a punishable offense, according to Human Rights Watch LGBT Rights Program Senior Researcher Rasha Younes. In March 2022, the government passed a Personal Status Law that gave women certain rights but also requires that they get the approval of a male guardian in order to get married. This law also says that wives must “obey in righteousness” and that a husband can withhold financial support if his wife “refuses herself” without “a legitimate reason.”
In the historically progressive electronic music scene, a world pioneered by Black and gay people, the Saudi-funded Soundstorm is thus “very polarizing in our community,” says Silvia Montello, who was CEO of the Association for Electronic Music (AFEM) when we spoke.
“Beyond What You Think You Know”
To some critics, Soundstorm is a glitzy distraction from the Saudi government’s human rights violations. Women, LGBTQ people, migrant workers and journalists have faced repression from the same government that’s helping fund the country’s forays into music. In 2018, journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul; in 2021, the Biden administration released a report saying bin Salman approved the killing of Khashoggi, although MBS has denied this. This past August, a retired teacher was sentenced to death for tweets criticizing the government, and in January a Saudi women’s rights activist was sentenced to 11 years in prison for charges including “indecent” clothing and promoting women’s rights on social media.
But some festival participants believe that music and events can drive social change and hope their participation will fuel more progress. “Some of my first shows in Saudi touched me deep,” David Guetta said during his 2022 XP keynote. “I’m sure everyone here can feel it. We’re witnessing a moment in history.”
“Ten or 20 years from now, there’s going to be books written about how Saudi changed,” says a non-Saudi music industry executive who’s worked with MDLBEAST. “If we all play our cards right, electronic music will be a chapter in that book. Don’t we all want that?”
People attend the MDLBEAST Soundstorm 2022 music festival in Banban on the northern outskirts of Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on December 1, 2022.
Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
Social progress is part of the mission for MDLBEAST, the roughly 100-person organization that produces Soundstorm and several other festivals and events around the Gulf with a combination of government and private funding. Though it operates in partnership with various Saudi government divisions, the country’s politics “have nothing to do with us as an organization,” says its chief creative officer Ahmad Alammary, who goes by his DJ name, Baloo.
Raised in Riyadh, Alammary grew up listening to music — house, disco, new wave — with his family and started DJing in 1997 while attending American University in Washington D.C., once receiving a call from the Saudi consulate telling him to stop playing at clubs if he wanted to keep his scholarship.
Nonetheless, he returned to Riyadh in 2002 with eight boxes of vinyl and began DJing illegal underground parties where, he says, “The people, the ‘extracurriculars,’ everything looked, felt and sounded like any other party I would attend around the world.” When an event Alammary was scheduled to play was raided in 2004, he moved to Dubai, scored a residency at a club in Bahrain, then moved to New York City and earned his Masters from Pratt Institute’s Design Management program.
When he returned home again in 2013, Alammary found “a different society — art exhibitions, film screenings, gatherings with mixed crowds.” In 2019, he helped form MDLBEAST with the government’s blessing, booking the first Soundstorm with local artists, plus dance music titans like Guetta, Steve Aoki, Tiësto and Afrojack. More than one member of the MDLBEAST team compares this first festival to the fall of the Berlin Wall. “Every Saudi DJ got off the decks in complete shambles, tearful, in disbelief,” Alammary recalls.
Alammary says most fans who were interested in this first Soundstorm didn’t even believe it would happen — “they were like, ‘bulls–t,’” he remembers — with the crowd only swelling on the second day when locals realized it was real and began arriving by the carload.
Now, with a staff that’s 50% women, the festival promoter seeks to become “one of the top brands known for gender diversity” with equitable lineups and “minority inclusion across our experiences,” according to an internal strategy document provided to Billboard, while it aims to “own the music industry in the Middle East” by increasing “the GDP of MENA [the Middle East and North Africa] Music Biz,” “promote Saudi as a global music destination,” “export cultural IP” and “inspire and promote progressive culture.”
“The truth is, though, we have to work harder because of where we’re from,” the document reads. “Beyond the money. Beyond the stereotypes. Beyond what you think you know.”
At The Festival
While female dancers in red, skintight latex bodysuits writhe around 50 Cent during a performance of “Drop It Like It’s Hot” on stage at Soundstorm this past December, festival attendees, all 16 and older, wear traditional robes or abayas, streetwear or jeans. Many women wear surgical masks to ensure they won’t be recognized in photographs. Ticket prices start at SAR 169, or about $45. A private suite with its own concierge goes for SAR 80,000, or about $21,000. Fans with premium access never even need touch the ground — a miles-long network of 15-foot-high walkways connect viewing areas at the event’s seven stages. On one stretch, a muscular man with army fatigues and a gun holster escorts a group of elegantly dressed women to the “VIB” — short for “very important beast” — area.
Each evening around seven, the music stops for about 15 minutes during the call to prayer, during which a small percentage of the crowd enters a designated tent to observe. Alcohol is illegal in Saudi, so the drink stands sell bottled soft drinks. Even so, a festival employee tells me backstage that “everyone here is shitfaced.” (I’m told that alcohol is brought in from Bahrain.) In the crowd a man offers me “pills to party.” I decline. A Soundstorm spokesperson says the festival has a zero-tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol and security removes violators.
Attendees dance during the MDLBEAST Soundstorm 2022 music festival in Banban on the northern outskirts of Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on December 1, 2022.
Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
The first year of Soundstorm was hard to book, as many artists were reluctant to play in the country, says MDLBEAST Strategy Director Nada Alhelabi. She says assembling the lineup “gets easier every year.” The industry executive who’s worked with MDLBEAST says that while artists earned two or three times their normal fee at the first festival, rates have since come down to standard (mid-to-high six figures for top-tier acts). As at most dance-focused festivals, the 2022 and 2023 Soundstorm lineups skew heavily male, although there are performances from women including Peggy Gou, Nervo, La Fleur, Anne-Marie, Carlita, Nora En Pure, and many Middle Eastern artists including Cosmicat, who grew up in the coastal city of Jeddah and was studying to be a dentist before a DJ career became possible.
Saudi’s General Authority of Statistics reports that 67% of the population is younger than 35, data cited repeatedly by artists and executives who are here to assess the market. Backstage before his Soundstorm 2022 set, Dutch producer Hardwell tells me that Saudi “feels to me how it did when I started playing in the States around 2010 when the whole EDM thing blew up.”
The country’s music investments still seem to exist outside the realm of supply and demand, however. Soundstorm is not yet profitable, although Alammary predicts it will break even in the next few years.
The most striking difference between Soundstorm and other festivals is that in 2022 and years prior, attendees were overwhelmingly male. In the 2022 crowd, I count roughly one woman for every 20 men. Sexual harassment has been an issue at Soundstorm since its 2019 debut, and every year, several female attendees post on social media about being harassed, even groped. Co-ed events are still relatively new, and organizers “are doing everything they can to make it safe for women,” says the industry executive who’s worked with MDLBEAST. “They’re not sweeping it under the carpet.”
In both 2022 and 2023, LED signs and bathroom-stall posters promote Respect & Reset, MDLBEAST’S anti-harassment program, which brings in 250 staffers to offer support in the crowd at four tents, where anyone who has been harassed can report the incident and get support. More established events around the world devote fewer resources to the issue, says Respect & Reset Co-Director Judy Bec, who operates similar anti-harassment programs at festivals in her native U.K.
People attend the MDLBEAST Soundstorm 2022 music festival in Banban on the northern outskirts of Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on December 1, 2022.
Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
On Saturday night during Swedish House Mafia’s 2022 set, I’m groped from behind on two separate occasions by men who stick their hands between my thighs and grab. (I don’t report either incident, since both men disappear into the crowd.) A male friend does his best to protect me and a female companion, but being in the crowd is hectic until a group of courteous Saudi men create a wall around us. I don’t see any similar incidents in the premium viewing areas, where the crowd is older and more gender balanced. A female journalist who traveled from Europe for Soundstorm in 2022 and 2023 says that while the festival was generally less crowded in 2023, GA attendees at this most recent event were more gender balanced, a shift, this journalist says, that made the atmosphere less threatening and more like other festivals around the world.
On the final night of Soundstorm 2022, I see two men embracing on a patch of fake grass in the general admission area. Alammary, the MDLBEAST creative director, remembers asking a DJ he wanted to perform at Soundstorm questioning the offer because of the country’s hostility toward gay rights. “I told him, ‘I understand and respect that, but I need you to also understand that everyone is on the dance floor,’” Alammary remembers. “Everyone is behind the decks. We don’t care about anybody’s background or orientation.”
There’s evidence that he’s right. A 2021 U.S. State Department report on human rights in Saudi Arabia ends with a single sentence: “Observers at the December MDLBeast [sic] Soundstorm music festival reported that it included the public display of LGBTQI+ culture.”
“They’re Taking The Music Business Very Seriously”
Amy Thomson, Swedish House Mafia’s former manager who now runs her own rights management platform, travelled to XP 2022 to speak on a panel because she says “it was important for me to come see if they’re taking it seriously…and clearly, they’re taking the music business very seriously.” Though she says she nearly canceled the trip three times, she ultimately chose to attend, as “you can’t just run around the world just throwing your opinion without education.”
Mirik Milan, the former night mayor of Amsterdam and founder of the nightlife consultancy VibeLab, who has come to XP since its first year, says he’s seen “a cultural renaissance has taken place in the last couple of years,” but “we should also not be naïve. Music and nightlife have the power to change people’s lives, but they won’t inflict a power change in Saudi or anywhere in the world.” To him, the point is the people of Saudi experiencing the joy of dance music.
On the final night of Soundstorm 2022, three Saudi women in their early 30s, all of whom speak English, sit at a picnic table and talk about life before bin Salman’s reforms.
Until a decade ago, they say, the most exciting form of legal entertainment was a restaurant with dancing waiters. The reforms have made dating easier, they say, since they no longer have to chaperone one another on secret visits to mens’ houses. “We’d be nervous, like ‘don’t drink anything; be careful,’” says one. “Now you can just go to a coffee shop.” Even now, though, they say the lives of Saudi women depend significantly on the permissiveness of their fathers. “And if it’s not your dad, it’s your siblings, or your uncles, or your cousins,” says another. “Someone in the family is going to stand up and say ‘no.’”
Dressed in jeans and T-shirts, they say they’re happy that the women here in hijabs can experience the festival, because, the first one says, “It’s getting them out of their comfort zone.” The second says she was excited when tourists started coming, since “a lot of the terrorist [activity] created a big cloud on us that really doesn’t show who we are as people.”
That’s one reason they appreciate the DJs and artists who do make the trip. A third woman says she especially loves Guetta for coming here to play when the country first opened for foreign entertainment.
But she loves bin Salman even more, for making all of this possible.
“I am,” she says, “his biggest fan.”
About this reporting: Billboard assumed all costs related to travel to and from Saudi Arabia, including hotel accommodations. MDLBEAST helped arrange a travel visa. While in Saudi Arabia, the writer was part of a press entourage for which the festival provided transportation to and from XP and Soundstorm, along with sightseeing.
Billboard’s parent company, PMC, received a minority investment from SRMG, a publicly traded media company based in Saudi Arabia and Dubai, in early 2018.
Teyana Taylor, BET’s Connie Orlando and more were honored at the eighth annual Culture Creators Innovators & Leaders Awards Brunch on Friday (June 28) at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Hosted by journalist Gia Peppers, the exclusive fête brought industry icons, influencers and thought leaders together to pay tribute to extraordinary individuals who have left an indelible mark on Black culture across various sectors, including technology, business, sports, fashion, music and more.
It also benefitted The Culture Creators Foundation, a non-profit that is dedicated to bridging the gap between high school and college as well as college to graduation for underrepresented students in industries lacking diversity. The foundation empowers these students to thrive academically and professionally by providing resources, curriculum supplementation and membership. Funds raised during the brunch will support the 2024 Academic School Year Scholarship Program for the Campus Changemakers, the foundation’s inaugural cohort of students across 35 colleges and universities.
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Taylor was honored as Innovator of the Year with a celebratory video montage that highlighted her incredible career in entertainment, from choreographing Beyoncé‘s “Ring the Alarm” music video and signing to Pharrell Williams‘ Star Trak Entertainment when she was only 16 years old (when the world also watched her epic birthday bash on MTV’s My Super Sweet 16) to later signing to Ye‘s GOOD Music when she was 21. Since then, the multihyphenate star has earned eight gold-certified singles from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), while “Gonna Love Me” from her 2018 album K.T.S.E. is certified platinum. She’s creative directed shows and tours for Usher, Latto, Summer Walker, Diddy, Glorilla, Lil Durk and Lil Baby.
She also won the video director of the year award at the 2020 and 2023 BET Awards. While Taylor’s gearing up for her directorial debut, Get Lite, she’s also had a successful run in front of the camera: Her starring role in A Thousand And One earned her the best breakthrough performance award at the 2023 National Board of Review Awards and 2023 Critics Choice Awards, and she’s set to star in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest untitled feature and Tyler Perry’s Straw film.
“Teyana Taylor is a one of one. She’s a person who helps us mark time, a time in culture and different times of our lives. We’ve Googled her, we’ve celebrated her Sweet 16, we’ve watched her be our favorite baby mama next door, we’ve watched her slay rap battles (some of y’all remember that?), we’re watched her conquer choreography that would even make Janet Jackson blush,” said Emmy-winning screenwriter, producer and actress Lena Waithe while she was presenting the award to Taylor.
“She’s given us timeless music videos, unforgettable performances like the one she beautifully delivers in A Thousand And One. I’ve gotten a front row seat to her journey in becoming a serious actress. I’ve watched her break down both in front of and behind the camera. She let us watch her tears fall so others wouldn’t be afraid to cry.”
Taylor held back tears as she began her acceptance speech, which took the form of a prayer.
“Heavenly Father God, I thank you for who you are. All-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful. Let me tell you something about your favor. Father God, your favor cannot be stopped, you hear me? I know you’re hear me, so let your daughter cook. Let me cook. Lord, you told me in John 8:12 that you are the light of the world and if I followed you, I wouldn’t have to walk in darkness because you would have the light that leads to life,” she said.
“Thank you for wiping away every tear away when I thought the weight was punishment, ’cause you’ve made it very clear now that it was just preparation. Thank you for never letting my crown fall because you keep my head high. Thank you for teaching me the power of grace as I walk in it.”
She thanked her 8-year-old daughter Junie, who stood on stage beside her, for her “protection” and “being so pure. Thank you for loving me the way that you do. Thank you for teaching me how to be fearless,” Taylor said. And to her 3-year-old daughter Rue, “she knocked out in the green room,” Taylor revealed, which was met with roaring laughter. “I love you too, girl! …. One thing Rue gon’ do is never make it to the table, you hear me. My girl be knocked out like she work five jobs.”
After thanking her parents, her longtime friend and The Aunties production company co-founder Coco Gilbert, “Auntie” Natina Nimene, executive vp of promotion and artist relations at Def Jam and the rest of her team, Taylor returned to her prayer.
“I want to thank you for having me in this room full of amazing, talented innovators and leaders. Thank you for using me as an affirmation to everybody and every hardworking person in this room today that we are here because we belong here in this moment, it was already written in the palm of your hand…. And thank you for telling us ‘yes’ when naysayers told us ‘no.’ In Jesus’ name, Amen.” But right before she left the stage, Junie took the microphone for a precious scene-stealing moment. “And I love my mom! I love my mom!” she exclaimed.
Former BET Networks CEO/chairman Debra Lee presented presented an award to her former colleague Orlando, BET’s EVP specials, music programming & music strategy.
“I don’t think anyone in this room would disagree with the statement that everybody loves Connie,” said Lee, who collected proof in the form of a four-page document filled with responses from Orlando’s friends and business contacts about why everyone loves her. “Jesse Collins, her producing partner on many BET specials, says, ‘Words that describe Connie: integrity, her word is her bond; patience, in a world of folks seeking instant gratification with very little effort, she stands out as someone who puts in the work in order to make sure whatever she is working on is perfect; style, just look at her; love, Connie is love. Her heart is always open for anyone that needs it. And that is probably her greatest talent because, please know, she is not to be taken lightly or toyed with and will gladly let you see the girl from Queens if she has to. But after she pops out and shows you, she will always send you on your way with a hug and a smile. And you gotta give her credit for the BET Awards and all the moments she creates.’”
After Lee continued singing her praises, Orlando took the stage and choked back tears while crediting Lee as the reason why she was there in the first place.
“I’m honored to accept this year’s Culture Creator Award and to receive your generous recognition of my contributions to the world of television and film. I stand before you filled with so much gratitude. It is a blessing to do the work that I love,” she said while addressing Culture Creators founder Joi Brown and the Culture Creators Advisory Council. “Working in the mediums of television and film, I am keenly aware of how much time the average person spends watching the screen of some kind, at any given moment. With billions of people consuming content everyday, there lies a unique opportunity to foster meaningful discussions, to create pathways of understanding, to uplift and to educate countless numbers of viewers. Though entertainment is at the core of what we do, we can use the power of media to speak life into our audiences, to tell authentic stories and ignite a light in the darkness that exists in our world today.”
CAA account executive Lorrie Bartlett — whose client roster includes Andra Day, Fantasia, Regina King, Rachel Zegler, Michael Keaton, Travis Kelce, Jeymes Samuel and more — received the Icon Award for her commitment to advancing diversity and inclusion within the entertainment industry, while spearheading initiatives promoting equity within Hollywood. Additional honorees included Reign Venture Capital’s co-founder Monique Idlett; Brown Girl Jane CBO and media personality Tai Beauchamp; FashionBombDaily CEO/founder Claire Sulmers; social impact and brand engagement strategist Alencia Johnson; WME Sports agent and executive Cecil White; celebrity stylist duo Wayman + Micah; AI innovator and immersive technology expert Alton Glass; and The Doux haircare brand creators Maya and Brian Smith.
Four months out from its October conference in Amsterdam, ADE is adding a new batch of names to the program.
Today (June 27), ADE announced the addition of Empire president Tina Davis, who will give a keynote question and answer session about her role in expanding the influence of Empire, with a focus on the independent label’s expansion into Afrobeats and Latin.
Amid the explosion of music from the region, Spotify’s head of music for Sub-Saharan Africa Phiona Okumu will talk about elevating African artists and Spotify’s initiatives to support emerging and female artists. Grimes’ manager Daouda Leonard will give a talk looking at the intersection of music, AI and technology, along with artist management and ways to give artists control over their careers and businesses.
Believe’s global head of music Romain Vivien and TuneCore CEO Andreea Gleeson will give a joint keynote address as part of ADE’s Insider Knowledge series that will focus on how artists can navigate the evolving music landscape. Additionally, as part of a new partnership between SoundCloud and ADE, leaders from the platform will present a session on how independent artists can make the most of it.
Along with these execs, electronic artists including Palestinian techno producer Sama’ Abdulhadi, Ukrainian artist Miss Monique and Dutch producer Chris Stussy all join the program. Previously announced speakers include Timbaland, Martin Garrix, Laurent Garnier, music executive Grace Ladoja and representatives from fabric London, Armada Music, WME and UTA, with more names to be announced in the coming months.
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ADE 2024 is taking place Oct. 16-20 at locations throughout Amsterdam. The conference will again be divided into Lab and Pro programming, with Lab content tailored for people trying to get into or just starting out in the industry and Pro programming designed for established managers, label execs, artists, streamers, marketers, promoters and more.
The conference also offers consumer-facing events, with last year’s musical offerings happening in more than 200 venues around the city.