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The students who began their undergraduate education this fall at any of Billboard’s top music business schools are the first since the class of 2019 who can actually expect to spend four years on campus and in classrooms.
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As the COVID-19 pandemic spread in March 2020 and learning moved online, every student studying the music business, or any other field, took on a double major — in resilience.
“The resilience and positivity that our graduating students have shown over the last three years has been an inspiration,” said Sean McNamara, president/CEO of the Liverpool (England) Institute for the Performing Arts — the school that Paul McCartney co-founded in 1996 — as he presided over LIPA’s graduation in 2022, the school’s first inperson commencement since 2019. “I believe these qualities will see them successfully embark upon the next stage of their careers.”
Those attending any of Billboard’s top music business schools will be solidly positioned to pursue careers in an increasingly complex music industry. The schools listed are selected through executive recommendations, alumni information provided by honorees from our multiple power lists, information requested from each school and a decade of reporting on these programs.
We continue to prioritize more affordable public colleges and universities while also aiming for broad geographic diversity. Beyond the music capitals of New York, Los Angeles, Nashville and Miami, students can find worthwhile curricula in Philadelphia, Memphis and New Orleans, as well as Syracuse, N.Y.; Kennesaw, Ga.; Stillwater, Okla.; and Cleveland, Miss. This list includes the Valencia, Spain, campus of Boston’s renowned Berklee College of Music, the United Kingdom’s famed BRIT School outside London, LIPA and the BIMM Institute, the largest provider of contemporary music education in Europe.
Two noteworthy historically Black universities and colleges, public Tennessee State University in Nashville and private Howard University in Washington, D.C., also merit inclusion this year.
Billboard presents this list of schools alphabetically and declines to rank institutions in what would often be an apples-to-oranges comparison. (The past year has seen widespread criticism of college ranking practices.) For students seeking quantitative measurements — from admission percentages to tuition and fees to graduation rates — those data points are available through impartial sources such as College Navigator, a resource of the Institute of Education Sciences, a division of the U.S. Department of Education.
By any measure, however, the colleges and universities here offer impressive opportunities for students seeking an edge in music-industry careers — running campus record labels, devising business plans, volunteering at top festivals, traveling to major music industry events and meeting with leading artists and executives.
The faculty and administrators at any of these schools would echo the remarks of McNamara as their students complete their studies and move to reshape the music business: “We are immensely proud of them and extremely excited to watch them progress toward the next chapter in their lives.”
Abbey Road InstituteLondon
Established as a music production school in 2015 by Abbey Road Studios and the owner of the famed location, Universal Music, the flagship program is now located inside London’s Angel Studios, the site of recording sessions for acts including Adele, The Cure and Sam Smith. The institute also has sister programs across Europe and in the United States, Australia and South Africa. It offers a one-year intensive program, designed in collaboration with the music industry, that dives deep into music production, sound engineering and the music business.
Course: The core program offered by all of the institute’s campuses worldwide is the advanced diploma in music production and sound engineering.
American UniversityWashington, D.C.
Created in 2013 under the guidance of SoundExchange co-founder John Simson, the business and entertainment program at American University is housed in the Kogod School of Business and is already making a name for itself in the industry. The university is the alma mater of, among others, Rich Kepler, day-to-day manager of The Killers, and CAA agent Zack Borson. Given the school’s location, it’s an easy stop for industry professionals visiting the nation’s capital as well as local executives. Recent guests include Michael Huppe, president/CEO of SoundExchange, and Audrey Fix Schaeffer, head of communications for concert promotion and production company I.M.P.
Course: Representing Talent: Agents, Managers & Lawyers, taught alternately by Simson and former Sony vp of marketing Stacy Merida, informs students about all participants on an artist’s team. The class also assists in managing regional recording artists.
Baldwin Wallace UniversityBerea, Ohio
This past year, Baldwin Wallace welcomed the largest-ever class of incoming students to its music industry program housed on its campus just 15 minutes from downtown Cleveland. The university, which in 2021 was invited to become an educational affiliate of the Grammy Museum, offers individualized instruction combined with hands-on experiences supported by Cleveland’s musical ecosystem, including the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Internship partners range from Live Nation properties to small indie venues. In spring 2023, students had the opportunity to enroll in tour management, a special topics course taught by Lamba Productions president Hadden Hippsley, who has helped produce festivals including Bonnaroo, Outside Lands and Governors Ball, while some students served as volunteers at Bonnaroo in June.
Event: Stephanie Yeager — tour accountant for Foo Fighters, Phish, Bon Iver, Neil Young and Blake Shelton — recently visited the tour management class to provide insight into the financial components of a successful tour.
Belmont University — Curb College of Entertainment and Music BusinessNashville
Located less than a half-mile from Nashville’s Music Row, Belmont’s Curb College offers unique access to networking opportunities with industry professionals as well as affiliated programs in areas including audio engineering and songwriting. Courses such as Inside a Booking Agency (taught in association with CAA) and The Artist’s Team (which features industry guests representing each of the main roles on a recording artist’s team) are complemented by hands-on opportunities such as summer term Bonnaroo U. A partnership with the Songwriters Hall of Fame yielded a new SHOF scholarship, and Belmont songwriting majors Lauryn Marie Hedges and Zander Jett were named the inaugural recipients in May. Hit-maker Desmond Child presented a master class on songwriting and navigating the industry, the first of many in a series.
Event: In April, Belmont hosted Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw for an intimate Q&A about touring, marketing and getting his start in the business.
Berklee College of MusicBoston
Berklee offers two degrees for students pursuing careers in the industry: a bachelor of music in music business/management and a bachelor of arts in music industry leadership and innovation, which debuted in 2022. The school continues to attract top-level industry guests. Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, spoke in March on a keynote panel as part of its annual Career Jam that also featured former Beats by Dre president Luke Wood and Main Street Advisors founder and CEO Paul Wachter. Berklee also has an expansive alums network, which includes Live Nation senior vp of touring Jared Braverman and Netflix music data and insights manager Anahita Bahri.
Course: BPMI Live is a one-year program focused on the festival business. Students hone their skills in talent scouting, artist development, and concert promotion and production; the capstone includes opportunities to participate at Lollapalooza and Governors Ball, where they work as production and tour managers for artists.
Berklee College of MusicValencia, Spain
The sister campus to Boston’s Berklee College of Music offers a one-year master’s degree in global entertainment and music business attended by students from more than 20 countries who can concentrate in live entertainment, entrepreneurship and the record industry. The program optimizes its location, bringing all students to the Future of Music Forum in Barcelona and to the Great Escape in Brighton, England, a conference and festival showcasing 500 emerging artists from around the globe. In addition, it annually welcomes high-level industry professionals. This year’s honorary doctorate recipient, Yvette Noel-Schure, known for her work with Beyoncé, Prince, John Legend and Chloe x Halle, was recognized at the 2023 commencement ceremony in July, and recent guests include Ithaca Holdings/SB Projects founder Scooter Braun and manager Sophia Chang, who has worked with acts ranging from Paul Simon to Wu-Tang Clan.
Course: Emerging Technologies and New Creative Frontiers prepares students to both understand and capitalize on technological change, from artificial intelligence to virtual reality.
Berklee College of Music in Spain presented an honorary degree to veteran music publicist Yvette Noel-Schure, known for her work with Beyoncé and others.
Tato Baeza
BIMM University — BIMM Music InstituteLondon
Given full university status by Britain’s Department for Education in July 2022, the newly named BIMM University now includes the BIMM Music Institute as well as schools for the performing arts, film and TV. The BIMM Music Institute, with seven locations in London and other cities across the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany, draws on a 40-year history of educating its students with high-end facilities, industry experience, knowledgeable lecturers and music business connections. Courses include music business; music marketing, media and communications; and event management to train those aiming for industry careers.
Alums: Ella Mai, Fontaines D.C. and James Bay are among the graduates of the school.
The BRIT SchoolCroydon, England
The BRIT School, a tuition-free institution that educates students ages 14 to 19 for careers in performance and creative arts and related industries, was co-founded in 1991 by the British government and the British Record Industry Trust (the charitable division of U.K. labels trade group BPI, which presents the BRIT Awards). The school has specialists teaching courses in live sound, production, recording, music tech and the music business — while also offering a comprehensive nonvocational curriculum. Not surprising given its history, the school has exceptional connections within the British music industry for career opportunities post-graduation. Students have participated in sessions with industry figures from Disney composer Alan Menken to YouTube global head of music Lyor Cohen.
Alums: Artists including Adele, Jessie J, Loyle Carner, RAYE, Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis and Katie Melua have attended The BRIT School.
Artists including Adele (pictured), Jessie J, Loyle Carner, RAYE, Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis and Katie Melua have attended The BRIT School in England.
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
California Institute of the Arts — The Herb Alpert School of MusicSanta Clarita, Calif.
CalArts students at the Herb Alpert School of Music immerse themselves in the business of music, but the school also ensures that every student — even those who plan to pursue nonperforming roles — lean into some type of music creation. Among its alums: Composer Raven Chacon and composer/sound artist Ellen Reid are both Pulitzer Prize winners; Greg Kurstin, a producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, has won nine Grammys and worked with artists including Adele, P!nk, Paul McCartney and Kendrick Lamar. On the business side, courses such as AI Sonic Explorations, The Art of the Mix and The Art of Recording keep students ahead of the curve regarding evolving technology and work-flow models.
Faculty: Laurel Halo, a composer, producer, live musician and DJ, joined the faculty in fall 2022.
California State University, NorthridgeLos Angeles
While copyright law, publishing and licensing concepts, and the intricacies of recording and publishing contracts are key areas of focus in the classroom at CSUN, the school’s music industry studies program also delves into entrepreneurship and experiential learning. Aside from regularly hosting industry panels, the program — which counts singer-songwriter Andy Grammer as an alumnus — is home to Vove, a student-run record label where participants select, record, promote and manage an “artist of the year.” Thanks to its L.A. location, the school also boasts a robust internship program where all students must earn four credits working in a sector of the music business, from publishing to labels to live events. In addition to its undergraduate program, CSUN offers a master’s in music industry administration, with class schedules designed for fully employed students and midcareer professionals.
Event: The university recently presented a panel and networking discussion of songwriting with Jud Friedman, an Academy Award- and Grammy-nominated songwriter (Whitney Houston’s “Run to You” from The Bodyguard); Bonnie McKee, who co-wrote hits for Katy Perry, Christina Aguilera and Kelly Clarkson; and Joe Poindexter, vp of digital at Pulse Music.
Delta State University — Entertainment Industry StudiesCleveland, Miss.
Located in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, Delta State’s entertainment industry studies program offers small class sizes and hands-on opportunities including its entertainment industry entrepreneurship and record-label practicum: Fighting Okra Records, where attendees work at the student-run imprint. The school annually draws industry speakers, including recent guests Boo Mitchell, Grammy-winning producer and owner of Royal Studios in Memphis, and Jim Sonefeld, drummer, author and songwriter (Hootie & The Blowfish).
Alums: Erin Moorman, marketing coordinator at Syntax Creative, and Libby Switzer, executive assistant at Creative Strategic Management, both in Nashville.
Drexel University — Westphal College of Media Arts and DesignPhiladelphia
Students at Drexel’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design begin taking music business-specific classes when they start the program freshman year. That allows them to engage in the school’s unique course offerings, including Women in Music Industry and Fan Engagement: One Direction, which uses the former boy band as a focal point to examine the past, present and future of fan engagement. As part of the curriculum, students spend six months working in the industry; this year’s class interned at companies such as Netflix, Goldenvoice, Universal Music Group, Republic Records, WME, Live Nation and AEG.
Alums: Universal Music Group senior director of artist and label services Deb Keller and The Orchard vp of international label management Marissa Putney.
Full Sail UniversityWinter Park, Fla.
Full Sail offers several nonperforming degree programs in areas including music business, audio production, recording arts and the live industry-centric program show production. The school also regularly hosts events where students can learn from first-hand experience of those in the industry. Its recent speaker roster includes Mike McGrath, tour manager for Jason Aldean, and Randall Foster, vp of business development at Symphonic Distribution, and it hosts executives — and potential employers — from companies including Microsoft Game Studios, Fever, Samsung, Disney and Carnival Cruise Line.
Alumnus: Music business program graduate Michael Cariglio is a vp of marketing at Republic Records.
Hofstra UniversityHempstead, N.Y.
The number of students enrolled inthe music business program at Hofstra has nearly tripled since the curriculum launched in 2017. The school has created a new bachelor of science in music business and also offers a music business major (for nonperformers) that leads to a bachelor of arts. Hofstra welcomes over 50 guest speakers on campus every year and offers internship opportunities year-round in New York (30 miles west of campus). A state-of-the art MIDI computer lab was completed in January, and a recording studio including a control room, live room, isolation booth and recording console is due to open at the end of the year.
Faculty: Kenyatta Beasley, a professor of music business who began teaching earlier this year, is a trumpeter, composer and music producer who has worked with Tru-Sound New York, Interscope/G-Unit Records, Helen Han Creative and Art vs. Transit Production.
Howard UniversityWashington, D.C.
The Warner Music/Blavatnik Center for Music Business at Howard University, funded by a $4.9 million gift in 2021, offers a one-year fellowship program that provides fellows with coaching, specialized curriculum, mentorship and experience working with partner organizations. The Howard University School of Business takes the approach that the key to addressing the underrepresentation of Black executives and professionals in music and entertainment is intense coaching and immersion programs, and the Warner Music/Blavatnik Center frequently hosts industry executives for fireside chats, master classes and other programming. Recently, Combs Global president Tarik Brooks presented a “master mogul” panel discussion, and DJ Drama, a co-owner of Generation Now (home to Lil Uzi Vert, Killuminati and Jack Harlow), had a session with students.
Course: Among the university’s noteworthy offerings is the class The History of the American Music Industry: What Isn’t Black Music?
Indiana University — Jacobs School of MusicBloomington, Ind.
At IU’s Jacobs School, emerging professionals have the opportunity to establish a career path that pairs their interest in the music industry with a large set of career options. Among multiple paths of study, undergraduate students can earn a music-oriented entrepreneurship certificate that includes foundational courses at the university’s Kelley School of Business. The music school also hosts a strong roster of guest speakers. Austin Wintory, an award-winning composer for film and video games, recently visited the campus to talk with students in an event hosted by the Music in Games student organization and the office of entrepreneurship and career development.
Event: Indiana native John Mellencamp spoke about his life and career in March at the university’s Franklin Hall during a symposium discussing the social and cultural impact of his music. University president Pamela Whitten subsequently announced that Mellencamp would be donating archived collections of his work to IU.
John Mellencamp (left) answered questions from music writer Anthony DeCurtis during a symposium about his life and career at Indiana University in March.
Michael Claycamp/Indiana Daily Student
Kennesaw State University — Joel A. Katz Music and Entertainment Business ProgramKennesaw, Ga.
Integrated within the university’s Coles College of Business, the Joel A. Katz Music and Entertainment Business Program teaches the business side of the industry while providing practical experiences, on-the-job training and exploration of career opportunities. The program offers an annual study abroad trip to London, including an all-day visit with international executives at Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. It recently formed a partnership with the book and online platform Music Business Toolbox and its creator, Bryan Calhoun, that provides tools, templates, forms and guidance to help students manage their music careers. The program recently established a partnership with the Dolby Institute, an educational division of the audiovisual technology company.
Artist in residence: David Ryan Harris, John Mayer’s guitarist and a singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist, is Kennesaw’s latest artist in residence as of fall 2023.
Liverpool Institute for the Performing ArtsLiverpool, England
Within LIPA’s curriculum on management for the creative industries and performing arts, students take the music industry management pathway train alongside performers, technicians, designers and filmmakers in the school’s facilities. In their final year, students participate in a three-month internship that reflects their career goals with companies such as Warner Music, Live Nation and Sentric Music Publishing. LIPA was co-founded in 1996 by Paul McCartney and Mark Featherstone-Witty, who retired as LIPA principal/CEO in 2021, succeeded by Sean McNamara.
Speaker: Robert Plant participated in a Q&A with students in November 2022.
Los Angeles College of MusicPasadena, Calif.
LACM’s music business program — which offers a 12-quarter bachelor of music degree and a six-quarter associate of arts degree — is committed to offering students hands-on experience and networking opportunities. On average, a student will meet and interact with more than 100 guest speakers and master class guests per year from all facets of the music industry, and the program also features field trips to companies such as Spotify, Hipgnosis, Universal and Disney. Recent industry guest speakers include Billboard’s Keith Caulfield, managing director of charts and data operations, and publishing reporter Kristin Robinson.
Faculty: Music business department head Erin Workman’s experience in artist development includes working with Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus and Ashley Tisdale.
Los Angeles Film School — The Los Angeles Recording SchoolLos Angeles
Located in the heart of Hollywood, the Los Angeles Recording School (a division of the Los Angeles Film School) is equipped with professional recording studios that let students train in a real-world work environment. The school offers an array of degrees across its music and entertainment business programs, which let students gain analytical and practical skills both in the classroom and in the field. New for 2023 is an 18-month online competition program that allows those with an associate degree to earn their bachelor of science in entertainment business. The school also boasts an active speaker roster. Recently, SunPop managing partner Will Tenney spoke with students from the entertainment business program during an on-campus event.
Alumnus: As president of Record Plant Studios, Jeff Barnes oversees business operations and booking and has worked with Justin Bieber, Beyoncé and Ariana Grande, among other artists.
Loyola University — School of Music and Theatre ProfessionsNew Orleans
New Orleans is among the world’s most vibrant music cities, and Loyola University’s music industry studies program, within the School of Music and Theatre Professions, helps students build careers around their passions. Students learn from professors who are active in the industry and can create their own professional projects alongside creative peers. Loyola’s two Hilton-endowed professorships fund student travel and participation in various music industry conferences such as NAMM, Americana and Mondo — with future plans for South by Southwest and Music Biz. The program this year launched songwriter and music business camps where students worked directly alongside Grammy-winning rapper-producer D’Mile and Pulse Music Group’s Ricki Rich. The school also partners with the city so students can help produce the annual Freret Street Festival, which has drawn over 20,000 attendees a day.
Course: Record Label Operations brings a working music-label entity to campus. With a professorship-funded budget of $5,000, students in the course form a team to function as a label, recruiting and developing a young artist for commercial release.
Middle Tennessee State UniversityMurfreesboro, Tenn.
Located less than an hour from the site of the Bonnaroo festival, where students regularly gain hands-on experience, MTSU offers an expanded focus beyond music recording into areas including live-event production, broadcast and streaming, and immersive audio for music, film and gaming. As such, courses in venue management, mixing techniques in immersive audio, and concert promotion and touring are popular with students. The school also hosts a revolving mix of industry speakers. Mixing engineer Andrew Scheps and recording engineer George Massenburg are among recent visitors to campus.
Event: This summer, MTSU students produced over 30 segments for Hulu’s Bonnaroo Music Festival channel, which streamed the event.
Monmouth UniversityWest Long Branch, N.J.
Monmouth’s music industry program combines coursework from the university’s business school with its music and music business curriculum, a hybrid model that prepares students for a range of opportunities in the arts industry. Home of the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music, the school incorporates hands-on activities like its student-run record label, Blue Hawk Records, and leverages partnerships with major music organizations, tech companies, agencies and a state-of-the-art recording complex in Asbury Park. Last year, the new Monmouth Artists for Diversity & Inclusion released an album on Blue Hawk, and the organization’s founding members were awarded a joint senatorial and gubernatorial proclamation from the State of New Jersey for contributions to society.
Alumnus: Joe Bognanno is director of music publishing licensing and partnerships at TikTok/ByteDance.
Musicians InstituteHollywood
Anderson .Paak was once a drum student and a drum teacher’s assistant at Musicians Institute, whose Hollywood location puts it at the nexus of the entertainment world. The school’s music business program offers detailed specialization in every area of the industry through a frequently updated curriculum taught by professionals. Courses cover the gamut from law and contracts to music publishing and licensing to artist and tour management, A&R and record labels, distribution, promotion and marketing. Musicians Institute is also continually honing industry partnerships that serve as a direct line into the workforce through internships.
Event: During a recent online social media workshop, BRXND vp of artist management and digital strategy Dan Tsurif discussed the importance of social media marketing and explained how platforms can aid developing artists and brands.
New York University — Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human DevelopmentNew York
The ongoing addition of courses like advanced topics in recorded music and music publishing, co-taught in person by RIAA chairman/CEO Mitch Glazier and National Music Publishers’ Association president/CEO David Israelite, is just one way NYU Steinhardt ensures students are learning from the leaders at the cutting edge of the music business. For the course Village Records, students work with independent artists on career development areas including live performance, sound recording, product management, publicity, management and fan engagement. The Steinhardt program also allows students to take classes at NYU’s Stern School of Business and offers options for them to complete studies on its campus in Nashville (through a program designed in partnership with Universal Music Group) or at any of 12 global campus sites including Los Angeles, London, Paris and Shanghai.
Speaker: David Gray, executive vp of U.S. A&R and head of global creative for Universal Music Publishing Group, is an executive in residence and engages with students at least three times each semester.
New York University — Tisch School of the Arts, Clive Davis Institute of Recorded MusicNew York
A holistic understanding of business, performance, production, writing, history and emerging media is the goal of the Clive Davis Institute, which counts Maggie Rogers among its notable graduates. Students work with resident artists, such as singer-songwriter Dawn Richard and singer Jamila Woods, and executives in residence. Columbia Records A&R executive Katie Vinten served in the latter role this past year and also led a summer accelerator program. Other recent speakers included Atlantic Records president of A&R Pete Ganbargs, Hipgnosis Songs Fund founder and CEO Merck Mercuriadis and Patreon co-founder and CEO Jack Conte. In partnership with Billboard, the institute offers an online music industry essentials course. In 2022, Barry Manilow and school officials joined Davis at the opening of the Clive Davis Gallery at NYU. The institute is also expanding geographically, recently launching a study abroad program in Berlin.
Event: Pop Conference 2023, held in April at the institute, hosted guests including Timbaland, NPR music critic Ann Powers and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis.
Sony Music Entertainment chief creative officer Clive Davis, who endowed New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music, attended the 2022 opening of a permanent gallery focusing on his career at the school’s campus in his native Brooklyn.
Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images
Northeastern University — College of Arts, Media and DesignBoston
Northeastern’s bachelor of science in music with a concentration in music industry encourages students to become entrepreneurial thought leaders and change agents across the music business. Aside from classes focused on topics including actionable analytics in the music industry and artist management, the school is home to Good Dog Licensing, a student-run music synch company through which students receive hands-on experience and offers four- or six-month co-op experiential learning opportunities. New this year is a university chapter of the nearly four-decade-old nonprofit Women in Music, dedicated to fostering equality in the music industry through the support and advancement of women.
Event: In honor of World Mental Health Day in October 2022, the Women in Music Boston chapter presented Mental Health Awareness for Artists and Their Allies, a panel to guide musicians with resources and information about emotional well-being.
Occidental CollegeLos Angeles
Occidental’s music business courses are embedded within its liberal arts curriculum, and many of the students in music department classes major or double-major in other disciplines such as economics, math, politics, chemistry, philosophy and physics. The school’s location gives students access to a capital of the music industry, providing immersive education through internships and other opportunities. In 2022, Occidental formalized its relationship with Warner Music Group (whose former CEO Steve Cooper is an alumnus) and has since hosted events with WMG executives for students from all majors who are interested in a career in music business.
Event: Warner Chappell Production Music vp/head of legal and business affairs Steve Touchton met with students in March to share his 25 years of experience, field questions and offer advice on entering the business side of the music industry.
Oklahoma State University — The Greenwood School of MusicStillwater, Okla.
OSU’s bachelor of science in music industry, established in 2017, remains the fastest-growing music program at the school. Recent developments include the Greenwood School of Music’s new facilities, which opened in 2021, and a collaboration this year with Kicker, a Stillwater-headquartered audio manufacturer with which students partnered on the research and design of a potential new product. The student-run music company Poke U comprises a record label, music publisher, concert promotion and musical products divisions, and the school has a robust speaker and alums network. Once again, the New York Philharmonic residency returned to the university’s McKnight Center for the Performing Arts, adjacent to the campus, with the opportunity for students to work with the business staff of the orchestra.
Event: Alumnus Garth Brooks in April delivered two concerts at OSU: a scholarship benefit show and a free performance exclusively for OSU students.
Rhodes College — Mike Curb Institute for MusicMemphis
Rhodes College and the Curb Institute benefit from their location in the artistically vibrant city of Memphis, as Curb students tap experiential opportunities in the city. In 2022, the institute launched the Curb Community Fellows program, which provides funding for students to work directly with local professionals and organizations such as Goner Records, the Overton Park Shell, the Memphis Music Initiative and the STAX Museum of American Soul Music. On campus, they can engage with Dredge, a student-produced zine and social media platform focused on the Memphis arts scene, and Beyond Beale, a student-produced podcast that explores underresearched aspects of the city’s music history. The first two seasons received honorable mention recognition by the NPR Student Podcast Challenge.
Courses: In fall 2024, Rhodes will offer two new certificates in music industry studies — content production and arts entrepreneurship — that complement the college’s core liberal arts mission.
State University of New York, OneontaOneonta, N.Y.
The music industry program at SUNY Oneonta is designed to appeal to aspiring executives, as well as students interested in technical fields like audio production or who are entrepreneurial musicians. In addition to the core courses, music industry students are required to complete a sequence of courses in the SUNY Oneonta School of Business, an array of general education courses and at least one course from a slate of electives such as concert production, through which students conceive, plan and manage a series of live concert events on campus and in the Oneonta community. Off-campus learning and networking experiences include a faculty-led trip to the annual NAMM trade show in Los Angeles.
Events: John Mayer recently engaged with music industry program students through a video conference; another event connected students with members of the Dave Matthews Band. (Mayer and Matthews are both clients of business manager and Cal Financial Group founder Rit Venerus, an Oneonta alumnus.)
Syracuse University — Bandier Program for Recording and Entertainment IndustriesSyracuse, N.Y.This year marked the return of the Bandier Program’s international immersion trip, with a dozen students traveling in May to meet with more than 40 executives at music companies in Singapore; Jakarta, Indonesia; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and Bangkok. On campus, students choose from an ever-evolving variety of courses and also tackle entertainment industry exploration, the program’s capstone, for which seniors must build a functioning and profitable real-world business. The previous academic year also saw rapid growth in the readership of Full Rate No Cap, a free weekly email of industry analysis that program director (and former Billboard editorial director) Bill Werde crafts for students to read; the email underpins a weekly, programwide student-led discussion about industry trends and headlines. Subscribers number in the thousands and include top executives at virtually every major music company around the globe.
Event: The weekly Wednesday-night speaker series this past academic year scheduled over 25 guest lectures from industry pros including Warner Music Group chief digital officer/executive vp of business development Oana Ruxandra and Apple Music creative director/radio host Zane Lowe.
Temple University — Klein College of Media and CommunicationPhiladelphia
Temple University’s Klein College offers an interdisciplinary bachelor of arts in audio and live entertainment that also includes courses in the music and business schools. The college’s mission is to empower and prepare the media creators of tomorrow to be ethical, analytical and creative leaders. The faculty has a wealth of industry experience, and courses are often complemented by presentations by industry creatives and executives including Grammy and Academy Award winner Questlove and American Association of Independent Music CEO Richard Burgess. (Philly native Questlove received the college’s 2022 Lew Klein Excellence in the Media Award.) A student-run record label interfaces with student radio, TV and other ventures in a collegewide media ecosystem, and a study abroad program offers opportunities in top global music markets such as Tokyo and London.
Alumnus: Multiple Grammy-winning producer Noah Goldstein, founder of Ark Publishing, has worked with artists including Kanye West, Frank Ocean, Travis Scott, Rihanna and Paul McCartney.
Questlove received the Lew Klein Excellence in the Media Award from Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication in 2022.
Kayla Oaddams/Getty Images
Tennessee State UniversityNashville
One of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, TSU is located in the heart of Nashville and offers a commercial music program as a concentration within the school’s music department. Perks include small class sizes, targeted courses such as music business and law, access to a variety of internships and mentor programs, and ample guest speakers who have recently included producer Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins and BMI executive director, creative Shannon Sanders, a TSU alumna. Harry Fox Agency client solutions coordinator Dashawn Howard and Grammy-nominated producer Dwane “Keywane” Wier are among other alums.
Event: In May, the music business accelerator program, which offers Black college students in Tennessee career resources to help them break into the industry, held an event at TSU in partnership with Amazon Music, Nashville Music Equality, the RIAA and Wasserman Music.
University of California, Los Angeles — Herb Alpert School of MusicLos Angeles
Spurred by the success of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music’s music history and industry degree program and its music industry minor, the school this fall introduced a major in music industry. The new program, which complements the performance, composition, musicology and music education programs already offered, provides students with a high level of liberal arts integration to ensure they master the skills needed for a successful creative industry career. Classes immerse students in a range of subjects from data science for the music industry to music and activism, and internship and employment opportunities abound as those enrolled in the program benefit from the school’s relationships with an array of music companies. A major gift from former Warner Bros. Records chairman Mo Ostin, who died in 2022, funded construction of the Evelyn and Mo Ostin Music Center.
Speaker: Amy Davidman, founder of and agent at TBA Agency, recently spoke with students on campus.
University of Colorado DenverDenver
The university offers two course tracks for students interested in pursuing a career in the music industry: one for performing students and another to provide the chops to work as managers, publishers, music supervisors and/or marketers. Students in the lattermost progression take courses examining music supervision and synch licensing, music publishing, music marketing, law and the music industry, artist management and more. Additionally this year, the Mechanical Licensing Collective appointed faculty member Dan Hodges as one of its educator ambassadors to advise students on the importance of registering music with the MLC to collect interactive streaming royalties.
Partnership: The Nashville Songwriter Association International this past year launched a chapter at the university.
University of Miami — Frost School of MusicMiami
Under director Serona Elton, whom the Music Business Association recently named the first music business educator of the year, Frost’s music industry program is expanding. It recently launched a bachelor of arts in music industry major for nonperformers, an addition to its well-established bachelor of music in music industry and master of arts in music industry. Along with its diversity of courses and proximity to the Latin offices of many major music companies, the program also offers a variety of student-run enterprises including ’Cane Records, Cat 5 Music and Frost Sounds, as well as a campus radio station, concert production organization, numerous concert halls and music industry student association.
Course: Students in recorded-music operations learn about A&R, production, distribution, marketing/promotion, licensing and royalties and use Chartmetric to analyze the consumption of their favorite artists’ tracks.
In May, Serona Elton (right), director of the music industry program at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, received the Music Business Association’s first music educator of the year award, presented by president Portia Sabin.
Laura E. Partain
University of North Texas — College of MusicDenton, Texas
Options abound at UNT’s College of Music, located on the northern edge of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and the country’s largest public-university music program. It offers degrees from bachelor to doctoral levels and is home to the world’s first jazz studies degree program, now in its 75th year. The school is continually adding faculty and courses to the curriculum, offered fully online or in a hybrid format, with options ranging from music leadership to performing arts management to touring. The curriculum leading to a master’s in music business, launched just three years ago, supports student goals within music technology and entrepreneurship. In 2021, the Yamaha Institution of Excellence program included the UNT College of Music in its inaugural list of 10 distinguished colleges and universities recognizing extraordinary commitment to innovation in the study of music.
Event: Julian Peterson, associate director at Gearbox Software and a composer, audio programmer, sound designer and researcher, recently met with students.
University of Rochester — Eastman School of MusicRochester, N.Y.
It’s all about flexibility at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School. Students can earn a double degree, a minor concentration or just take courses related to their interests. Among the options, Eastman offers a master of arts in music leadership and a commercial music industry experience through the Beal Institute for Film Music and Contemporary Media, where students have opportunities to work with the Rochester Institute of Technology’s film, animation and video game development schools. The Electroacoustic Music Studios at Eastman introduces students to electronic music technologies. And student-run ensembles provide commercial and music leadership skills, including the Empire Film and Media Ensemble, a live-to-film ensemble, and OSSIA, the school’s student-run new music ensemble.
Alumnus: Eastman’s Beal Institute was named after its founder, alumnus Jeff Beal, a five-time Emmy-winning composer of film and TV scores. Beal is a frequent guest speaker and students have traveled to Los Angeles to work with him for an immersive experience.
University of Southern California — Iovine and Young AcademyLos Angeles
USC’s Iovine and Young Academy innovators forum hosts leaders in diverse disciplines, industries and the arts to present and discuss problems facing society and to critique real-world projects. Recent guests have included TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie. That’s just one way the interdisciplinary-focused academy provides a framework for students interested in the music industry to study topics from reimagining virtual concert events to building a new artificial intelligence-driven music platform. Endowed by industry entrepreneurs Jimmy Iovine and Andre “Dr. Dre” Young, the academy offers a bachelor of science in arts, technology and the business of innovation and a master of science in integrated design, business and technology.
Event: For the Masters of Scale podcast in June, Iovine spoke with Angela Ahrendts, former CEO of Burberry and former senior vp of Apple, about success, motivation and education.
University of Southern California — Thornton School of MusicLos Angeles
Close ties with the L.A. music community are core to the DNA at USC Thornton, which offers both an undergraduate and 18-month master’s program in the music industry. Students benefit from an abundance of networking, internship and job opportunities across areas such as touring, marketing, branding, business and law, and the school provides a classroom guest list that recently included Ali Harnell, global president/chief strategy officer of Live Nation Women. Collaboration and camaraderie are also emphasized among students who will one day join an alums network that includes DreamWorks Animation senior vp of TV music Alex Nickson and Warner Records senior vp of creative sync licensing Julia Betley.
Events: Thornton’s producers forum has hosted speakers including Merck Mercuriadis, founder and CEO of Hipgnosis Songs Fund, and Lee Zeidman, president of Crypto.com Arena, Peacock Theater and L.A. Live.
William Paterson UniversityWayne, N.J.
William Paterson University’s music and entertainment industries program focuses on today’s industry from an independent artist and label perspective. Courses, including the popular Backstage: The Business of Touring, focus on three key pillars of music income: live, recording and publishing. The program has hosted visiting resident experts including Kate Hyman, former vp of A&R for BMG, and Mark Robinson, senior vp of music strategy, business and legal affairs at Paramount. And while internships are a core tenet, students also benefit from industry professionals who come to campus, including Vydia co-president Jenna Gaudio in a recent visit.
Alums: Theresa Abou-Daoud, production assistant with Tyler, The Creator, and Nathaniel Meyerowitz, associate manager of experience at Wasserman, are among recent graduates of the program.
This story originally appeared in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
“I just need to make one edit. Could we start talking while I do it?” Mike Dean asks, lowering himself into a leather office chair in his Los Angeles home studio.
He swivels his seat to face a widescreen monitor and scrolls through scores of waveforms in his Pro Tools session, searching for the right spot to doctor. It’s a song from Diddy’s just-released The Love Album: Off the Grid called “Another One of Me” (featuring The Weeknd, French Montana and 21 Savage), and mere days before its Sept. 15 release, Dean has been tasked with crafting a slightly cleaner version of 21’s verse.
Despite the clear urgency of the work, Dean appears unfazed, steady. “It’s OK. I like to do eight things at a time,” he explains while he rotates among vocal editing, answering questions, FaceTiming a manager and ripping from his bong. This is not the first time the writer, producer and engineer has performed last-minute miracles for an A-lister’s song — and it certainly won’t be the last.
Dean’s stoicism and keen editing ear are among the many reasons he has been hip-hop’s most in-demand collaborator for decades, often skillfully guiding the genre’s most temperamental and perfectionistic talents — from Kanye West to Travis Scott to Jay-Z — to complete their best work.
He recalls the February 2016 evening when West played his seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo, for fans at Madison Square Garden in New York. With a packed house of nearly 20,000 at the arena and 20 million tuned in at home through a livestream, West shared a sampling of its tracks, including now essential hits like “Famous” and “Ultralight Beam.” As on the six West albums that had preceded it, Dean was a trusted collaborator in creating Pablo. Fans waited well past the event’s scheduled start time, but few could have guessed the reason for the delay: Almost none of the songs were done.
“It was crazy,” recalls Dean as he clicks over to his camera roll on the monitor, searching back to the photos he took that night. “We had 16 songs unfinished. I think we finished something like four songs, gave them to Kanye, and he went down there and played that shit in front of 20,000 people.
“Then I finished some more and rushed from the studio. We had to jump out of the cab about 10 blocks before the arena because the traffic was so bad,” he continues, still searching for that specific night on his camera roll, casually whisking his cursor past other culture-defining moments in the process: The Weeknd’s headlining Coachella set, West’s Yeezus-era Saturday Night Live performance and many raucous Scott shows. “I ran to MSG, fought to get to the basement and then to the floor and gave him the memory stick.”
Michael Tyrone Delaney
Finally, Dean locates one of the pictures of that night. In it, West stands in the center of the frame in a red long-sleeve shirt and black baseball cap, arms lifted above his head. Under the halo of a white spotlight, he appears to be leading a religious rite rather than a listening party. Dean stands to West’s right sporting a flat bill hat from MWA, his label, and a slick black windbreaker. Despite the preceding chaos, Dean’s countenance betrays no signs of alarm. “I’m calm, really,” he says with a shrug, zooming in on himself in the background. “I’ll put a memory stick in a computer in front of thousands of people.”
His most prolific relationship of all is with West, whom the Texas born-and-bred producer-engineer met when he was still living in Houston circa 2002. In the preceding years, Dean had become a local legend, defining the sound of the Dirty South by producing, writing and mixing records for Geto Boys and Scarface and touring with acts like Selena.
“Kanye first came to my house when he was working on his mixtape, songs like ‘Through the Wire.’ I remember he had on a backpack and tight pants,” he says with a laugh. “You know, people in Texas don’t wear tight pants.”
Though West has now cycled through dozens — if not hundreds — of other creative collaborators throughout his career, Dean has been his singular through line. He has been with the artist from mixing parts of The College Dropout (2004) to producing much of Donda 2 (2022). He says the key to fostering such long-term relationships with artists, including West, is to not “try to follow them too much” and “stand up for what [I think] is right” for a song. “You let them do their thing but steer them in the right direction,” he says, though he admits “that gets harder, though, as they get bigger and bigger.” (Dean declined to comment about the current status of his creative relationship with West.)
Michael Tyrone Delaney
Don Toliver, who worked on his 2020 hit “After Party” with Dean, says he loves collaborating with the producer because he is “the ultimate badass at mixing and mastering. If Tony Montana from Scarface worked in the music industry, he would be Mike Dean, deep into his craft and bringing that essence and vibe to the music as well.”
But Dean’s best-known strength is his penchant for synthesizers. From where he sits in his studio, these analog instruments cocoon him, stacked in columns up and down all four walls of the room. He points out a few of his favorites: a Memory Moog from 1978, the latest Prophet from Dave Smith Instruments. Then Dean gestures across the room to a clunky keyboard with colorful knobs and buttons and wood grain siding. “That’s the one Michael [Jackson] played ‘Billie Jean’ on. That’s the most important synth in the room,” he says, beaming. Of course, he has other favorites in storage — in his two garages, his other studio or his Texas house.
In recent years, some Dean acolytes have dubbed him “The Synth God.” “Every year, I turn the synths up a couple dBs [decibels],” he jokes. “On [West’s 2005] Late Registration, the synths were really tucked in, but since then it has just gotten louder and louder.”
While many of his contemporaries add so-called “producer tags” — audio identifiers on tracks where they stake their claim — Dean mostly shies away from that. “My sound is usually my tag,” he says matter-of-factly. It’s a claim that’s evident on records that feature what has become known as a Mike Dean Outro — a 30-second- to minute-long ending devoted to Dean’s transcendent synth work; one of the best-known examples is on Scott’s 2019 single “Highest in the Room.” Of the 59 total producer credits and 106 songwriter credits Dean has amassed on the Billboard Hot 100, “Highest in the Room” is one of his few No. 1s (along with Scott’s Drake-featuring “Sicko Mode” and Kid Cudi collaboration “The Scotts”). “That’s when the outro really went viral,” he says, though that was far from its first iteration. He has been doing these characteristic endings since West’s “Stronger” in 2007. “I just always jam on songs as much as possible… But [the outros are] becoming almost cliché to me now,” he says.
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Savvy rap fans have known about Dean since the 2000s — or earlier, if they followed Houston hip-hop — but the producer, 58, has intentionally increased his visibility in recent years. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Dean started to see himself as more of an artist in his own right. He began a series of solo albums, released annually every April since 2020, each titled 4:20, 4:21, 4:22 and, most recently, 4:23.
He also started livestreaming as he played around on his synths, building avant garde instrumentals from scratch as teenagers frantically sent goat and fire emojis in the chat. The videos let Dean be more transparent with his process, and they amassed a following quickly, even among his famous friends like The Weeknd — who texted Dean, “You should open for me on tour.” Soon he was performing with the singer in stadiums around the world. To keep up with his other musical commitments, Dean worked out of a 10-foot-by-10-foot makeshift studio, designed for the back of his tour bus.
“It wasn’t too hard to work out of there, really,” he explains. “I did Travis’ second album in the back of a bus once. Plenty of my songs have been made like that.” It was during that time on the road, he says, that he created much of the songs and score for The Idol, the dark HBO drama co-created by The Weeknd and Euphoria producer Sam Levinson. The show was widely panned and ultimately canceled; one of its highlights, however, was Dean’s scoring work and soundtrack. Apart from co-writing the score for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, The Idol was Dean’s first major gig as composer, and his synth mastery laid the perfect morose undertone for the action onscreen.
Dean himself was also written into the show, playing “Mike Dean,” and furthering his mystique. In his first scene, he arrived in a matte black Tesla, emerging from the car’s butterfly doors in a fog of smoke, bong in tow — a meme-worthy entrance caricaturing his real-life demeanor and pot habit. It was Levinson’s idea: “I was first approached about Euphoria season two,” Dean says, which ultimately did not happen. “Then they asked me if I wanted to do music for The Idol, and when I met Sam, he asked me, ‘Well, do you want to be in the show, too?’ I guess he thought I was funny.”
Michael Tyrone Delaney
But moving forward, Dean says TV and film work isn’t a priority: “I’d work on some select projects but not too much. I’m looking more at being an artist and putting out my own music and touring than anything else right now.” And as usual, he’s dutifully at work behind the scenes on the year’s biggest records. In 2023, he has already lent his expertise to Scott’s Utopia, the Idol soundtrack and Metro Boomin’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse soundtrack. And because Dean is never entirely predictable, he also worked on Paranoia, Angels, True Love by Christine and the Queens.
“I don’t work much,” he insists. “I just smoke weed and f–king hang out and make music — it’s not work.” He swiftly turns his head to look back at the monitor, refocusing. “Sorry,” he says. “I actually need to get to editing this.”
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Last December, the Recording Academy convened a listening session of artists, label executives and stakeholders both in the United States and across Africa to discuss the rising influence of music coming from the continent. The meeting, which lasted several hours, was a key part of the process that led to the addition of a category that will be presented for the first time at the 66th Grammy Awards on Feb. 4: best African music performance.
“There’s a threshold that you like to see for a genre of music before it actually could make for a healthy category,” says academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr., who led the meeting alongside global music genre manager Shawn Thwaites. “When you talk about music coming from Africa, you’re seeing Afrobeats grow, you’re seeing amapiano and other genres coming out of the continent over the last three to five years. That started the discussions around, ‘Is it the right time?’ ”
The new category reflects the exploding commercial and cultural appeal of music by African artists in the United States. Its growth over the past few years has been almost linear: Davido’s 2017 single “Fall” was the first Nigerian song to be certified gold in the United States by the RIAA in 2020; Wizkid and Tems’ “Essence” became the first Afropop song to reach the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 in 2021; Burna Boy’s Love, Damini debuted at No. 14 on the Billboard 200 in 2022, becoming the highest-charting Afro-fusion album in chart history; and in May, Rema and Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down” became the first song to ever top both the U.S. Afrobeats Songs and Pop Airplay charts and peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100. (“Calm Down” was released too early to be eligible.)
“I don’t think currently there’s better or more advanced music being made anywhere outside the continent,” says Seni Saraki, CEO and editor in chief of The NATIVE Networks, the Lagos, Nigeria-based media and content company that launched a joint venture with Def Jam in September 2022. “From what we call Afrobeats — which is, really, just popular music from Nigeria — through amapiano, the rap music, Afropop, I genuinely think this is some of the most exciting music in the world right now. And the academy is becoming cognizant of that.”
The new category is also an attempt to address some of the controversy that has arisen around the global music album award, renamed from best world music album in 2020 due to “connotations of colonialism,” but still seen as little more than a catchall for non-Western music. As the music industry has itself become more global, the academy recognized that the time had come to offer a home for music from the African continent. But it also goes beyond the popularity of Afrobeats, which itself is more of an umbrella term: The academy listed some 30 different genres that could qualify for the category, including alté, fuji and high life.
“People know about Afrobeats and they’re learning about amapiano, but they don’t realize there are so many other genres on the continent that are underserved, and they can’t just be put in a bulk category called ‘world music,’ ” says Tina Davis, president of EMPIRE, which has invested heavily in African music and artists. “And much respect to the Recording Academy because they actually took the time to want to find out. [Mason] went to the continent to just learn more about it.”
The industry has also taken notice. In the past few years, an explosion of new signings, joint ventures and licensing deals for African artists and labels from U.S.-based companies and distributors has brought a new generation of stars like Rema, Asake and Ayra Starr to join the continent’s established hit-makers. “There was a time a few years ago when I was at RCA and it seemed like we were the only ones on it,” says Def Jam chairman/CEO Tunji Balogun, who signed Tems and worked closely with Wizkid and Davido while an A&R executive at RCA and has since signed Adekunle Gold and Stonebwoy to Def Jam. “Now every week, there’s another label signing someone. The budgets are open.”
“I think you see more labels paying attention to it, you see the marketplace paying more attention to it; there’s a spotlight on it,” RCA co-president John Fleckenstein says. “The Grammys are the big leagues of awards, one of those artistic validations that many artists dream about. It’s a bit of an awakening that we are more global than we’ve ever been.”
There is, however, a little reticence around the new category; in the past, artists from genres like hip-hop, R&B and some of the Latin sectors have looked at the genre categories as boxes that merely nod to their music while gatekeeping them from the more prestigious general-field categories like song, record or album of the year. Further, a category called best African music performance, while welcome, is itself incredibly broad, covering a continent with 54 countries and 1.4 billion people.
“It’s a really important moment for the Grammys,” says Temi Adeniji, managing director of Warner Music Africa and senior vp of strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa. “But then the next step is, how do you actually roll this thing out? Even regionally — East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa — it would be great to see a diversity of nominees, and that would reflect a real understanding from the Grammys of how large the continent is and how diverse the sounds are that are coming out.”
Talks of additional categories around African music, as well as a possible African Grammys, could be part of a future that Mason says this category is just the start of. “We want to serve music people, regardless of where they are,” he says. “I don’t know what that means yet, but we will continue to try and make sure that we are reaching as many music people regardless of their geography.”
The Potential Nominees?
Five songs that are in strong contention for a nod for the inaugural best African music performance Grammy.
Wizkid feat. Ayra Starr, “2 Sugar” (Starboy/RCA)
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Following the crossover success of his “Essence” (featuring Tems) was this breakout hit from the Nigerian superstar’s More Love, Less Ego album, featuring a powerful vocal from Starr, who is herself blossoming into a major force in African music.
Libianca, “People” (5K/RCA)
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With an arresting, emotional vocal performance, the 22-year-old Cameroonian American singer — who previously appeared on season 21 of The Voice — has captivated fans and the industry alike. “People” spawned remixes by artists such as Ayra Starr, Omah Lay and Becky G on the way to a long-running No. 2 peak on the U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart.
Davido feat. Musa Keys, “Unavailable” (Davido Music Worldwide/RCA)
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The lead single from one of the year’s best albums in any genre, “Unavailable” showcases Davido at his irresistible best, combining Magicsticks’ amapiano production with a slick verse from South Africa’s Musa Keys to craft one of 2023’s more enduring anthems.
Adekunle Gold feat. Zinoleesky, “Party No Dey Stop” (Def Jam)
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Insistent, urgent and eminently catchy, Gold’s debut Def Jam single blends the street melodies of fellow Nigerian Zinoleesky with his own knack for songwriting for a club banger with substance. It’s aspirational yet relatable, much like the album on which it appears.
Asake feat. Olamide, “Amapiano” (YBNL/EMPIRE)
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Asake’s meteoric rise over the past few years led to a headlining slot at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in September. This track, alongside label boss and Nigerian music legend Olamide, is among his best, celebrating his trademark amapiano vibe and orchestral backing vocals, yet elevating both artists.
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
As R&B superstar SZA has continued to ascend to the highest levels of popular music’s stratosphere over the past year — No. 1 hits, festival headlining slots, A-list collaborations, raves from critics and peers — her résumé still lacks a key item: major Grammy success. While SZA has been nominated for 15 Grammys — an impressive number, considering that as of the most recent ceremony, she still only had one full-length album to her name — she has just one win: in the best pop/duo group performance category, for her guest turn on Doja Cat’s crossover smash, “Kiss Me More.”
That seems likely to change at the 2024 Grammys, following the December 2022 release of her SOS, one of the most universally lauded albums of the past year. Not only did it draw near-unanimous praise, it also brought SZA to a new level of commercial dominance: SOS topped the Billboard 200 for 10 nonconsecutive weeks, with all 23 of its tracks hitting the Billboard Hot 100 — including breakout single “Kill Bill,” which became her first No. 1 on the chart. “There’s nobody close,” says artist development specialist and academy member Chris Anokute when gauging SZA’s 2024 Grammy credentials. “The girl has paid her dues. She has been releasing music for seven years. And she has made a multigenre, multiformatted album — the best multigenre, multiformatted record I’ve heard in years. And it deserves to be the album of the year.”
Indeed, the feeling among insiders that Billboard spoke with for this article is that SZA’s career has hit all the right beats for a Grammy artist since she signed with Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) a decade ago — and that it’s time for the Recording Academy to properly recognize her. “The Grammys are supposed to reward artists who show development and growth; artists who were once opening up and then get to arena level,” one music industry veteran says. “The Grammys really should want to be behind the trajectory of an artist like that.”
A source on SZA’s team confirms that the label will run a traditional campaign for her and points to increased visibility from the second leg of her North America tour (which includes two late-October stops in Los Angeles), as well as a deluxe reissue of SOS — recently confirmed by SZA herself as being titled Lana, featuring “seven to 10 [new] songs” and coming sometime this fall. The team has also sent out SOS boxes to “partners at press, radio” and digital service providers that include the album on vinyl and CD, as well as a compass, ring, metal straw and cleaning brush.
“Such packages have become very effective through the years because that’s what helps make projects stand out,” says a veteran marketing strategist of the box set promotional strategy. “It’s about what’s going to remind people that this record is a contender.”
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While the album (and its accompanying singles, “Kill Bill” and the more recent top 10 hit “Snooze”) likely will be in the running, it’s working against the tide of recent history. R&B has had some success in the past decade within the all-genre Big Four categories, but the genre’s most successful artists in the general field have tended to be those who embraced more of a classic, retro-vibing R&B mold: Bruno Mars and Silk Sonic, H.E.R., Jon Batiste. Artists like SZA — whose R&B is largely rooted in hip-hop sonics (and who came up as the lone R&B artist on the rap-focused TDE) — have, like rap itself, struggled to gain that kind of Grammy recognition.
Anokute doesn’t necessarily see that lack of recent precedent as an issue for SZA’s chances, instead calling back two decades to a pair of artists whose blend of classic and modern soul sounds made them pop insiders and Grammy darlings. “To me, you could compare this SZA moment to Lauryn Hill’s and Alicia Keys’ big Grammy moments [in 1999 and 2002, respectively],” he says. “She has crossed boundaries, she has crossed race with this album. At the end of the day, popular is popular, right? … You can’t call pop music [only] music that is on top 40 radio. Pop music is the most popular genre. And at the end of the day, Black music is the most popular music in the world.”
No matter how popular her music is currently, SZA will still have her work cut out for her contending at next year’s Grammys, likely against some of the other biggest artists in the world right now — including Olivia Rodrigo, Morgan Wallen and of, course, three-time album of the year winner Taylor Swift. However, Anokute points out that no one, not even the galactically popular Swift, can boast the cross-demographic appeal that SZA now has: “In terms of the most popular record between all genres of people, SZA beats Taylor Swift. I don’t know anybody listening to Taylor Swift outside of mostly, you know, white people… But I know a lot of white people, a lot of Black people, a lot of Spanish people that are listening to SZA and are huge fans. I’m not saying that Taylor only appeals to white people or Caucasian people, but the majority of her fan base is not Black or brown. SZA’s is, but she also crossed over.”
And whether the Grammys ultimately reward SZA’s latest, one music industry veteran says that it is in the Recording Academy’s best interest to look forward with R&B as much as backward. “We appreciate [the recognition for] the Bruno Marses and the H.E.R.s — they’re a safe balance,” the veteran says. “I think the academy knows that to be a part of the future, they have to embrace the future… Can we prove the Rolling Stone guy [Jann Wenner] wrong? That’s what we should focus on.”
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
“I don’t go on TikTok,” says PinkPantheress when asked whom she pegs as future TikTok stars. It’s surprising, to say the least. Few musicians have utilized the platform as expertly as she has over the past three years. What started out as a bet with a friend to prove she could crack its algorithm — “I told her I could make a viral video if I wanted to. And then I did,” she remembers — wound up launching what has turned out to be a fruitful career IRL.
“Once I figured out the algorithm, I was like, ‘Well, surely this would be able to blow up the music, too,’ ” she says. The 22-year-old English musician (who goes by various pseudonyms in lieu of her real name) is sitting in a midsize meeting room at the 1 Hotel in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood, where the décor — black leather, bare metal and treated wood everywhere — is working hard to make nature feel modern, but she looks effortlessly cool in baggy denim and a comfortable tank top. She’s polite and cordial, even though it’s clear she would rather be doing anything but an interview. “I was like, ‘Well, I might as well just try and see what happens. And even if I don’t get anyone listening to it, at least it’s out there and not just stuck on my laptop.’ ”
The songs that were hiding out on her laptop quickly found an audience. Her brand of drum’n’bass-meets-’90s pop/R&B tapped right into the heart of the zeitgeist, resonating with a generation of kids who don’t know life before the internet, smartphones and social networks but are downright tickled by the idea of a more analog lifestyle.
“When I posted my first song, people were commenting saying it was really good. And I saw people using the sound — like 200 uses in a day or something,” PinkPantheress says. “At that point I was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy.’ Imagine you have a song that you didn’t think anyone was going to listen to, to suddenly way more people than you expected listening to it.”
Lia Clay Miller
Uploaded three years ago on Christmas Day, the song was the Michael Jackson-sampling “Just a Waste,” and it showcased what has become her trademark style: throwing a disco ball drenched in despair into a blender to create something deceptively fun. But while PinkPantheress loves sampling, she’s weary of relying on its easy pleasures. “I always like to think that I’m adding something to [the sample], which is, like, relevant enough that suddenly it’s a new song. I just think too many songs these days are just an interpolation,” she says.
With hordes of new fans clamoring for more, PinkPantheress uploaded “Pain” in January 2021, a song that would have fit in perfectly with the Euro alt-pop invasion of the late 1990s. At only a minute and 39 seconds long, it’s really more of a ditty than a song — but manages to perfectly convey forlorn teenage love.
“Just a Waste” and “Pain” showcased a young, gifted songwriter, one who could succinctly capture and clearly telegraph universal feelings to make listeners feel as if she might be reading their DMs. Early on, unrequited love dominated her music. The feeling of “having someone that you’ve always wanted to see romantically but you’ve never managed to be able to and stuff like that,” she says. Now that she’s getting more famous, though, her music may soon have a more optimistic glint. “I guess the more I create music, the less I want to be stuck in that world.”
Born in Bath, England, to a Black Kenyan mother and a white British father, PinkPantheress was raised in Kent with her older brother. She took to music at an early age, learning to play piano and forming a rock band with a few friends while in grammar school. She spent most of her free time watching music videos and interviews on YouTube. By the time she got to college, she started making electronic music and experimenting with musical software to create her own productions.
To try out her songs, she wrote and produced for her friend MaZz. “I think, objectively, the songs were good songs,” PinkPantheress says. “She was kind of the [voice] and face for my writing.” But, like many talented songwriters, PinkPantheress soon “wanted more control over how I sounded.” She registered for SoundCloud under the name of her favorite Steve Martin movie and began uploading songs.
Lia Clay Miller
Nothing caught on — but when she took to TikTok in December 2020, seemingly overnight, she became an indie pop darling. “Pain” broke onto the U.K. Singles chart in August 2021 and peaked at No. 35. Later that year, she signed a deal with Parlophone and Elektra Records and released her first mixtape, To Hell With It. As booking offers came in for PinkPantheress — who had yet to perform live — her management at Upclose took things slowly, opting for smaller shows that allowed her to build an audience rather than going for festival stages.
“I remember my first few shows after my mixtape was out at the end of 2021 and [my management] were making me do rooms of like 100 people and 150 people,” she recalls. “The biggest room I did was probably 800. I remember thinking, ‘Why are these rooms so small?’ ”
“It has been superintentional,” says Jesse Gassongo-Alexander, PinkPantheress’ co-manager, when asked about helping her build a fan base after finding so much success online. “It was always a case of putting in the hard work and taking the slower route to build a foundation that is solid that’s going to allow her to stay here for a while.”
Her story resembles that of another young female artist who managed to parlay massive online success into real-world results: rapper Ice Spice. On paper, PinkPantheress and Ice Spice may seem like photo negatives of each other — one’s a brash rapper from the Bronx who has no problem putting herself in the spotlight; the other’s an introverted singer who prefers the solitary pursuit of songwriting to industry glad-handing — but to PinkPantheress, they’re more alike than different. So much so that she offered Ice a spot on the remix to her hit song, “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2,” earlier this year.
“I feel like I don’t have that many peers that exist in a similar space to me,” she says. “I’m not talking about levels. I’m talking about internet space. I think a lot of people see me as being this, like, internet cutesy teen-pop girl. I feel like she was one of the newcomers whom I got drawn to because, even though she does drill and rap, it still feels like she’s in the same cutesy world to me. And she’s Black too, and that was a big important part of it to me. I prefer to collaborate with other Black artists.”
Lia Clay Miller
The song became an instant hit, her biggest so far, debuting at No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 after going viral on TikTok. For many in the United States, “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” was the first time they had heard PinkPantheress. It got her her first BET Award nominations (best collaboration, BET Her Award), landed her an MTV Video Music Awards nod (best new artist) and ultimately peaked at No. 3.
Many believe she’s a lock for her first Grammy nomination thanks to the song — if she had to guess, probably for best pop duo/group performance. She’s taken aback and amused when told about the drama that has surrounded the Grammy Awards’ classification of certain albums by Black artists — even more so when she learns how disappointed Justin Bieber was when his album Changes got the nod for best pop vocal album instead of best R&B album.
But even without a Grammy nomination, she can count this year as an unequivocal success. In addition to her biggest single yet, she appeared on Barbie: The Album — as good an “I’ve arrived” moment as any. But still, even as her career explodes, it’s surprising to hear that TikTok has taken a back seat.
“I didn’t leave it behind. I still post on it,” she says reassuringly. “I love using it to post my own videos, but I do not watch videos on there. Because like a year ago, I would scroll and I’d see too many TikToks about me. I was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ ”
Makes sense. Her management team trusts her to make the best decisions for herself. “I think she has shown how globally intelligent she is by being one of the earlier trendsetters,” Gassongo-Alexander says. “Coming from TikTok and appealing to a wider audience and then knowing how to retain that wider audience.”
How does PinkPantheress plan to keep growing that audience? By keeping on keeping on, it seems. She’s uninterested in sacrificing her core audience at the altar of pop stardom. Thankfully, her music is naturally easy on pop fan ears. “What I’ve realized is that my natural way of writing is more pop-friendly than anything,” she says. “So even though the beats can be kind of alternative, I still write in a very standard structure. And I make sure all the lyrics are tangible. And because of that, I think that it has made the [music] that I’m doing very accessible to mainstream audiences. But my biggest fear is having people hear me do a [song] and recognize that I’m doing it for the wrong reasons.”
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
The first time Gracie Abrams met Aaron Dessner, at his famed Long Pond studio near Hudson, N.Y., the pair wrote over 10 songs. “We hit it off,” recalls Dessner, 47, of their first session in spring 2021. That’s a bit of an understatement, considering what followed: Dessner went on to produce and co-write Abrams’ acclaimed debut album, Good Riddance, released in February and brimming with honest reflections sung in her delicate voice that float over intriguing chord progressions and indie-rock riffs. In June, following the album’s vinyl release, Abrams topped Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart.
In early September, following appearances by both on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour (Abrams as an opener, Dessner as a guest), the duo played three sold-out, intimate acoustic shows in New York, Nashville and Los Angeles, where they performed songs of Abrams’ both old and new. The gigs bookended a recording pit stop at Long Pond. “We made a lot of music, and it feels really different than what we’ve done before… like the best stuff we’ve made,” Dessner reveals.
Abrams, 24, is one of the newest artists to become a Long Pond regular, joining an eye-popping group of talent that includes Swift, Ed Sheeran and, of course, Dessner’s band, The National — all of whom have been incredibly active in recent years, continuing Dessner’s streak as one of the most in-demand, and busiest, collaborators in music today. As such, and with Abrams a likely best new artist contender, could Dessner finally score a long-awaited nod for producer of the year, non-classical?
“I don’t know another person that could do what Aaron does,” Abrams says. “There’s a kind of sensitivity that doesn’t necessarily exist in most artist-to-producer relationships that I am aware of.”
What was it about Long Pond that felt immediately inspiring or comfortable?
Gracie Abrams: Everything. I felt really open as a result of the space feeling open, and it’s entirely a testament to Aaron’s entire personality. The place feels very inviting [for] sharing all your secrets and deepest, most private feelings without any hesitation.
When Gracie’s debut arrived, Aaron wrote on Instagram that it almost feels like you two are siblings. What’s the best example of that?
Abrams: I mean, maybe brutal truth all the time. I tell Aaron everything as soon as it happens to me, so I burden him with my life story in a way that I feel like only people who you’re related to by blood should have to take on.
Aaron Dessner: And I get to live vicariously through Gracie, which is really nice. (Laughs.) When you write songs and make music with someone — and when you make so much music as we have — it’s an intimate, vulnerable experience, so you get to know each other really well. And it’s also the thing that makes music most meaningful, I think, the friendships that you collect along the way. Because when I look back — I’m quite a bit older than Gracie, although we don’t feel so far apart — there are these friendships that I still have from different points along the way, and those are the mile markers. Because [as a musician] you don’t have a very normal life and you’re traveling all the time and kind of running on fumes and it’s so amazing but it’s also hazardous, being unstructured and not having your support system or your family close by a lot of the time. The only way I know how to do this is to grow close to people and learn from them. I always feel like I’m learning as much as anyone might learn from me.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned from each other?
Abrams: My identity now has been massively shaped by what I’ve learned in this relationship with Aaron the past couple years, not just musically — which it has entirely helped guide me in terms of self-trust — but just how to be a very decent person. Especially in the context of the music industry. I grew up in L.A. and started recording here first and it felt very different than when I went to Long Pond for the first time, and it really broadened my imagination for the kind of life that I could have if I’m lucky enough to do the thing that I love, versus what I assumed to be the blueprint that always secretly made me feel a little depressed.
Dessner: To be honest, I’ve never written songs in the room with anyone [before]. I would always make music alone or with my brother [Bryce]. Most of the time, I write the music first and then someone writes to it. That has been how The National worked and how I worked with [Swift] and other people. And Gracie came and we wrote together in the room, and it’s a scary thing because you don’t have the chance to be figuring out your brilliant idea. And I found I was even more comfortable doing it like that, where I would basically sketch [an idea] and Gracie could guide me or bounce off it in real time and write words and melodies. And then over time we got really good at it, and that’s what I ended up doing a lot with Ed Sheeran. I don’t know that I would have been able to do it had I not had that confidence from this.
Gracie Abrams photographed on September 1, 2023 at Long Pond Studio near Hudson, NY.
Wesley Mann
Aaron Dessner photographed on September 1, 2023 at Long Pond Studio near Hudson, NY.
Wesley Mann
Aaron, why do you think Gracie could be in the running for best new artist?
Dessner: Gracie is making incredibly compelling, emotionally direct songs that really resonate with her fan base. [She has] become an artist that’s clearly impacting a lot of people. And I think the record is one of the best of the year, and she’s one of the artists that should be in that discussion. I also think with all of this stuff, it’s subjective. It’s a total honor to be in any conversation about the Grammys and to win a Grammy, and of course it sounds like I have to say that, but a lot of my favorite artists have never been in that conversation. So I kind of take it with a grain of salt. I have a lot of respect for it, but at the same time if you don’t get nominated… it doesn’t diminish what you’re doing.
And Gracie, why should Aaron get a producer of the year nod?
Abrams: I don’t know another person that could do what Aaron does could make album of the year after album of the year. I can identify instantly whether or not Aaron has touched a song because you can feel it, and I can’t compare that to anything. It’s not something that I’ve found anywhere else. And I think also it’s so evident, like the songs that people fall in love with on all the albums that Aaron has made are the ones that really work. The ones that the die-hard fans want to hear and scream at the top of their lungs.
How do these sets you’ve been performing together compare to the stadium shows you both played as part of Swift’s Eras Tour?
Dessner: As much as I am close friends with and know Taylor well, you can’t believe that she pulls it off. It’s like, the best thing that has ever happened to live music in a way. And seeing Gracie play those shows [as an opening act] and seeing people in the stadium singing the songs, it’s a crazy moment in her career. It reminded me of, in a way, in 2007-8, R.E.M., on their final tour, invited The National to open for them, and that was this real moment for us because one of our favorite bands, a giant American rock band, was saying, “Come, we love you.” This is on a much bigger scale than that was, but it feels related, it feels like that really fueled us, and I can feel that in Gracie now, like there’s this confidence, and it’s exciting.
Abrams: There’s something about the scale of what Taylor has done that is unlike anything I’ve ever felt or known in my entire life, and I agree that it is the best thing that has ever happened to live music. Just to be in a place where that many people are equally moved and emotional and down to express it as loudly as possible, it’s really unbelievable. That feeling, though — being in a stadium, at least a Taylor Swift stadium, and these intimate rooms — is very connected, which sounds wild maybe. One of the many millions of things I learned this summer is, she does actually make it feel like you’re on another planet and like it’s just you and her in the room. And I’ve been lucky enough to see the show so many times and I’ve watched it from every possible place in the stadium, and that’s true every time.
From left: Gracie Abrams and Aaron Dessner photographed by Wesley Mann on September 1, 2023 at Long Pond Studio near Hudson, NY.
Wesley Mann
From left: Aaron Dessner and Gracie Abrams photographed by Wesley Mann on September 1, 2023 at Long Pond Studio near Hudson, NY.
Aaron, have you and Taylor’s longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff ever joked that you two could be competing for producer of the year for the foreseeable future?
Dessner: He has produced so many records and been in that really intensely for a long time, whereas I’ve been really doing all my esoteric art music with my brother and making music with The National and touring a lot. But I feel like there’s a lot of camaraderie between Jack and I, having worked on a lot of the same records now, and I think anyone that gets nominated is lucky. Some people have more notoriety for whatever reason, and I think part of the thing is like, how much do people know what you do? So, the answer is, I think we’ll think it’s funny.
For an artist or producer who wants to build what you two have, what advice would you give?
Abrams: I hope I’ve gotten less annoying about it, but [Aaron] very much encouraged following your gut, which is maybe cliché advice or feels empty, but I think I was so lucky to have had the person saying that to my face be someone whose work I have admired forever and someone who I trust. But having not heard that or believed it, a lot of the music wouldn’t exist, or I would be in a very different place in general right now.
Dessner: There are a lot of producers who franchise themselves and collect as many artists as they can, and you can see that, and I feel like the work becomes diminished or something. You also have to live and experience things. I like the way community slowly grows… I feel like people find each other for a reason.
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
In February, during a writing camp in Palm Springs, Calif., singer-songwriter Teddy Swims had a professional breakthrough — amid a period of personal turmoil, following a breakup. “I was so unhinged at the time,” he remembers. “I just needed to say a lot of stuff.” Over the course of five days, he poured his emotions into half of the songs that would ultimately comprise his debut album, including his biggest hit to date, “Lose Control.”
Rooted in piano-driven production — and an impressive ability to stretch his vocal runs — the R&B-pop ballad details a relationship that’s been tainted by substance abuse. “Lose Control” has steadily grown since its release in late June, leading to Teddy Swims’ first entry on the Billboard Hot 100. “When it was finished, I was showing everybody before the song came out,” he says. “I just felt that energy, like, ‘This is lighting in a bottle.’ I knew this was going to change my life.”
Born Jaten Dimsdale, the 31-year-old began performing a decade ago at his suburban Atlanta high school, trading football for musical theater (he joined with a friend, who still plays guitar in his live band today). His senior year was particularly pivotal: he helped the theater department out of debt prior to graduation with an in-school production of a Star Wars musical parody he created with his teacher. That same year, his band at the time, Heroic Bear, released its first EP, a hardcore project he now deems “really bad.”
In the years that followed, he explored countless genres including country, alternative, funk and metal in various musical projects. “He was in, I kid you not, like eight bands,” says Luke Conway, who started managing Teddy Swims while he was touring as an opening hip-hop act in early 2019. “He was doing every single thing that you could possibly do.”
From left: Teddy Swims and manager Luke Conway photographed on September 15, 2023 in New York.
Meredith Jenks
In June 2019, on the 10th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death, Teddy Swims uploaded a YouTube cover of “Rock With You” that soon went viral. The success prompted him to ask his friends for a six-month commitment to help him keep momentum. During that time frame, he sang classics (Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me”) and hits of the moment (Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved”) alike, with his spins on Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One” and Mario’s “Let Me Love You” each eclipsing 100 million YouTube views. Publishers called first, then booking agencies, and before long, a dozen record labels had made offers. On Christmas Eve 2019 — a day short of six months from when he uploaded “Rock With You” — he signed to Warner Records.
While the covers helped grow Teddy Swims’ audience on a global scale, his priority upon signing was to create an identity all his own. “Some people get stuck in that world and never really make it out,” he says. “There was a lot of fear in no one caring about my [original] songs. I wanted to be an artist with my music.”
Warner placed him in rooms with veteran songwriter-producers like Julian Bunetta and John Ryan to help him hone his voice, and over the next few years, he wrote hundreds of songs, releasing singles across four EPs (including the holiday-themed A Very Teddy Christmas) and getting featured on tracks by Meghan Trainor, X Ambassadors and others. “I go back and listen to some songs that I did four years ago,” Teddy Swims reflects. “They started this idea of the signature Teddy sound that I feel like I’m finally nailing now.”
Teddy Swims photographed on September 15, 2023 in New York.
Meredith Jenks
That “signature” sound punctuates his September debut album, I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 1), which is full of “sad boy breakup songs,” as he puts it. His powerhouse vocals (“Some Things I’ll Never Know,” “The Door”) and poignant writing chops (“Suitcase”) are on display throughout its 10 tracks, but no song better illustrates the style he’s created than “Lose Control.” After its June release, he shared three new versions — live, strings and piano — as the song gained steam on digital service providers and radio. By the end of August, “Lose Control” debuted on the Hot 100, where it has since reached a No. 67 peak. On Adult Pop Airplay, it climbs to a new No. 26 high on the Oct. 7-dated chart.
As the hit keeps growing, Conway says the strategy isn’t to strike while the iron is hot with unrelated follow-up content. In fact, it’s the opposite: he hopes the song becomes “cemented in culture” in the months to come, likening “Lose Control” to Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.”
“We have to be protective,” he says. “It’s his story. This is the golden egg we’ve been searching for and fighting to dig out of the ground for five years. There have been a lot of conversations about finding a feature, but we see the lifespan of this song. We can’t dilute it by giving it anybody else’s identity.”
Teddy Swims is currently on a 43-date North American tour in support of the project, studying how each city reacts to the new material. “There’s no A&R that [compares to] when you’re at a show and you see what really moves people,” he says. As the title of his album suggests, there are plans for another installment. He says it could arrive by the middle of next year, though both he and Conway share that the writing likely won’t begin until after the tour wraps.
However, Teddy Swims does suggest that, if all goes well, the follow-up will contain brighter content. “I’m really hoping the next time is me falling back in love and moving on,” he says, taking a beat and then laughing. “Or it’s more sad s–t. You never know. Life is happening to us, what are you going to do?”
Teddy Swims photographed on September 15, 2023 in New York.
Meredith Jenks
A version of this story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
“We all must make a choice — to be a hero or a villain.”
The familiarity of Morgan Freeman’s commanding voice couldn’t calm down the fans — 80,000 of them, reportedly — standing around Coachella’s Sahara Tent. The perilous tone of his monologue, paired with producer Mike Dean’s sinister synths, stressed the festival’s need for a hero. And comic book animations projected on either side of the stage illustrated there was only one man for the job.
Wearing a custom black Chrome Hearts suit, a masked Metro Boomin emerged from beneath the stage, his purple cross-embroidered cape fluttering in the desert wind. But regardless of the Academy Award-winning actor’s resounding introduction, it was the usually soft-spoken producer’s booming voice that caught festivalgoers — and one of his many guest performers — by surprise when he greeted the crowd.
“When we was done, Future kept telling me, ‘Bro, I ain’t know who the f–k was talking!’ ” Metro recalls. “ ‘I ain’t know you could do that! You be in a room and just be so quiet.’ ”
Future’s description of our hero’s usual alter-ego is true today as Metro sits at his own Boominati Studios in North Hollywood. He isn’t cloaked in his luxe costume; instead, he’s wearing a black Barriers hoodie with the image of Michael Jackson’s moonwalking silhouette highlighted by a baby blue spotlight. One of the studio’s ceiling lights floods him in the same blue as the bandanna wrapped around his tri-colored dreads.
He has gotten more comfortable in the spotlight lately. Over the last decade, Metro, 30, has transformed from a behind-the-scenes trap beat-maker to one of rap’s most in-demand producers. He has managed to take over pop music, too, and without compromising his signature sound, which is characterized by eerie synth loops, 808s, soulful samples and orchestral finishes and branded by his notorious producer tags. (“Metro Boomin want some more, n—a!”) So far, he has produced 115 Billboard Hot 100 songs, including 10 top 10 hits, among them Post Malone’s Quavo-featuring “Congratulations” and Future’s “Mask Off,” and two No. 1s, Migos’ “Bad and Boujee” (featuring Lil Uzi Vert) and The Weeknd’s “Heartless.”
But Metro’s latest solo album, Heroes & Villains — which he released Dec. 2, 2022, on Republic Records and his own label, Boominati Worldwide — continued his ascent into rarefied air: the producer-turned-successful artist. The sequel to his 2018 debut album, Not All Heroes Wear Capes, which topped the Billboard 200, and the second installment of an ongoing trilogy, Heroes & Villains built on Metro’s own cinematic universe, adding depth to his sound with more live instrumentation, like the horns on “Superhero (Heroes & Villains)” or the choral vocals on “Umbrella,” and assembling hip-hop Avengers like 21 Savage, Young Thug, Travis Scott and Don Toliver to perform their melodic and slick-tongued superpowers.
Heroes & Villains became Metro’s third No. 1 album, earning his biggest opening week yet, with 185,000 equivalent album units (according to Luminate), and its lead single, “Creepin’,” with The Weeknd and 21 Savage — a remake of Mario Winans’ 2004 R&B smash “I Don’t Wanna Know” (featuring Diddy and Enya) — spent the first half of 2023 in the Hot 100’s top 10, peaking at No. 3. Between Heroes & Villains’ No. 1 debut and Lil Uzi Vert’s Pink Tape, which topped the Billboard 200 in July, no other rap album reached No. 1 on the list, making it the longest wait in a calendar year for a rap album to lead the chart since 1993 (the year Metro was born).
Amiri sweater and jacket.
Sami Drasin
The album’s success was unsurprising to those paying attention to Metro’s creative promotion strategy for Heroes & Villains. He tapped Freeman, who narrated Metro and 21’s chart-topping album, Savage Mode II, to star alongside him in an action-packed short film directed by Gibson Hazard that also featured actor LaKeith Stanfield, Young Thug and Gunna. The clip kicked off his extensive rollout, which also involved an on-the-nose way to reveal the album’s featured artists.
A$AP Rocky had texted him one day about “this artist on Instagram that was doing all these comic book covers for hip-hop artists. And I was like, ‘Damn, this sh-t looks crazy,’ ” he recalls. “I DM’d [the artist, Alejandro Torrecilla], and I was like, ‘Yo, I’m finna start rolling my album out in three, four weeks. What if you did a cover for every artist on here and I just roll out the features that way?’ ”
The promotional efforts didn’t stop once the album was out: Metro embarked on a four-city in-store CD signing tour, debuted a live beat-making hologram of himself in Los Angeles and Miami, and projected his Heroes signal (from the cover of Not All Heroes Wear Capes) around the world (literally). “He was more in people’s face,” says Republic vp of marketing strategy Xiarra-Diamond Nimrod, who has worked with Metro since 2017. “[With Not All Heroes Wear Capes], we didn’t have as many in-store components. But this time around, we wanted him to have that interaction with [fans] and bring them into his world.”
The heightened visibility around Metro allowed the superproducer to transform into a superstar, separate from the ones with whom he regularly records. And more public-facing opportunities outside of music helped turn him into a household name: Earlier this year, he starred in and produced the music for Budweiser’s Super Bowl LVII ad and teamed up with the MLB Network for its Opening Day video, which was soundtracked by “On Time” and “Trance” from Heroes & Villains.
“That’s one of the things we discussed when we first met: Do you want to be that low-key producer who you know some of their songs but you can walk right past them today and not know who they were? Or do you want to be out and known, like Swizz Beatz, Timbaland or Pharrell [Williams]?” says his manager, Ryan Ramsey. “The numbers he’s doing on his own albums show he’s at that level where people are going to see him and say, ‘Hey, that’s Metro Boomin.’ ” Ramsey, who also manages Brandy, has represented Metro for the last two years under SALXCO, alongside the management company’s founder and CEO, Wassim “Sal” Slaiby; SALXCO vp of A&R Rahsaan “Shake” Phelps; and Amir “Cash” Esmailian through his own YCFU management company.
And while his No. 1 rap album set a high bar, getting a prime-time slot at Coachella served as the perfect climax for his rollout. “We had every intention of stealing the weekend,” Metro confidently says in retrospect.
Junya Watanabe jacket, Fendi pants, Louis Vuitton shoes.
Sami Drasin
In order to pull it off, he recruited a superstar-trained team: creative director La Mar C. Taylor, who works closely with The Weeknd; show director Ian Valentine, whose creative studio Human Person (which counts Billie Eilish and Post Malone as clients) was also responsible for animation, staging, lighting and content; choreographer Charm La’Donna, who works alongside major acts from Kendrick Lamar to Dua Lipa; and his longtime recording and mixing engineer Ethan Stevens, who helped him curate the setlist. He even passed on using Coachella’s designated livestreaming crew and hired his own to ensure the quality of the video and flow of the performance for folks at home.
“There was so many people advising me, ‘Don’t spend your money on that show.’ But I was like, ‘Nah, n—s have to get this,’ ” says Metro, who remains mum about how much Coachella paid him to perform but reveals he spent “over four times” that amount to ensure it happened just as he envisioned. “People were already hearing me different with this album. But they needed to see me different now.”
While his albums have established Metro as a masterful curator, “Trochella” confirmed he was an equally skillful showman. And much like his albums, he brought out his all-star collaborators, including The Weeknd, 21 Savage and Diddy for the first live performance of “Creepin’,’’ to perform the hits they share. While he mostly flexed his superproducer muscles from behind the DJ booth, he made sure to bask in his glory from the stage, too.
As Metro’s biggest risks — like dropping an album during the holiday season or investing a small fortune in an impressive Coachella set — have continued to pay off, he credits his unwavering dedication to the art. “Over time, [I’ve] established trust between me and my listeners, [so they know] that whatever I have to offer as far as music or anything, I’m definitely putting 1,000% into it,” he says. “It’s not about, ‘Oh, look at me like a star!’ Look at me like I care.”
Growing up in St. Louis, the producer born Leland Tyler Wayne looked up to hometown hero Nelly. Country Grammar was the first explicit CD he bought, and it inspired then-literally young Metro to become a rapper. But rapping requires beats, and since he couldn’t afford any, he decided to make his own. Producing turned into a bigger passion and came with added benefits, like not having to compete with so many other aspiring rappers — and sounding like a more legitimate profession to his mother, Leslie Wayne.
Leslie played an instrumental role in getting his career off the ground: When Metro was 13, she bought him his first laptop, where he downloaded the popular music production software FL Studio. And when he was in high school, she made 17-hour round-trip drives from St. Louis to Atlanta nearly every weekend so he could work with artists he connected with over social media, like OJ Da Juiceman and Gucci Mane — while still returning home before school on Monday morning. (Leslie died in June 2022, and Metro pays tribute to her often on social media and during live performances.)
He moved to Atlanta in 2012 to attend Morehouse College but dropped out after one semester to pursue music: In 2013, he got his big break when he produced Future’s acclaimed “Karate Chop” (featuring Lil Wayne). And Metro seemed to take over hip-hop in 2015: He joined the Rodeo Tour with Travis Scott and Young Thug as a supporting act and the latter’s touring DJ; produced most of Future’s DS2 album; worked on Scott’s debut album, Rodeo; and executive-produced Drake and Future’s joint mixtape, What a Time To Be Alive.
But he experienced a career-defining moment in February 2016 when Kanye West dropped The Life of Pablo. Right before premiering it during his Yeezy 3 fashion show at New York’s Madison Square Garden, West called Metro about one of the songs he had produced, “Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1.” “I didn’t put that tag on that beat. It’s Kanye’s sh-t,” Metro explains. “He asked for it like, ‘I’m finna play the album, but I need the tag on the song.’ And he just threw it in there real quick.” In a now viral clip, West is seen screaming and embracing a raccoon fur trapper hat-wearing Kid Cudi before “If Young Metro don’t trust you, I’m gon’ shoot you” blasts throughout the arena’s speakers. Metro’s tag catapulted him into the pop culture zeitgeist, from the numerous memes that flooded the internet immediately after to the hype it still creates whenever a DJ plays the song at a party. “That just took it to a whole ’nother stratosphere,” he reflects.
Amiri sweater, jacket, and pants.
Sami Drasin
From there, Metro continued building relationships with other rappers and elevating their music while reinforcing his reputation as the genre’s go-to producer. “A lot of times an artist will say, ‘I want to work with you, but send me beats.’ With Metro, it’s the opposite. He wants to create with you at a very intentional level,” says Vladimir “V Live” Samedi, who began working as Metro’s tour bus driver in 2016 before he was promoted to Boominati’s head of A&R. Metro dropped collaborative projects with Big Sean, Nav and 21 Savage, the lattermost of whom Metro has worked with on three full-lengths: Savage Mode, Without Warning (with Offset) and Savage Mode II. “Metro is the greatest producer of all time. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the help of my brother,” 21 Savage tells Billboard.
With prestige, a star-studded network and a stacked production discography, Metro had all the tools he needed to fly high on his own. He launched his Boominati Worldwide label in partnership with Republic in 2017 and, the following year, released his first solo album, Not All Heroes Wear Capes, a cohesive, superstar-filled set that plays out like a movie soundtrack. His hero motif stems from a family tradition: He, his mother and his four younger siblings used to “always go see every single Marvel movie together. We done followed the whole timeline on some nerd sh-t,” he reflects. “It has always been an interest to me.”
Sony Pictures Animation, which produced 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in association with Marvel, took notice. The studio worked with Republic on the first Spider-Verse soundtrack (which yielded Post Malone and Swae Lee’s mega-smash, “Sunflower”). When the time came to work on its follow-up, Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group president of music Spring Aspers says it “was just pure luck in terms of timing” that the label had just finished working on Metro’s Heroes & Villains campaign and decided he was its “ideal partner.”
“It started off with him doing a couple songs, and then it just got to the point where I went to him and was like, ‘Yo, do you want to executive-produce this whole thing? Because it looks like I’m going to have that conversation,’ ” Ramsey recalls. “He said, ‘Man, that would be dope!’ ”
Martine Rose suit.
Sami Drasin
Metro started working on the Spider-Verse soundtrack at the end of December — the same month he released Heroes & Villains. “We’re already on a roll; might as well keep it going,” says Stevens, who also served as executive producer. Compared with the two-and-a-half years they spent working on Metro’s solo album, the duo knocked out the Spider-Verse soundtrack in six months. Metro Boomin Presents Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse taps a diverse web of artists — Don Toliver, Nas, Lil Wayne, James Blake, Myke Towers, Mora and more — to deliver an ingenious mix of hip-hop, pop, Latin and Afrobeats that nods to the film’s protagonist Miles Morales’ African American and Puerto Rican heritage.
“He once texted us a line that a string quartet had played,” says Phil Lord, one of the film’s co-writers and co-producers, of what became the opening sequence of “Am I Dreaming” with A$AP Rocky and Roisee, an up-and-coming St. Louis artist whom Metro discovered on YouTube years ago. “Then he had [Mike Dean] come over and do this really wild synth stuff. That became the song that’s on the end credits of the movie. And now that’s going to be the official Oscar submission for the film.”
When the time came to promote the soundtrack, Lord and Chris Miller, another one of the film’s co-writers and co-producers, took a page out of Metro’s playbook. “In the first movie, there was this phenomenon where people were making their own ‘Spidersonas,’ ” Miller says. When they saw what he did with Heroes & Villains, they tapped the film’s character designer, Kris Anka, to create Spidersonas for each of the featured artists on his soundtrack.
But they had a special plan for Metro’s own caricature. The day before Metro attended one of the Spider-Verse film screenings, Lord and Miller asked him to swing by the studio an hour early to test out some lines they had written for him. “The Republic team, our team, the music executives from Sony and the editors were crammed into another booth,” Lord recalls. When everyone cracked up after he recited, “My bad, everybody! There was somewhere to run,” Miller says they knew “that was the winner.”
Now his Spidersona — and his voice — actually appear in the film as Metro Spider-Man, but Nimrod wanted to ensure that fans would see him off the silver screen, too. “We made these cool cutouts of his character and were hanging them from light poles, and there were decals on the sidewalks and walls,” she says. “People were fully stealing these cutouts and tagging me on social like, ‘I got my Metro Spider-Man hanging in my room!’ That’s when I was like, ‘OK, now this is fire.’ ”
Amiri sweater, jacket, pants, and shoes.
Sami Drasin
Metro Boomin Presents Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse reached No. 1 on both the Soundtracks and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts — matching, and outperforming, respectively, the performance of the first Spider-Verse soundtrack, which also received a Grammy nomination for best compilation soundtrack for visual media. Ramsey hopes Metro’s Spider-Verse contribution can score the same distinction, and given the success of Heroes & Villains and “Creepin,’ ” next year could well be Metro’s long-awaited Grammy breakthrough. Incredibly, he has been nominated only once, and not for a project one would have expected him to have worked on: He co-produced Coldplay’s “Let Somebody Go” with Selena Gomez, from the band’s Music of the Spheres, an album of the year nominee. “[Frontman Chris Martin is] a good friend of mine. Sometimes we work on ideas; sometimes we just go walk outside,” Metro explains casually.
But with so much music to make, industry accolades are far from his mind. He’s currently wrapping up his long-awaited joint album with Future and still working on his project with J.I.D that the two teased earlier this year. Metro is also working on A$AP Rocky’s highly anticipated album, Don’t Be Dumb, and is one of a few trusted producers working on The Weeknd’s final album.
Nonetheless, there are a few other artists he dreams of collaborating with in the future. “I still really want to do something with Justin Timberlake,” he says. “I need to work with Miguel. I still haven’t worked with Jay-Z.”
But while Metro will always make time for the music, he plans to spend the next decade focused more on his businesses. Since he launched Boominati, “a lot of the business was focused on Metro and our producers that we work with: Chris XZ, Doughboy and David x Eli,” Samedi says. Now Metro is transferring his artist discovery and development skills to the executive side so he can start signing artists. And, he teases, he has already started his own production company that will allow him “to do stuff for screen.”
“The amount of grind and effort I put in my 20s into the music, I’mma put into the business aspect through these 30s,” he says. “I watched my music seeds grow from 20 to 30. I can watch the rest of these grow from 30 to 40.”
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
The best part of producing Mick Jagger’s vocals, according to Andrew Watt, is when he begins taking off his clothes.
“He starts in like, a sweater, a button-down and a T-shirt,” the producer-songwriter recalls of a studio session with the Rolling Stones legend, “and then, two takes in, the sweater comes off. Two takes later, the button-down comes off. All of a sudden, he’s down to a T-shirt, and he’s ripped, and he’s 80, and he’s f–king giving you full-blown Mick Jagger, shaking and sweating as he sings every note.”
Such fantastical rock-star run-ins have become relatively commonplace for Watt — but the 32-year-old and 2021 producer of the year Grammy winner, who wore a different Rolling Stones T-shirt every day to the studio while producing the band’s forthcoming album, Hackney Diamonds, still recounts the experience with giddy breathlessness. “You can’t not be jumping up and down with excitement,” he says of watching Jagger work his magic, “because that’s what we’ve all been trained to do for the last 60 years.”
Over the past half-decade, Watt has transitioned from scoring hits for pop stars like Justin Bieber, Camila Cabello and 5 Seconds of Summer to guiding late-career projects from rock’s legacy elites, including Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John and Iggy Pop. While the New York native still collaborates with modern A-listers — Watt worked on the majority of Austin, the recent full-length from frequent collaborator Post Malone — his career has become an inverse of the “How do you do, fellow kids?” meme, with the 1990s baby blending in with legends in their 70s and 80s. “It’s like going to college,” he says, “and learning from the literal masters.”
Helming Hackney Diamonds, due Oct. 20 on Geffen Records, represented a true bucket-list item for Watt, who was introduced to Jagger by veteran producer Don Was in the middle of the pandemic and struck up a friendship over FaceTime. In the summer of 2022, Watt was in London working with Dua Lipa, and Jagger invited him over for some tea; after years of false starts and scrapped demos for the Stones’ first album of original material since 2005’s A Bigger Bang, Jagger asked Watt if he would be interested in helping them cross the finish line. Watt’s jaw dropped: “You have this moment where you’re like, ‘Am I even capable of that?’ ” he says. “It’s the greatest honor as a kid with a guitar who grew up idolizing every single thing Keith Richards ever did.”
Courtesy of Polydor
That level of lifelong fandom, combined with an urgency to secure results, is what Watt believes makes him so effective at sharing the studio with icons more than twice his age. He understands that “these legends don’t owe anyone anything,” as he puts it, “so the only reason they’re making a new album is for themselves.” With that in mind, Watt encourages artists to pursue ideas indiscriminately — less conversation, more raw creation — and then it’s his job to approach projects from the viewpoint of what fans most want to hear.
When it came to the Stones, “Any fan wants to hear the greatest live rock’n’roll band of all time,” Watt explains, “so to do anything else with them in the studio is just letting everyone down.” When preproduction for Hackney Diamonds began in September 2022, Watt pushed the band to work efficiently and made sure to prioritize its live energy, particularly within the interplay between Richards and Ronnie Wood.
Session locations ranged from Los Angeles to Paris; Steve Jordan took over the drum kit from Charlie Watts, who died in 2021 but is posthumously featured on two tracks carried over from earlier sessions; and Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder were among the guest stars to swing by. The result is a lean, 11-song Stones album that Watt says was mostly finished in under six months, and that “you could put on against other contemporary music, but is still loose and really gets grooving at certain points.”
Although Watt likens the experience of producing a Stones album to climbing a personal Mount Everest, he also says that he has plenty left to accomplish in his career. Aside from contributing to Lipa’s highly anticipated third album, Watt recently co-produced “Seven,” Jung Kook’s Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper featuring Latto. “That was the first time I worked with an artist who didn’t speak the same language as me, so we communicated through music,” he says of the BTS star. “It was the complete opposite of my work with The Rolling Stones, but that’s what keeps it interesting.”
Watt says that his work with various music legends has already started to inform his new stars. “Watching Paul McCartney arrange background vocals and harmonize with himself?” he says. “I’m taking that s–t with me to every production I do for the rest of my life.”
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Myke Towers’ latest hit was born “in one of those magical moments that when I hear a rhythm I like, I can’t switch it off until I get something out of it,” recalls the Puerto Rican artist. Since chasing down that rhythm, Towers’ “LALA” has become an unlikely hit, with its arresting reggaetón thump and […]