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Clams Casino doesn’t believe in the age-old adage of having to finish what you start — at least in a single recording session. Born Michael Volpe (no relation to the New York Yankees shortstop and fellow New Jersey native Anthony Volpe), he rose to prominence serving as the sonic architect behind a majority of A$AP Rocky’s seminal 2011 Live. Love. A$AP mixtape, which ushered in a new era of NYC rap and kicked off the A$AP Mob frontman’s Harlem Renaissance.
But nearly 15 years later, Volpe’s atmospheric beats has continue to leave an impact on the next generation of artists. Being a fan of his work with Rocky, Clams Casino was already on The Kid LAROI’s radar when a mutual collaborator, Billy Walsh, connected the producer to the Australian musician when he was just 17 years old. Though nothing came of the initial studio session link-up, a year-and-a-half later, Clams Casino cooked up another intoxicating beat that he felt matched the vibe LAROI was looking for, and he turned out to be right.
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“I hadn’t spoken to LAROI in a long time and I just had a feeling,” he tells Billboard. “I sent him that one and he immediately responded that he loved it and went right in, recorded it on his own and sent it back in like a day.
“He used the MP3 I sent him as-is,” he continues. What came out was pretty much the original demo, which is cool about.” That result is the euphoric “Nights Like This,” which ended up landing on The Kid LAROI‘s debut album, The First Time, last November. And while it didn’t take off immediately, the track would slow-burn to success with the help of TikTok and break through in July on the Billboard Hot 100, where it has remained for the summer and currently sits at No. 67 in its ninth week on the chart.
The 37-year-old producer and LAROI then continued their magic with “Nights Like This Pt 2,” a heart-racing second installment that on The First Time‘s deluxe edition, released in August.
Below, Clams Casino breaks down all things surrounding “Nights Like This,” what stood out to him about The Kid LAROI and working with A$AP Rocky throughout his career.
How did “Nights Like This” come together? How did you originally get onto The Kid LAROI’s radar?
Clams Casino: It was a few years in the making. LAROI first reached out to me online when he was like 17. He was in the studio working with a mutual collaborator, Billy Walsh — I think he played him some of my stuff, and they were brainstorming and brought me out to [Los Angeles]. LAROI knew a lot of the music that I had done. Later on, he told me he was a big fan of the [A$AP] Rocky stuff. I went out to L.A. and we met up in the studio and we talked and played some stuff, but nothing really came out of that first time we met up. I kept it in the back of my mind.
I think it was a year-and-a-half later, and I was at my own studio in New York making beats. That [beat] came up, and I just thought this was the one to send to him. This is kind of what they were talking about what they wanted [during the initial session] and the sound they were referencing. I just sent that one beat. He was excited about it. I had a feeling this was the one and it worked out. Once it happened, it was quick, but the roots were a long time in the making.
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Do you remember actually cooking up that specific beat before getting it into his hands?
I had the melodic stuff sitting around a little bit. I knew it was a special one. I didn’t really know what to do with it. I had half of the beat kind of put away. I was like, “When the time is right, I’ll come back to it.” I don’t do full things in one sitting. A lot of stuff, I’ll come back to it months or years later. I messed around trying to do a different arrangement, and I think he was just stuck on the original demo. There was something about it; he kept going back to that. He was right about it. I tried some other things out, but he just wanted that original version, which is cool looking back on it.
What stands out about his artistry?
What’s exciting for me when I hear his music is that he has a very unique sense of melody — his delivery and his vocals. There’s something melodically that just feels like he’s delivering in the tones of his voice [with] a genuine feeling and it connects with his music because of that.
“Nights Like This” was teased back in 2022 and released in November. What do you think about its slow burn onto the charts?
It spread around very organically and I think that’s the best way it could happen. There was like zero push from the label at the beginning — they thought, like, “This is a little interlude or something.” I don’t think anyone took it seriously. From the beginning, I knew it was a really special thing and he did too. He was really excited about it. We had the freedom to do exactly what me and him wanted to do. People really connected with that.
Was there a moment you realized the record was taking off, and saw the fan reaction really moving?
I started seeing headlines, and all of a sudden, it was getting jumps in streams. I started seeing things online with people saying it was going crazy on TikTok. It just slowly started building. That’s how it really happened. I’m glad everyone’s hearing it now and they got around to it because that’s how I felt about it when it came out. I was happy and really excited and proud of that. Even just for it to come out in the first place I was happy, but I’m glad it got to that point. I always knew it was special. I’m glad it really connected with everybody else.
How did this lead into “Nights Like This Pt 2”?
The beginning of that idea came from something I made for myself. An instrumental solo project — that was the first thing when I was starting on my own new stuff. When I was listening back, I was going to save it for myself, and I was like, “Something about it feels like this should be the part two.” This was in March or earlier this year. So, a few months after the first was released. I sent LAROI not the full beat or anything, but melody stuff and it was a start.
He loved it, and he immediately started teasing it online. Ten minutes after I sent it to him, he was on Twitter saying, “Part two coming!” I was laughing about that — he was real excited about it. There was a little bit of back-and-forth after that. Him and [co-producer] Dopamine recorded it and did some other production and sent it back to me. We sent it back a few times. Dopamine did a lot of work on it and we went back a few times. We got it finished up.
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When did The First Time track “Strangers (Interlude)” come into play?
I actually didn’t know about that. I had no idea about that until the album came out. They had done that on their own. I felt like it set up [“Nights Like This”] really nicely. I love how it sounds sequenced on the album. It’s a clip from “Nights Like This” — just the intro to it and filtered out a little and a little skit on it.
Is there more to come from you guys?
Yeah, it feels like we’re just starting to figure it out. We’re both really excited. I’m like such a fan of his music and I’m happy that I’m able to bring what I bring to it. It just makes sense and it’s a beautiful thing. I’m always working on more that I want to send to him and we got some other stuff that we’re going to keep going [at] hopefully.
Outside of those collabs, what else are you working on?
I’ve been working on different stuff, like getting into scoring things. I worked on some original music for an independent movie that premiered at Cannes a few months ago. [It’s called] It Doesn’t Matter and the director is Josh Mond. I’ll definitely be doing more of that. In the meantime, I really have been having fun getting in with a lot of young producers and young people I’m inspired by. A lot of them have been inspired by me since they were younger, and now they’re coming up doing their own thing. It’s really crazy. I just been having fun getting in with all these new guys and seeing what happens. Producers [like] Evilgiane, who did the Earl Sweatshirt song recently. [I] been working with other guys like Ok. I did some stuff on the JT album with Aire Atlantica. I’m always experimenting and having fun doing stuff I haven’t done before. That’s what keeps me going.
Did you work on A$AP Rocky’s upcoming album?
We did work [on Don’t Be Dumb]. I don’t know what’s going to be used or not. It always seems up in the air until the last minute. We definitely had some things in the works. I don’t know what’s going to be released or not.
Can you speak to Rocky’s influence and his enduring legacy as a 2010s rap titan?
I’m just happy to be part of his story and the ride of his career. Seeing it from the beginning when we first met to where he’s at it now, it’s an amazing story. Remembering where it started and seeing where he’s at now, it’s awesome. I’m just happy to be able to see some of that and some of the behind-the-scenes things.
What do you think makes him special as an artist?
Overall, he has a clear sense of vision for everything. All aspects of it. The music, visuals and everything else. He’s always developing and sharpening that. I don’t really know what it is, but he’s got it.
Do you have a favorite collaboration over the years?
All of the first mixtape stuff [Live. Love. A$AP] is super important to me. That whole time, we weren’t really working in the studio. I was sending stuff, but then I’d come meet up with him every couple weeks and he’d play me what he did, but he was recording it [on his own]. The first song we officially did together was “Wassup.” Then we did “Bass” and “Palace” and all that stuff. It was happening one at a time over the spring and the summer leading up to the mixtape. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew something good was happening. Those songs are really special. There was an energy there that something was happening. For me, it was exciting and I didn’t know what was going to happen, and we just kept following it.
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For me, I think I gotta go “LVL.”
That was a little bit after the mixtape. That’s another special one doubling down on the sound that we started. That’s when it went from this internet mixtape thing to a major label and we were doubling down on the sound like, “This is what we’re doing.” That’s one of my favorites too.
A version of this story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
These four memoirs from artists across genres and generations are among the most anticipated music books to arrive this fall.
Over the Influence: A MemoirBy Joanna “JoJo” Levesque
After breaking through in the mid-2000s with rhythmic pop hits like “Leave (Get Out)” and “Too Little Too Late” — which hit the Billboard Hot 100 at Nos. 12 and 3, respectively — JoJo retreated from the spotlight. Years later, she detailed an extended lawsuit with her record label, along with her own personal challenges. Now, with her memoir due Sept. 17, she discloses what happened during those years, illuminating exactly what kept her away — and what brought her back.
Life in the Key of GBy Kenny G and Philip Lerman
Grammy-winning saxophonist Kenny G has long been a jazz icon — known just as much for his skillful playing as his tight curls — but he has never let fans into his life like this before. Out Sept. 24 and written with author Philip Lerman (co-producer of America’s Most Wanted and co-author of host John Walsh’s memoir), the artist born Kenneth Gorelick details how he went from a bullied, skinny kid in Seattle to a teenage backing musician for everyone from Barry White to Liberace.
From Here to the Great Unknown: A MemoirBy Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough
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Two years ago, Presley asked her daughter Keough to help her finish an important, though daunting, task: her memoir. One month later, Presley died — and Keough was left with a mission to deliver her mother’s story, which is out Oct. 8. Keough gathered the tapes recorded for the book and listened in bed as Lisa Marie recounted her relationship with her famous parents: Elvis and Priscilla Presley.
Cher: The Memoir, Part OneBy Cher
As Grammy-winning, chart-topping icon Cher approaches 80, she will share the story of her extraordinary life in her own words — and two parts. In Part One, out Nov. 19, the artist born Cherilyn Sarkisian recounts her childhood and career beginnings up through her marriage to Sonny Bono, revealing more about the pair’s complicated relationship. There is no publishing date yet for Part Two, but as Part One’s bio teases, “It is a life too immense for only one book.”
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
While biking across Iowa this summer, Mark Michaels enjoyed a rare moment of reflection. “You’re riding about 80 miles a day among cornfields, and it gives you a lot of time to think,” the United Record Pressing chairman/CEO says. “I spent a lot of time while I was peddling thinking about United,” he adds of the oldest and largest American-owned, U.S.-based vinyl pressing plant in the world, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary this fall.
Michaels is speaking from his Nashville office, where he’s surrounded by signed records from Buddy Guy, Jack White and more of his icons, all expressing their thanks to him and his manufacturing team. (In 2014, White made history by recording, pressing and releasing a 7-inch of his single “Lazaretto” in under four hours, thanks to URP.) “It’s easy to forget those moments of euphoria and gratitude because you’re so focused on ‘How many records of this did we ship?’ or ‘What’s going on with that press?’ ” Michaels says. “But you don’t want too much life to pass by where you don’t stop and reflect.”
URP was founded as Bullet Plastics in Nashville in 1949, becoming Southern Plastics in the ’50s before landing on United Record Pressing in 1971. By the ’60s, a deal was signed for the plant to handle singles pressings for Motown, and in 1963, the first Beatles 7-inch, “Please Please Me”/“From Me to You,” was pressed, with a typo that spelled the band’s name as The Beattles.
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In 2007, a year before Record Store Day officially launched and just before the format was beginning its first-wave resurgence, Michaels bought the company — and helped sustain it through a particularly rough patch. As he recalls, half of URP’s output at the time was 12-inch singles created as promo records for DJs. “That was a lot of what we did, and shortly after I bought the company, the labels stopped doing that,” he says. “The DJs all got [music production software] Seratos, and the labels figured out that was a better business model. So all of a sudden, the health of the company was in serious jeopardy … We were doing everything to keep the lights on.”
By the summer of 2009, a career-changing order came in: a 50th-anniversary pressing of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (a favorite of Michaels) — the plant’s biggest order to date. Michaels himself oversaw quality control, checking a record at random every 30 minutes. “I remember one night, it was two in the morning and I’m in my office listening to these records, and I thought, ‘This is crazy, but goddamn, I’m lucky.’ And it just gave me this boost of energy. The next month, we got another order of that size.” Since, URP has manufactured vinyl for every major artist, from Adele to Taylor Swift.
In the early 2020s, URP faced another challenging period: the coronavirus pandemic. “Demand for vinyl exploded” during lockdown, Michaels says, but the orders put an unprecedented pressure on pressing plants to keep up. He says that was the catalyst for URP to expand, resulting in an $11 million project that built new infrastructure and supporting equipment and added 26 new presses. “The challenge is you can’t do that overnight,” he says. And now, not only can URP meet demand, but “the plant runs better than ever.”
He and his team of approximately 130 employees — all of whom have been sporting anniversary T-shirts that detail the plant’s various logos over the years — are now ready to toast such a feat and storied history, with Michaels saying the energy “is palpable” at the plant these days. A forthcoming celebration will bring together partners, customers, vendors and “people who support the format … There’s a renewed sense of pride and interest in what we do.”
Already, Michaels is focused on how to maintain it for the next 75 years, doubling down on the honor he has in keeping the process — and workforce — in Music City. “Seventy-five-plus years of history gives you a lot of gas in your tank in terms of pride,” he says. “You don’t make the first Beatles record in America, you don’t make all these Motown records, you don’t accumulate all this history and know-how and not have something special. And I never want to lose that.”
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024 issue of Billboard.
Nearly a decade ago, as a college senior, rising country singer Kassi Ashton signed a record deal with Universal Music Group Nashville (UMGN)/Interscope Records. Now 30 — and following the success of her highest-charting single to date — the California, Mo. native will finally release her anticipated debut album, Made From the Dirt, on Sept. 20.
Foundation
Singer-songwriter Ashton is a study in contrasts: a motorcycle enthusiast who designs and crafts many of her stage and red-carpet outfits from scratch (including for this year’s Academy of Country Music Awards, where she was nominated for new female artist of the year). As a child, she competed in pageants mostly as a vessel for showcasing her music. Even then, her vocal prowess was apparent, thanks to influence from vocalists including Adele, Aretha Franklin and (later) the country-soul of Chris Stapleton. Ashton soon started writing original songs, enrolling at Nashville’s Belmont University to study commercial voice and music business.
Discovery
In 2016, as college graduation neared, Ashton signed a management and publishing deal with Nashville-based Creative Nation. By 2017, she scored a label deal with UMGN in partnership with Interscope. But the ensuing years were spent refining her sound and weathering setbacks, with none of her singles promoted at radio — and no debut album. “I never felt like I should quit,” she says. “When I signed, they wanted me to go straight to radio. I said no because I didn’t have a song I wanted to sing for the rest of my life.” Her first full-length was also delayed by the pandemic in 2020, but in 2022, she finally issued her debut country radio single, “Dates in Pickup Trucks,” followed by “Drive You Out of My Mind.” The two songs built momentum, but this year’s “Called Crazy” has resonated most, rising to No. 32 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. “It came so easy,” she says. “I felt like I was finding a pillar.”
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Future
Nearly a decade after inking her label deal, Ashton will release her long-awaited debut album, Made From the Dirt, on Sept. 20. She teamed with longtime collaborator Luke Laird, as well as Oscar Charles, to craft an eclectic mix of uptempo jams (“I Don’t Wanna Dance”), grungy rock gems (“Son of a Gun”) and a heartfelt tribute to her late grandmother (“Juanita”). “I couldn’t have made this album at 23,” Ashton says. “It would have been rushed and not steady with who I am as a person. I can’t wait to see how what I’ve put energy, time and tears into is connecting.”
A version of this story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
When Rauw Alejandro performed at the Governors Ball music festival in New York in June, he wore a burnt yellow and beige pinstripe suit with skinny pants, reminiscent of 1970s hipster New York — and previewing what to expect from his next studio album, due out on Sony Music US Latin.
“My dad is from Brooklyn and I have lots of family in New York, and obviously, there’s a lot of Puerto Rican culture there,” Alejandro says, speaking from Rosarito Beach, Mexico, where he headlined the Baja Beach Fest in August. “It’s a little inspired in the ’70s, the Fania All-Stars, all that. It’s a whole character, and I call it a ‘character’ because I see it as an overall concept. Music goes hand in hand with the visuals, the videos, the photos.”
Alejandro, whose six albums have all reached the top 10 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart, is no stranger to chameleonic shows of artistry. His aesthetic has changed from album to album, notably with 2021’s Vice Versa (which debuted at No. 17 on the Billboard 200), along with its disco-tinged hit single “Todo de Tí,” plus his most recent album, 2023’s Playa Saturno.
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The upcoming Cosa Nuestra — a title inspired by the genre-defining 1969 Fania All-Stars salsa album by Willie Colón with Héctor Lavoe on vocals — includes the already-released “Touching the Sky” and “Déjame Entrar,” slick blends of funk, disco and R&B. (The latter track is bolstered by a video featuring a cameo by actor Adrien Brody). Producers include Alejandro stalwarts like Mag, Tainy and Mr. NaisGai, as well as veteran salsa producers like Nino Segarra.
Alejandro is approaching his new music with a new agency (UTA) and, instead of new management, is working with “a collective, a family, where we all bring ideas to the table,” he says. The core group consists of veteran manager Jorge “Pepo” Ferradas (who also manages Camilo and Rels B and spent a decade with Shakira), Alejandro’s longtime associate Matías Solari and business manager/attorney José Juan Torres. Ahead of Cosa Nuestra’s late-fall release, Alejandro will perform at the Global Citizen Festival in New York in September and at two arenas in Japan in October as part of Coke STUDIO Live 2024 alongside NewJeans and Rita Ora.
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You spoke about creating a character for this album. Who is he?
I give them nicknames. This is Raúl, Raúl Alejandro, which has more of a telenovela vibe. It’s a bit more like Raúl Alejandro and His Orquestra, which is more serious. My dad’s name is Raúl, so everyone calls me Raulito. I was Raulito on Saturno, a younger character, more active in the street, in the neighborhood. But now I’m Raúl, a more adult guy living in New York and re-creating the era when Puerto Ricans immigrated to the city. My grandmother came in the 1930s, 1940s when there was a big economic depression in Puerto Rico. Many genres — hip-hop, jazz, salsa — came from that time. I love to really study the world I’m going into and try to live it in the present with my touch.
How did you decide on the direction of Cosa Nuestra?
I like to visualize my plans long term. I’ll sit in my house, read a book, smoke a joint with a little cafecito, look at the sky and try to make a mental map of what’s coming up. I don’t like to repeat projects, so planning helps me achieve that. Saturno is an album inspired by the ’90s with more uptempo, electronic music, so don’t expect my next project to be more of the same. Obviously, my essence comes from R&B, and that can fit in any kind of rhythm. It’s not just about the music, but the eras overall.
Your album title is inspired by a classic salsa album. Will there be salsa on yours?
Salsa is not my essence, but it’s something that’s in my blood and in my culture, and it’s something I love. I come from urban music, but I can do other genres. The Colón-Lavoe Cosa Nuestra had the elegance and the musicality and the instruments, which you will hear on this album. It’s the first time I use my band and live music on almost an entire project. I usually write with my keyboard and my computer, but on this project I’m going to the roots.
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You had a hit with “Santa” alongside Jamaican producer Rvssian and Nigerian singer Ayra Starr. Are you planning any Afrobeats or African-inspired music on this album?
Afro is mixed in everything because for me, African music is the mothership. We inherited so much African music in Puerto Rico; our cultural mix is so rich and flavorful, and African music is in our blood. I’ve worked a lot with Rvssian, he’s a good friend, and all our collabs are Afrobeats and dancehall mixed with reggaetón. But everything comes from Africa. I’d love to tour Africa.
Dance has been front and center in the music videos for this album’s singles. What inspired that?
I’ve been studying my ancestors and all the richness of Puerto Rico, so there’s a lot of typical dance and dance that the world may not know. I’ve already used those elements, but I haven’t explained them. Those movements are inspired by something cultural … They’re inspired in salsa, in bomba, in plena, in dances from my island, obviously mixed with jazz, contemporary dance and hip-hop. It’s another aspect of my career.
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Clive Davis was feeling proud.
In early April, the chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment addressed a gathering of more than 500 members of the New York University community and music industry who had gathered in Brooklyn to celebrate the 20th anniversary of NYU’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music, the school that the legendary music executive had endowed.
“It’s really incredible to see how far the program has come and how successful the students have been,” Davis told the crowd in a video message (noting he had a schedule conflict with a friend’s wedding). “There are students winning Grammy Awards in major categories, actually dominating the Billboard charts and occupying major positions at record labels, agencies and management companies.
“It’s great to see how my original concept for a new and original music program has become such a successful reality,” Davis added.
“What is my fond hope for the future? I hope students continue to find success and really emerge as the leaders in the 21st-century music business.”
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As if to highlight Davis’ assertion, earlier that same day in April, one of the most successful alums of the school, Maggie Rogers, announced her first arena tour, in support of her album Don’t Forget Me, which peaked at No. 6 on Billboard’s Americana/Folk Albums chart.
Among those gathered for this celebration of the institute, which is part of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, were Allyson Green, dean of the Tisch School, who said: “For the past 20 years, the Clive Davis Institute has fostered some of the industry’s most exciting new musical artists and creative business minds. Our outstanding faculty, leaders and staff cultivate an exciting learning environment that allows for both the freedom to experiment and the tools to navigate the competitive music world.”
D-Nice DJ’d the institute’s 20th anniversary party in April 2024.
NYU Photo Bureau
Successful alumni have included not only Rogers (whose career was memorably jump-started by a viral video of Pharrell Williams’ awestruck reaction to her recording of “Alaska” during an institute master class in 2016), but also Grammy-nominated producer Dan Knobler; Noah Yoo and Sedona Schat, aka Elektra Records act Cafuné; production duo Take a Daytrip’s Denzel Baptiste and David Biral, who earned album and record of the year Grammy nods for their work on Lil Nas X’s album Montero and single “Montero (Call Me by Your Name),” respectively; singer-songwriter Nija Charles, who shared the album of the year nomination for her contributions to Beyoncé’s Renaissance; and Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt.
The institute accommodates about 250 students who work toward a bachelor of fine arts in recorded music. Its Brooklyn campus, which the program moved into in 2020, offers a seamless flow of spaces designed to inspire creativity and collaboration. Facilities include Oscilloscope Laboratories, the Beastie Boys’ studio formerly located in Manhattan that member Adam Yauch’s widow, Dechen Wangdu, gifted to the school.
The school also hosts its share of guest speakers and performers — Davis, Williams, Alicia Keys, Benny Blanco, Chris Blackwell, Jay-Z, Mark Ronson, Paul Simon, Rihanna and Stevie Wonder among them.
Nick Sansano, chair of the Clive Davis Institute, recently sat down with Billboard to describe the school’s program, which, like the music industry itself, is constantly evolving and rooted in a bit of rebellion.
How involved is Clive Davis in the institute?
What he did was lay out the design and the idea of this holistic curriculum where someone would not just learn about an instrument or be a studio rat or only study music business or legal affairs. His idea was to take everything out of their silos so you have this program that is about music, about music production, about music business — but really what it’s about is leadership, entrepreneurship, thinking holistically, about the future of the industry.
I don’t think he imagined how successful the whole thing would be and how much he would get out of it. He definitely feels that authentic pride, and once in a while he’ll even call with ideas out of the blue. He’s so checked in, and that has been a game-changer for us.
Oscilloscope Laboratories, the Beastie Boys’ studio formerly located in Manhattan, was donated and reconstructed within the institute’s Brooklyn building, including details like takeout menus the group kept on hand.
Carine Puyo
How has the curriculum expanded over two decades?
We’ve always had this ethos around here to push change through and ask questions later, because it could take forever to change curriculum at a university and by the time you do it, you need to go to the next one. It was hard to navigate in the beginning. But the university understood ultimately that we needed to move at our own pace. And we proved ourselves competent. The more we handled our own affairs, the more room they gave us.
The curriculum is always changing as new topics come up and others become irrelevant. New this fall are Reggaetón Revolution, the history of reggaetón, and Creating a Narrative in Audio, a podcasting class from the editorial and journalistic side.
We’re now at a point where we’re very realistic, very pragmatic about what we teach. We have to go beyond the topic at hand and look at it on a really macro level. In the beginning we were trying to set modalities in stone, but we emphasize objectives now more so than specific methodologies because how we get there today will not be how we get there tomorrow.
Much of that evolution, I imagine, is driven by your faculty.
We have a very experienced full-time faculty — a lot of us have been here since the beginning or first few years — and a lot of adjuncts, who will come and go based on what we need. When we do a hip-hop course on the Art of the MC, we have Black Thought from The Roots come in. If we have a Lou Reed class, we go to a biographer. [Author-critic] Will Hermes has taught a number of classes for us. We’re always looking at “What are we offering? Where are the holes and who are the experts in the field or on that very specific topic?”
It’s also a great way to find full-time faculty. When people realize the vibe of the place and sincerity of it… Good people are incredibly difficult to find, and we’ll do whatever we can to keep them here.
Professor Bill Stephney (left) and Chuck D at the institute in April 2024.
Kyra Williams
Isn’t that how you became part of the institute?
I’m a music producer, mixer and engineer, and I came in the first year to give a talk about my work with Public Enemy, Sonic Youth and other New York-centric artists. It was a wonderful experience. The students were asking really thought-provoking questions and getting emotional about it. I said to [the institute], “I’ve never taught before, but if you want to take a chance…” The whole thing was a big experiment. I wasn’t the only experimental hire.
How engaged is your alumni network?
One of my priorities was to change the relationship with the alums, and we’ve made a really conscious effort to reach out. I want alumni to feel as if they never left. When we have an event, when we have guest appearances, we invite all the alums — and the reaction to that has been incredibly positive. We now have 20 years of alums. We have people who have some real influence, and our students definitely benefit from that.
What has been the biggest benefit of moving the program to Brooklyn?
Space, and having all our spaces consolidated. When we were in Washington Square and our Mercer Street location [in Manhattan], we had classes all over the city because we kept running out of space. It was all decentralized. And not only was it expensive, but our students were running all over the place.
Our goal was to centralize everything. We have rehearsal spaces, we have edit suites, we have studios, we have piano practice rooms, we have musicianship labs. We have The Garage, a 100-capacity venue, on the first floor, and we have access to a 200-seat auditorium. We are very self-sufficient at this point, and we designed the space the way we wanted to design it. We began five years before moving in. We saw potential and convinced the university to allow us to hire our own acoustic designers and studio builders.
We had a very specific vision. We want you to walk in and feel as though you are part of a professional environment, and that should dictate what you say, how you act and so on. A place you are proud of. The university loves it. We are the showcase; everyone comes here.
Clive Davis (left) and MSNBC’s Ari Melber at the Clive Davis Institute in 2023.
NYU Photo Bureau
Still, a lot of learning also takes place outside this building. What’s the experiential component like?
We require a minimum of two internship credits, but most students are doing way more than that. It runs the gamut from the obvious major labels to some recording studios to smaller publishing companies. We have someone working full time on establishing and looking after these relationships.
We did a partnership with Atlantic this past year, and part of it was — along with some songwriting camps and some A&R sessions and field trips to their offices — a certain amount of priority internship opportunities for our students. We are trying to solidify more of those executive internship programs.
We prefer when a student comes with an idea and then we vet it. We don’t immediately say no to anyone. And we closely monitor [internships]. There are [labor] laws and there are NYU-mandated requirements, and you could run afoul of both. It doesn’t happen very often, but that doesn’t mean we don’t watch.
The institute’s offerings don’t come cheaply. The NYU website says the university’s general cost of attendance — tuition, food and housing — for the 2024-25 academic year is $87,488. How do you justify that cost and ensure a diverse student body?
We don’t just give people the sticker price and then that’s it. The university works with them, Tisch works with them, and then we as a department work with them on a very personal level. Most of our students who apply for financial aid do get substantial aid. And something new that’s just kicking in this fall is an NYU-wide policy that covers full tuition for students whose families make under $100,000 a year, which is a huge help.
Being so aware of the sacrifice many families make to get their kids here — it affects the overall tone of the institute because we realize that’s how much we need to give back. But we also have to deal with student issues we wish we didn’t, like students who can’t sustain. There are a lot of factors that go into it, including just living in New York, and we get involved with things like housing and food. We have supporters and financial donors that help us with professional development. We are able to do showcases; students are able to travel, to get concert tickets, to go to an exhibit. We just took eight students to Milan for a week. The year before, we took them to Norway. In January, we’ll take them to France. We’ll go that extra mile and subsidize.
Ultimately the goal of the department is to be free, through a large endowment, which we know is possible because we’re seeing it happen. We saw it at NYU Medical School, and we’re seeing it at other universities. [NYU Medical School became tuition-free in 2018 after raising the majority of the endowment needed to sustain the program.]
Professor Bobby Wooten and artist-in-residence Corinne Bailey Rae at the institute in February 2024.
Sam Hollenshead
How else does the institute use financial support to bolster the program?
A priority here is equity having to do with women and music. We’re working with the history that, for so long, women were excluded from production and some other business areas. It’s important to rebuild a certain amount of trust that has eroded over the years.
Our classes now are usually more than 50% women. We have a student-run organization called PAM, which stands for Producers Against Misogyny, and our Audio Engineering Society student chapter is run by women. We support these student groups and their events.
We also host a Future Music Moguls program, which is fully funded for high school students. It’s a whole-day affair on a Saturday during the spring semester where we give a mini version of our curriculum. Engaging with high school students is important to us — and a great way to recognize future talent.
How do you view the overall role of the institute in the music business?
Our ultimate goal is, we would like the music industry to change for the better, but we are not going to do that by banging on the walls and asking to get in. We’re going to do that by busting it out from the inside. Meaning, our students will infiltrate the industry — and we’re seeing that change now.
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Joe Jonas’ upcoming album is not technically his solo debut: Back in 2011 during a Jonas Brothers hiatus, the middle JoBro released Fastlife, a club-aimed rhythmic pop foray featuring contributions from Lil Wayne and Chris Brown that couldn’t quite turn the then-22-year-old into a radio star. “I have so much love for those songs — they actually aged pretty well!” Jonas says today with a wide smile. “But it feels like a different person.”
Fastlife might as well be a lifetime ago for Jonas, now 35. Since then, he found his radio hit with 2015’s “Cake by the Ocean” as the leader of pop collective DNCE, then reunited with his siblings Nick and Kevin in 2019, for a Jonas Brothers comeback that produced the No. 1 smash “Sucker” and a global arena tour, among other achievements.
Jonas also married actress Sophie Turner in 2019, welcomed two daughters, then experienced a very public divorce in 2023. “I was going through a lot of life changes,” he says of the past few years, “finding out who I was as a person and father and friend, and living under the microscope of what the music industry can be. And I think, at such a crazy time in my life, I looked to music as an outlet.”
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The result is Music for People Who Believe in Love, a solo album full of unvarnished thoughts and sonic experiments that Republic Records will release Oct. 18. The full-length doesn’t sound anything like Fastlife, but it doesn’t resemble Jonas Brothers or DNCE, either. Jonas lands on a shimmery pop sound that synthesizes a wide array of influences, from garage-rock to alt-pop to ’90s country, while singing about navigating life’s uncertainties and finding gratitude amid loss.
“Things you can’t imagine/Remind you of what you’ve always had/Maybe they need to happen/So you know the worst ain’t all that bad,” he sings on “My Own Best Friend,” a pleading anthem marked by mournful whistling. Elsewhere, Jonas races through a fuzz-heavy synth workout on “Velvet Sunshine,” offers a gently strummed “lullaby to my kids” on “Hey Beautiful” and, on the wide-reaching lead single, “Work It Out,” addresses his “head full of insecurities” while slipping into falsetto over a percolating beat.
Jonas says that Music for People Who Believe in Love began with the song “Only Love,” a funked-up and flirtatious pop-rock jam that he originally conceived with his brothers. During the writing process in Australia as they worked with producer Joel Little, “I noticed that the song was going toward the direction of some personal stuff that I went through,” Jonas recalls. “So I go to Kevin and Nick, ‘Hey, can I use this as a catapult to go explore what this sound could be, and also what I’m trying to figure out emotionally?’ They were very supportive — Nick said, ‘Well, damn, I really like that song. But I get what you need to do, so go for it.’ ”
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Jonas quickly went to work, corralling studio whizzes including Alexander 23, Justin Tranter, Jason Evigan and Tommy English to Los Angeles’ House of Blues studio and knocking out the majority of the album in two-and-a-half weeks. Following the sunny Jonas Brothers full-length The Album in spring 2023 — and then a slew of tabloid headlines detailing his divorce last fall — Jonas says that hunkering down on a more personal project ultimately proved to be therapeutic.
“It was scary at times, and also freeing,” he says. “I’m not trying to come for anyone on this album. I’m not trying to put stuff on blast. I have a beautiful life that I’m grateful for. I’ve got two beautiful kids. I’m a happy person, and the music needed to resemble that — but also, the journey to get here.”
Republic vp of marketing strategy Alyssa LoPresti adds, “This campaign starts and ends with Joe. From his personal taste in music, which is highlighted by [his] notable and exciting choice of collaborators, to the way he’s engaging with fans on his platforms and the content he’s filmed to support the release, it is all authentic to who Joe is and reflective of this chapter of his life.”
Jonas says that more album tracks, and their featured guests, will be unveiled in the coming weeks following the July release of “Work It Out,” and that he’s “definitely” planning to showcase the album live, potentially around release week.
If Jonas’ last solo project was a bid for stardom when he was still figuring out who he was, Music for People Who Believe in Love represents a check-in from an artist at peace with his choices. “At the core of it,” he says, “if this body of work helps people through what they’re going through, that’s all I can really wish for.”
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
When the idea for the Americana Music Association emerged in the late 1990s, it came from a community that shared a vision. A collective of artists, label executives, journalists and radio programmers all believed in promoting music driven by ideals and creativity rather than revenue. The nonprofit launched in 1999 and held its first convention in Downtown Nashville the following year with performances from Rhonda Vincent, Sam Bush, Jim Lauderdale and Rodney Crowell. In 2002, the first Americana Music Honors & Awards show was held lauding Lauderdale, Buddy & Julie Miller, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Billy Joe Shaver and T Bone Burnett.
Over the past 25 years, the association has worked to fashion a community that supports an ever-growing, ever-evolving slate of artists whose roots music styles include country, folk, bluegrass, R&B and roots-rock. The Avett Brothers, Carolina Chocolate Drops (whose members then included Rhiannon Giddens), Mumford & Sons, Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile, Margo Price, Sturgill Simpson, Brandy Clark and the late Levon Helm have had sterling career successes under the Americana banner, followed by the recent ascension of Noah Kahan, Wyatt Flores, Kaitlin Butts, Charley Crockett, Tyler Childers and Allison Russell.
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The Americana genre is “just a home base thing, for me — I’ve built my whole life within this community, including my family and my kids,” Carlile told Billboard last year when she received Grammy Award nominations in the pop, rock and Americana categories. “We’re just rooted in our Americana people. And what Americana really is is a rejection of some of the exclusive tenets of country music — I mean that politically; I mean that sonically. In terms of diversity, Americana is where you’re going to see it the most.”
Jed Hilly has been key to the Americana Music Association’s growth. After serving as head of label for Orbison Records, Hilly became the association’s executive director in 2007 and has been a foremost advocate for the genre. He sees the organization’s mission in simple terms: to advocate for the authentic voice of American roots music. During Hilly’s tenure, the Recording Academy expanded its Americana/roots categories at the Grammy Awards (there are now four), while Billboard updated the name of its Folk Albums chart to Americana/Folk Albums and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary added the word “Americana.”
In recent years, acts including Carlile, Crockett, Russell, the late John Prine, Billy Strings and The War and Treaty have won honors in top categories at the Americana Music Honors & Awards, and the association now boasts 4,000 members. In addition, the annual Nashville-based AmericanaFest has served to highlight a diverse array of talent, with last year’s event showcasing 200 acts with performances spanning 48 venues across the city. The 2024 AmericanaFest will take place Sept. 17-21.
As the Americana Music Association celebrates its 25th anniversary, Billboard spoke with Hilly about the organization’s beginnings, its evolution and the genre’s current surge in popularity.
Tell me about the origins of the Americana Music Association.
In the late ’90s, there was a movement against commercial country radio, which had dropped artists like Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, Rosanne Cash and the list goes on. The movement was started by Jon Grimson and Rob Bleetstein, [who were instrumental in launching] an Americana chart for [music publication The Gavin Report], where they cherry-picked the stations that were still playing that kind of music. Then in 1999, when about 30 people got together at South by Southwest in Austin, they wanted to start a trade association like others had done.
The credit goes to the founding fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers, people like Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Rodney [Crowell]. We truly have changed the landscape of music. We’ve given prominence to those artists who otherwise might not be heard. Music in the ’90s became more commercial, with less artist development. SoundScan really shifted the landscape. But as T Bone Burnett says, “If you make a great album, you make a great album.”
Jed Hilly onstage during the association’s Honors & Awards nomination ceremony at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville on May 7, 2024.
Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images
The Americana Music Association has done significant advocacy work in expanding the roots and Americana recognition at the Grammy Awards.
That was the first thing I was working on. Hats off to Robert Plant, Alison Krauss and T Bone Burnett [whose 2007 Raising Sand earned five Grammys, including album of the year]. We welcomed that album before it [went] on to win Grammys. It was our album of the year in the fall before the Grammys, when they were nominated and won all those awards. When Robert went into the press room at the Grammys with four or five Grammys stacked up, someone asked him which was his favorite, and Robert said, “Actually, it was the one we won in Nashville last fall.” That opened the doors. I engaged [the Americana Music Association’s] membership to support the Recording Academy’s membership [because the academy’s philanthropic division], MusiCares, is an organization I so respect. Significantly, the Americana album category became the fastest-growing category, percentagewise, for the Grammys.
In recent years, top Americana Music Honors & Awards winners have included the bluegrass-rock sounds of Billy Strings, Charley Crockett’s old-school country and soul sounds, the songcraft of John Prine, the strong voices of Brandi Carlile and Allison Russell and the country-soul sounds of The War and Treaty. How do you define Americana today?
Music evolves. Billy Strings crosses a contemporary line. Maybe a more radical version would be Mumford & Sons with that first album. They crossed a contemporary line. With blues, if Muddy Waters is the baseline, Bonnie Raitt made a contemporary form of the blues. [Bob] Dylan and the band [went] electric at [the Newport Folk Festival] — that was not folk music anymore; it was something else. I believe that it’s important for art forms to maintain their integrity. In 1955, rock’n’roll was Elvis Presley; 1961, it was Chubby Checker; and fast-forward to U2 winning [the Grammy for best rock performance by a duo or group with vocal] for The Joshua Tree. It evolves.
I also give credit to Danna Strong, who was the first Americana Music Association employee and is still our director of education and programs and conference producer. Danna came to me in 2010 and said, “No one’s honored Muscle Shoals. How do we do that?” We honored everyone in Muscle Shoals and asked Rick Hall [who has been called “the Father of Muscle Shoals”] to accept the award, but honored everyone who was part of that.
Did that change the way you looked at the awards?
We recognized inspiration as part of the criteria for a lifetime achievement award, and that came in part from Porter Wagoner. In my first year, I was reluctant to honor Porter and I hate that I was reluctant, but I was figuring things out. Porter, to me, was the epitome of country music, and I felt we were something different than country music. But I realized people like Buddy and Rodney all did Porter songs on their albums. That opened the door to other ideas, like [honoring] Richard Thompson [and] honoring Booker T. and the M.G.’s. That’s not what you would think of as the down-the-middle Americana at the time. It was about looking at the greater landscape of inspiration.
The Americana Music Honors & Awards is slated for Sept. 18 in Nashville, and the awards have become more inclusive in honoring the work of pioneers such as Mavis Staples and Allen Toussaint, but also celebrating the artistry and musicianship of contemporary artists including Brandi Carlile and Allison Russell.
Diversity is important. I woke up after the [Americana] awards show in 2013 or 2014 and realized that all of our lifetime achievement honorees were basically white, middle-aged men. Americana is the contemporary form of music that is derived from multiple roots genres. The best way I know to go about that is to find people who feel welcome in the community and show them off. The McCrary Sisters have been our in-house band for as long as we’ve been doing this, and they are extraordinary. We have partnered with the National Museum of African American Music. The Fairfield Four as a quartet deserves to be recognized and honored — let’s put a spotlight on that. Our goal is to be open and welcoming. Do we have a long way to go? Sure we do. Americana is a great American art form, and it’s an opportunity that welcomes all walks of life with an authentic approach to making music. I do believe that if everyone in the world listened to Americana music for one hour, the world would be a better place.
Over the past few years, artists such as Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan, who have a roots-driven sound, have dominated all-genre charts. They aren’t based in Nashville, but they are having a huge impact in driving listeners to seek out more Americana sounds. What is your take on that impact?
Americana’s rockin’ right now. Noah has participated in several events, and he’s nominated for artist of the year this year. When The Lumineers took off, we embraced them early and nominated them for emerging artist of the year. They didn’t really know what we were doing, so we sat down with them, and as time went on, they were like, “What can we do to help?” They did a show during AmericanaFest at The Cannery [Ballroom], so 700 people got to see them perform. I hope Zach will join us someday. I think he’s an Americana artist — he’s not a country artist, in my humble opinion. But we look at Wyatt Flores and Sierra Ferrell, Nathaniel Rateliff, Jason Isbell and Brandi Carlile selling out massive rooms. Whether or not Americana has a mainstream [radio] hit, we can build careers.
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
I’m not getting too stressed about bridge lyrics,” says Benjmn, 29. “Because there’s like a 100% chance it’s going to get translated.”
The Los Angeles-based topliner is closing in on his ninth straight hour of songwriting today. And like the 10 other lyricists and producers Universal Music Publishing Group has assembled at Arcade Studios in New York, he won’t stop until he’s achieved perfection. Benjmn, who has written for acts like ENHYPEN and Le Sserafim before, and his cohorts here are all proven K-pop hit-makers, so they’re well aware that much of today’s work will be rewritten in Korean. Still, he and his collaborators on this particular track — 31-year-old SAAY from South Korea and 34-year-old Sandra Wikstrom from Sweden — will continue fine-tuning their already pristine bridge for at least 15 more minutes before moving on. Are there enough syllables? Is it dragging? Can the melody be more expansive?
They know that the punchier the lyrics, the likelier it is that major K-pop labels like HYBE, JYP Entertainment and SM Entertainment will pick up their demos for artists to record. Their current target is a boy band on the rise that UMPG knows is looking for its next hit, although the track — a swaggering dance tune tentatively titled “GLUE” — may very well go to another of the ever-proliferating K-pop groups. (Because of the unpredictable nature of where songs end up and the prejudices a label may have if it sees a song title publicly attached to other acts, UMPG declines to comment on the precise artists for whom the musicians have gathered.)
The three rainy days these writers and producers will spend here mark just the second-ever international K-pop camp UMPG has held in the United States as it pushes to capitalize on the opportunities the genre offers its roster of talent, rounding up its most experienced creatives from all over the world and charging them with completing three songs a day in small groups. After the camp concludes, UMPG Korea senior creative A&R executive Yena Kim will pitch the nine finished tracks to the big three labels, which constantly send her hyperspecific briefs outlining what they’re looking for and for whom; for now, she walks from room to room ensuring everyone understands their assignments.
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“Ultimately, we want releases,” explains UMPG’s head of its global creative group, David Gray. “We can sign K-pop writers and say, ‘Go get us K-pop cuts.’ But we can also be proactive and creative. Let’s put our best K-pop writers together, bring them briefs from Korea and keep it small, focused and strategic so we have the best chance of getting results.”
Benjmn (left) records vocals for an R&B-inspired demo produced by Sam Klempner.
Nina Westervelt
Jeppe London (left) and Lauritz Emil work on a song with guitars.
Nina Westervelt
On day one of camp, delirium is already setting in. “We should do a song called ‘Jet Lag,’ ” Benjmn jokes before he, SAAY and Wikstrom start spitting out catchy rap bars seemingly effortlessly, despite their lack of sleep. “Jet lag, jet lag, gotta go get bags/All around the world, I’m getting whiplash,” they sing, taking turns adding lines.
Down the hall, 28-year-old BLVSH from Germany and London-based Josh McClelland, 27, are writing for the same boy band, penning a punk-rock heartbreak anthem called “Close the Door.” Producer duo Jeppe London, 28, and Lauritz Emil, 26, both from Denmark, speak in rapid-fire Danish while recording electric guitar passes to find a sweet spot between Demi Lovato and Linkin Park, both of whom label SM sent as references. The room’s shared credits include tracks for BTS, ENHYPEN, NCT and TWICE, and an expertise in the subtleties of writing for K-pop artists shows.
“You’re looking for fun keywords instead of poetic structure,” explains BLVSH, who earned a No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 last year for her work on Jimin’s “Like Crazy.” “It’s more [about] attention-grabbing visuals and hooky words.”
They also labor over how pleasing each syllable sounds, the cadence and differentiation of each line, whether the melodies will sit in the band members’ varying vocal ranges and how easily choreographers will be able to pair the lyrics with snappy dance moves — all elements they say they don’t necessarily think about when writing for other genres, as many of them started out writing outside K-pop. Phonetics are key, even if most lyrics do end up getting reworked by translators, who generally earn a 12.5% split in royalties when the song is finished; BLVSH and McClelland say Korean labels are more likely to bite when they can imagine from the get-go how a song will sound once translated, which is why the writers make sure to infuse their demos with sharp consonants to mimic the Korean language. (For example: Saying a love interest looks “picturesque” grabs their ears far more than a simple “pretty” or “good.”)
SAAY (left) listens to a demo while BLVSH tinkers on piano.
Nina Westervelt
Max Thulin produces a track in Logic Pro.
Nina Westervelt
It’s also why the writers focus less on storytelling and more on a certain vibe or attitude in their songs, which they strive to convey even when recording their demos. By nature, many of them are far less extroverted than the acts they write for, so it’s entertaining to watch Benjmn cringe as he listens to a take of himself singing with Justin Bieber-esque sultriness, or to see 31-year-old Feli Ferraro of Los Angeles intuitively flip her hair and pop her hips while recording sexy-confident raps for a song called “8” that’ll be sent off to a brand-new girl group SM is developing (the campers know nothing of its top-secret lineup).
The songwriters aren’t fazed when translators alter the meaning of their lyrics; they understand it’s an often necessary part of ensuring they still rhyme and flow well in Korean. Still, it’s always ideal artistically when their work stays as close to the original as possible — and there are ways of increasing the chances that it does: As McClelland puts it, “Let’s make sure this lyric is fire.”
Toward the end of the day, everyone takes a short break to mingle and eat dinner; last year, UMPG learned that the ever-diligent writers prefer bringing in meals to avoid taking time away from their songs, and tonight’s comes from Joe’s Home of Soup Dumplings. SAAY and Wikstrom excitedly make plans to visit the Times Square Disney store while they’re in town. But there’s minimal time for this kind of pleasant catchup. A mountain of empty plastic containers in their wake, everyone instinctively filters back into their respective rooms.
Most end up staying until 10 p.m. There’s more work to be done.
From a publisher’s perspective, everything changed for global K-pop in 2020. That’s when BTS earned its first Hot 100 No. 1 with “Dynamite” — and the genre “exploded, that’s for sure,” quips Daniella Rasho, international A&R executive at UMPG U.S., who oversees the camp alongside Yena Kim.
“People have seen what BTS has done,” she continues. “Now every K-pop label is like, ‘I’m going to have the next BTS. I’m going to have the next one that goes global or is on U.S. radio.’ ”
“[Korean] labels are aiming for hits on the Billboard charts,” Kim adds. “The artists, most of them now all speak English, as well as local A&Rs. The whole thing is changing. It wasn’t like this five to six years ago.”
As K-pop’s global reach has expanded, so too has foreign songwriters’ interest in the genre, which rapidly transformed from one of the least popular international markets for songwriters to one of the most competitive. It’s an appealing space: Western pop stars are often inclined to stick with the same close circle of collaborators, but K-pop labels are quite open to taking songs from outsiders. Thanks to K-pop fans’ propensity for buying multiple physical variants of singles and albums, the royalty checks for songwriters and producers tend to be higher, too.
Western stars like Taylor Swift have also prioritized writing their own music, while K-pop fans value the glossy, high-production performances their idols have spent years training to execute more than the names on a song’s billing, allowing more space for career songwriters to notch credits. Rasho has a theory as to why: “American audiences want to relate to pop stars. For K-pop, people want to be them.”
Front row, from left: Jeppe London, Celine Svanback, Feli Ferraro, Benjmn and Max Thulin. Middle row, from left: Sandra Wikstrom, SAAY, Sam Klempner and BLVSH. Back row: Josh McClelland (left) and Lauritz Emil.
Nina Westervelt
SAAY (left) with Sandra Wikstrom who reads lyrics off her phone.
Nina Westervelt
Plus, the campers say that K-pop labels are in some ways more forgiving than their Western counterparts. They’re used to receiving detailed feedback on their demos and getting ample opportunity to rewrite or add parts to a song, and Ferraro explains that some will “Frankenstein” pieces of different submissions together to achieve the desired result. “They’ll find a home for it,” says the Connecticut native, who co-wrote “Run BTS” and Le Sserafim’s “Unforgiven.” “It doesn’t feel like you’re wasting your time at all.”
Seeing the many opportunities K-pop presents for its roster, UMPG has sprung into action over the past few years organizing writing sessions all over the world. Kim handpicked each creative at this year’s camp based not just on skill, but also on who would be most suited to the song briefs at hand — “Specific labels like some writing styles more than others,” Rasho explains — and who would get along best as collaborators.
Figuring out the latter is an art in itself. At last year’s camp, Gray recalls that “there were tears” during a creative dispute over a song that would turn out to be TWICE soloist NAYEON’s “Something.” It ended up being one of the most high-profile releases the inaugural camp created, with the EP it was on, NA, reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart in June.
Next, Kim tailored small groups around who could best match the demands of the individual briefs, which reflect just how tuned in to global trends K-pop labels are. JYP requested a solo song akin to Tate McRae’s “Greedy” for a member of one of its girl groups, while others cited Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” Chappell Roan, Caroline Polachek and Charli xcx’s brat as references.
K-pop’s sonic evolution is a big reason why UMPG’s approach, gathering writers from all over the world, works so well. Swedish and British producers like Max Thulin, 30, and Sam Klempner, respectively, “bring their experimental, cool sounds,” while Germans are masters of “fun, electronic pop,” Rasho says.
“The U.S. writers come and do their rap thing — they have that swagger,” she continues. “They bring out something new and different in each other. They bring the best of their territories, too.”
Celine Svanback records vocals for a girl-group demo.
Nina Westervelt
Celine Svanback and Josh McClelland records vocals.
Nina Westervelt
Only at the end of camp, when all of their songs are finished, do the writers let UMPG treat them to dinner offsite — Cecconi’s on Broadway. Over drinks, McClelland jokes that Universal saved money on hotels by having two couples present. Benjmn and Ferraro are married, and Emil is engaged to fellow Dane Celine Svanback, 28; both couples met in past writing sessions. But aside from a few others from the same close-knit territories who’ve worked together before, like McClelland and Klempner, it’s the first time many of the campers have met — although, in the course of conversation, Benjmn and Thulin realize they share credits on a previous song created remotely, Le Sserafim’s “Eve, Psyche & the Bluebeard’s Wife.”
Most of them, it seems, fell into the K-pop world unintentionally, whether they were headhunted by labels or indoctrinated at the nudging of UMPG. It wasn’t the first choice for many but now, it’s become perhaps their best avenue to flex their creative muscles, writing pop, hip-hop, rock and R&B all under the ever-expanding K-pop umbrella.
“It’s not just one sound,” says Wikstrom, who never did come up for air long enough to visit the Disney store. “That’s what I really love — you’re not tied to anything. I used to think, ‘No, I don’t want to do K-pop. I don’t even know what K-pop is.’
“Then, I realized,” she continues, her eyes widening. “K-pop is everything.”
This story will appear in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Mr. David Washington stands on the grounds that he has tended for decades, amid the Georgia Pines that flood much of the property, as the early-morning June heat creeps across the lawns. Now in his 70s, he’s quick to laugh and does so often, each one punctuating his thick, Southern drawl as he tells the story of the day, some 35 years ago, when Mr. James Brown called out to him and changed his life.
It was the late 1980s, and Mr. Washington, as everyone calls him, had gotten off a 12-hour shift at the cotton mill in Graniteville, some 14 miles away, and gone straight to Mr. Brown’s estate in Beech Island, S.C., when the Godfather of Soul summoned him to the house’s front porch. He had a series of pointed questions for his groundskeeper: Did he smoke? Nothing other than his Newports, Mr. Washington said. Did he drink? He and his wife would have a glass on special occasions, but that was all. Well then, Mr. Brown wanted to know, why were his eyes so red? He explained about the mill job; that his part-time work for Mr. Brown was a way to make ends meet; that he had been on his feet, by then, for hours on end. Well, that wouldn’t do, Mr. Brown replied.
“ ‘You go back down to that plant and tell them you’re putting in your two-week notice — what you make down there, I’ll pay you double if you come work for me,’ ” Mr. Washington recalls the boss saying before breaking out in another laugh. “I said, ‘Yes, sir, Mr. Brown!’ ”
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Over the next 15-plus years, Mr. Washington became more than just Mr. Brown’s full-time groundskeeper. He became a driver, an assistant, a confidant and, after Mr. Brown’s maid fell ill, something of a jack of all trades. “I started working in the house: running his bathwater, doing his grocery shopping, making the bed, babysitting; I did a little bit of everything around here,” he says. “He didn’t like to be by himself, so sometimes I’d sit right in the house with him and we’d watch Westerns, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, the news.” Mr. Washington was the one who, in late December 2006, drove Mr. Brown to the hospital after his dentist heard something in the Godfather’s chest and recommended he get it checked out; and he was there, in the early hours of Christmas Day, when the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business succumbed to pneumonia and took his last breath.
More than 17 years after he made the drive back to Beech Island alone, Mr. Washington is still here. He has kept watch over Brown’s house through a succession of three estate trustees, a Christie’s auction, a 15-year legal battle among Brown’s heirs over his assets and, now, under the stewardship of Primary Wave, which purchased the assets of his estate in December 2021 for a reported $90 million. Primary Wave — the publishing, marketing, branding and content firm that touts itself as being in the “icons and legends” business and also has stakes in the rights of Whitney Houston, Bob Marley, Prince and more — acquired Brown’s publishing, master-royalty income, name and likeness rights and the Beech Island property, with its 60-plus acres, the mansion in which Brown lived since the late 1970s and everything in it, including a dozen cars, two tour buses and even the food that had remained in the cabinets since his death. The company also retained Mr. Washington to look after the place. “He’s our resident historian,” says Donna Grecco, Primary Wave’s asset manager who has overseen the cataloging and archiving of the estate. “He’s a treasure.”
James Brown, who grew up picking cotton so he could afford food and clothes, kept cotton branches in vases around his house to remind himself where he came from.
Andrew Hetherington
The Brown estate in Beech Island sits on 62.8 acres on James Brown Boulevard, behind wrought-iron gates and down a sloping drive that passes through a lake and several other outbuildings. The house is built around an Asian garden in the center, where he liked to sit.
Andrew Hetherington
Primary Wave, founded by veteran label executive Larry Mestel in 2006, has a long history of reinvigorating the intellectual property of music’s giants, both living and departed, whether through new remixes, samples or interpolations of their work, partnerships with brands (its first major success, in 2008, was a sneaker deal with Converse that featured Kurt Cobain lyrics on a line of shoes) or big-ticket content plays like the 2022 Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Several estate and asset deals the company has done came with troves of personal items and memorabilia that took months to sift through and organize.
But the Brown deal marked the first time the company acquired an actual house. (After finalizing the acquisition of 50% of the Prince estate in August 2022, Primary Wave now also owns a stake in Paisley Park.) And what the company found on the compound, which sits just across the Savannah River from Augusta, Ga., was a home almost entirely preserved as it was on the day Brown died, down to the Christmas tree that still stands in the foyer, with unopened presents underneath.
To walk through its rooms is to step into a moment frozen in time: big, clunky TVs and VCRs by brands long out of business; Christmas decorations on the mantel; a matching collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books in his office; phone books on the shelves. Mirrors, elephant motifs, bamboo poles and marble are everywhere. Inside Brown’s personal hair salon there’s a basket of dozens of hair curlers, with bottles and cans of hair product lining the shelves. A mix of cultural artifacts — African, Native American, Indian, East Asian — adorn every room; each light switch cover is a photo of Brown holding a street sign with his name on it. Grecco, with her team’s help and Mr. Washington’s expertise, has been working to restore everything to precisely where it was during Brown’s life, before a series of museums (including the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame) and the one-time auction resulted in some items shifting around and being moved in and out.
“When we first came into this house, there were boxes everywhere,” Grecco remembers. She and a team of archivists went room by room, photographing everything, scanning documents, protecting clothing, entering information into spreadsheets and documenting where things were found and where they should go. “We’ve had this estate for two-and-a-half-years — we’re still doing it,” she says. “You put together a plan of how to approach it from the most delicate and respectful angle knowing that this isn’t a museum — this was somebody’s living space.”
Mr. David Washington, who worked for Brown for decades later in the star’s life, with Brown’s Rolls-Royce, one of several luxury vehicles — including a red Thunderbird and a ’42 Lincoln Continental — that came with the estate when Primary Wave purchased it. Mr. Washington’s favorite? “Big Red,” the lawnmower he stores at the top of the hill.
Andrew Hetherington
Brown’s bedroom was a centerpiece of his house; opposite the bed (with his monogrammed pajamas), heart- shaped mirrors flank an old TV on the wall. In the corner is a movie director’s chair, from the set of either The Blues Brothers or Rocky IV, both of which he appeared in.
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At the same time, the rest of Primary Wave got to work, and the executive team went down to Beech Island to walk through the property. “When we are stepping into the full gamut of an artist’s life and you can touch the cars and go on the tour bus, it helps us with our ideation and what we’re going to do on a marketing level and a content level,” says Ramon Villa, Primary Wave’s COO. “The closer we are to the assets and we see how the artist lived, it helps us ideate more.”
Already, some of the team’s ideas have had an impact. In 2022, Primary Wave licensed Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” to Amazon for its Mother’s Day “Woman’s World” campaign; the ad won a Clio Award in January for best use of music in film and video. The following month, plant-based milk company Silk featured Jeremy Renner singing Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good)” in a Super Bowl ad. The Netflix films You People (“The Payback”) and Shirley (“Think [About It]”) also dipped into the catalog, while the upcoming Peacock film Fight Night incorporated “The Boss” into its trailer and The Wonder Years used “I’m Black and I’m Proud” in a period-specific scene. “A lot of what we’re trying to connect the dots to is either period-specific projects in film and TV or just more generally catalog-based projects,” Primary Wave head of global synch Marty Silverstone says. In partnership with Republic Records, the estate also put out a previously unreleased archival song, “We Got To Change” — recorded in August 1970 — in tandem with the February release of a four-part A&E docuseries, James Brown: Say It Loud.
In fact, one of the challenges Primary Wave faces as it looks at content opportunities for the Brown estate is that so many things have already been done. In 2014, a biopic starring Chadwick Boseman, Get On Up, was released to positive reviews. Around a dozen other documentary-style or live performance-based films on Brown have come in the past 20 years. “There’s been a lot done,” Primary Wave partner/chief content officer Natalia Nastaskin says. “But there are so many stories that are part of Mr. Brown’s life.”
Brown’s salon, which also contained a spa and footbaths (for feet that were constantly dancing onstage), was full of dozens of the same product — he was so meticulous about his hair and appearance that when he found something he liked, he would often buy it in bulk out of fear it would sell out or be discontinued.
Andrew Hetherington
This photo of Brown holding the street sign that leads to his home adorns nearly every light switch in the house.
Andrew Hetherington
Nastaskin cites films such as 2023’s Air, about the creation of Michael Jordan’s Nike empire, and 2020’s Academy Award-nominated One Night in Miami…, centered on a meeting between Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown, as examples of how a figure like Brown could appear in a major film without making another cradle-to-grave biopic. “It’s about isolating these very important moments in time and focusing on them, and focusing on ways that they haven’t been dissected before,” she says. A live-theater project is also in the works.
But for an artist who dominated music for decades, then earned a second life as one of the most-sampled talents in hip-hop, Primary Wave is looking far beyond the obvious opportunities to keep Brown’s legacy front and center for future generations. “With new media and emerging platforms and things like [artificial intelligence], we get a ton of incoming traffic with wanting Mr. Brown, wanting to create the next ABBA: Voyage experience that is based on Mr. Brown’s live performances,” Nastaskin says, referencing the successful virtual concert series of the Swedish band that debuted earlier this year. “We’re having those conversations, but we’re very selective because it’s very hard to get Mr. Brown right as an avatar. It has to be perfect, and if it’s not perfect, then we’re not interested in doing it.”
The first thing most people notice when they get to Augusta is the heat. The summer has barely begun, but the heat already wraps the city like a cocoon, standing at 98 on the thermostat but more like quicksand on Broad Street. Anyone in their right mind is indoors, giving the streets an almost Potemkin feel, though one man lounging in the shade with a trumpet outside an empty club called The SOUL Bar hints at the history that thrums below the surface.
Brown was born in South Carolina but raised in Augusta, and the murals, statues and soul references that permeate the city reflect his continuing influence. He’s an icon, a genius and means many different things to many different people. “Entrepreneur, self-made, proud, confident,” says Bennish Brown, president/CEO of Destination Augusta, which promotes tourism in the city. “A lot of Augusta’s history and progress is tied to the way James Brown lived his life: constantly innovating, evolving and always looking for opportunities that made sense.”
Primary Wave takes special care of Brown’s iconic suits and jumpsuits, which can be particularly susceptible to the passage of time.
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The front living room of Brown’s home, featuring a photo of him and his eldest son, Teddy, above the fireplace; a phonograph on the hearth; and a bar in the corner. The house is full of mirrors, bamboo and motifs such as elephants.
Andrew Hetherington
Though the Brown house is technically in South Carolina, Augusta lies just 8 miles away. And the city will be an important partner in Primary Wave’s ultimate vision for the house: a Brown version of Elvis Presley’s home-turned-museum, Graceland.
In pursuit of that, Primary Wave will document the continuing restoration process through a development deal with Page Turner, the licensed real estate agent/TV producer who hosts HGTV’s Fix My Flip. “We want people to be able to come and peek behind the curtain of James Brown’s home and have a space with some creative and educational opportunities, too, because education was pretty important to him,” says Primary Wave’s Songhay Taylor, who runs point on all things house-related.
But there is one important distinction between Graceland and the Brown home. “Memphis is a city that gets a lot more tourists and traffic as a music city,” Villa says. “So as we look at what is a realistic approach to having his house be open to the public, we’re working with the city of Augusta as they try to build up their tourism to make a comprehensive plan.” That, Destination Augusta’s Brown says, could include marketing the estate as the focal point of a regionwide attraction with James Brown at its center — “a dream come true.”
A photograph of Brown and his father, above the service flag that adorned his dad’s casket during his funeral. Brown had a sometimes contentious relationship with him, though he later purchased a house for the elder Brown in Augusta in the ’60s.
Andrew Hetherington
James Brown’s “Sex” jumpsuit in the music atrium of Brown’s home in Beech Island, S.C.
Andrew Hetherington
To many, Augusta is most synonymous with The Masters, the crown jewel of global golf tournaments, played each April at Augusta National Golf Club. But Brown’s story aligns better with how locals see themselves and their city than The Masters, the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business a better avatar than the golfers who visit once a year to play an exclusive course. Brown, after all, pulled himself up from sharecropping roots to the top shelf of culture; from picking cotton to shaking hands with the Pope; from dropping out of school to working with a half-dozen successive American presidents on free education initiatives for kids across the country. (His estate stipulates that his master-recording royalties support educational opportunities for Georgia and South Carolina youth; Primary Wave has honored this by contributing a portion of all revenue to a permanent trust run by Brown’s family.)
His story was one version of the American dream — good, bad and ugly. And there was an ugly. Brown’s sterling musical reputation is deeply scarred by allegations of domestic violence against a series of wives and girlfriends, often spurred by alleged drug use, as well as arrests for assault and drug possession for which he served a prison sentence in the late 1980s, among other lurid incidents and accusations, particularly near the end of his life. “We’re not running from that aspect of him, but we’re also paying homage to what he did throughout history, the trails he blazed and the things he stood on from education to Black empowerment, entrepreneurialism, his principles,” Taylor says. “It’s about not ignoring the human elements of him, but also celebrating him as well.”
If things go to plan, Augusta will soon be even more widely known as the home of James Brown — the City of Soul, perhaps, or of Funk — where his legacy and influence are on full display. (As Brown put it in an interview featured in the A&E docuseries, “I created funk. God and me.”) “In order to create an overall immersive experience, we need the city of Augusta to help tell those stories,” Taylor says. “Where he shoeshined, where he buck-danced, where he would do shows, where he went to church — all of those things that are part of the overall story.”
Brown died on Christmas Day in 2006, and this tree has remained standing — with presents underneath — in the foyer of his home ever since.
Andrew Hetherington
Two tour buses parked on the lawns of the Brown estate from the Living in America Tour in the ’80s. One housed the band, the other equipment.
Andrew Hetherington
And for some, that story is not entirely in the past. Mr. Washington recounts that long, lonely drive back to Beech Island from the hospital on Christmas Day, passing through the wrought-iron gates for the first time since the boss had gone.
“I come down the hill — you could see right to the porch — and it looked like he was standing out there with his hands folded up,” he says. “I was like, ‘Mr. Brown, you know you got pneumonia, you need to get back in the house!’ And then the closer I got, his spirit just faded away.” For a few days afterward, he remembers the house alarm going off for no reason, lights flickering in different rooms, an unsettling feeling.
He has other memories, too — driving back-and-forth with Mr. Brown to Atlanta, going down to church on Sundays and then visiting Mr. Brown’s mother in the nursing home afterward, stopping for fried chicken on the way back. “I’ve got a lot of good memories of him,” he says. “Any time he’d crack a joke or something…” Mr. Washington trails off, then laughs again. “I could visualize his face right there. I know it’s been some years, but it seems like he’s been gone just yesterday.”
For more exclusive photos of the James Brown home, read here.
This story will appear in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.