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29 Mar 2023

‘It’s Definitely Also Business, Otherwise We Wouldn’t Be Allowed to Fly Over’: What Gets Done During Miami Music Week?

Each year during the penultimate week of March, the city of Miami is inundated with superstar DJs, up-and-coming producers, fans and electronic music industry insiders — all of whom flock from around the globe to have a little fun and seek their fortune at Miami Music Week.

As is annual tradition, from Tuesday to Sunday — or in the case of Club Space, which hosts a 48-hour closing party, the following Tuesday — every venue, warehouse, hotel lobby, art gallery and alley that can fit a pair of turntables is transformed into a party; the piece de resistance being Ultra Music Festival, the three-day mega-fest that takes over downtown’s Bayfront Park the weekend following MMW.

But other than throwing parties, booking every hotel room within a 20-mile radius and getting roughly five hours of sleep a night, what is everyone actually doing? What, exactly, is Miami Music Week actually for?

This business-laced bacchanal got its start in 1986 when dance music fans Louis Possenti and Bill Kelly organized the first Winter Music Conference. What started in a Fort Lauderdale Marriott over the years expanded to host an estimated 100,000 people in its golden age in the ’90s. The conference lured a who’s who of DJs, record label executives and everyone in between to Florida’s tropical beaches to talk shop, swap records, test the latest gear and share a cocktail or 20.

WMC also hosted informative panels alongside a lineup of official pool parties, demo submission opportunities for up-and-coming artists and capped this celebration with the International Dance Music Awards. 

Soon, satellite parties not officially associated with WMC popped up around the city, taking advantage of the wealth of talent flying in. The first Ultra Music Festival came to life on South Beach in 1999, and by 2011 had grown from one day to three, becoming one of the largest and most successful dance music festivals not only in the United States, but the world. In 2011, when WMC decided to move to early March while Ultra kept it’s later in the month dates (effectively forcing the industry at large to choose one of the other week), the MMW brand was born to give a name to the week of parties leading up to the festival.

In 2018, Ultra bought WMC outright, putting on small iterations of the Conference in 2018 and 2019. After the pandemic, however, there’s been no conference at all. (Its official website has been updated for 2024, suggesting a return next year.)

Still, hundreds of thousands of electronic music makers, lovers and executives keep returning for MMW. But how important for business is Miami Music Week? Or is it just a party? In an industry that parties for business, does it accomplish both goals?

pinnins Sessions Miami Music Week

View From Spinnins Sessions Miami Music Week 2023

@10kphotography

“I’ve been going to Miami for more than 10 years already, and I almost never went to the conference,” says Jorn Heringa, Head of A&R at Spinnin Records. This year, he and VP of Marketing Susanne Hazendonk flew to Miami from Spinnin’s Dutch HQ to take advantage of what they see as one of the most important business opportunities of the dance calendar year.

“You have a little drink together and it makes our chats a bit easier,” Hazendonk laughs. “But I wouldn’t say it’s just partying. It’s definitely also business — otherwise we wouldn’t be allowed to fly over.”

“It’s great for us to be here, because normally you don’t see a lot of American artists and managers,” Heringa continues. “Amsterdam Dance Event is just the overall business, and I think Miami is more DJ-minded — there’s a lot of DJs and managers around.”

With so many of Spinnin’s DJs and producers in one picturesque locale, the label books tons of talent for its Spinnin Sessions Pool Party and asks these artists to take part in press runs and on-site shoots, filming content that can be shared on social media for months to come. 

“We also try to launch a couple of really important club tracks, so DJs can test the waters,” Heringa says. “If it feels good, they hopefully will play it in their sets at Ultra or one of the bigger pool parties — because it’s the starting point of the summer, and if it works over there, they will play it the whole season.”

Ultra proudly proclaims itself as one of the most globally attended festivals in the electronic world. Heringa and Hazendonk liken its global impact with that of Tomorrowland in Europe. Add to that the Ultra livestream broadcast, viewed by millions, and you’ve got a recipe for serious exposure.

“That has a lot of impact on our current marketing strategies,” Hazendonk says, “so it moves the needle for sure.”

You don’t have to be a record label or artist playing Ultra to feel the impact. Brownies & Lemonade is an event production brand that started in Los Angeles and now hosts a variety of concepts across the country. After hosting a stage takeover at Ultra and its first MMW event in 2018, B&L considers MMW pivotal.

“Miami Music Week is one of the few events where, no matter how big or small you are, you can have some sort of involvement,” says co-founder Kush Fernando. “It’s a week long and stretches all around Miami from small to big events, as well as Ultra. If you’re into dance music in some capacity, you should definitely try to take advantage and do something.”

For Fernando and his team, MMW has become a spotlight and launch pad for whatever the B&L brand sees as its most important activations. “Our drum’n’bass parties [DnBnL] are a big initiative for us, so we really wanted to have the presence of that at Miami Music Week,” he continues. Fernando says that in the past, B&L’s Miami events made enough to cover their expenses, although this year’s sold-out events turned a profit.

Madeon

Madeon Plays Brownie & Lemonade’s Miami Music Week 2023 Show.

Acre Media

Standing on the side of the stage at B&L’s Thursday night party, the impact MMW can have on an artist could be seen first-hand. Madeon was delivering a massive DJ set, complete with his hyper-saturated Good Faith Forever visuals. A group of industry insiders gathered in VIP to watch, including up-and-coming producers ISOxo and Moore Kismet, both of whom were scheduled to play Ultra in the coming days.

When Madeon started mixing into ISOxo’s single “Beam,” the friends looked at each other, jaws on the floor. They started jumping up and down, and then Madeon turned and waved ISOxo to join him on stage. You could tell it was a moment the 22-year-old would never forget.

“When I first experienced Miami Music week, I was a college student in Miami working as a waitress,” remembers Stefania Aronin, known now to fans as DJ and producer Nala, with releases on Dirtybird, Pets Recordings and her own label Mi Domina. “It was the first time I realized I could pursue a career in music and be part of the arts and entertainment world. By the time I left the infamous Hard to Leave Sunday party at 7:00 a.m., I decided to quit my waitressing job two hours later and throw myself into the music events industry 100 percent.”

Aronin lived in Miami at the time, and though she now lives in LA, she returns each year to take advantage of booking and networking opportunities.

“While partying is still a big part of the week, I’m at a different point in my career where the goal is to discuss track releases, tour dates, and collab opportunities with old and new colleagues,” she says. “It’s about sending unreleased tracks to friends and playing parties that showcase your art direction. This past week, I spent a lot of time reconnecting with artists, promoters, agents and label managers from cities across the world. It’s a mix of a reunion and a reminder that we’re all pushing full speed ahead in our careers.”

“Miami Music Week is definitely a highlight of my year,” says Brandon Kessler, co-founder of Miami-based management company Super Music Group, whose roster includes Grammy-nominated artists Amtrac and Durate and Major Lazer member Ape Drums. “Being from Miami, it’s amazing for everyone in our industry and the artists we manage to be together in our city playing shows and networking. This year was my 15th MMW, and every year it reminds me of the growth we’ve made during the previous year.”

Kessler’s client Amtrac used MMW as a platform to launch a new party concept called Go Time!, going back-to-back with his friend Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, a show Kessler says “had the nostalgia of an OG MMW event.” While Kessler declined to comment on the profitability of these shows, he calls them “a labor of love.” 

Amtrac b2b Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs at Go Time!

Ian O’ Connor

So too was the panel that LP Giobbi and her Femme House non-profit organized at the W South Beach on March 24.

“During a week that is chaotic to say the least, it was important to me to take a beat to set intentions on what we are all doing out in Miami in the first place,” LP Giobbi says. “Hearing all the panelists and my co-founder, Lauren Spalding, speak about allyship and equity gave me the fuel I needed to power through that week.”

This panel, Allyship and Amplification: Creating Equity in Dance Music invited representatives of Spotify, UTA, Diplo’s Higher Ground label and more (including the author of this piece) to discuss the current state of the industry’s diversity initiatives. It was well-attended, demonstrating that there’s still a demand for informative panels during this party marathon. One of the young women in the audience told me days later on Instagram that it was the highlight of her MMW. 

“If we just go into the city, throw a party and then leave, it kind of seems like we’re missing the point,” says Bryan Linares, Label Manager at Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak. He’s worked with the company for more than 15 years and has been coming to Miami for 14. 

“What we’re trying to do is figure out how we make this more of an interactive experience,” he says. “How do we create more of a community with fans, but also with up-and-coming artists?”

Toward that end, Dim Mak set up a demo submission opportunity for emerging artists to have their songs heard by label heads, who in turn gave them instant feedback. It’s something Dim Mak started at last year’s ADE and hopes to continue in cities across the U.S.

Speaking of upcoming talent, there is one segment of MMW that still feels under-represented no matter where you go: Miami itself.

“The scene is kind of getting run over — like, trampled,” says Miami event producer Justin Lobo. “It’s all become super-commercialized, and there’s not really a place for locals to have the spotlight shined on them. Club Space kind of does that for some of our locals, but they’re basically a huge conglomerate. At the end of the day, the majority of people that come here are tourists, and we live here. We should be able to get a piece of that.”

Rather than sit and complain, Lobo and his buddies put on a massive house party some 20 minutes west of the main MMW hub. Happening on March 25 (the second night of Ultra), the cheekily titled Miami A– Party fit a few hundred locals into two downstairs rooms and a backyard, transformed with club-quality sound systems, lighting tech and some of the highest-tier DJ and live music talent I heard all week — all of whom are born or based in Miami and south Florida. 

Miami A-- Party

Anastasiya Verbytskaya

Cars lined every edge of grassy lawns for a roughly five-block radius, while inside, the kitchen was completely covered in silver wrapping; disco grooves bounced off the refrigerator and through the ears of sweaty dancers. Another room was set up with a folding table where DJs played straight-up electro records in the dark for hours on end. Every time someone accidentally hit a light switch, the room of kids would shout until someone turned them back off. 

There were full bars set up in each room, and a merch table with Miami A– Party t-shirts in the backyard. Here, I heard a live band play everything from ‘80s new wave covers to country music before having my mind totally blown by the improvisational grooves of three-piece band Eris. Lobo says he lost money on the party, but, “For the sake of the party and the community, I said, ‘F–k it.’”

It was particularly insane that all this was going on in a two-story residence, while just a quick drive away, essentially every major electronic artist in the world was playing. The party went until 9 a.m. the next morning, until one of the neighbors finally called the cops.

“I think that there’s a possibility we might bring this thing to the [94th Aero] Squadron,” Lobo says, referencing one of Miami’s large and off-the-beaten path venues near the airport. “That’s a big dream of mine. You put a thousand people in there that don’t know any of these f—ing locals—well, guess what? After that party? You’re going to know who they are.”

29 Mar 2023

Ashley McBryde Stocks Her ‘Kitchen’ With Life Lessons and Independent Aspirations on New Single

People don’t come with an owner’s manual, but if they did, the checklist might look something like the words in Ashley McBryde’s new single, “Light On in the Kitchen.”

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Much like Tim McGraw’s “Humble and Kind,” written by Lori McKenna, “Kitchen” is a compendium of wisdom handed down from a mother to her kids. But where “Humble” was relayed from Mom’s point of view, the advice in “Kitchen” is seen through the recipient’s eyes. And those eyes may well be teary.

“Mom and her sister and I are really close, and we say it to each other, just to remind one another that we’re on each other’s minds,” McBryde says. “Instead of just saying, ‘All right, I love you. I’ll talk to you later. Bye,’ we’ll say, ‘Hey, I’m going to leave the kitchen light on for you tonight.’ I don’t know why it’s so stirring. It tugs on something.”

That something is the stuff that successful families are made of: the generational mentoring, the caring for relatives, the sense that there’s someone offering protection. Those are the nuts and bolts of love and connection.

“Light On in the Kitchen” arrived in the world at a time when connection was being tested. McBryde wrote it with Connie Harrington (“I Drive Your Truck,” “Mine Would Be You”) and Jessi Alexander (“Don’t Think Jesus,” “Never Say Never”) on June 9, 2020. It was three months into the pandemic, 15 days after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and eight days after the Trump administration used chemicals to disperse a crowd of protesters for a controversial photo op in front of a Washington, D.C., church.

“I just remember that being such a dark time,” says Alexander. “It was dark for me, just being stuck at home and feeling like I’m lost. I mean, songwriting is such a part of who I am. It was a weird time, but what a beautiful light’s come out of it.”

They masked up and met in person to write two songs in Midtown Nashville — “It was tumbleweeds down Music Row,” Alexander recalls. Harrington got one of the day’s titles from a story in The Magnolia Journal, a quarterly magazine published by Chip and Joanna Gaines, co-hosts of HGTV’s Fixer Upper. The “light on in the kitchen” line resonated with her own experiences.

“If I have guests that get up in the night, I want them to be able to go to the kitchen because that’s where everything you need is,” she says. “No matter how little your kitchen is, or how many people are there, and how much room might be elsewhere in the home, everybody ends up in the kitchen.”

Alexander threaded a simple chord progression as they began to fashion a series of homey thoughts from the top “left-hand corner of the page,” says McBryde. “I love it when songs happen this way.”

The verses provide details on smart self-care, the first two choruses feature hints at building relationships, and the final chorus changes a few lines to focus on living independently if that right relationship never quite appears. Significant time spent alone, oddly enough, improves the chances of living successfully with someone else.

“Until you really get along with yourself, and reconcile your demons, and learn who you are apart from anybody else, you won’t be at your best and optimal,” Harrington reasons. “Everyone needs to do that, in my opinion.”

After a parade of images and hurdles — pancakes after midnight, runny noses and weight issues, among them — that last chorus encourages listeners to stand up for themselves: “If somethin’ tries to hold you back/Get up and give it hell.” It’s an example of a mentor plotting their own obsolescence.

“As a mom, if you’ve done a good job, they don’t need you anymore,” says Alexander. “That’s the ‘light on in the kitchen’ for me — my daughter and I and my sons actually had this conversation the other night: ‘Always, you can call me. There’s nothing you can say that would keep me from helping you if you needed it.’”

When producer Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Miranda Lambert) heard “Kitchen,” McBryde’s team already had it scoped out as a likely single. Joyce felt pressured to make it radio-friendly, though he fought that tendency. “It’s hard not to think that way,” he says, “particularly if they put that on you.”

They cut “Kitchen” at Joyce’s Neon Cross Studios during February 2022 in East Nashville using McBryde’s band: electric guitarist Matt Helmkamp, mandolinist Chris Harris, bassist Chris Sancho and drummer Quinn Hill. The challenge was to make the supporting arrangement interesting without distracting from the lyrics. McBryde had already finished recording her Lindeville album, and knowing it would be released first, they had freedom to take their time in getting “Kitchen” right.

The mandolin brought a bluegrass element to its folk foundation, while Helmkamp applied a contrasting blues guitar to the proceedings. Those instruments deftly bracketed the song, though McBryde eventually recognized an unintended symbolism. “It’s a big guitar and a little mandolin,” she says. “And it’s a big woman and a smaller girl having a conversation.”

Hill’s percussion part relied mostly — if not entirely — on the snare and kick drum, dialed intentionally into a thinner sound. “I think I’m filtering the top end of the drums,” says Joyce. “They’re very dark and sort of muffled, so they’re not getting in the way of the vocals.”

McBryde recorded the bulk of her vocals live with the band, getting a more cohesive performance out of the entire ensemble. “When somebody’s really singing, then the players play better,” Joyce reasons. “There’s a million questions that are answered naturally in your own mind — how hard to play, when to play, when not to. When somebody like her is really performing, it just makes it easy.”

It was not necessarily easy for McBryde, who wrote “Kitchen” with the longest notes — on the phrases “trust yourself” and “love yourself” — in an uncomfortable section of her voice. “I don’t know where other women’s vocal break is, but the difference between chest voice and head voice is just right there on that damn line,” she says. “It’s so on-brand for me to be like, ‘Here’s the line, I’ll put my toes on it.’”

McBryde topped off the recording with finger-picking on acoustic guitar. She performed it live for the first time on Feb. 24 at TempleLive in Fort Smith, Ark. During the day, she sang it for her mom, though it took three tries before she could get through it. McBryde held it together onstage that night, introducing it to fans a day after Warner Music Nashville released it to country radio via PlayMPE. “Light On in the Kitchen” occupies the No. 41 spot on the Country Airplay chart dated April 1.

As a contemplative ballad, it’s a bit unusual as a first single from a forthcoming album — but it speaks volumes for its long-term possibilities.

“I didn’t see that coming,” McBryde says. “I’m so happy for that to be the life that this song lives — to not only be on the album, but also to be the song [about which] we say, ‘This is the foot that we’re going to stick forward.’”

29 Mar 2023

Doja Cat Claps Back at Claim That She’s ‘Encouraging’ Young Fans to Get Plastic Surgery

Doja Cat found herself firing back on social media over the weekend after being accused of promoting plastic surgery to her young fans.

The online drama started when the rapper tweeted, “got my ti–ies done and my cl– bedazzled” on March 20, also revealing she received liposuction on her thighs but was “healing fast.” One follower asked Doja to show off her “new boobies” on Sunday, and she responded that they were too “swollen” just a few days post-surgery. However, that’s when another user jumped into the conversation to tweet, “Stop encouraging your young and impressionable fans to change their bodies.”

Doja didn’t take kindly to the accusation, and considering she was laid up with nothing but time on her hands, she didn’t mince words with her response, telling the troll to “eat my long quiet and warm farts.”

In a separate thread on the same day, a different follower joked, “She’s so easy to trigger it’s hilarious,” and the Grammy winner acknowledged, “i know, stop. please im literally on bed rest yall gonna get blocked over a bad joke.”

Doja then proceeded to give her 5.5 million followers on the platform more updates about her recovery, telling them she wasn’t in much pain, “just numb and swollen as f— under my arms” and promised to show off the results of her breast reduction “soon when they dont look like two loafs of bread. give it 3 more weeks.”

It seems that Doja was at least well enough to make an appearance at Monday night at the 2023 iHeartRadio Music Awards in Los Angeles, taking the stage to accept an iHeartRadio Titanium Award for her “most-played” hit “Woman.”

Check out Doja’s many tweets and unvarnished responses regarding her recent surgery below.

29 Mar 2023

Emily Ratajkowski Recalls How ‘Upset’ She Was Over Resurfaced Taylor Swift Interview

Emily Ratajkowski made headlines back in January when she commented on a TikTok featuring a 2012 Ellen DeGeneres interview with Taylor Swift, in which the “All Too Well” superstar is visibly and outspokenly uncomfortable as the host has her react to various photographs of herself with male celebrities.

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“This is so f—ed up. She’s literally begging her to stop,” Ratajkowski commented on the clip, in which Swift is seen telling DeGeneres, “Stop it, stop it, stop! This makes me feel so bad about myself,” before adding, “Every time I come up here, you put a different dude up there on the screen, and it just makes me really question what I stand for as a human being.”

In a new interview with Elle, the High Low podcast host reflected on how she felt watching the TikTok clip. “I recently became a Swiftie. I loved her last album and I’ve seen her documentary, but I wasn’t following her career in the same way the last 10-plus years,” Ratajkowski explained. “Watching that [interview], I was so struck by how clear she’s being about what is making her uncomfortable. I think the lens that I would’ve viewed that interview from 10 years ago versus now has evolved so much, which is why it struck me. I was in bed falling asleep and commented on it, not because I thought it was going to make headlines at all.”

She continued that Swift is “another example of a woman who has been faced with such blatant misogyny and sexism, and yet we don’t want to admit that, because she’s powerful and successful, and also she’s white.”

“There’s a bunch of reasons, which I think are fair and important to also bring up in the conversation, but that clip in particular was just so striking to me because she was communicating very clearly about why she didn’t feel comfortable with what was happening,” Ratajkowski concluded. “And it was making everyone laugh. It actually upset me. And I think that just even that speaks to a larger thing I’ve noticed, where people don’t listen to femme-presenting people.”

29 Mar 2023

Metro Boomin Has a Joint Album On the Way With J.I.D

Metro Boomin has been creeping back into the studio just months after dropping his third Billboard 200-topping album Heroes & Villains in December. And it looks like he’s already cooking up another project with none other than J.I.D, which a rep from the rapper’s team confirmed to Billboard on Wednesday (March 29).

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The superproducer took to Twitter on Tuesday to share some pics of the new dynamic duo from the studio with the caption, “Got a lot of new music coming but when me and @JIDsv drop,” followed by a string of fire emojis. The “151 Rum” rapper commented, “I love working with u brudda, it’s an honor,” to which Metro replied, “Honor is mine family,” with a handshake emoji.

Metro later wrote “Yessir!!” in response to the Debating Hip-Hop Twitter account, announcing, “we’re really getting a @JIDsv x @MetroBoomin album.”

He might’ve hinted at the album earlier in the year when he sat down with Streetz Is Watchin Radio and told DJ Drama about a collab project that he was releasing this year. “I’mma just say when this drop, honestly, it’ll be like one of the biggest things of this generation,” the producer said. “And you know I be chilling, I don’t like to just jump out and say that, but I can confidently say that.”

In his Flaunt cover story, Metro confirmed a collab album with Future is also on the way, affirming, “I would bet on it. I would definitely bet on it.” Metro is clearly no stranger to collab albums, having worked on Without Warning alongside 21 Savage and Offset in 2017, Double or Nothing with Big Sean the same year, and Savage Mode II with 21 Savage (with special narrative assistance from Morgan Freeman) in 2020.

29 Mar 2023

Taylor Swift Scores 189th Hot 100 Hit With ‘All of the Girls You Loved Before’

Taylor Swift’s four newly released songs make impacts on Billboard’s charts dated April 1.

Swift released four tracks March 17, timed to the kick-off that night of her The Eras Tour. Among them, “All of the Girls You Loved Before” launches at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking her 189th career entry on the chart, extending her record for the most among women.

Notably, Swift has now debuted at least one song on the Hot 100 each year since 2006, when she logged her first with “Tim McGraw,” on the chart dated that Sept. 23. Her uninterrupted 18-year run of debuts marks the longest active streak among all acts. (She made the cut in 2016 on the last day of that year: “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever [Fifty Shades Darker],” with Zayn, debuted that Dec. 31.)

Plus, Swift lifts her total to a record-extending 80 top 10s on the Digital Song Sales chart, while her “If This Was a Movie (Taylor’s Version)” premieres at No. 1 on Country Digital Song Sales. With the original having ruled in 2011, the composition is the first to have led the list via two versions.

Swift Up to 189 Hot 100 Hits

Swift’s “All of the Girls You Loved Before,” originally recorded during sessions for her 2019 album Lover, soars onto the Hot 100 at No. 12, with 15.3 million official U.S. streams, 1.2 million in airplay audience (even as it’s not being actively promoted to radio) and 17,500 sold March 17-23, according to Luminate.

Swift swells her career count to 189 Hot 100 entries.

Most Hot 100 Hits:

  • 293, Drake
  • 207, Glee Cast
  • 189, Taylor Swift
  • 184, Lil Wayne
  • 160, Future
  • 141, Kanye West
  • 133, Lil Baby
  • 125, Nicki Minaj
  • 114, Chris Brown
  • 109, Elvis Presley (with the legend’s career having pre-dated the Hot 100’s Aug. 4, 1958, inception)
  • 105, Justin Bieber
  • 105, Jay-Z

As previously reported, “Girls” also enters at No. 10 on the Billboard Global 200 chart.

Swift First to 80 Digital Song Sales Top 10s

All four newly-released Swift songs start in the top 10 of the Digital Song Sales chart.

Beyond “Girls” at No. 2, Swift debuts with “If This Was a Movie (Taylor’s Version)” (No. 4; 11,300 sold), “Safe & Sound (Taylor’s Version),” with Joy Williams and John Paul White (No. 5; 11,200 sold), and “Eyes Open (Taylor’s Version)” (No. 6; 10,900 sold).

Swift becomes the first act with as many as 80 Digital Song Sales top 10s.

Most Digital Song Sales Top 10s:

  • 80, Taylor Swift
  • 57, Drake
  • 49, Nicki Minaj
  • 42, Justin Bieber
  • 39, Eminem
  • 36, Lil Wayne
  • 36, Rihanna
  • 32, BTS
  • 27, Kanye West
  • 26, Ariana Grande
  • 25, Lady Gaga

Swift’s Hit ‘Movie’ Reboot

Meanwhile, Swift’s “If This Was a Movie (Taylor’s Version)” opens at No. 1 on Country Digital Song Sales. With the original having led for a week in November 2011, the composition is the first to have topped the tally via two versions.

The re-recording is additionally Swift’s record-padding 19th Country Digital Song Sales No. 1.

Most Country Digital Song Sales No. 1s:

  • 19, Taylor Swift
  • 11, Luke Bryan
  • 10, Jason Aldean
  • 10, Kane Brown
  • 10, Florida Georgia Line
  • 10, Morgan Wallen
  • 9, Carrie Underwood
  • 8, Luke Combs
  • 7, Blake Shelton
  • 5, Eric Church
  • 5, Tim McGraw

29 Mar 2023

30 Ways Selena Quintanilla’s Legacy Has Endured: A Timeline

Selena Quintanilla-Perez rightfully earned her titles of “La Reina del Tex-Mex” (Queen of Tejano) and “La Reina de la Cumbia” (Queen of Cumba) because she single-handedly revolutionized the genres, fusing her Mexican roots with bold new sounds. Alongside her brother A.B. Quintanilla III, who produced all of her biggest hits, and her band Los Dinos, Selena was not afraid to make music on their own terms, adding a hint of pop and rock to the classic cumbia, mariachi, rancheras, and Tejano rhythms.

Born and raised in Texas, Selena was homegrown.

As a woman in a male-dominated industry, she managed to keep it classy and real. With her bedazzled bustiers and high-waisted pants, she was sexy but approachable. Her music, including timeless hits such as “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” and “Amor Prohibido,” had a universal appeal, and when she won the best Mexican American album Grammy for Selena Live! in 1993, she became the first female Tejano artist to win that award.

On the Billboard charts, seven of her studio albums hit No. 1 on the Top Latin Albums chart, including Amor Prohibido (1994), which spent 20 weeks there, and Dreaming of You (released posthumously in 1995), which spent 44 weeks. The latter set made history as the first predominately Spanish-language album to debut at No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart.

Selena’s timeless appeal has continued well beyond her death at age 23 on March 31, 1995. Her legacy has not only shined on the charts, but also on social media, street murals, clothing lines, and makeup brands as an example of a true Latin icon in pop culture.

Here are 30 ways her legacy has stayed alive throughout the years:

29 Mar 2023

Elon Musk & Other Tech Leaders Call for Pause on Training AI With ‘Human-Competitive Intelligence’

In a new open letter signed by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Andrew Yang and more on Wednesday (March 29), leaders in technology, academia and politics came together to call for a moratorium on training AI systems “more advanced than Chat GPT-4” for “at least 6 months.”

The letter states that “AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity,” including the increased spread of propaganda and fake news as well as automation leading to widespread job loss. “Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?” the letter asks.

By drawing the line at AI models “more advanced than Chat GPT-4,” the signees are likely pointing to generative artificial intelligence — a term encompassing a subset of AI that can create new content after being trained via the input of millions or even billions of pieces of data. While some companies license or create their own training data, a large number of AIs are trained using data sets scraped from the web that contain copyright-protected material, including songs, books, articles, images and more. This practice has sparked widespread debate over whether or not AI companies should be required to obtain consent or to compensate the rights holders, and whether the fast-evolving models will endanger the livelihoods of musicians, illustrators and other creatives.

Before late 2022, generative AI was little discussed outside of tech-savvy circles, but it has gained national attention over the last six months. Popular examples of generative AI today include image generators like DALLE-2, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, which use simple text prompts to conjure up realistic pictures. Chatbots (also called Large Language Models or “LLMs”) like Chat GPT are also considered generative, as are machines that can create new music at the touch of a button. Though generative AI models in music have yet to make as many headlines as chatbots and image generators, companies like Boomy, Soundful, Beatlab, Google’s Magenta, Open AI and others are already building them, leading to fears that their output could one day threaten human-made music.

The letter urging the pause in AI training was signed by some of AI’s biggest executives. They notably include Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, Conjecture AI CEO Connor Leahy, Unanimous AI CEO and chief scientist Louis Rosenberg and Scale AI CEO Julien Billot. It was also signed by Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn and Ripple CEO Chris Larsen.

Other signees include several engineers and researchers at Microsoft, Google and Meta, though it notably does not include any names from Open AI, the firm behind the creation of Chat GPT-4.

“This does not mean a pause on AI development in general, merely a stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities,” the letter continues. Rather, the industry must “jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts.”

The letter comes only a few weeks after several major organizations in the entertainment industry, including in music, came together to release a list of seven principles, detailing how they hope to protect and support “human creativity” in the wake of the AI boom. “Policymakers must consider the interests of human creators when crafting policy around AI,” the coalition wrote. “Creators live on the forefront of, and are building and inspiring, evolutions in technology and as such need a seat at the table.”

29 Mar 2023

‘Love & Hip Hop: New York’ Cast Member Brittney Taylor Allegedly Beat Her Kid’s Father With A Baseball Bat

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Beautycon Festival New York 2019 - Day 1

Source: Noam Galai / Getty / Brittney Taylor

The Love & Hip Hop star allegedly took some swings at the father of her children with a baseball bat.

TMZ exclusively reports Taylor allegedly was swinging for the fences and tried to knock her kids’ father’s block off. The incident with Afeez, the father of her 2-year-old and 8-month-old, took place earlier this month. After a warrant was issued for her arrest, the rapper turned herself into authorities.

Per TMZ:

A source familiar tells us the alleged beating came after Afeez flew to NY to see his kids, although he’d been keeping his distance due to some bad blood between him and Brittney.

As he and his mom were leaving the apartment with the kids, Brittney allegedly said something to him which he ignored, and we’re told that set her off.

According to the criminal complaint, obtained by TMZ, Afeez told cops Brittney then punched him in the face while his kids were present. Afeez then left the residence, but cops say Brittney followed him out with the bat, hitting him and leaving him with a laceration and significant facial bleeding.

Afeez took himself to the hospital, where he got stitches for a cut above his eye. For her behavior, she got two counts of assault charges, one count of endangering the welfare of a child, and one count of criminal possession of a weapon.

Brittney Taylor was once the victim of violence herself. Taylor was allegedly the recipient of a Remy Ma punch. The Bronx superstar did end up in jail and quickly was a free woman after making bail. The charges against Remy Ma were dropped.

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Photo: Noam Galai / Getty

29 Mar 2023

YouTube’s Lyor Cohen to Receive City of Hope 2023 Spirit of Life Award

YouTube global head of music Lyor Cohen is being honored with the City of Hope’s 2023 Spirit of Life Award, the cancer research and treatment organization announced Wednesday (March 29). The award will be presented at a gala dinner Oct. 18 at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles.

“City of Hope is proud to honor the notable contributions of Lyor Cohen and celebrate 50 years of philanthropic partnership with the Music, Film and Entertainment Industry group,” said Robert Stone, City of Hope CEO and Helen & Morgan Chu CEO distinguished chair, in a statment. “This collection of industry leaders has made extraordinary contributions to our mission and continues to enhance our ability to deliver tomorrow’s breakthrough innovations today. We look forward to partnering with Lyor and the larger music community in the years ahead to develop new cures and save patient lives.”

Cohen started his career as a road manager for Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys before moving on to executive leadership roles at companies including Def Jam, Warner Music Group and 300 Entertainment, which he co-founded in 2012. Cohen joined YouTube as global head of music in 2016. He sits on the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Independent Venue Association and is an acting director for the New York-based charity SCAN-Harbor.

“If you have the opportunity to give a gift back to the industry you love, with an organization like City of Hope, whose doctors and scientists’ passion for helping others is so extraordinary, it’s a no-brainer,” said Cohen. “My career has been shaped by a contrarian point of view. Open to making mistakes, making big bets, unpopular decisions and being comfortable with change; that is how culture shifts and how breakthroughs happen. To me, these are many of the same qualities that make City of Hope’s mission to transform the future of cancer care across all communities so impactful. I am honored to join this admirable group of Spirit of Life recipients and look forward to continuing the tradition of leaning on music to bring us together.”

Wednesday’s announcement kicks off a year-long fundraising initiative for City of Hope that includes such events as the Taste of Hope wine dinner and auction on May 17 in New York City, the Music Trivia Bowl on July 20 in Los Angeles and the annual Songs of Hope event.

Evan Lamberg, president of Universal Music Publishing Group North America and president of City of Hope’s Music, Film & Entertainment Industry board, added that the board is “thrilled” to honor Cohen: “In addition to Lyor powering American Hip Hop as a cultural and musical phenomenon, I have known him to have a big heart and passion when it comes to helping others. This is certainly a prime example of that as he now takes an incredible step in helping City of Hope fight cancer, diabetes and HIV.”

Previous recipients of the Spirit of Life Award include Republic Records co-founders Monte and Avery Lipman, Universal Music Group chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge, Epic Records chairman/CEO Sylvia Rhone and former Greenberg Traurig attorney Joel Katz.