Innholdsfortegnelse for Mar-08-14 i Billboard Magazine

When Kiss spit fire on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and announced it wouldn’t perform to mark its own longawaited induction to the hall, it was the latest in a series of squabbles that have pitted the institution against those it celebrates. Long-festering disputes have caused onstage embarrassment almost from the start — in 1988 Diana Ross and Paul McCartney sat out the induction of The Supremes and The Beatles — and have continued ever since (see sidebar). And the inductees have complained about everything from the introduction of TV cameras to the proceedings 17 years ago to why, exactly, they have to pay for tickets for their family to witness the honor of a lifetime. The Kiss conflict is over who gets to perform: The band as…

A Feb. 20 event to toast the 13th season of American Idol should have been a celebratory af air, but minutes after the show’s Top 13 and star judges arrived at West Hollywood hotspot Fig & Olive, Fox senior executive vp David Hill, a burly Australian and Rupert Murdoch loyalist best-known for a two-decade-plus tenure at Fox Sports, was making a beeline for the bar and ordering a Belvedere — straight. If Hill felt the need to calm his nerves, perhaps it had to do with the financials of the show’s latest season. Judge, resident pop diva and bonaf de superstar Jennifer Lopez — who sat in a banquette just feet away from the bar — will command $15 million for this run of Idol. Ditto for host Ryan Seacrest,…

As Idol alums part ways with their labels, many are turning to crowdsourcing sites like Kickstarter, PledgeMusic and Indiegogo to fund their next releases and videos. The results are decidedly mixed. Blake Lewis (Season 6) Peak position: 2nd place Former label: Arista Platform: PledgeMusic Goal: Open-ended Pledged: n/a Status: Ongoing Haley Reinhart (Season 10) Peak position: 3rd place Former label: Interscope Platform: Indiegogo Goal: $30,000 Pledged: $3,741 Status: Ongoing Bo Bice (Season 4 ) Peak position: 2nd place Former label: RCA Platform: Kickstarter Goal: $35,000 Pledged: $9,327 Status: Unsuccessful Siobhan Magnus (Season 9) Peak position: 6th place Former label: None Platform: Kickstarter Goal: $20,000 Pledged: $23,610 Status: Funded Casey Abrams (Season 10) Peak position: 7th place Former label: Vanguard Platform: Kickstarter Goal: $500,000 Pledged: $92,999 Status: Ongoing…

First it was broadcast radio, then MTV. Now YouTube? Could it be that the music industry is a three-time loser in getting its fair share for distribution of content? Did it give away the golden goose by not suing the bejeezus out of YouTube when it was a startup, or at least cut better deals when Google acquired it in 2005? Of course it’s not a simple question. At first glance it’s clear that today YouTube isn’t delivering the goods. During a MIDEM panel this year, YouTube vp content Tom Pickett said the company had paid more than $1 billion to music rights holders during the past several years. Well, that’s sweet. Hey, you know who else has done that? Spotify. The difference: Spotify did it with a fraction of…

Cole Swindell went from selling merch for Luke Bryan to playing arenas with him. The upstart country singer- songwriter’s self-titled debut is No. 2 on Billboard’ Top Country Albums chart for the week ending Feb. 23, and bows on the Billboard 200 at No. 3 with sales of 63,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The album was boosted by the slow-burn success of single “Chillin’ It,” which tops the Hot Country Songs list for a second week after a 38-week climb and is currently No. 28 on the Billboard Hot 100. “I don’t question the way things happen,” Swindell, 30, says of the song’s drawn-out journey. “Every time I’ve wished things would happen now, it happened later on, 10 times better.” In an genre known for its top-down business model,…

THURSDAY, FEB. 20 7:55 p.m. “This is just where you want to be during Armageddon — on a boat,” says Brad Paisley, launching into the concert portion of Sony Music Nashville’s Country Radio Seminar cruise on the General Jackson as tornado sirens blare in the background. But Paisley def es the weather and gets the party started, strong winds and all. 8:55 p.m. Katy Perry gets a chance to roar in Milan. As photographers boo her for arriving almost an hour late to the Moschino fashion show (where she’s walking the runway), the diva stops posing and snaps: “You’re all going to get your picture, so shut the f— up!” Perry, decked in a curve-hugging black and gold number, then struts her stuff of the catwalk, allowing the rest of…

How do you top a concert that packs more fur, feathers and sequins than a Siegfried & Roy show and hilariously suggestive gargantuan props? Let the audience take all the provocation home with them. Along with T-shirts and panties emblazoned with the ubiquitous tongue, Miley Cyrus’ merch tables feature blow-up bananas and goldleaf rolling papers. Despite rumors that pot paraphernalia was prompting boycotts of the Bangerz Tour, those items are its hottest sellers. “Teen girls love outrage. The more provocative the better,” says Lisa Katnic, who brought the foam finger and the papers into Cyrus’ repertoire of tricks. “I designed a T-shirt with Miley’s tongue sticking out from between the boobs,” she says. “And it’s hand-drawn to look even rawer.”—M.F.…

1 CRENSHAW HIGH(5010 11th Ave.) Ice-T, Odd Future’s Left Brain, Iceberg Slim — Crenshaw has nurtured generations of L.A. rappers. 2 52ND AND HOOVER Q’s old stomping grounds and the inspiration for the Oxymoron standout track “Hoover Street.” 3 CRENSHAW STRIP The cultural spine of black L.A. has inspired countless shoutouts and was featured in Dr. Dre’s “Let Me Ride” video. 4 NICKERSON GARDENS(1590 E. 114th St.) TDE’s Tiffith, Jay Rock and Henderson earned their street bona fides in this Watts housing project. 5 FRIDAY LOCATION (W. 126th St. at S. Normandie) Where neighborhood bully Deebo got “knocked the f— out” in Ice Cube’s 1995 comedy. 6 EVE AFTER DARK(12823 S. Avalon Blvd.) This Compton club, which housed a studio, was a key fixture in L.A.’s early-’80s rap scene. 7…

For many attendees of South by Southwest 2013, few attractions were as strange and surreal as the Doritos-sponsored showcase in the parking lot of Carmelo’s Italian Restaurant on E. Fifth Street. There, a 62-foot-tall — and functional — vending machine dispensed live sets by Public Enemy, LL Cool J and Ice Cube. Sometimes the jokes write themselves, only it gets better: Through Twitter, fans could control the playlists and trigger onstage special ef ects. With a tap on their iPhones, they helped SXSW forfeit part of its soul. It’s surely a sign of the times when you hear more people talking about sponsorships and “activations” than record deals at SXSW, but for a lot of folks, LL singing “Jingling Baby” while the chip bags jiggle isn’t just a punchline: It’s…

NPR and SXSW are two of the biggest names when it comes to music discovery. So it’s no wonder that the festival’s opening showcase at the legendary Stubb’s, sponsored by NPR, is one of the event’s hottest tickets. NPR has hosted some of the most anticipated lineups of the week at Stubb’s since 2008. Fiona Apple, Vampire Weekend, Bon Iver and James Blake have all performed in recent years. This year, Damon Albarn, St. Vincent, Kelis and Perfect Pussy will grace Stubb’s on March 12, with a fifth act expected to be confirmed shortly. And with minimal branding from NPR — there’s no fiers or free T-shirts or constant reminders to tweet — it’s one of the few remaining musical sanctuaries in a week filled with sponsorship. “We think if…

Kylie Minogue played some of the biggest venues of her 26-year career in music on 2011’s Aphrodite: Les Folies Tour, including a five-night stint at London’s O2 Arena and her first proper North America run, with stops at the Hollywood Bowl and Las Vegas’ Colosseum at Caesars Palace. So London’s tiny Old Blue Last, with a capacity of 120, was a peculiar place for Minogue to begin the album cycle for Kiss Me Once, her 12th studio album and first for Warner Bros. in the United States. (Her longtime label home Parlophone was acquired by Warner Music Group in 2013.) “It’s like every Thursday down at the pub, isn’t it?” Minogue joked of the Shoreditch bar, which was redubbed “Into the Old Blue Last” in honor of her new single,…

For her latest attempt at a comeback single, Mariah Carey ditches the guest stars for a back-to-basics approach that finds the pop icon in familiar form. Riding a dreamy, midtempo beat from Rodney Jerkins, Carey pines for a lost love with lyrics that build to the inevitable five-octave melisma, echoing 2005 megahit “We Belong Together” and other past triumphs. Though Jerkins puts a romantic spin on the “ratchet” sound currently ruling the clubs (underlying calls of “Hey! Hey!” are a nice touch), “You’re Mine (Eternal)” sounds like a slight, three-and-a-halfminute breeze through the singer’s catalog. It hits all the expected notes, with few surprises — enough to ensure steady airplay at Carey’s most tried-and-true formats, but not enough to reach the same heights as last summer’s sleeper hit, “#Beautiful” (featuring…

Like everyone in their hometown of Atlanta, the members of Casting Crowns have been caught up in the unusual winter storms that have struck the Southeast in recent weeks. Their followers on social media got a taste of how these family-rooted musicians survived their snow days. “Hey guys! I’m having a Q&A time on Instagram at home since the kids and I are iced in,” frontman Mark Hall posted on the band’s Facebook page on Feb. 12. “I’ll post a few of the vids on Facebook:) I’m markhallcc on Instagram.” Bassist Chris Hufman tweeted two days later: “Power is out, so [my wife] Amanda & [infant son] Silas rest with the fireplace going while the girls & I watch a movie in the van & de-ice the windshields.” Violinist-singer Melodee…

On March 2, 1989, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” single premiered worldwide in a lavish twominute TV commercial for Pepsi. It was supposed to be the start of a beautiful corporate partnership between the cola giant and the Queen of Pop, with Pepsi set to feature Madonna in further advertisements and sponsor her upcoming world tour. But the pop synergy quickly f zzled—for Pepsi, at least. A day after the commercial’s premiere, Madonna unleashed her own music video for “Like a Prayer,” which featured a quite different storyline than that of the Pepsi ad. The video — directed by Mary Lambert — featured controversial imagery that riled religious groups, including shots of Madonna with stigmata on her hands, dancing in front of burning crosses and kissing a black saint in a…

Creedence Clearwater Revival In 1993, CCR members Stu Cook and Doug Clifford are barred from the stage as John Fogerty, Bruce Springsteen and Robbie Robertson perform the band’s songs. Sex Pistols In 2006, Pistols singer John Lydon posts this missive on the band’s website: “Next to the Sex Pistols rock and roll and that Hall of Fame is a piss stain. Urine in wine.” Blondie In 2006, ex-members Frank Infante and Nigel Harrison complain about their exclusion from the musical performance. “Debbie, are we allowed?” Infante asks. Van Halen Eddie Van Halen and his brother, drummer Alex, are no-shows in 2007. Original singer David Lee Roth suggests he perform, backed by Velvet Revolver. No takers. Guns N’ Roses The week of the 2012 ceremony, Axl Rose declines the band’s induction,…

Roger Waters’ The Wall Live was Billboard’ top tour of 2012, but he’s created his own wall within certain factions of the music industry for his recent comments about the Israeli-Palestine conflict. In a Dec. 6 interview with progressive political blog Counterpunch, Waters refers to a “systematic racist apartheid Israeli regime” as the basis of his cultural boycott for playing gigs in the country, likening the Israeli government to the Nazis at one point and citing unnamed artists as being “afraid” of playing the region over safety concerns. Razor & Tie co-founder Craig Balsam criticized Waters’ beliefs in a column for the New York Post, dismissing Waters’ views as “inaccurate, bigoted and malicious.” Balsam notes that acts ranging from Paul McCartney to Alicia Keys have all played the region in…

Romeo & Juliet Head To Fox As Boardwalk Bets Big On TV Musical Mania Romeo & Juliet: The pop musical? That’s the plan for Boardwalk Entertainment Group, which is partnering with RCA Records to produce classic stories simultaneously as event TV series and staged musicals. In addition to Romeo & Juliet, which is being developed for Fox, Boardwalk is preparing contemporary musical versions based on Robin Hood, King Arthur and Jack the Ripper. Given the success of such smallscreen musicals as Fox’s long-running Glee and NBC’s one-of The Sound of Music Live!, the company, founded in 2011 by writer Timothy Bogart; his brother, songwriter Evan “Kidd” Bogart; and producer Gary A. Randall, also is hoping to develop limited series as well as live events, specials and multiple-season series as formats.…

Grammy Award-winning singers, it is generally assumed, spend the majority of their time writing and performing music. But when country superstar Trisha Yearwood, who last released a studio album in 2007, launched her recent U.S. theater tour, it was actually to give herself a break from her career as a best-selling cookbook author and the star of her own Food Network show, Trisha’s Southern Kitchen. Yearwood, an avid home cook, says she has been surprised by her success in the culinary world, telling Billboard she “never dreamed” she would have a second career. But the fact is that the joining of music and food has proved to have incredible appeal to not only musicians and chefs, but also to fans of both mediums. To that end, the Cooking Channel recently…

2 YEARS AGO The catalyst for the album’s arrival was the 2012 video for the band’s cover of The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” from its Fun Machine EP. By the time the group emerged from recording Bad Self Portraits in Maine, it had passed 1 million views. “Where we were recording there was no cell service or Internet,” recalls trumpeter/guitarist Mike “McDuck” Olson. “We came back to civilization and the response was insane.” Signature Sounds president Jim Olsen says the video was especially useful because the LP was delayed for nearly a year due to legal complications from singer Rachel Price’s previous recording contract with Claire Vision Productions. 5 MONTHS AGO T Bone Burnett asked Lake Street Dive to be part of the all-star Another Day, Another Time…

“When Paul Anka used to buy Warhols in the 1970s, no one took note. Art collecting was akin to intellectual recreation,” says Adam Shefer, partner at New York’s Cheim & Read gallery, where Bono and Elton John are clients. “Now it’s considered asset management.” But to music’s newest collectors, art is more than an investment. Kanye West rhymes about it. Jay Z and Lady Gaga stage elaborate art/music productions. Not surprisingly, pop stars now boast some of the best art portfolios and fuel the increasingly glitzy art fair market, which begins March 4 in New York with the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) opening gala and runs through March 9 with more parties and events (including Blood Orange and Jamie XX at the Museum of Modern Art Armory Party…

It doesn’t exactly look like the place that so recently has launched the next generation of hip-hop superstars. Indeed, the Top Dawg Entertainment recording studio — christened the House of Pain and located in the back of a family-style home on a nondescript cul de sac dotted with manicured lawns in Carson, Calif. — has a sweat-box vibe: VHS tapes, dusty CD cases, Taco Bell wrappers and half-empty Gatorade bottles litter the stained carpet; the panel walls suggest a suburban rec room, except for the handwritten messages tacked to them that mix hip-hop tough love with inspirational business motivation. “The ability to move people through words is a gift like nothing else,” one reads. Another references the 2000 shooting that transformed 50 Cent’s life: “Charisma/personality/swagger: Believe it or not, 50…

On Sept. 14, 2013, after seven years together, John Legend married his longtime girlfriend, Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover girl Chrissy Teigen. A month earlier, he gave her a gift: A love song called “All of Me,” the third single from his then-upcoming fourth album, Love in the Future. The song had been around since 2011, when Legend began working on the album with Kanye West, and it took about three hours to complete with co-writer Toby Gad. The recording took longer, though it doesn’t sound it: “All of Me” is just Legend’s voice and piano, a deadsimple ballad — inspired, in part, by Billy Joel’s 1977 hit “She’s Always a Woman,” but not the kind of thing you hear on the radio much these days. Still, it was so striking…

Pedernales Falls State Park Unless you show up after a storm (in which case it will be too dangerous to show up at all; people have died in flash floods here), don’t take the “Falls” in the name literally. The fun to be had here is in scrambling along the 3,000-foot-long incline of layered limestone, making your way across or around — or into and out of — the numerous crevices that dot this stark moonscape. 2585 Park Road 6026, Johnson City, TX 78636 Salty Sow This cozy-on-the-inside, expansive-on-the-outside, head-to-tail gastropub offers plenty of expertly prepared pork, but there are other animals on the menu (try the Crisp Chicken Thighs), and the vegetarian in your group will be very happy with the glazed turnips, roasted beets, crispy Brussels sprouts leaves…

Rick Ross is proud and warm. In a blue chinchilla jacket, black sweatshirt and a Saint Laurent belt hoisting up his jeans, he sits at the head of the table in a conference room in Def Jam’s New York offices, thanking his label for a grandiose listening session for his sixth album, Mastermind, the night before. A bevy of models in snug skirts, New York Knicks guard J.R. Smith, Swizz Beatz and, more randomly, Jerry Seinfeld’s wife Jessica were among the attendees at the party, held at Manhattan’s New World Stages theater. “Think of it as your bar mitzvah,” says Barry Weiss, chairman/CEO of Universal Music Group’s East Coast Label Group, of the soiree’s success the night before. Ross, 38, and not Jewish, didn’t miss a beat: “L’chaim!” Laughter erupts.…

Pharrell Girl PRODUCER: Pharrell Williams LABEL: Columbia “Diferent.” It’s not just the first word spoken by Pharrell on Girl — preceded by a 30-second string overture composed by Hans Zimmer, no less — but also a sign of how much things have changed since Pharrell’s first solo album, 2006’s hip-hop-leaning In My Mind. After a huge Grammys night and hits with Daft Punk and Robin Thicke, he’s now a bona fde pop star. With Girl smartly arriving the day after the Academy Awards — where he’s performing his first solo No. 1, “Happy,” up for best original song — there’s no question that this is Pharrell’s most high-profile chance yet to showcase his many talents. And he seizes the opportunity: Girl is his most consistent, relentlessly catchy body of work…

When a band is hammering out its record deal, it’s not unusual to have the group’s manager in the room and, likely, the act’s attorney. But who brings a pastor? For lead vocalist Mark Hall, 44, and the members of Casting Crowns, it was a no-brainer. Tim Dowdy, 52, is senior pastor of the 6,000-member Eagle’s Landing First Baptist Church outside of Atlanta, where Hall and members of the band have continued to work while building their music career. “When we sat down with them at Provident [Label Group], Mark’s very first question was, ‘Can I still be a student pastor?’ ” Dowdy recalls of that seminal meeting in 2003. “It was an interesting conversation because they never knew anyone who had continued to do that, so there were a…

Disney’s unstoppable soundtrack to Frozen returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, collecting its fifth nonconsecutive week atop the list. Frozen has now earned the most weeks at No. 1 for a soundtrack since Titanic racked up 16 straight weeks in the top spot in 1998. It ruled on the charts dated Jan. 24 through May 9 that year. This week’s Billboard 200 refects the tracking week ending Feb. 23, where Frozen sold 89,000 copies (down 11%), according to Nielsen SoundScan. A week ago, it was No. 2 with 100,000. Last week’s No. 1, Eric Church’The Outsiders, falls to No. 2 in its second week with 74,000 (down 74%). Since the Billboard 200 began using SoundScan sales data on May 25, 1991, only fve soundtracks have spent at least…

UNIVERSAL STREAMS NEW REVENUE Universal Music Group had a 75% jump in subscription and streaming music sales to top €450 million ($618 million) in 2013 thanks in large part to growth in Spotify’s ondemand music service, which now has more than 2 million U.S. subscribers. Streaming revenue growth was a bright spot for what UMG described as an otherwise flat financial year, excluding its 2012 EMI acquisition. With EMI included, UMG’s revenue rose 12.8% on a constant currency basis to €4.9 billion ($6.8 billion). ROUND HILL IN THE BUSH BIZ Publisher Round Hill Music and Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale have acquired five albums in the ‘90s alternative band’s catalog from Kirtland Records for a reported $5 million. The catalog’s ownership is split evenly between Round Hill and Rossdale. The albums…

Apple’s music chief Robert Kondrk has been pressuring major labels for releases similar to last year’s Beyonce exclusive, excluding services like YouTube and Spotify to help shore up slowing download sales, according to music executives familiar with the conversations. The tense talks with label executives during Grammy Week in Los Angeles in January were spurred by Beyonce’s success in launching her self-titled album exclusively on iTunes in December for one week, during which the album was only sold in its entirety. After the first week in which it sold 1 million copies globally, the album was available for sale at other retailers, and fans were able to buy tracks separately. Crucially, the pop diva kept the album of streaming services for the first week, but made two of the album’s…

BAREILLES SIGNS WITH NEW MANAGER Singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles has found herself a new manager in Brandon Creed. Creed, through his Creed Co., handles the careers of Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson, along with award-winning songwriting-production collective The Smeezingtons and bands Hunter Hunted and Falls. Creed is a former A&R executive at Epic Records, Bareilles’ label. Bareilles split from longtime manager Jordan Feldstein after the Jan. 26 Grammy Awards, where she was nominated for album of the year. Feldstein, who represents Maroon 5 and Robin Thicke, was involved in an altercation with Sharon and Kelly Osbourne on Jan. 25 at the Clive Davis/Recording Academy-sponsored Pre-Grammy Gala. According to an insider, Bareilles also was considering Michael McDonald for representation. McDonald and longtime client John Mayer parted ways in December. Mayer has since…

Lorde’s Second Coming? Could Broods be New Zealand’s next pop sensation? The Auckland brother-sister duo of Caleb and Georgia Nott close in on the Alternative airplay chart with their airy, electro-pop debut single, “Bridges” (Capitol), produced and co-written by Lorde collaborator Joel Little. Ahead of the release of the pair’s first full-length album, Broods’ self-titled debut EP entered Heatseekers Albums at No. 5 and the Billboard 200 at No. 164 last week. “It’s impossible not to be in awe of [Lorde],” Georgia Nott told Billboard in November. “But we have to build our own identity.” Kesington Kross Feels The ‘Love’ As the first joint signing by LaFace cofounders Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds and Antonio “L.A.” Reid in 25 years, expectations are running high for Kesington Kross. “Gimme Your Love” (Epic), a…

The “selfie” has become so ubiquitous that Oxford Dictionaries named the term its 2013 Word of the Year. Rising DJ duo The Chainsmokers, New York natives with a knack for humor and insight into the club scene, acted on the trend: On a whim, Drew Taggart, 24, and Alex Pall, 28, made a demo of a dancefloor thumper titled “#Selfie” that features a female clubber’s comically vain monologue — about taking a selfie, of course. Within days of the track’s SoundCloud premiere, plays began exploding, aided by a viral video and a smart social media campaign. The song, released on Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak Records, debuts at No. 38 on Billboard’ Mainstream Top 40 airplay chart this week, and has sold nearly 35,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. “It’s been…

It’s been a minute since a concert tour has generated quite the heat that Miley Cyrus’Bangerz extravaganza did when it kicked of its 38-city run in Vancouver on Feb. 14. The buzz is as loud as a chain saw, with calculated provocations like the star getting down on her knees before a dancer in a Bill Clinton mask, and a wardrobe of bedazzled bodysuits and star-spangled booty shorts, and oversize hot dogs. And then there are the props, which include oversize bananas, giant foam fingers and a Statue of Liberty headpiece festooned with weed. So just how did the glitzy hoedown come to be? As another Clinton once said, it takes a village — in this case creative director Diane Martel and stylists/costume designers Simone Harouche and Lisa Katnic, who,…

1 Quality Is King Says Jay Rock, “I learned from Kendrick that you have to have passion before the check.” 2 Embrace Trial and Error “Whether or not to sell our first project [Lamar’s 2010 digital release, Overly Dedicated] proved a tough call,” says TDE co-president Terrence “Punch” Henderson. “We’d been giving everything away for free and were going back and forth until Top Dawg went against everybody, decided to commercially release it. It trained our fans and consumers to buy the music.” 3 Avoid Formula “[When] we’d try to make a radio song or a track for the ladies, they’d never work,” says Henderson. “We vowed to just do us.” 4 Let the Music Find Its Audience “People don’t want to be force-fed by corporations,” says Henderson. “If the…

South by Southwest is the prime environment for a condition known as FOMO — fear of missing out — to spread like the incurable contagion that it is. But take it from the old school: In fve years, or as many months, that secret set from the fest’s rapper-dujour on the edge of town won’t feel so special when you can’t remember anything more than pining for your hotel bed at 2 in the morning. (Semi-related: A lesson many new bands learn the hard way is to check whether a performance at 12 means noon or midnight.) To be sure, music is not the end-all, beall of the five-night fest. With so much happening simultaneously (including movie screenings all over town; see page 30), and much of it easily viewed…

He looks the part, but it’s more than that — whether speaking, singing or playing guitar, OutKast’s Andre Benjamin is a convincing Jimi Hendrix in Jimi: All Is by My Side. John Ridley’s biopic tackles Hendrix just before his stardom , the period from 1966 to 1967, when he stepped out from being an R&B backing musician and took center stage, first in London and then in a culturedefining set at the Monterey Pop Festival in California. The movie has a lot of music — three dozen tracks by Bob Dylan, The Seeds and others — but Hendrix’s own material is re-created by seasoned session players like Waddy Wachtel and Kenny Aronof “We were never preoccupied with securing the benchmark material — it was to delineate and expose the art…

CASHMERE CAT Magnus August Hoiberg — better-known as Norwegian producer-artist Cashmere Cat — produced Ludacris’ new single, “Party Girls,” featuring Wiz Khalifa and Jeremih, has recorded with Rihanna hitmaker Benny Blanco, and recently relocated to Los Angeles to work with other big-name rappers he can’t reveal. But despite this almost-famous resume, he shuns the spotlight: During a recent FaceTime call for one of his first press interviews, Hoiberg, 26, spent much of the conversation with the phone pointed toward his bare feet. “Am I your worst interview ever?” he asks. On Feb. 10, Hoiberg released Wedding Bells — a mostly instrumental EP of soulful electronica — on British label Lucky Me. It’s his second EP as Cashmere Cat, the name he took on after first making noise as a battle…

Beck Morning Phase PRODUCER: Beck LABEL: Capitol A dozen years ago, Beck, still licking his wounds after a nasty breakup, shocked listeners with the appropriately titled Sea Change. The singer, it must be remembered, was most celebrated for the eclectic, post-modern and often-funky trifecta of Mellow Gold, Odelay and Midnite Vultures. A mournful set of singersongwriter laments wasn’t exactly what his audience was expecting — at least not that mournful. Beck returns to that haunting sonic terrain on the new Morning Phase. But emotionally, he’s clearly in a much happier place. He’s not only on a new label, but the married father of two. And while this is his first ofcial studio album since 2008’s Modern Guilt, he has been industrious in the interim, producing others (Thurston Moore, Charlotte Gainsbourg,…

Coinciding with the release of Casting Crowns’ new album, Thrive, the band has launched the Thrive Challenge. Visitors to CastingCrowns.com can delve deeper into the themes on the new album and watch videos inspired by each song. “It’s not a contest. It’s a challenge to dig deep,” Provident Label Group president/CEO Terry Hemmings says. “The Thrive Challenge [is] a marketing tool and it’s also a teaching tool. I don’t know if there’s anyone better at tying the two together than Casting Crowns— sequencing it with the record and the teaching that’s around it.” Casting Crowns frontman Mark Hall says the Thrive Challenge provides an opportunity to share more of the album with fans. “In the culture nowadays, people will just go buy singles. I want them to see the full…

LEGEND Bullets indicate titles with greatest weekly gains. Album Charts ● Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA) certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 500,000 albums (Gold). ▴ RIAA certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 1 million units (Platinum). Numeral noted with Platinum symbol indicates album’s multiplatinum level. ◆ RIAA certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 10 million units (Diamond). Numeral noted with Diamond symbol indicates album’s multiplatinum level. ○ Latin albums certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 50,000 units (Oro). △ Latin albums certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 100,000 units (Platino). Numeral noted with Platinum symbol indicates album’s multi-platinum level. Digital Songs Charts ● RIAA certification for 500,000 paid downloads (Gold). ▴ RIAA certification for 1 million paid downloads…