Innholdsfortegnelse for 11/26/2016 i Billboard Magazine

RAE SREMMURD, ALSO known as brothers Aaquil “Slim Jxmmi” and Khalif “Swae Lee” Brown, roars from No. 9 to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Black Beatles,” featuring Gucci Mane. The track, the first Hot 100 leader for both acts, as well as the first for its producer/co-writer Mike Will Made It, unseats The Chainsmokers’ “Closer” (featuring Halsey) after 12 weeks at No. 1. “Beatles” has received a big boost from its use in viral phenomenon the Mannequin Challenge, which has everyone from high schoolers to an actual Beatle — Paul McCartney — making videos soundtracked by the single. The track vaults 16-1 on Digital Song Sales, up 320 percent to 144,000 downloads sold in the week ending Nov. 10, according to Nielsen Music, and 5-1 on Streaming…

HIS WAS ONE OF THE least likely victory laps in music history. In 2005, it was discovered that Leonard Cohen’s longtime manager, Kelley Lynch, had embezzled more than $5 million from the 71-yearold’s accounts, while also surreptitiously selling many of Cohen’s publishing rights. In the previous decade, Cohen mostly had been residing in a Zen monastery and had released only two albums — 2001’s Ten New Songs and 2004’s Dear Heather, neither of which reached the top 100 on the chart. To pursue his case against Lynch, Cohen ultimately had to take out a new mortgage on his Los Angeles home. So on the heels of his induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, the singer-songwriter announced that he was going to generate some income the…

Walt Disney himself couldn’t have scripted a happier coincidence: During the same week in early 2014 in which Lin-Manuel Miranda learned he was going to write songs for Disney’s animated feature Moana, the Hamilton creator also found out he was going to become a first-time dad. “So I had a new goal,” the 36-year-old tells Billboard: “to make songs my son was going to be singing one day.” The huge Disney fan, who’s also co-starring in the Mary Poppins sequel set for Christmas 2018, discussed how he captured the sound of a mythical Polynesian island — and wrote the perfect song for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — before Moana opens Nov. 23. Disney sent you and co-writers Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa’i to a traditional New Zealand music festival when…

The Fame: Chicken Scarpariello Germanotta recommends darkmeat chicken and pepperoncini for Gaga’s 2008 debut: “It’s earthy and unique, an Italian classic.” Born This Way: Nutellasagna For her 2011 opus, Germanotta skips to dessert. “Addictive and indulgent,” Nutellasagna layers puff pastry, Nutella and mascarpone. Joanne: Pork Ragu Named for Gaga’s aunt, who died in 1974 from lupus, Gaga’s latest album “brings out the passion for food and family.”…

For four straight days after the presidential election, thousands of Chicagoans chanting “Not my president!” marched through the Loop, crossing the river to gather beneath the giant switchblade of the 98-story Trump Tower. Similar protests erupted in other big cities. (Elsewhere, those emboldened by Trump’s victory carried out more than 200 assaults on ethnic and racial minorities, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.) But it was Chicago — President Obama's hometown, where 84 percent of voters picked Hillary Clinton — that was Donald Trump’s go-to symbol for the inner city throughout his campaign, a place so violent and impoverished, he said, that the people “living in hell” had nothing to lose by electing him. Now we will find out. “I was woozy to see such a symbol of hatred…

‘IT’S A CITY OF HURT, BUT ALSO SO MUCH HOPE’ On the night of July 13, 2013, when George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the killing of Trayvon Martin, Charlene Carruthers was at the first meeting of Black Youth Project 100, a gathering of 100 black millennials — area students, musicians and poets among them — aiming to train and mobilize other young black activists across the country. “We held hands, and some people screamed, some people cried, some people were silent,” recalls Carruthers, 31. She is now national director of BYP100, which has chapters in seven states; highprofile police shootings of young black Chicagoans like Rekia Boyd (in 2012) and Laquan McDonald (in 2014) lend urgency to its mission. “Chicago has a deep tradition of the arts and…

THERE MAY NEVER HAVE BEEN a president more beloved by artists and the media business than Barack Obama, or a candidate who was criticized more vehemently by the same community than Donald Trump. Yet most policy executives believe that Obama was generally tough on the entertainment business — and that Trump might be good for it. “Obama was bad for music and copyright because he was very close to Google,” says a Washington, D.C., insider. “The hope is that Trump will be better.” Few entertainment business lobbyists, who generally tend be Democrats or moderate Republicans, had much enthusiasm for Trump’s surprise victory, and they spoke cautiously in the days following the election. But several say it presents an opportunity to regain their influence over the debate about copyright — the…

PARTNER, MAVERICK MANAGEMENT ADAM LEBER HAS LONG HELD on to what he calls an “oldschool mentality” — that “ representation is about the talent, not about yourself.” But when the company you work for, Maverick Management, collectively handles 40 of the biggest stars in music (Madonna, U2, Paul McCartney and Shania Twain among them) and is named manager of the year for 2016 at the Billboard Touring Awards (founder Guy Oseary accepted), a little celebration is certainly in order. Leber, a Queens native who shares a roster with partner Larry Rudolph that includes Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Steven Tyler and, as of January, Fifth Harmony, got his start running the street teams at hip-hop bastion Loud Records (“I was like an animal,” he boasts). That led him to manager Johnny…

A friend of mine who went to school with Leonard knew him as this very obscure poet, little known outside of Montreal, but she adored him and she’d bring him up from time to time. One day she called me and said, “Leonard has written some songs and he wants to come to New York and sing them to you.” By that point, I had made a successful career singing songs that made the people who wrote them more famous. When he came, I was living on 79th Street, and we socialized for a bit and went out to Tony’s Italian restaurant for dinner, spending the rest of the evening just eating and drinking and talking — no songs yet. When he was leaving, I said, “You know, Leonard, you…

We wrote our first song together on the road in 1980. I showed him a melody I had written, and he immediately started working on lyrics, right there in the hotel lobby. That was “Summertime,” which he didn’t record — it’s very much from a woman’s point of view — but Diana Ross and Roberta Flack did. After that, he started to learn more about my songwriting, and I guess he thought I was good enough at it to be someone he’d want to work with. He loved the old soul and blues masters, and I think he loved me bringing soul music into his style. After that, we wrote “Everybody Knows.” His lyrics pretty much start out as poetry, and you really have to study the meaning to figure…

Billboard Touring Conference & Awards BEVERLY HILLS, NOV. 9-10 HALSEY’S MISCALCULATION THAT HER NO. 1 SONG “Closer,” with The Chainsmokers, would merely be a place holder in between album cycles (“Boy, was I wrong,” she told the audience) and keynote speaker John Fogerty feeling “scared to death” of being a one-hit wonder were just two of the confessions shared at the 13th annual Billboard Touring Conference. Held at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills, the confab’s first-ever Los Angeles spin included panels with a who’s who of industry insiders that covered an array of topics, including ticket scalping and security. The event concluded with the Billboard Touring Awards and the presentation of the Legend of Live Award to Jon Bon Jovi, who celebrated his sixth No. 1 album that same…

SURPRISE ALBUM ROLLOUTS MAY BE THE NEW NORMAL, BUT AVENGED SEVENFOLD UPPED the ante: On Oct. 27, the metal band unveiled its new album, The Stage, with a concert streamed in 360-degree virtual reality from the roof of Los Angeles’ Capitol Records Building. Available to fans via Facebook and Universal Music Group’s new VRTGO platform, the performance marked the industry’s most ambitious dive into VR yet — and yielded a top five Billboard 200 debut. “It’s all about pushing the envelope in any way necessary,” says guitarist Zacky Vengeance. UMG’s Deborah Hyacinth adds, “The time and market was right” for the stunt. Costs vary (from $50,000 to millions, depending on the project, says a tech source), but artists are embracing VR in growing numbers. U2’S VR CONCERT AT THE ROXY…

DOG “I bring Rizla, my English bull terrier, with us as often as possible. Other than farts or pooping, she’s easy to handle.” BICYCLE “It’s key for me to be able to explore, find restaurants and get away from the venue. Lots of people in the crew end up using it.” COMFY PAJAMAS “After a long day, you want to feel like a normal human being: get in your pajamas, have a cup of tea and snuggle up in your bunk.” SLIP-ON SHOES “If you have to use the bathroom at night, inevitably one of the boys has peed all over the floor, so my Adidas slides are crucial.” BOOKS “I just finished Dave Eggers’ Heroes of the Frontier. It’s hard to slow down and read, but…

I wasn’t with Leonard when he died, but I’m certain that until he couldn’t hold a pen in his hand, he was working. That’s the way Leonard was. He had been weak and ill for a while, but he was working all the time. The hours in a day that he could work were narrowing, but the determination was still there. I think it was clear that the end was in sight, but I don’t think his October release You Want It Darker is him leaning toward mortality: Go back and listen to his first album [1967’s Songs of Leonard Cohen] — there are mortality issues there. The songs we were working on before he died were really light R&B, beautiful Leonard Cohen love songs. Another project we were working…

My first tour with Leonard was in 1972. Looking into his audience, I saw a sea of beautiful faces not unlike the ecstatic ones you see in old religious paintings, where the men and women were openly weeping — and even though I was only 22 years old, I knew I was not in Kansas anymore. This was the tour when famously the audience sang to him in Jerusalem [after Cohen walked offstage mid-performance, overwhelmed by the crowd’s applause]. I was onstage when it happened; we were crying, and it was this moment when I understood the depth of his commitment and their commitment to him. I think somebody had given him some windowpane acid, and it was coming on as they were singing to him. He thought a miracle…

I just couldn’t carry around all of these stories anymore,” says Robbie Robertson about his decision to write a memoir. “There were too many, and they got too heavy.” Testimony (Nov. 15, Random House), it turns out, is a lyrical look back at his life until 1976: his native Canadian and Jewish roots, his role as lead guitarist on the raucous 1966 tour when Bob Dylan “went electric” and his time as guitarist of roots-rock legends The Band. The book arrives on the 40th anniversary of The Last Waltz — the Thanksgiving 1976 concert that featured guests like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell — as does a box set of the 1978 Martin Scorsese concert film and its soundtrack. The Last Waltz marked Robertson’s retirement from touring, but since then,…

CHE SMITH, THE CHICAGO RAPPER known as Rhymefest, lay awake one night late in August. His doubts were multiplying, worries about money and career colonizing his every thought. He had won a Grammy writing raps with Kanye West, and an Oscar co-writing “Glory,” the song from Selma, with Common and John Legend. The father he barely knew while growing up had lived in this very house as a child, and a documentary about Rhymefest buying the South Side home and reuniting with his homeless dad was right then airing on Showtime. But in his restless gloom, even achievements looked like failures. For all I’ve done, I should have so much more. Nothing I do is going to work. He fled the house at dawn, listening to beats as he drove.…

CREATING A HIT TAKES GREAT ARTISTS, songwriters and producers — and often A&R executives to first discover those talents and bring them all together. Those who take on the challenge of A&R — artists and repertoire — are the matchmakers of the $15 billion global music business. The 21 executives chosen by Billboard editors for this inaugural A&R power list work at record labels and publishing companies, both for multinational major music companies and indie contenders. They have played a role in some of the biggest hits of 2016, including Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface, Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Shawn Mendes’ Illuminate, all charttoppers on the Billboard 200. Yet even while they watch their hitmaking efforts yield gold and platinum, the best A&R executives also are searching for tomorrow’s stars. “The next…