Innholdsfortegnelse for October 19, 2019 i Billboard Magazine

IN THE SUMMER OF 2018, Travis Scott reached out to Lil Wayne to ask a favor. Scott was in the process of booking the lineup for his inaugural Astroworld festival, and wanted to stack the Houston event with handpicked hip-hop acts. Lil Wayne agreed to perform, topping the bill alongside Post Malone and Scott himself. This September, Scott returned the favor by headlining Lil Wayne’s Lil WeezyAna Fest in New Orleans. “That kind of artist-centric support is so pivotal in growing what an artist-curated festival is about, because that Travis Scott audience is the kind of audience that is going to love and appreciate Lil Wayne as well,” says Live Nation Urban vp business development and operations Brandon Pankey. In an oversaturated market where there are too many festivals…

For three consecutive years, Disney’s High School Musical franchise was a juggernaut; the movie-musical trilogy produced a trio of soundtracks between 2006 and 2008 that have sold a combined 9.8 million copies, according to Nielsen Music. Now, Disney is hoping to reintroduce one of its most lucrative tentpoles with High School Musical: The Musical: The Series — one of six original shows premiering on the company’s new streaming service, Disney+, which will launch Nov. 12 and offer new and classic Disney programming. (Unlike Netflix’s binge-watch model, new episodes will be released weekly.) The show’s plot is quite meta: A group of students from Salt Lake City’s East High School (where the film trilogy took place) are staging a production of High School Musical. The show’s creator, Tim Federle, insists…

“This year, it has to be Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road.’ Everyone thought it was a gimmick when it was released, and he broke records. It was great to see a rap record do the numbers it did.”—RONNIE TRIANA, SIRIUSXM “OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. The way they orchestrated that double-disc, and the things that André 3000 brought to the game at that time was something that had never been done by a rap artist. It was one of those game-changing moments in the culture.”—PIERRE “P” THOMAS, QUALITY CONTROL MUSIC “[Kanye West’s debut] The College Dropout is one of the most important albums of not only hip-hop, but in music history. When it came out in 2004, hip-hop was still in its excessive phase, very much bravado-driven. With College…

IN 1960, A 25-YEAR-OLD performer-songwriter named Sylvia Vanderpool Robinson — then of the guitar-and-vocal duo Mickey & Sylvia, known for their million-selling “Love Is Strange” — walked into a recording studio in Manhattan to work with a New Orleans artist named Joe Jones on a tune he called “You Talk Too Much.” Sylvia Robinson walked out a record producer. She did not receive credit for the session, one she claimed that she had run on behalf of Jones’ label, Morris Levy’s Roulette Records. If she had, it might have cemented her as the first-ever black and female independent record producer to have a top 10 pop hit. (The song peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.) Instead, Sylvia would become famous for another breakthrough: conceiving and producing…

SuperM’s Super Sales K-pop supergroup SuperM debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 as the act’s first set, SuperM: The 1st Mini Album, enters atop the tally. The release launches with 168,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States in the week ending Oct. 10, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 164,000 were in album sales. SuperM’s sales start was bolstered by an array of purchasing options, which fans likely found appealing, as the K-pop audience is passionate about buying collectible physical editions of an album. The 1st Mini Album had over 60 merchandise/album bundles sold through the group’s official web stores, a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer for its upcoming arena tour and eight CD versions of the release. —KEITH CAULFIELD 6 CHRIS BROWN Indigo…

Cage ‘Cues’ Up Latest Leader Cage the Elephant (above) collects its ninth leader on the Alternative airplay chart as “Social Cues” climbs 2-1. The band takes over sole possession of the fifth-most No. 1s in the chart’s three-decade history; Red Hot Chili Peppers lead with 13. “Cues” topped the Triple A airplay chart for a week (Oct. 5), marking Cage’s fourth No. 1. Plus, Green Day’s “Father of All…” ascends to its fifth No. 1 on the all-rock-format Rock Airplay chart, up 4% to 9.4 million audience impressions, according to Nielsen Music. The track concurrently becomes the group’s record-extending 21st top five hit on Alternative (6-5); Foo Fighters rank second with 18, followed by Linkin Park and U2, each with 16. —KEVIN RUTHERFORD SALES, AIRPLAY & STREAMING DATA COMPILED…

Fortune Ties No. 1 Mark James Fortune (above) notches his record-tying sixth Gospel Airplay No. 1 as “I Am” (featuring Deborah Carolina) ascends 3-1. Fortune matches Kirk Franklin and Tamela Mann for the most leaders, dating to the chart’s 2005 inception. Fortune scores his first No. 1 since 2014, when “Live Through It,” with his longtime backing choir FIYA, ruled for a week in May. Carolina tops Gospel Airplay with her first Billboard chart entry. On the airplay-, streaming- and sales-based Hot Gospel Songs chart, “I Am” reaches the top five (6-5). Plus, Zach Williams’ Rescue Story debuts at No. 2 on Top Christian Albums, tying his best career rank, as the set starts with 7,000 equivalent album units (5,000 in album sales), according to Nielsen Music. His prior…

WHEN UNIVERSAL MUSIC Group senior vp global streaming marketing Jay Frank died Oct. 13 after a battle with cancer, the industry lost a thought leader who for years encouraged executives to adapt to a music business shaped by technology. “Stop caring about what the music business used to be,” he would say, “and start appreciating how the business is transforming.” In his first book, Futurehit.DNA — published in 2009, just as Spotify launched in Europe and well before streaming arrived in the United States — Frank argued passionately that streaming would require songwriters to shorten introductions because songs were no longer built for radio. A decade later, Frank’s warnings of waning attention spans seem to have come true: Tracks on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2019 are, on average,…

LIKE MANY EXECUTIVES in the music business, Mark Cheatham started his career in the mailroom. But he took a circuitous route getting there. During his stint as a Navy hospital corpsman stationed in Long Beach, Calif., the Queens native studied with professors flown in each weekend from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Later, although he was armed with a degree in healthcare services, Cheatham opted to join Merrill Lynch as a stockbroker. While there, a tip from a family friend helped him land a $200-a-week mailroom gig at Associated Booking Corporation, whose clients included B.B. King and Anita Baker and whose founder, Joe Glaser, mentored the music industry’s so-called “black godfather,” Clarence Avant. “What engaged me was the pace of the business,” reflects Cheatham, who maintains that same momentum…

LOCATION Los Angeles/Nashville AGE 24 LABEL RCA FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD Born to Ukrainian parents in Boston, Sloan grew up taking piano lessons — and after she watched The Wizard of Oz for the first time, she started singing, too. “I was always that kid in math class writing down lyrics instead of paying attention,” says Sloan, who after high school attended the Berklee College of Music for one year. TRENDING While Sloan was away at Berklee, her parents painted the outside of their home — and had the word “Dork,” with an arrow pointing to Sloan’s bedroom window, scrawled across their house as a gag. Amused, Sloan posted a photo of it to Reddit. “I blew up,” she says. “It became No. 1 on the homepage.” Capitalizing…

ANDRE “DR. DRE” YOUNG He has been hip-hop’s master architect for over three decades, a beat-maker and kingmaker for N.W.A, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent and Kendrick Lamar. The label Dr. Dre founded in 1996, Aftermath, has logged 31 albums on the Billboard 200 and 124 songs on the Hot 100, with its catalog accounting for over 112 million album consumption units. Beats — the company he co-founded with Jimmy Iovine in 2008 — expanded Dre’s horizons, allowing him to shape not just what we hear, but how we hear it. Beats grew from headphones and speakers to a subscription streaming service in 2014, the same year that Apple acquired the company for $3 billion — $2.6 billion in cash and $400 million in stock vested over time (which…

The Boys Are Back On Vinyl Beastie Boys’ 1989 record, Paul’s Boutique, returns to the Vinyl Albums chart for the first time in over seven years, entering at No. 18 with 1,000 sold in the week ending Oct. 10, according to Nielsen Music. The set was reissued on Oct. 4 on 180-gram black vinyl and limited-edition violet-colored vinyl to celebrate the album’s 30th anniversary. Boutique was one of four vinyl reissues from the Boys on Oct. 4. It was accompanied by encore vinyl pressings of 1994’s Ill Communication, 1995’s Root Down EP and 2004’s To the 5 Boroughs. Combined, the latter three sold 2,000 copies. Elsewhere on Vinyl Albums, the Stranger Things 3 score soundtrack arrives at No. 10 with 2,000 sold. The set was issued in a multicolored…

AIRPLAY & SALES DATA COMPILED BY RADIO SONGS: THE WEEK’S MOST POPULAR SONGS, RANKED BY RADIO AIRPLAY AUDIENCE IMPRESSIONS AS MEASURED BY NIELSEN MUSIC. STATIONS ARE ELECTRONICALLY MONITORED 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK. DIGITAL SONG SALES: THE WEEK’S TOP-DOWNLOADED SONGS, RANKED BY SALES DATA AS COMPILED BY NIELSEN MUSIC. POP/RHYTHMIC/ADULT: THE WEEK’S MOST POPULAR CURRENT SONGS AT MAINSTREAM TOP 40, RHYTHMIC, ADULT CONTEMPORARY AND ADULT TOP 40 FORMATS, RESPECTIVELY, RANKED BY RADIO AIRPLAY DETECTIONS, AS MEASURED BY NIELSEN MUSIC. SONGS ARE DEFINED AS CURRENT IF THEY ARE RELATIVELY RECENTLY-RELEASED TITLES, OR SONGS RECEIVING WIDESPREAD AIRPLAY AND/OR SALES ACTIVITY FOR THE FIRST TIME. STATIONS ARE ELECTRONICALLY MONITORED 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK. SEE CHARTS LEGEND ON BILLBOARD.COM/BIZ FOR COMPLETE RULES AND EXPLANATIONS. ALL CHARTS…

Walker’s Record Week Summer Walker (above) shines on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums as her debut studio album, Over It, begins at No. 1 with 134,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Oct. 10, according to Nielsen Music. Of those units, 114,000 derive from streams, equaling 154.7 million on-demand audio streams for the album’s songs, the largest streaming week for an R&B album by a female artist. That surpasses the debut of Beyoncé’s Lemonade (115.2 million streams in 2016). Meanwhile, Walker’s “Playing Games” rises 39-9 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, the singer’s first top 10 on the list. YoungBoy Never Broke Again also logs his maiden visit to the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs top 10 as “Bandit,” his collaboration with Juice WRLD, debuts at No. 6. The song kicks off with…

Ronson, Cabello ‘Find’ No. 1 Mark Ronson (above) and featured vocalist Camila Cabello rule Dance Club Songs with “Find U Again” (2-1). The track — remixed by MK, Robert Eibach and The Scene Kings, among others — is Ronson’s fourth No. 1 and Cabello’s first. For Ronson, “Find” follows prior leaders “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart” (featuring Miley Cyrus; Feb. 9), “Electricity” (with Diplo, as half of Silk City, and alongside Dua Lipa; November 2018) and “Uptown Funk!” (featuring Bruno Mars; January 2015). Meanwhile, DJ Regard rolls to his first top 10 on both Dance/Electronic Streaming Songs (12-8) and Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales (16-10) with “Ride It.” Following the Oct. 4 premiere of its official video, the track, at No. 8 on the multimetric Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart, drew…

Deuces At No. 1 With reports of six recent dates at the Park Theater in Las Vegas, the Deuces Are Wild residency by Aerosmith (above) dominates the Boxscore chart at Nos. 1 and 3. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the band’s Sept. 21, 23 and 28 shows earned $3.4 million, while the Oct. 1, 3 and 6 dates grossed $3.1 million. The September trifecta marks Aerosmith’s first time atop the Boxscore chart since April 30, 2007, with a performance at Estadio River Plate in Buenos Aires. These new reports push the residency’s total gross to $31.1 million since opening April 6. The enduring rock band has played 24 shows at its Vegas home base, plus seven concerts at other MGM locations around the country. —ERIC FRANKENBERG BOXSCORE:…

CARDI B The Bronx-bred MC’s money moves extend well beyond her debut album, Invasion of Privacy. Her “Season 2” collection with online boutique Fashion Nova dropped in May, reportedly taking in $1 million in one day. Her minor but memorable film debut in Hustlers — which grossed $33.2 million in its opening weekend — should lead to more offers, and she and her “Okurrr” catchphrase jazzed up major marketing campaigns for Amazon’s Alexa and Pepsi. JOE BUDDEN Budden’s 2018 partnership with Spotify for his namesake podcast; his YouTube interview series, Pull Up; and his REVOLT show State of the Culture have changed the way fans absorb hip-hop-focused digital media. “These are necessary conversations that our audience cares about, wants to hear more about and ultimately can make their own…

DIIV Delivers DIIV (fronted by Zachary Cole Smith, above) debuts at No. 7 on Emerging Artists as the shoegaze band’s third LP, Deceiver, arrives at No. 6 on Independent Albums and No. 19 on Alternative Albums, earning 6,000 equivalent album units (5,000 in album sales) in its first week, according to Nielsen Music. Plus, Ghost Town Blues Band banks its first No. 1 on a Billboard survey as Shine starts atop Blues Albums (2,000 units), sparking the group’s No. 36 start on Emerging Artists. Its previous effort Backstage Pass reached No. 4 on Blues Albums in March 2018, marking the act’s first chart entry overall. —XANDER ZELLNER CHART BEAT HUNT TIES BEST BOW Sam Hunt (above) ties his highest Country Airplay debut as “Kinfolks” enters at No. 18, equaling…

Styles ‘Lights Up’ Social 50 The tease of new music sends Harry Styles (above) back onto the Social 50 at No. 15, marking his first chart appearance in nearly five months and his best rank since February. Styles racked up 375,000 mentions and 185,000 reactions on Twitter in the week ending Oct. 10, according to Next Big Sound, while teasing “Lights Up,” the first new track from his sophomore solo album. The song, and its music video, arrived Oct. 11. The chart’s top debut belongs to The Who, which bows at No. 20. The rock legends had 279,000 visits to their Wikipedia page, up 1,219%, while Twitter mentions had a 103% boost. Interest in the band stems from the release of a new single, “All This Music Must Fade,”…

It’s Dan + Shay (And Bieber’s) Time “10,000 Hours” by Dan + Shay and Justin Bieber (above) roars from No. 40 to No. 1 on Billboard’s airplay-, streaming- and sales-based Hot Country Songs chart following its first full week of tracking. The collaboration — which also launches at No. 4 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100; see page 3 — marks Dan + Shay’s third leader on the chart and pop superstar Bieber’s first. Brantley Gilbert earns his third total and consecutive Top Country Albums No. 1 as Fire & Brimstone ignites with 36,000 equivalent album units, according to Nielsen Music. It follows the chart-toppers The Devil Don’t Sleep (2017) and Just As I Am (2014). Plus, George Strait becomes the first artist to log 100 appearances on Country…

A New ‘Versión’ Natti Natasha and Romeo Santos (above) bound into the top 10 of Hot Latin Songs as “La Mejor Versión de Mi” reenters at No. 10 after a six-month absence. Originally a solo pop track for Natti Natasha, the song returns largely thanks to a new version of the cut — a remixed bachata duet with Santos. (In turn, he now gets chart credit.) All versions of “Versión” combined for 4.2 million streams in the week ending Oct. 10 (up 1,146%), according to Nielsen Music, while airplay soared 3,687% to 6.1 million audience impressions in the week ending Oct. 13. It’s Natti Natasha’s fourth top 10 and first in nearly a year. It’s Santos’ 19th top 10. Elsewhere, on Latin Airplay, Luis Fonsi, Sebastián Yatra and Nicky…

“Songs do not climb the charts and reach mega-success by themselves. Angie and the APG A&R team keep the roster small enough to focus on each talent. They are a wonderful creative team that helps nurture the songs from conception to consumption.”—MADISON LOVE Since 2014, Pagano has led operations, business affairs and A&R for the Warner Music Group-funded publishing startup. A Billboard Women in Music honoree in 2016 and 2018, she kicked off her 2019 by watching a handful of APG songwriters score No. 1s on various charts: Cook Classics (Panic! at the Disco’s “High Hopes” on Billboard’s Adult Top 40 Airplay), Amy Allen (Ava Max’s “Sweet but Psycho,” Official U.K. Singles chart) and Madison Love (Halsey’s “Without Me,” Billboard Hot 100). Pagano looks back on the trio of…