Innholdsfortegnelse for November 14, 2020 i Billboard Magazine

MOOD,” BY 24KGOLDN FEATURING IANN DIOR, REBOUNDS for a third week atop the Billboard Hot 100. The song drew 84.2 million radio airplay audience impressions and 19.2 million U.S. streams, and sold 7,000 downloads in the tracking week, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. The single also rules the multimetric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs and Hot Alternative Songs charts for an 11th week each and Hot Rap Songs for a fourth week. It’s the first title to have led all three lists. “I think our generation grew up listening to different types of music. We don’t think about genre instinctively,” 24kGoldn recently told Billboard. “Back in the day, it was like, ‘Well, you want to be a rock star? You want to be a rapper? Or, ‘You want to…

CURTIS WATERS WAS understandably stressed when the coronavirus began to wreak havoc on the music industry in late March. Like many independent acts, the 20-year-old recording artist was in survival mode before the pandemic — but the moratorium on touring and global economic crisis amplified all of his existing challenges. “I didn’t have health insurance and stuff, so I was like, ‘Man, I’m going to die if I don’t make money soon,’” recalls Waters. “At one point I was like, ‘I might just sign a crappy [record] deal — whatever deal comes to me.’” Waters was able to find stability, thanks to a combination of clever digital marketing and fortuitous timing. After studying online music marketing tutorials, he chose to download TikTok and relentlessly promote his single “Stunnin’” on…

IN YEARS PAST, STEVE CHILTON HAD often considered opening his Phoenix venue, The Rebel Lounge, as a coffee shop with friends and Driftwood Coffee owners Luke Bentley and Lance Linderman. The space — which has hosted artists including Jimmy Eat World, Lucky Daye and Soccer Mommy — typically sat dormant during the day, and he had the room, but with promoting shows as Psyko Steve Presents and near-daily sound checks, the idea never came to fruition. Over eight months into a pandemic and with menial revenue for 2020, Chilton’s idea is no longer a pipe dream — it’s a necessity. “If we’re still looking at [another] year until real shows come back or whatever the timeline is, now is the time to invest in [this],” says Chilton. On Oct.…

“I’M A BIG FAN OF SMALL-BATCH artisan food-makers, especially as a vegan who travels around the country quite a bit. We were going to do a hot sauce for Speedy Ortiz in 2015, but the logistics of carrying glass bottles on tour for three months was more liability than we were willing to personally accept. As soon as we knew that touring was over [this year], but that I’d still be putting out a record, I was like, ‘I can do all of the cool, glass-bottle food merch I’ve always fantasized about!’ Dragon’s Blood Elixir was the first [vendor] I reached out to, and I got in touch with Craft Tea, which stocks a lot of local venues and cafes with different herbal blends. We planned to do chocolates…

THE FEARLESS LYRICIST: BRENT FAIYAZ Before Faiyaz became an R&B smooth operator, he was a punch-line-heavy lyricist looking to break into the rap game. It wasn’t until his manager convinced him to try singing in 2014 that Faiyaz realized his calling. Three years later, he struck gold when he sang the catchy, made-for-summertime chorus on GoldLink’s “Crew.” The song earned a Grammy nod and gave Faiyaz his first taste of mainstream success. His appreciation for ’90s R&B shines on his buzzy subsequent projects (2018’s Lost and 2020’s Fuck the World EP), as does his nimble, fearless writing on self-love, gang culture and Black masculinity in America. THE QUIET FORCE: BRYSON TILLER Tiller’s transcendent 2015 project Trapsoul unlocked a new level in the genre: Pairing trap-laden beats with his silky…

When Rosie Perez danced to this song at the start of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, she didn’t just help create one of the most iconic opening-credits scenes in film history — she also captured what made this track so effective: its ability to get listeners up on their feet, with a beat as urgent as the lyrics about standing up to injustice. The song’s official music video, also directed by Lee, took a more literal interpretation of its message, following the group as it performed at a rally in Brooklyn alongside images of Malcolm X and other “heroes [who] don’t appear on no stamps,” as frontman Chuck D raps.…

TUNE IN TO THE audio-only app Clubhouse on any given Wednesday and you’ll find a music-business panel with the likes of Scooter Braun, Parkwood Entertainment president Steve Pamon or interim Recording Academy chief Harvey Mason Jr., like a laid-back, A-list executive conference call. You could listen along as 21 Savage plays a Black Jeopardy trivia game or discusses relationships with industry figures and fellow rapper Meek Mill, their headshot profile pictures forming a grid across the minimalist iOS app. Elsewhere there are conversations about politics, sneakers and more. Since launching in March during the pandemic, Clubhouse has stepped in for those missing real-world conferences, VIP rooms and happy hours, captivating and capitalizing on the music industry’s attention. In May, Forbes reported the company was valued at $100 million…

HONG KONG — Frustrated by the shutdown of live music in the United States this summer, the dance music duo BEAUZ made a radical move: The pair left California and moved to China. After arriving in Shanghai in early August, Taiwanese-Indonesian brothers Bernie and Johan Yang quarantined for 14 days, then got to work arranging concerts in a country that had tamed the spread of the coronavirus enough to make touring possible again. Since then, BEAUZ has played 13 club shows and three festivals. “This is the most intense touring we have done in our careers,” says Bernie. As Europe locks down again and the United States breaks records for new coronavirus infections, further paralyzing both live-music sectors, China and Taiwan have emerged as global outliers in their ability…

WHEN BETH LAIRD WAS preparing to launch her Nashville independent publishing company, Creative Nation, in 2011, she turned to publishing veteran Carla Wallace, co-founder of fellow Nashville indie Big Yellow Dog Music. “I wasn’t telling anybody, but [she was] one of the first people I was hitting up with questions,” says Laird. “She didn’t take any of my advice,” jokes Wallace, who co-founded Big Yellow Dog Music in 1998. Over a decade later, Laird and Wallace have remained just as close while leading their respective teams (of around 10 employees each) with cautious optimism and motivating their songwriters to continued success — even through a pandemic. Both companies have landed No. 1 hits this year: Big Yellow Dog Music client Maren Morris had a crossover smash with “The Bones”…

MIDWAY THROUGH Megan Thee Stallion’s performance of her hit “Savage” on Saturday Night Live’s October season premiere, the sound of gunshots cut the music short. Audio clips of an iconic 1962 Malcolm X speech and of Black Lives Matter activist Tamika Mallory played, followed by an impassioned speech from Megan herself, calling for justice in the wake of Breonna Taylor’s death in March at the hands of Louisville, Ky., police — and for the protection of Black women and men in this country. For Megan, 25, it was a powerful statement made on the biggest platform of her career, and the highlight of a year in which she topped the Billboard Hot 100 twice — with her “Savage” remix alongside Beyoncé, as well as the jaw-dropping Cardi B collaboration…

IT’S THE LATE 1990s, AND Southern rap music is beginning to bubble up in the mainstream. In New Orleans, Master P’s No Limit Records is gaining steam on the heels of his “Make Em Say Uhhh” and Cash Money Records is thriving on buzz from Juvenile and Lil Wayne. Memphis is entering the fray with the emergence of Three 6 Mafia. And in Atlanta, OutKast is making a bid for hip-hop’s crown, following its seminal album Aquemini. Throughout that city’s historically Black college campuses, students are looking to break into the scene — including three young men who will one day help change the sound of hip-hop. At Clark Atlanta University, Tyree Simmons studies communication by day; by night, as DJ Drama, he crafts mixtapes with the hottest new…

THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC may have forced much of the music industry to pause, but it hasn’t stopped WondaGurl and Hit-Boy — two of hip-hop’s most prolific and inventive producers — from working nonstop. “I’ve been having a hard time completely focusing,” admits WondaGurl, 23, who has crafted hits for Rihanna and Travis Scott. “But I’m doing what I have to do at the same time.” That has included producing tracks on two of the year’s biggest debuts, Don Toliver’s Heaven or Hell and Pop Smoke’s Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon — as well as inking a new co-publishing deal with Sony/ATV in partnership with Scott’s Cactus Jack imprint. For his part, Hit-Boy, 33, who took home his second Grammy earlier this year (for Nipsey Hussle’s “Racks…

JOE BIDEN’S WIN IN THE U.S. presidential election has some songwriters rushing to sell their publishing rights before the end of the year. The Internal Revenue Service generally treats income from the sale or exchange of “self-created musical works” as a capital gain, currently subject to a top federal tax rate of 20%, rather than personal income. During his campaign, Biden proposed doubling to 40% the top federal tax rate on capital gains, or taxing them as personal income, which is currently subject to a top rate of 37% — although Biden has talked about raising that, too. For songwriters selling major catalogs, such a change would raise tax bills considerably. “There’s always a want-to-do by the end of the year,” says attorney Erin Jacobson, who has done deals…

DAYS BEFORE THE PRESIDENTIAL election, workers outside the RIAA’s new office in downtown Washington, D.C., were busy boarding up storefronts preparing for possible unrest. But the trade organization’s leaders — chairman/CEO Mitch Glazier and COO Michele Ballantyne — were calm and optimistic. “It has been a very bizarre election,” says Glazier, sitting opposite Ballantyne on a cream-colored sectional sofa. “Emotions are high, but we are well positioned as an industry.” As the 2018 passage of the Music Modernization Act proved, copyright is one of the few issues that can bring together politicians on both sides of the aisle. The RIAA’s planned move to a new, open-concept headquarters, with an event space that can be set up as a theater, was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic — the staffers’ boxes…

Original Stax Records songwriter David Porter and 20-year business and legal veteran Tony Alexander launched their entertainment company, Made in Memphis Entertainment (MIME), in April 2015. Alexander quickly realized that in order for the independent label MIME Records to succeed, the co-founders would need to create some additional revenue streams. “If you’re trying to develop and break artists that are unknown, it requires patience and a lot of capital,” he says. In the years since, Porter (CEO) and Alexander (president/managing director) expanded to include a recording studio, a synch licensing division and a publisher, while launching the only Black-owned distribution company in the United States. And though MIME’s label roster boasts just three acts, Alexander emphasizes the amount of untapped potential in Memphis. “There’s no other city in the…

After Cooke and his entourage were arrested for trying to stay at a whites-only motel in Louisiana in 1963, the soul singer channeled his frustrations and hopes into what would become a foundational anthem of the civil rights movement. Cooke performed the song only once in his lifetime: He was fatally shot just before its release. (He also reportedly told protegé Bobby Womack, who said the song sounded “like death,” that he didn’t want to sing it in public again because of its heavy subject matter.) Yet its power hasn’t diminished: The U.S. Library of Congress added it to its National Recording Registry in 2007, and Barack Obama quoted the song’s lyrics the night he was elected president in 2008.…

Written in response to 1963 events such as the assassination of activist Medgar Evers and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., “Mississippi Goddam” marked Simone’s shift toward more politically outspoken music. What sounds at first like an upbeat show tune soon transforms into a dirge for Black Americans who’ve been brutally killed across the South. With her “do it slow” refrain, Simone also takes aim at white moderates who called for the civil rights movement to be more incremental. Radio stations across the South banned the song, and Simone later said the backlash curtailed her career. But in speaking her mind despite the risks, Simone made it easier for other artists to do the same in decades to come.…

N.W.A pushed West Coast hip-hop to the forefront of protest music with “Fuck tha Police,” whose lyrics take the form of a trial, with “Judge [Dr.] Dre presiding” and “prosecuting attorneys” MC Ren, Ice Cube and Eazy-E testifying against the LAPD. The song prompted the FBI to complain to the group’s label about “discouraging and degrading” lyrics, but the track’s raw message gave voice to the feelings of many Black Americans — and it has reverberated throughout pop culture ever since.…

When the Compton, Calif., rapper performed this song at the 2015 BET Awards atop a graffiti-covered police car, Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera claimed that “hip-hop has done more damage to African Americans than racism.” But that year, as Black Lives Matter protests unfolded in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore police custody, this soulful standout from Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly was the soundtrack: a message of resilience that echoed through the streets. Fans dubbed it “the new Black national anthem” on social media, and the song, which later won two Grammy Awards, continues to be played at protests today.…

WHEN OLD-SCHOOL hip-hop began, Billboard wasn’t late to class. With the July 1, 1978, article “B-Beats Bombarding Bronx,” former Billboard staffer Robert “Rocky” Ford Jr. — who died May 19 at age 70 — became the first journalist to write about the genre for a mainstream publication. “He’d heard there was something going on in the Bronx and wanted to learn more about it,” recalls his widow, Linda Medley. “He appreciated what this music meant to the Black community, and he could see it growing in popularity.” Although Ford soon left Billboard to become a music producer, writing was “his dream job in a lot of ways,” she says. “He was proud to put that on his résumé.” HIT THE BREAKS Ford’s landmark July 1978 piece introduced readers to…