Category Archives: R&B

Aya Nakamura thanks fans for support over Olympics racism as she wins awards

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French singer dedicates top prizes at Les Flammes ‘to all black women’ after backlash over rumoured Paris show

The French pop star Aya Nakamura, who found herself at the centre of a racist row after rumours she was going to sing at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, has thanked fans for their support after winning three big prizes at France’s Les Flammes awards for rap, R&B and pop.

“I’m very honoured because being a black artist and coming from the banlieue is very difficult,” Nakamura told the audience at the ceremony, which she opened with a medley of her songs. She dedicated her awards – female artist of the year, pop album of the year, and international star of the year – “to all black women”.

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Cher, Ozzy Osbourne and A Tribe Called Quest among 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees

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Cher finally recognised 60 years after her first recordings, while Mary J Blige, Peter Frampton and Dave Matthews Band are among the other inductees

Cher, Ozzy Osbourne, Mary J Blige and A Tribe Called Quest are among the stars to be added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year – many of them rather overdue.

Artists can be added to the US institution 25 years after their first recording, but Cher – who once described her snub by the Hall as “kind of rude” – has had to wait until 60 years after her first releases with Sonny & Cher to be included.

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Brit awards 2024 – full list of winners

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The winners of every category at the 2024 Brits, updated as the ceremony progresses

• Brit awards 2024: women dominate as Raye scores record-smashing six wins
• Brit awards 2024: as it happened

Blur – The Ballad of Darren
J Hus – Beautiful and Brutal Yard
Little Simz – No Thank You
Raye – My 21st Century Blues – WINNER!
Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy

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Henry Fambrough, last original member of R&B group the Spinners, dies aged 85

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Group known for hits like It’s a Shame and Could It Be I’m Falling in Love were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2023

Henry Fambrough, the last surviving original member of the iconic R&B group the Spinners, whose hits included It’s a Shame, Could It Be I’m Falling in Love and The Rubberband Man, died on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the group said. He was 85.

Fambrough died peacefully of natural causes in his northern Virginia home, the spokesperson, Tanisha Jackson, said in a statement.

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Mobo awards 2024: Central Cee tops winners thanks to megahit Sprinter

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London MC wins best male and song of the year, while Potter Payper beats stiff competition to win album of the year

Central Cee has topped the winners at the 2024 Mobo awards, winning best male for the second year in a row, and best song for Sprinter, his collaborative track with Dave, that dominated the summer months with a 10-week run at No 1.

Elsewhere the awards, which celebrate black musical artistry in the UK and globally, spread the garlands across a diverse range of music, with no one artist dominating.

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Eternal: 90s stars cancel full-band reunion over reported trans rights clash

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Representative for Louise Redknapp says sisters Easther and Vernie Bennett refused to play Pride events due to trans people ‘hijacking’ gay community

Chart-topping British girl group Eternal have cancelled a planned full-band reunion due to an alleged difference in views on transgender rights.

A representative for singer Louise Redknapp, who went on to have a successful solo career, confirmed reports that she had left the reunion due to a clash in values with sisters Easther and Vernie Bennett.

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Brit awards 2023: Harry Styles and Wet Leg triumph while Lizzo delivers the glitz – as it happened

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Fontaines DC, Aitch, Becky Hill and the 1975 also won gongs, while Tom Grennan flubbed it. Here’s all the action from the 43rd annual music awards

• Read the full report here
• The trouble with the Brits
• The night in pictures

Shania is here! And in a week where she has a UK No 1 album with Queen of Me to boot. She’s performed with Harry Styles in the past; wonder if they’ll have a redux (or if she’ll present him with one of the awards that he’ll inevitably walk away with tonight).

RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Bimini Bon-Boulash has arrived in extremely punk fashion, wearing a dress that transplants the colours of the trans pride flag onto the union jack – a nice little injection of chaos onto this year’s red carpet.

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Patti LaBelle rushed offstage after bomb threat made at Wisconsin show

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Singer abruptly evacuated just a couple of songs into her concert after the bomb threat forced authorities to evacuate the theatre

Patti LaBelle was abruptly rushed offstage just a couple of songs into a Christmas concert in Milwaukee, after a bomb threat forced authorities to suddenly evacuate the venue.

Footage of the 78-year-old singer’s sudden evacuation from the stage at the Riverside Theater began to circulate on social media on Saturday night shortly after the incident.

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Grammy awards 2022: Olivia Rodrigo wins big and Ukraine’s Zelenskiy makes cameo

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The specter of Oscars chaos loomed over the music awards – a mega-concert which included a message of hope from the Ukrainian president

Teenage pop phenom Olivia Rodrigo and R&B duo Silk Sonic dominated the major categories, and Jon Batiste won album of the year at the 64th annual Grammys – a three-and-a-half-hour mega concert that mostly steered clear of politics or the pandemic, save for a virtual message from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and an emotional tribute to victims of the Russian invasion.

A week after one of the most chaotic Oscars in recent memory – during which Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage – the Grammys seemed to revel in its technical proficiency and lack of controversy. “We’re gonna be listening to some music, we’re gonna be dancing, we’re gonna be singing, we’re gonna be keeping people’s names out of our mouths,” said host Trevor Noah in his opening monologue, acknowledging the elephant in the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

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Timmy Thomas, R&B singer of Why Can’t We Live Together, dies aged 77

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Singer’s anti-war song reached US Top 3 in 1973 before being widely covered and sampled by artists including Drake

Timmy Thomas, whose spellbinding anti-war song Why Can’t We Live Together was a global hit in 1973, has died aged 77.

No cause of death has been given. His family wrote on his Facebook page: “With appreciation and gratitude, the family extends a thank you for the prayers, support, precious words and other expressions of love and kindness during this time.”

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TLC’s 20 greatest songs – ranked!

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Confident, unpredictable and irresistible, TLC set a benchmark in a golden age for R&B. Thirty years since the release of their debut album, we count down T-Boz, Chilli and the late Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopez’s best tracks

Far sassier than your standard early 90s slow jam, blessed with a laconic Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes rap: let rumour-mongers and spreaders of “crap street yap” beware! Somethin’ You Wanna Know is the sound of a band already far more sophisticated than their cartoonish early image suggested.

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Syl Johnson, much-sampled blues, funk and soul singer, dies aged 85

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Singer’s upbeat and socially conscious songwriting appears on tracks by Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy and Kanye West

Syl Johnson, the blues, funk and soul singer whose work was much sampled in US hip-hop, has died aged 85.

No cause of death was announced by his family, who said of Johnson: “He lived his life as a singer, musician and entrepreneur who loved black music … A fiery, fierce, fighter, always standing for the pursuit of justice as it related to his music and sound, he will truly be missed by all who crossed his path.”

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Barbados’s icon: why Rihanna’s national hero status is so apt

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Honoured by her newly independent country, Rihanna has always proudly worn her Bajan heritage – broadening her sound from her Caribbean roots, while staying true to them

Rihanna’s designation as a national hero of Barbados, to coincide with the country’s transition to an independent republic, could not be more apt. Not only has she been an official ambassador for culture and youth in the country since 2018, the singer remains the country’s most famous citizen and indeed advocate. She has never softened her Bajan accent, and her music, while tapping into pop, R&B and dance music, has remained rich with her Caribbean heritage.

In her investiture ceremony, the country’s prime minister Mia Mottley addressed the pop singer, fashion icon and hugely successful entrepreneur as “ambassador Robyn Rihanna Fenty: may you continue to shine like a diamond” – a reference to 2012’s global hit Diamonds – “and bring honour to your nation, by your words, by your actions, and to do credit wherever you shall go. God bless you, my dear.”

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Paul Weller’s 30 greatest songs – ranked!

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Drawn from the Jam, the Style Council and his solo work, all of it powered by romance, storytelling and political vim, here is the best of a British songwriter unbounded by genre

On the B-side of A Solid Bond in Your Heart lurks Weller’s mea culpa take on the sudden demise of the Jam, the arrogance of youth and the perils of becoming the Voice of a Generation. “I was a shit-stained statue / Schoolchildren would stand in awe … I thought I was lord of this crappy jungle.”

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Adele: 30 review – the defining voice of heartbreak returns

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(Columbia)
While the topic of her divorce is all-consuming, the singer seems to be pushing gently at the boundaries of what people expect of her

There is a sense in which 2021’s biggest single – 84.9m streams in a week on one platform alone; straight to No 1 in 25 countries; a song that received more first-week plays on US radio than any other song ever – wasn’t so much a comeback as an act of global reassurance. The world may recently have lurched from one unimaginable crisis to another, but Adele’s Easy on Me brought with it the message that at least one thing hasn’t changed: Adele Adkins is still heartbroken and belting it out over a gentle piano and tasteful orchestration.

Romantic despair became her global brand from the moment she stopped the show at the 2011 Brit awards with her tearful performance of Someone Like You. It catapulted her from the massed ranks of soul-influenced singers filling a gap created by Amy Winehouse’s inability to follow up Back to Black, to mind-boggling levels of success. There’s always the chance that millions of people might flock to an upbeat Adele album that depicts her full of the joys of spring, but clearly she wasn’t taking any chances last time around: for want of new unhappiness, 2015’s 25 returned to the same failed relationships that inspired its record-breaking predecessor 21. No matter – it sold 22m copies.

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Candi Staton: ‘When the promoters tried not to pay I had to get my gun out’

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Between the ‘chitlin’ circuit’ and her new rave tunes, the soul diva even picked up praise from Elvis. In our new series where you ask the questions, this storied musician reveals a few untold yarns

Why do you think that your early 70s classic albums (I’m Just a Prisoner, Stand By Your Man, Candi Staton etc) are less canonised than other ‘classic’ albums of that period by the Stones, the Beatles etc? mesm

Back then I didn’t get on the same chart as those guys because Black artists on smaller labels were put in the R&B charts, not the pop charts. It was musical segregation. To cross over you needed a big label and money behind you. There was a lot of politics. In the UK there was one chart, which is how it should be.

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R Kelly had sexual contact with underage boy as well as girls, prosecutors say

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  • Jury selection nears in sex-trafficking trial of R&B star
  • Prosecutors detail new claims but not new charges

Federal prosecutors in R Kelly’s sex trafficking case say the R&B star had sexual contact with an underage boy as well as girls, and jurors should hear those claims.

Related: Surviving R Kelly producers: 'We wanted to explain why you shouldn’t blame survivors'

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Amy Winehouse’s 20 greatest songs – ranked!

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With the 10th anniversary of her death this week, rediscover the best of Winehouse’s discography, where heartbreak and anger are mixed up with wit and joy

After all its emotional strife, the Back to Black album concludes with a jokey paean to weed. You could construct an argument that Addicted is Winehouse once more tapping into a venerable jazz tradition – it’s easy to imagine Fats Waller singing about someone snaffling his stash in the 30s – but perhaps it’s better to just enjoy its mordant wit.

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