Rapper sends letter to Republican presidential hopeful objecting to candidate’s use of his song
The rapper Eminem has demanded that Vivek Ramaswamy cease using his music.
In a letter reported by the Daily Mail, a representative for the rapper’s publisher told counsel for the Republican presidential hopeful that Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, objected to Ramaswamy’s use of his compositions and was revoking a license to use them.
Continue reading...London-born musician Dumile Daniel Thompson, 49, had a lack of oxygen to his brain after a reaction to a blood pressure drug
An NHS trust has apologised for the substandard care given to MF Doom, an underground rap icon who died aged 49 while having hospital treatment.
The artist behind songs including Accordion and That’s That, whose real name was Dumile Daniel Thompson, died in October 2020 due to a lack of oxygen to his brain after a reaction to a drug prescribed for blood pressure.
Continue reading...Musician cheered on during jump by his sister Gracie, who has the condition and regularly features in his work
Rapper Aitch has skydived to raise money and awareness for Down’s syndrome, inspired by his sister Gracie, who has the condition. Gracie, 13, regularly features in the Manchester-born rapper’s music and recently joined her brother in the video for his latest single, Round 2.
Although the skydive had been scheduled to take place in March to coincide with Down’s syndrome Awareness week, windy conditions postponed the jump.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Parents of Kiernan Forbes pay tribute to ‘beloved son’ who was killed alongside another man while walking to car
One of South Africa’s top rap artists, known as AKA, has been shot dead outside a restaurant in the eastern city of Durban, his family said.
Kiernan Forbes, 35, won multiple South African awards, was nominated several times for a Black Entertainment Television award in the US and was once nominated for an MTV Europe music award.
Continue reading...P38-La Gang perform in balaclavas, namecheck the Red Brigades – and are under criminal investigation for inciting terrorism. Are they, as they believe, being scapegoated for their politics?
For P38-La Gang, everything changed on 1 May 2022, Labour Day. The Italian rap group were performing at the club Arci Tunnel in Reggio Emilia. The location appeared to be no coincidence. It is the city that birthed the Red Brigades, the far-left terrorist group that shocked Italy with kidnappings, kneecappings and more than 80 political assassinations in the 1970s and 1980s – a period of social turmoil known as the “Years of Lead”. On stage that day, the four-piece covered their faces with balaclavas and made a three-fingered gesture representing the P38 gun – the symbol of the 70s leftist movement Autonomia Operaia. As usual, the group flew the Red Brigades flag at the back of the stage – the title of their 2021 debut album, Nuove BR, translates as “new Red Brigades”.
Until then, the Bologna-based band had been considered one of the most bizarre and original newcomers in the Italian trap scene: angry, funny, outrageous, paradoxical, even a novelty act, depending on who you asked. Mixing bad taste with offending politicians and talkshow reporters, making fun of terrorism and dictatorships, P38-La Gang showed a face of Italy that few people want to see: the anger of workers paid €3 an hour and of a generation defeated by the class struggle who are surviving on memes and desperate irony.
Continue reading...The far-right Republican congresswoman was served with a cease-and-desist letter after she soundtracked a promotional video with his 1999 hit Still Dre
Dr Dre has successfully blocked Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from using his music in any context to do with her political career after she used his 1999 hit Still Dre to soundtrack a promotional video.
In the nearly two-minute video, posted on 9 January with the caption, “It’s time to begin … and they can’t stop what’s coming”, the far-right Georgia lawmaker walks out of her office in slow motion to the familiar first notes of the song, which features Snoop Dogg.
Continue reading...A clean sweep led by Harry Styles was an ‘astonishing’ high note for the music industry – but the domination of older songs reflected the impact of streaming
For the first time since year-end charts were introduced more than 50 years ago, British artists have made up the entirety of the year’s 10 most popular songs in the UK.
Topping the biggest songs of 2022 in the UK was Harry Styles’ omnipresent As It Was; Ed Sheeran had two songs on the list, while new artists such as south London songwriter Cat Burns and Scottish dance duo LF System rubbed shoulders with Kate Bush, whose 1985 single Running Up That Hill topped the UK singles chart for the first time last year after being featured in the latest series of Netflix drama Stranger Things, having originally peaked at No 3.
Continue reading...Elon Musk intervenes after rapper posted image hours after airing antisemitic views in Alex Jones interview
Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has been suspended from Twitter after he tweeted an image of a swastika blended with a star of David, less than two weeks after he returned to the platform.
The suspension took place hours after Ye praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in an interview on Infowars, a show hosted by the rightwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Continue reading...Condé Nast files complaint in Manhattan federal court after rappers allegedly use trademark without permission
The rappers Drake and 21 Savage have been sued by Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue magazine, for allegedly using the Vogue name without permission to promote their new album, Her Loss.
Condé Nast claimed the musicians’ promotional campaign, including to their more than 135 million social media followers, was built “entirely” on the unauthorised use of Vogue trademarks and false representations that they would appear on Vogue’s next cover, and with the “love and support” of the magazine’s longtime editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour.
Continue reading...Atlanta-based Quality Control issues statement speaking of ‘monumental loss’, as Houston police appeal for any of 40 people at scene to come forward
Migos’s Atlanta-based record label Quality Control has shared a statement on the fatal shooting of their rapper Takeoff. “It is with broken hearts and deep sadness that we mourn the loss of our beloved brother Kirshnik Khari Ball, known to the world as Takeoff,” the label wrote on Instagram. “Senseless violence and a stray bullet has taken another life from this world and we are devastated. Please respect his family and friends as we all continue to process this monumental loss.”
At a press conference, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and police chief Troy Finner responded to the shooting, asking any of the supposedly 40 people who were present on the scene to come forward with details.
Continue reading...Kevin Michael Brophy says his back tattoo was superimposed on to a male model who seemingly performs oral sex on the cover of Gangsta Bitch Music Vol 1
A “man of faith” is suing Cardi B for superimposing his back tattoo on to a male model who seemingly performs oral sex on the rapper on the cover of her debut mixtape.
Kevin Michael Brophy is suing the Grammy-winning musician in a copyright-infringement lawsuit in federal court in southern California, seeking $5m in damages. Belcalis Almánzar, the rapper’s real name, was in court and is expected to testify during the trial.
Continue reading...The decision to end the relationship with West and clothing brand Yeezy predates recent controversies and array of antisemitic comments
The US bank JP Morgan Chase has ended its relationship with Kanye West and his clothing brand Yeezy Inc – although the decision predates the rapper and designer’s recent controversies in which he wore a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt and shared racist conspiracy theories in an unaired interview.
Candace Owens, the conservative US commentator whom West has associated with in recent years, shared a letter from the bank, dated 20 September, on Twitter.
Continue reading...The rapper was released on $75,000 bond on Saturday after being booked into jail in Fort Lauderdale
Rapper Kodak Black has been arrested in south Florida on charges of trafficking in oxycodone and possession of a controlled substance.
The rapper, whose legal name is Bill Kapri, was previously pardoned by Donald Trump on the last day of his presidency for a previous conviction on a weapons charge. He was booked into jail in Fort Lauderdale on Friday and released on Saturday after a $75,000 bond was negotiated at a bail hearing, his lawyer Bradford Cohen told Rolling Stone.
Continue reading...Keith Grayson’s death was confirmed in a statement released through Hot 97, the radio station where he hosted The Drama Hour
The pioneering hip-hop artist Keith Grayson, who performed as DJ Kay Slay and worked with top stars, has died of complications from Covid-19.
Grayson’s death at 55 on Sunday was confirmed by his family in a statement released through New York radio station Hot 97, where he hosted The Drama Hour for more than two decades.
Continue reading...Representative confirms rapper will not perform at awards show after he was suspended from Instagram for 24 hours
Kanye West has been barred from performing at the Grammy awards next month due to “concerning online behavior”, a representative for the rapper and designer said.
The decision, confirmed to Variety, came a day after West, now legally known as Ye, was suspended from Instagram for 24 hours. The platform said content on the 44-year-old’s account was in violation of its policies on “hate speech and bullying and harassment”.
Continue reading...Unidentified gunman kills 20-year-old vocalist minutes after he was released on bond following arrest in Opa-locka, Florida
Tributes have been paid to Baby Cino, an aspiring rapper from Miami, who was shot and killed in a daylight ambush minutes after leaving a city jail on Wednesday.
The 20-year-old vocalist, whose real name was Timothy Starks, was arrested by Miami-Dade officers at 2am in Opa-locka, Florida on Tuesday after they pulled him over for driving with an obscured number plate. On searching his car, police found a fully loaded Glock 32 pistol.
Continue reading...In early 2010s, he was one of the biggest French-speaking artists in the world, but then he suddenly stopped. Now he’s ready to resume his spot at the top – and is as controversial as ever
A few months ago, Paul Van Haver, better known as the Belgian singer-songwriter/rapper Stromae, announced his comeback. In the French-speaking world, this was big news. As the 00s turned into the 2010s, Stromae had established himself as one of the biggest Francophone artists in the world. He sold 8.5m albums. His single Alors On Danse went to No 1 in 19 countries: in 2010, it was the most-played French-language song in the world. Its level of success was almost freakish, leading to the assumption that he was, as he puts it, “a one-hit wonder … when you have a hit people say it’s going to be the only hit in your life”.
But he wasn’t. His second album, 2013’s Racine Carrée, spent five years in the French chart: it was the best-selling album of the year twice on the trot. He was critically acclaimed for a kaleidoscopic sound that takes in everything from Congolese soukous to knowingly cheesy Europop to the mordant chanson of his countryman Jacques Brel, an unpredictable mishmash that he thinks is rooted in his peripatetic childhood. His largely absent father was Rwandan – he was killed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide – and his Belgian mother was an inveterate traveller. “Sometimes we loved it and sometimes it was pretty close to a nightmare, because we didn’t have a lot of money, so they weren’t all-inclusive vacations,” he says. “Sometimes good memories, sometimes really bad, but memories you don’t forget.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...With breakdancers, artists and parkourists facing a bleak future under the Taliban, a global network stepped in to help, drawing on the activist spirit of rap culture
A veteran of the hip-hop scene and internationally celebrated breakdancer, Nancy Yu – AKA Asia One – has her fair share of people contacting her looking for advice. But the message she received in 2019 from a young Afghan was a little different.
Frustrated by his breakdancing crew’s inability to get visas to perform internationally, Moshtagh* was wondering if Asia could help. “He felt they were really good, but they felt, like, invisible to the world,” she says. “I liked him. He wasn’t trying to bug me or say ‘we need this right now’ … He seemed rather humble and honest.”
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