Building is destroyed, but we will be back. | | | | Megan Thee Stallion at Rolling Loud, Oakland, Sept. 28, 2019.
(Miikka Skaffari/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “Building is destroyed, but we will be back.”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// Devastation and resilience in tornado-wracked NASHVILLE. Honky-tonk hearts and hugs to Music City... I was today years old (yesterday years old by the time you read this) when I learned that the CARL CRAWFORD who runs 1501 ENTERTAINMENT, the label MEGAN THEE STALLION is publicly feuding with, is the same Carl Crawford who a decade ago became the worst free agent signing in the history of my beloved BOSTON RED SOX. I don't resent athletes wringing hundreds of millions of dollars out of team owners who have way more money than they do, but let's just note that this particular deal was one the underperforming Red Sox left fielder never came close to recouping. If the Red Sox were UNIVERSAL MUSIC, he might still be paying them back with any money he's made in the past couple years from a billion-plus streams and other assorted Megan Thee Stallion revenue. Sports contracts, of course, aren't record deals. They're more transparent and less complicated, and the teenage or 20someting athletes signing their first ones tend to know exactly what they're signing. In the case currently unfolding on INSTAGRAM, TWITTER and elsewhere in candid detail, Crawford and Megan are feuding over a deal signed when both were new at this. She was a 20-ish up-and-coming rapper who, she told her fans in an Instagram post, "didn't know everything that was in that contract," a 360 deal that gives the label 60 percent of her recording income (she splits her 40 percent cut with her producers, engineers and collaborators) and 30 percent of her touring and merchandise revenue. He was an athlete-turned-label-owner who, in his own words, "knew absolutely nothing about [the business]. Zero." She says her management at ROC NATION told her it's an unconscionable deal andthe label's paying her pennies on the dollar. He says she owes him money. She says he's trying to block her from releasing her upcoming album, SUGA; he says he isn't. They're in court in Texas—the reporting on what exactly is happening there has been weirdly thin and sketchy—and very much online, she on Instagram, he in an unusually transparent interview with Billboard's CARL LAMARRE, some of which reads like inside baseball and some of which reads like he's letting you rifle through the papers on his desk. We readers are offered a glimpse of the transparency that the artist, and maybe even the label owner, didn't have when they first went into business together... JUICY J also went public on his label recently, with Twitter posts, references to PRINCE's "Slave" era and a song subtly titled "F*** COLUMBIA RECORDS." That dispute, too, seemed to partly involve music the artist was more interested in releasing than his label was. But the complaint desk at Columbia apparently heard what he had to say. On Saturday, he tweeted, "Spoke to @ColumbiaRecords We are all good!"... A day after she was fired as CEO of the RECORDING ACADEMY, DEBORAH DUGAN offered more evidence of what she has called GRAMMY AWARDS nomination rigging. In one case outlined in a new written complaint, supported with email evidence, Dugan says Grammy producer KEN EHRLICH pressed the Academy to nominate an unnamed superstar artist he's known since childhood for "Record, Album and Song" at this year's awards in the hope it would lead to the artist performing on the show. Dugan had promised a day earlier to hold the Academy accountable, and her termination may prove to be more of a beginning than the ending the Academy hoped it would be... Here's a running list of companies and people pulling out of SXSW, and here's a TEXAS MONTHLY piece explaining what would be lost, in very human terms, if the festival, which starts next week, is canceled. SXSW officials continue to say they're moving forward... Meanwhile QUARTZ informs us there are "already more than 65 songs on Spotify that include 'coronavirus' in the title and "another seven with 'covid19' or 'covid-19' in the title." SEO songwriting, it's a thing... BEHRINGER, the Swiss gear company, goes after a music journalist with an anti-Semitic attack, apologizes, then apparently deletes the apology. This is an amazingly calm and measured, even blissful, response by the journalist, PETER KIRN... RIP MIKE THRASHER. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | Texas Monthly | | Suspending the festival amid coronavirus fears would be The Big One for Austin’s economy. | | | |  | The New Yorker | | When we're young, a love song can seem like a beacon. It translates the mystery of feeling-the erratic moods and palpitations associated with growing up-into the stability of language. Pop music is built on these pithy excavations of fantasy and desire, even as this actual thing called love remains ephemeral. | | | |  | Variety | | Ousted Recording Academy president/CEO Deborah Dugan's attorneys have fired back at the organization with multiple new allegations, including what it claims is evidence of an attempts by the Academy - and longtime Grammy Awards executive producer Ken Ehrlich - to influence the nominations process. | | | |  | The Tennessean | | “It’s a sign of hope and redemption that made it through a night of terror,” one Twitter user shared. | | | |  | Saving Country Music | | "Nashville." Oh how people love to wag a dirty finger in its direction as this monolithic homogenized reprehensible blob-like entity looming on the horizon, responsible for all the current ills in country music and some of the cultural filth beyond. | | | |  | The New York Times | | An eclectic, unexpected, ambitious solo project let the singer and songwriter exorcise demons and stretch her creative powers. That’s good news for her long-running band. | | | |  | Complex | | Megan Thee Stallion is in a legal dispute with her record label, 1501 Certified Entertainment. We went through the legal documents. Here's everything we know. | | | |  | Guitar World | | Why we ended up with a culture of player haters, and what we can do to change it. | | | |  | Attack Magazine | | Ten years from now, what will it mean to be a DJ? | | | |  | Chicago Reader | | Local label Chicago Research has built a powerful, tight-knit collective of dark underground rock and electronic artists. | | | |  | The Music Aficionado | | Photographing and producing jazz icons Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, Esmond Edwards was at the heart of jazz album making in the 1950s and 1960s. | | | |  | Synchblog | | Ben Gilbert takes a look at the song economy and how digital platforms and sync placements are allowing classic songs to be hits over and over again. | | | |  | Highsnobiety | | The revolutionary two-year era of SoundCloud rap is effectively dead. We tally the 15 most essential contributions of the landmark genre. | | | | | Variety | | Sanders has transformed what might have been routine stump speeches into media-grabbing spectacles with the help of big-name talents like the Strokes, Bon Iver, Brandi Carlile and Jack White. | | | |  | The Guardian | | As they endure a political crisis that has led millions to flee, Venezuela’s musicians are striving to make life worth living. | | | |  | Billboard | | "The fairest thing is for people to start on equal footing. And in this country, people don’t always.” | | | |  | First Floor | | Attacks on music journalists are becoming more vicious and more frequent. | | | |  | Passion of the Weiss | | Abe Beame constructs a very detailed ranked list of rap music’s best grace notes. | | | |  | Resident Advisor | | Why is ultra-repetitive music so special? Matt Unicomb speaks with Robert Hood, William Basinski and more to find out. | | | |  | Music Business Worldwide | | Ralph Simon is the industry legend you’ve never heard of. Well, you’ve heard of him, of course, but you don’t really know his role in the rise of Zomba and Jive, the story and messy end of his partnership with Clive Calder, and how he feels about missing out on the biggest deal in the history of the music business. You’re about to find out. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
