We understand that many of you may ask the question 'Why have you not made this change until now?' The answer is that we can make no excuse for our lateness to this realization. What we can do is acknowledge it, turn from it and take action. | | | | Chloe x Halle perform on BET's Covid-19 benefit on April 22, 2020. "Ungodly Hour" is out today on Parkwood/Columbia.
(BET/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “We understand that many of you may ask the question 'Why have you not made this change until now?' The answer is that we can make no excuse for our lateness to this realization. What we can do is acknowledge it, turn from it and take action.”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// Part 2 of 2 on this strange week at the RECORDING ACADEMY: Two bits that were hard not to notice, and equally hard to reconcile, in HARVEY MASON JR.'s interview with the LA TIMES' MIKAEL WOOD about rule changes for next year's GRAMMY AWARDS. 1) The Recording Academy's interim CEO said he's in a bit of a rush to fix the Academy's longstanding problems with Black music (see Part 1) because "Puffy's clock is ticking." Mason was referring to SEAN "DIDDY" COMBS' demand for the Grammys to stop disrespecting hip-hop ("Every year, y'all be killing us, man"), which came with a deadline: "I’m officially starting the clock. Y’all got 365 days to get this s*** together." Good for Diddy, and good for the Academy for at least trying to respond. But then: 2) Asked if a new rule aimed at preventing conflicts of interest on the Academy's powerful nominating committees was a response to his predecessor's allegations of corruption and vote-fixing, Mason answered with a flat no: "We don’t adjust based on criticism." That’s a bizarre answer. You could hardly write a rule that was more responsive to former CEO DEBORAH DUGAN's explosive accusations of fixed Grammy nominations. She alleged, for example, that an artist who sat on one of the nominating committees and who's repped by a board member was given a 2020 Song of the Year nomination after the artist's own committee overrode the wider voting membership. The new rule requires committee members to disclose conflicts of interest and withdraw from the committee if they have one. Criticism, meet adjustment. But also, Mason had just explained the adjustments he's making in response to Diddy's criticism. So what's going on here? Why meet an outside executive's critique head-on but go out of your way to avoid looking like you're listening to your own former CEO? A CEO, in this case, who was hired to help the Academy become diverse and inclusive. A female CEO who says she ran into an old boys' network that, she decided, needed some adjusting. A CEO who was shown the door almost as soon as she tried to root out the very things she thought she had been asked to root out. Deborah Dugan's rocky monthslong tenure at the Academy has been well documented. There are stories of her not adjusting to the Academy's culture and not making enough friends. There are stories of the Academy having no interest in undergoing the changes it claimed it wanted. Maybe it was just a bad fit. But from the decision to push her out a week before the Grammy Awards, to the Academy's general reluctance to publicly respond to almost any or her complaints, to Mason's seeming dismissal that she had any impact at all, it seems almost as if the desire is to erase her. To pretend she never was there. To suggest, perhaps, that the Academy's old boys' network has got this after all. Nothing to see here. Literally... "Mindful of the music industry's record of shameful treatment of black artists, we have begun a review of all historic record contracts," says BMG in what may be the single most impactful response to #TheShowMustBePaused movement so far. CEO HARTWIG MASUCH told artists and managers the review will include all labels and catalogs acquired by BMG over the years. Is BMG is responding to author, critic and USC professor JOSH KUN's call for labels to use this moment to retroactively pay Black artists what they deserve? (Kun wasn't the first to have the idea, but his is the one that went viral). If so, good. Every label should do this. And everyone else is free to remain at least a little skeptical until contracts start getting ripped up... LADY ANTEBELLUM has never not been a terrible name for a band (or any entity participating in American life for the past 160 or so years). Kudos to the band now known as LADY A for using this particular moment in American history to acknowledge the mistake and fix it. The band's Twitter announcement explains where the name came from but makes no attempt to defend it: "We are regretful and embarrassed." (Dying to know: What did it cost to secure the @ladya Twitter handle?)... The label ONE LITTLE INDIAN has changed its name to ONE LITTLE INDEPENDENT RECORDS... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from CHLOE X HALLE, JEHNNY BETH, NAEEM (late of SPANK ROCK), KATE NV, AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE, NORAH JONES, GOGO PENGUIN, IANN DIOR, DIZZY WRIGHT & DEMRICK, CORIKY (new band featuring FUGAZI's IAN MACKAYE and JOE LALLY), TENGGER, PHOTAY, GIA MARGARET, GONE WEST (new country group featuring COLBIE CAILLAT), LARKIN POE, BIBIO, BUILT TO SPILL (plays the songs of DANIEL JOHNSTON), BOOSIE BADAZZ, ULTHAR, ORLANDO WEEKS, DRAB CITY, JACK GARRATT, the SOUNDS and BONEY JAMES... An album by the late POP SMOKE, whose "DIOR" has become something of a protest anthem, has been pushed back to July out of respect to the protest movement, but there's a new single today... LIL BABY responds to the protests with "THE BIGGER PICTURE"... A new single by MICHAEL STIPE and AARON DESSNER assures us there's "NO TIME FOR LOVE LIKE NOW"... And in his final recording, the late JOHN PRINE remembers everything. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | Billboard | | This letter, written by a major-label executive who has worked at all three major record companies, has been circulating through the industry. | | | |  | The Ringer | | After shutting down a Dallas Police Department app and donating more than $1 million to the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s clear that K-pop fans are a legitimate force to be reckoned with. But this shouldn’t exactly be a surprise--fervent fan bases have always been particularly equipped to force change. | | | |  | Trapital | | The system hasn't always had hip-hop's best interest at heart, so its artists are more likely to take control. | | | |  | Music Business Worldwide | | A suggestion made last week during the music industry’s ‘Black Out Tuesday’ is gathering momentum. As reported on Rolling Stone earlier this week, the likes of Kelis, Eryka Badu and John Legend. | | | | | Billboard | | On Tuesday, June 2, two young black women pushed the pause button on the multibillion-dollar music industry -- and remarkably, it ground to a halt. Brianna Agyemang and Jamila Thomas talk to Billboard about what went right, what went wrong and what’s next. | | | |  | NPR | | The intersections of country music and LGBTQIA+ communities can sometimes come across as solitary acts of bravery. But the state of queer country is better measured by its full time residents. | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | “You have to look at the song itself,” Ian Lewis says. “What is the song saying? How is it being misconstrued?” | | | |  | The New York Times | | In a rare interview, the Nobel Prize winner discusses mortality, drawing inspiration from the past, and his new album: “Rough and Rowdy Ways.” | | | |  | The New Yorker | | The legendary saxophonist, approaching ninety, discusses civil rights, jazz, and creative change. | | | |  | Pitchfork | | The percussionist has become a leading presence at rallies against injustice in the nation’s capital. | | | | | | | can't nobody hold me down | |  | Complex | | In the midst of calls to defund the police, the NYPD still has a unit dedicated to keeping tabs on rappers. Here’s a closer look at the "hip-hop police." | | | |  | WQXR | | David Patrick Stearns on #taketwoknees and how musicians bring new meaning to music in troubled times. | | | | | The New York Times | | The band, now known as Lady A, wrote in a letter to fans that its eyes had been “opened wide” to the injustices black people face. | | | | | Rolling Stone | | As TikTok’s user-base has ballooned, the cost of promoting music on the app has skyrocketed. | | | |  | MusicAlly | | Noting how the music industry lacked an equivalent to what the film industry had with IMDb - and also how it was missing a verified source of data from across the music supply chain - Jacqui Louez Schoorl, with a background in both film and music, began working on what was to become Jaxsta in 2013. | | | |  | The Guardian | | The singer played ticketed livestreams from an (almost) empty church to brighten up lockdown. We took up a lonely pew to see if it could match the real thing. | | | |  | Magnetic Magazine | | Inclusion riders will force promoters to book more POC. | | | |  | Attack Magazine | | We pay tribute to the Black Artists who changed the way we hear dance music. | | | |  | OneZero | | ‘They wanted to see my ID before they would give me my account back.’ | | | | | Pitchfork | | Soundtracked by Public Enemy, Spike Lee’s 1989 masterpiece is a fever dream of Black nationalism that never loses its intensity. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | "It can't change overnight / But we gotta start somewhere / Might as well go ahead start here / We done had a hell of a year." | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
