There are people who listen to reggaeton and love it and at the same time they have never felt represented within it. In 20 or 30 years nobody had worried about that, but I did. | | | | No, that isn't an N95 mask: Bad Bunny at the Forum, Inglewood, Calif., Nov. 17, 2019.
(Scott Dudelson/Getty Images) | | | | | | “There are people who listen to reggaeton and love it and at the same time they have never felt represented within it. In 20 or 30 years nobody had worried about that, but I did.”
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| | rantnrave:// Nothing to see here. "We're focused on the future," RECORDING ACADEMY board chairman HARVEY MASON JR. said Monday, hours after the board officially fired its first female CEO, the one it brought in seven months earlier to clean up the diversity mess its last (as of now) male CEO had left behind, and put on administrative leave in January for bullying an employee (widely reported to be the previous CEO's former assistant), making her possibly the most prominent CEO in American history to be forced out for a single complaint of bullying an employee. Bullying is bad. The female CEO, DEBORAH DUGAN, said a prominent music business lawyer connected to the Academy had sexually harassed her; that her processor, NEIL PORTNOW, had been accused of rape by a musician (he denied it and was cleared by an internal investigation) and the trustees had pressured her to hire him as a consultant for $750,000; that the Academy's leadership was riddled with conflicts of interest and financial improprieties; that it resisted her attempts at implementing the reforms she was hired to make; and that (this is what you might call burying the lede) the GRAMMY AWARDS are rigged. All of that, too, is bad. Focusing on the future may prove to be easier said than done. In a letter to Academy members, the board said it paid for two "costly" investigations of Dugan's allegations and the allegations against her. In the letter and in public statements, the board had lots to say about Dugan—who said she was never interviewed—and next to nothing to say about any of her allegations, as if not mentioning them would make them go away. The board's vice chair, TAMMY HUNT, told the LOS ANGELES TIMES that investigators "overwhelmingly confirmed the serious complaints that had been lodged against [Dugan] by a multitude of Academy staff members." Chair emeritus CHRISTINE ALPERT said, "It was not one thing that led to this action but rather the large number of incidents that demonstrated poor judgment, both before and after Ms. Dugan went on administrative leave." The "after" part of that statement makes it sounds like she was fired partly for complaining about being put on leave, which she did, while going public with her allegations, which the Academy has denied but never really talked about. Dugan implied Monday she was fired for being a whistleblower. She said she'll now work from the outside "to hold accountable those who continue to self-deal, taint the Grammy voting process and discriminate against women and people of color. Artists deserve better." Her lawyers said, "in due course, the Academy, its leadership and its attorneys will be held accountable under the law.” A 44-page complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, detailing all of Dugan's allegations, awaits review, a potential land mine waiting to be detonated. "For us as an organization," Mason said Monday, "it’s a setback, and it’s not something that we’re going to spend a ton more time and energy on. We’re focused on the future, and on transforming the Academy." He'll begin searching this week for what will be the Academy's fourth CEO in less than a year. That CEO's job, presumably, will be the same one Dugan set out to do in August. Which may just possibly involve spending some energy on a past mistake or two. MusicSET: "Grammy Wars: New CEO Steps Up, Recording Academy Asks Her to Step Down"... Tours and events continue to be canceled left and right because of coronavirus fears, but SXSW is moving forward as planned. The festival, which is scheduled to start next, acknowledged that "a handful" of participants from China and Japan have pulled out and that corporate travel bans may keep others away, but said after consultation with federal and local authorities, "we are proceeding with the 2020 event." As of early this morning, more than 29,000 people had signed a CHANGE.ORG petition asking festival organizers to reconsider. In addition to supplying disinfectant wipes and sanitizer, the fest says its safety plans include "microphone wipe downs"... Which reminds me of the time I saw MIRANDA LAMBERT as a New York club with ERIC CHURCH, and between sets a roadie swept the stage clean with a giant broom. More artists should do this... Also affected by coronavirus: WARNER MUSIC's IPO... RIP BILL EVANOV. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| Come on, you employed two firms to make independent investigations… If Dugan’s behavior was really that bad, why not release these results, obviously they would support your action. But probably they wouldn’t. | | |
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| After officially terminating ousted CEO Deborah Dugan, the Recording Academy's Harvey Mason Jr. speaks with The Times about the Grammy organization's next steps. | | |
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| Spotify Technology SA revived the music business. Now it wants the industry to return the favor. | | |
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| Post Malone has a cheerful, chaotic, beer-drunk image. But somehow he keeps churning out perfectly crafted pop anthems. To sort out the contradictions, Kelefa Sanneh hunkers down with the most reliable hitmaker in America. | | |
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| Nowhere beats the German capital for hedonism - which is one reason the price of real estate is rocketing. Can the club scene survive? As its home venue is closed down, we hit legendary party Cocktail d’Amore. | | |
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| Bob George's archive is an independent operation whose supporters have included David Bowie and Keith Richards. Now it's being forced to move due to rising rents in Manhattan. | | |
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| Or, an alternate history of the internet. | | |
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| Twenty-five years after her murder, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez is more popular than ever. The Tejano icon is remembered here, in murals and annual celebrations of her life. | | |
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| The deal isn’t expected to change the number of top tier headliner acts that play the Forum, but it will likely end an increasingly bitter legal battle between James Dolan, the city of Inglewood and Steve Ballmer over the Clippers' new home venue. | | |
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| A zillion other conferences have already been called off because of the coronavirus update, but none is more deserving of that fate than SXSW. | | |
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| On a Sunday afternoon, late last year, Beverly Glenn-Copeland and his band played to a sold out audience at MoMA PS1 in New York. It was his first visit to the United States, “my cradle country,” as he calls it, since 2000. Glenn, who was born in Philadelphia and embraced Canada as his home at 18, doesn’t, “expect to ever see the United States again—” for political reasons he’ll explain. | | |
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| How niche,highly engaged, fan-bases can propel an artist to commercial success. | | |
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| Including those publishing figures, the three major labels earned more than $18 billion among them in 2019. | | |
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| Like most of my generation, Swift knows the exhaustion of constantly selling yourself as a brand. | | |
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| Quentin Baxter and Clay Ross mix gospel and R&B with Gullah music, which originated from the descendants of formerly enslaved Africans who made their home in South Carolina's lowcountry. | | |
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| Health concerns have caused a number of high-profile singers to quit the road but what will it all mean for the industry at large? | | |
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| A senior member of the main U.S. union that represents opera performers has resigned, accusing leadership of a cover-up in its Plácido Domingo investigation. | | |
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| "Let's break the internet," Doja Cat sings on the first song from her recent album "Hot Pink." It's a cyber sex reference (the song is literally called "Cyber Sex"), but the rapper and singer born Amala Zandile Dlamini has a pretty strong handle on breaking the internet in the more traditional sense of the phrase, if such a phrase can be called traditional. | | |
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| A masked singer released a mysterious song last week, quickly garnering serious attention (and a lot of questions). | | |
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| Violent. Visceral. Anarchic. Some call it music. Others call it a problem. One film asks the big question surrounding the controversial Drill music scene: does life imitate art, or does art imitate life? | | |
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| | | | | | | Starting his fantastic new album, "YHLQMDLG," with a nod to Getz and Gilberto. |
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