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      Beatles Biographer Grapples With the ‘Paradox’ of George Harrison

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      Philip Norman, the author of books about Paul McCartney, John Lennon and the Beatles as a group, discovers that Harrison was, among other things, a puzzle.In a new biography, Philip Norman writes about the “paradox” of George Harrison, a man who was “unprecedentedly, ludicrously, suffocatingly famous while at the same time undervalued, overlooked and struggling for recognition.”This was the central contradiction that made Harrison, the composer of classics like “Here Comes the Sun,” and “Taxman,” a fascinating figure, both as a Beatle and after the band broke up, as Norman explores in his book “George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle.” Norman tackled his latest subject after writing celebrated biographies of Paul McCartney and John Lennon, as well as “Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation,” a book that Harrison was critical of.Harrison lived several separate lives. He was a rock star. A follower of Hinduism. A prolific film producer who came close to financial ruin. A philanderer who had an affair with a former bandmate’s wife and once had a guitar duel with Eric Clapton (also the subject of a Norman biography) over Pattie Boyd, Harrison’s first wife, whom Clapton fancied and later married.Scribner“The complexity of his character was something that hadn’t really been noticed before,” Norman said, adding, “Actually taking the whole elusive man, a bundle of different personalities, that was what was fascinating.”Norman discussed his approach to Harrison in a recent interview.This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Rock Gods Call Andrew Watt When They Need a New Thunderbolt

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      After producing hits for Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa and Miley Cyrus, Andrew Watt has become a go-to for new music by rock legends: Ozzy. Elton. Mick and Keith. Even Paul.One cool night in September, Eddie Vedder stood onstage at the Ohana Festival in Dana Point, Calif., looking out at a sea of expectant faces.Vedder and his band the Earthlings had paused their headlining set so medics could make their way to an audience member in distress. Once the situation appeared resolved, he conferred with the band; they’d start again from the top.“Uh, this one,” Vedder began to say — and then the Earthlings launched back into the song, taking their frontman by surprise and stepping on his reintroduction.Vedder started singing, like a man chasing a bus as it pulls away. He stopped, grinned and let fly an expletive in the direction of his lead guitar player, a 33-year-old with a bleach-blond buzz cut who happens to be the producer of Vedder’s last solo album and the next one by Vedder’s other band, Pearl Jam.The music clattered to a halt. Vedder, smiling but stern, pointed at the guitarist and began to admonish him for jumping the gun.“This is Andrew Watt,” Vedder told the crowd. “He produces the records. But up here, young man? I’m in charge. I’m in control. I’m the boss.”In the studio, it’s a different story. When he’s not playing live with Vedder — or as part of some other all-star outfit, like Iggy Pop’s backup band, the Losers, featuring the Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and the Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan — Watt, born Andrew Wotman, is one of modern rock and pop’s most in-demand producers.His first hits were songs for generational peers like Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa and Miley Cyrus. But he’s also become a first-call producer of new music by elder-god rock stars, working with performers so legendary they’re on a first-name basis with the entire world. Ozzy. Elton. Mick and Keith. Even Paul.(Yes, that Paul.)“If they’re showing up to do it with you, they want feedback,” Watt said of the artists he produces.Adali Schell for The New York TimesAnd although Watt would never put it this bluntly, sometimes a big part of that job is being unafraid to tell mythic musical icons what they should do. (Or at least — since another big part of the job is diplomacy — suggesting what might be cool to try.)“This artist is working with a producer because they want to be produced,” Watt said in an interview at his Beverly Hills home a few months before the Ohana show. “If they’re showing up to do it with you, they want feedback.”They’re rock stars, after all. If they live long enough, they usually start to second-guess themselves. They fall prey to self-consciousness, complacency, the creative consequences of festering internecine beef, or all of the above, and wander away from what they’re best at. Sooner or later, they need someone to step in and guide them back onto the path.This is not the only thing Watt is good at, of course. In interviews, his collaborators praised his alacrity, his ability to communicate musician-to-musician, and particularly his unflagging energy. (Watt compares his in-studio demeanor to Richard Simmons, the relentlessly cheery ’80s exercise guru: “It might make someone laugh, or think I’m a maniac, but I’m me, and I’m genuinely happy to be there.”)“He’s not one of those guys that gets in awe of people,” said Paul McCartney, who presumably knows awe when he sees it. “He just gets on with it.”Elton John said he’s never seen anything like Watt’s presence in the studio, likening him to “a live wire.” “For someone of my age, it’s really, really infectious, and it’s really important that I feed off of someone like that,” he added.“He takes every single session as seriously as if it’s Game Seven of the World Series and everybody is going to play like it’s Game Seven,” said the songwriter Ali Tamposi, a longtime friend who’s worked with Watt on some of the biggest songs he’s produced, including hits by Bieber and Camila Cabello. “He knows what to do and say to bring that out of everyone that he’s working with.”But the most important asset Watt offers his clients, particularly those who’ve lived in the fog of their own legend for longer than he’s been alive, may be the encyclopedic enthusiasm of a fan who knows exactly what he’d want to hear on a present-day recording by his idols — and has the self-confidence to voice those preferences to their faces.There is, after all, a crucial difference between “what you think other people want from you, versus what your fans really love about you,” said the singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile. Carlile, who’s worked with Watt on albums like John’s “Lockdown Sessions” from 2021, said Watt has a knack for helping wayward rock legends see their own light again.“He has that in common with Rick Rubin,” she said. “They both have that ability to big-picture understand, culturally, how an artist has impacted the world, and bring them face to face with that. It might be his greatest superpower.”As more and more iconic artists have sought out his perspective, Watt’s life has grown more and more unreal. Creative connections have blossomed into friendships. He talks to John every day. “Elton taught me about china,” Watt said. “Not the country — porcelain. The right plates, the right tablecloth. The right napkin rings. He’s a beacon of taste.”(“I learned it from Gianni Versace,” John said, “so I’m passing it along to Andrew.”)And Watt has spent so much time with Mick Jagger — in late 2022 and early 2023, while producing the Rolling Stones’ latest album, “Hackney Diamonds,” and during the long professional courtship that led to that gig — that sometimes, when the photo app on his iPhone serves him a slide show of his “memories,” the memories are of Mick Jagger.In an interview, Jagger also praised Watt’s energy, crediting him with helping the Stones overcome the inertia that had kept the band from completing an album of new material since 2005. (The Stones and Watt are up for best rock song at the Grammys in February for that album’s single “Angry.”)“He’s very enthusiastic,” Jagger said, “to the point of being too enthusiastic, sometimes.” At one of their earliest meetings, Jagger remembered, “I said, ‘Look, I can deal with this, but when you meet Ronnie and Keith, you have to dial it down a little bit.’”The experience of walking into a room with practically nothing and coming out with a song never gets old, Watt said. Adali Schell for The New York TimesWATT GREW UP in Great Neck, Long Island, but these days he lives in a spacious steel-and-glass house, surrounded by rock memorabilia. Even his art collection has a musical bent — it includes a clown painting by Frank Sinatra, a Warhol of Mick Jagger and a self-portrait in acrylic by David Bowie.A visitor pointed out a photograph: a 13-year-old Watt onstage, on his knees, in dress shoes and shirt sleeves, soloing on a gold-top Gibson. It was taken at Watt’s bar mitzvah at the Copacabana in New York. The party’s theme was “Andrew Rocks”; he played Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” and Prince’s “Purple Rain.”Watt smiled at the picture, an image of an inner child he’d done right by. “That,” he said, “is the most valuable thing in here.” (It was propped up between two Grammys.)As a kid, he’d wanted to do nothing but play rock music; after dropping out of N.Y.U. to pursue it full-time as a solo artist, he struggled. But when he was offered a gig backing the Australian pop singer Cody Simpson, who was set to tour as Bieber’s opening act, he balked.“I’m like, I don’t want to do pop,” Watt recalled. “I’m a rock and roller and I play in these nightclubs. Then they told me I would get $1,500 a week, and I was like, ‘I’m there.’”Before shows, Watt would linger onstage after sound check, jamming to empty arenas for as long as the crew would let him. One day in Dublin, he began playing “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” imagining himself as part of U2. Suddenly, he heard drums. He turned, and saw Bieber sitting behind the kit. They jammed for 45 minutes without speaking, and a friendship was born.Bieber and Watt began working on songs together. Two of Watt’s first production credits were bonus tracks for Bieber’s 2015 album “Purpose”; his first major hit as a songwriter and co-producer was “Let Me Love You,” with Bieber singing over a track by the French EDM producer DJ Snake.Even after he’d demonstrated a knack for pop production, Watt plugged away at a career as a solo rocker; scroll far down enough on his Facebook page, and you’ll find a photo of a longhaired Watt signing a contract with John Varvatos Records, the music-mad men’s wear designer’s Universal Music imprint, which released a Watt EP called “Ghost in My Head” in 2015.“I went back to touring in a van and sharing hotel rooms,” Watt said. “The tour was costing me money out of pocket that I didn’t have.”In November of that year, on the way to open for the British rockers the Struts in Reno, the van carrying Watt and his band hit a deer. They hitchhiked to the nearest phone, rode on each other’s laps in a tow truck, and made it to the venue in time to get heckled by Struts fans. Watt began to wonder what would be so wrong with pursuing pop production as a career.Within three or four years, he’d built a Rolodex and a résumé, producing songs for Cabello, Bebe Rexha, Avicii, Rita Ora, Selena Gomez, 5 Seconds of Summer and Cardi B. But he’d also struck up a working friendship with Post Malone, whose music muddles rock, pop and hip-hop. In 2019, while making his third album, “Hollywood’s Bleeding,” Malone recruited Travis Scott and Ozzy Osbourne to guest on a track called “Take What You Want,” which Watt produced.As more and more iconic artists have sought out his perspective, Watt’s life has grown more and more unreal. Adali Schell for The New York TimesWhen this led to an offer from Osbourne to make an entire album together, Watt — who’d come to understand himself as a pop producer — balked once again.“I love this music,” he remembered thinking, “but I don’t make this kind of music.”He accepted the gig anyway, and together they made the 2020 album “Ordinary Man,” on which Osbourne — still recovering from health issues, including a broken neck — sounded both newly vulnerable and invigorated, as if he’d dined on fresh bat for the first time in years.That album led to a second Osbourne album, “Patient Number 9” the next year, and to a Grammy for best rock album — and, in a broader sense, to Watt’s current position as rock’s premier boomer-whisperer, and therefore to days like the one Watt had last year, when a certain well-known guest came over for a cup of tea and a chat and Watt ended up writing an as-yet-unreleased song with Paul McCartney.“He’s very resourceful,” McCartney said. “I said, ‘I’d like to show you something on guitar, but I haven’t got my guitar with me. And he said, ‘I’ve got a guitar.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but I’m left-handed.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got a left-handed guitar.’”They jammed, and McCartney returned the next day with lyrics and a vocal melody. “Suddenly,” he said, “we had a song. From a cup of tea to a song. Doesn’t it sound easy?”(In a subsequent interview, Watt — who is left-handed in all things except guitar — admitted that he’d jolted awake in a cold sweat the night before McCartney’s visit, realizing that he had no left-handed guitars on hand, and began feverishly calling around until he found a friend to loan him a clutch of lefty Hohners, Martins and Rickenbackers, just in case a cup of tea led to something more.)Watt still enjoys making pop music; over the summer he spent some time in the studio with Jung Kook, of the Korean pop juggernaut BTS. Jung Kook speaks some English, but not fluently, and Watt speaks no Korean. So he acted out what he wanted, they sang to each other, Watt did his Richard Simmons routine, and when the song was released in late July it went straight to No. 1.The experience of walking into a room with practically nothing and coming out with a song never gets old, Watt said. But of course it feels different to share in the creative process of an Elton, a Mick or a Paul.“There’s people in the industry who say to me, ‘Why do you work with people that are so much older than you?’ But I don’t care what anyone thinks,” Watt said. “I want to do what makes me happy. And getting to work with the guys who wrote the book — you get to learn so much. They still have so much to offer the world.”“For a while,” Watt added, “I always thought I was born in the wrong generation. Like, ‘Man, if I was born when my dad was born, or a little after, I would be in some rock band now. And that would’ve been great.’ And recently, within the last year or two, my perspective on that has completely changed. And I feel I’m right where I’m supposed to be.” More

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      Sara Tavares, Portuguese Singer Who Prized Her African Roots, Dies at 45

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      She drew on rhythms from across the African diaspora and sang in Portuguese, English, Cape Verdean Criolo and Angolan slang.Sara Tavares, a Portuguese songwriter, singer and guitarist with a gentle voice and an ear for global pop, died on Nov. 19 in Lisbon. She was 45.Her label, Sony Portugal, announced the death, in a hospital, on social media. She had been diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2009.Ms. Tavares began her career in the pop mainstream, singing R&B-influenced songs in Portuguese and English. But as she found her own style, she came to embrace her African roots.Her parents were from Cape Verde, a nation of islands off the coast of Senegal, and Ms. Tavares increasingly drew on rhythms from across the African diaspora: Cape Verdean morna, funaná and coladeira, Brazilian samba and bossa nova, and Angolan semba, as well as funk and salsa.She often defined rhythmic fusions with her own intricate guitar picking, and she sang in Portuguese, English, Cape Verdean Creole (known as Criolo) and Angolan slang. In “Balancê,” the title song of her 2005 album and one of her biggest hits, she sang in Portuguese about wanting to share “A new dance/A mix of semba with samba, mambo with rumba.”Sara Alexandra Lima Tavares was born on Feb. 1, 1978, in Lisbon; her parents had moved to Portugal from Cape Verde earlier in the decade. She grew up admiring American singers like Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway; learned English; and delved into gospel music.At 16, she won a nationally televised contest, “Chuva de Estrelas,” singing the Whitney Houston hit “One Moment in Time.” She went on to represent Portugal at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest.Her debut EP, “Sara Tavares & Shout,” released in 1996, emulated American pop-R&B and featured a gospel choir called Shout. Her 1999 album, “Mi Ma Bo” (“You and Me”), was produced by the Paris-based Congolese songwriter Lokua Kanza and dipped into an international assortment of styles. It was certified gold in Portugal.Ms. Tavares fully came into her own with the albums she released in the 2000s, which she produced or co-produced herself: “Balancê” in 2005, “Xinti” (“Feel It”) in 2009 and — after a hiatus following her diagnosis with a brain tumor — “Fitxadu” in 2017, which was nominated for a Latin Grammy Award. (“Fixtadu” is Criolo for the Portuguese “fechado,” which means closed.) Intricate, transparent and seemingly effortless, carried by acoustic guitars and percussion, her songs offered yearning introspection, thoughts about love and socially conscious admonitions.Ms. Tavares in performance in Lisbon in 2018 with the Brazilian hip-hop artists Emicida, left, and Rael.Jose Sena Goulao/Epa-Efe/Rex, via Shutterstock In an interview promoting the release of “Balancê,” she said: “When I walk around with my friends, it’s a very, very interesting community. We speak Portuguese slang, Angolan slang, some words in Cape Verdean Criolo, and of course some English. In Criolo there are already English and French words. This is because slaves from all over the world had to communicate and didn’t speak the same languages.”She added: “I want to be a part of a movement like the African Americans were, like the African Brazilians were. Instead of doing the music of their ancestors, they have created this musical identity of their own. And it is now respected. It is considered whole and authentic and genuine. It will be a long time before the people from my generation do not have to choose between being African or European. I think you shouldn’t have to choose.”Between her own albums, Ms. Tavares collaborated widely, recording with the Angolan electronic group Buraka Som Sistema and the Portuguese rapper and singer Slow J, among others. Her last release, in September, was “Kurtidu,” a single that used electric guitars and programmed beats. Her voice stayed friendly and airborne on every track she sang, sailing above borders.Information on survivors was not immediately available.Ms. Tavares received online tributes from the presidents of both Portugal and Cape Verde, where she had won Cabo Verde Music Awards for best female voice in 2011 and for “Fitxadu” in 2018.President José Maria Neves of Cape Verde said on Facebook:“Sara Tavares, through her voice, her smile, her glance, was able to plant peace, friendship and brotherhood among Cape Verdeans, and also between Cape Verdeans and the world.” He added, “Your light will illuminate the path that still lies with us, in this land that temporarily welcomes us.” More

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      Zahara, Acclaimed South African Singer and Guitarist, Dies at 36

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      A self-taught musician who sang in English and Xhosa, she was a prominent figure in contemporary Afro-soul known for her heartfelt voice.Zahara, the South African singer-songwriter whose soulful voice and heartfelt ballads earned her platinum-selling albums and multiple accolades in her country, died on Monday in a hospital in Johannesburg. She was 36.Her family confirmed her death on social media but did not cite a cause. Litha Mpondwana, the spokesman for South Africa’s minister of sports, arts and culture, said Zahara had been hospitalized for several weeks.“My deepest condolences to the Mkutukana family and the South African music industry,” Zizi Kodwa, the minister, said on social media, adding that officials had been “with the family for some time now.” He continued, “Zahara and her guitar made an incredible and lasting impact in South African music.”She was born Bulelwa Mkutukana on Nov. 9, 1987, in the village of Phumlani in Eastern Cape, South Africa, and grew up listening to songs her mother played on the radio before discovering a love of singing. She became the lead singer of her Sunday school choir at 6.Zahara began her singing career busking on the streets of her hometown. She said she had never received any formal musical training and had taught herself the guitar.“There’s a difference between a gift and a talent,” she said in an interview in 2021. “I’m gifted, not talented.”Her father gave her the stage name Zahara, which means “blooming flower” in Arabic, she said in the same interview.Beginning with her debut album, “Loliwe,” in 2011, Zahara’s music drew critical acclaim and found success on the music charts. Nelson Mandela invited her to his private residence to perform a bedside concert before his death in 2013. Her most recent album, “Nqaba Yam,” was released in 2021.Zahara, who sang in both English and Xhosa, her native language, was known for her husky and heartfelt voice, often compared to those of Tracy Chapman and India.Arie, and her acoustic instrumentals. Her collaborations with titans of Africa’s music industry, like the singing group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the musician Robbie Malinga and the Nigerian singer-songwriter 2Baba, cemented her place in contemporary Afro-soul music. She was named one of BBC’s 100 women of 2020.Through her lyrics, she spoke of her faith, her struggles and her dreams. She described her songs as stories of her experiences and thoughts.“I write about my life,” she said in an interview in 2022. “If you want to know mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally where I’m at, where I’m centered, go get my albums.”Zahara’s younger brother, Mbuyiseli Mkutukana, was murdered in 2014, after which she said she went through a period of depression. In 2021, her older sister, Nomonde Mkutukana, died in a car accident. Over the years, she spoke publicly about her struggle with alcohol addiction.Zahara campaigned for female victims of violence in South Africa, which she said she experienced when she was in her 20s. “Prayer has kept me going through this difficult time,” she told the BBC. “Nothing can beat prayer.” More

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      Ricardo Arjona, Prolific Latin Pop Star, Says He Will Stop Touring

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      The Guatemalan singer-songwriter said that his latest performance in Chile would be his last after struggling with back issues that made it difficult to stand and perform.Ricardo Arjona, the Guatemalan singer and songwriter known for dozens of Latin pop ballads that became international hits over a career that spanned more than 30 years, said he would stop touring, citing back problems and an imminent surgery.Arjona, 59, wrote in social media posts on Sunday that he would stop performing on his “Blanco y Negro” tour after a show in Santiago, Chile, though his statement fell short of announcing a retirement.“I’ll have to disappear to invent a reason that’s bigger than this,” he wrote in Spanish. “If I can’t find it, I prefer not to return.”Arjona said he had received “six spinal infiltrations,” also known as epidural injections, over the past two months to be able to stand during his concerts, and to delay surgery. Before he performed on Saturday, Arjona said he wasn’t sure if he would be able to take a step. His “Blanco y Negro” tour, which began last year in Buenos Aires, included dozens of shows, with several stops in Mexico, Costa Rica and Guatemala. The North American leg of the tour this year included stops at Madison Square Garden in New York, as well as dozens of other cities across the United States.“I came from dear Argentina, which gave me songs in the street and gave me a glory that I did not deserve,” he said. “I say goodbye in this Chile of so many stories and affections.”The tour highlighted two of his albums: “Blanco,” which was released in 2020, and “Negro,” which came out in 2021. Over the course of a career that has spanned more than 30 years, Arjona has produced more than a dozen studio albums, which have earned him several awards and accolades, including the Billboard Latin music lifetime achievement award in 2017.In 2006, Arjona won a Grammy Award for best Latin pop album and the Latin Grammy Award for best male pop vocal album for his album “Adentro.” As of December, Arjona’s music was drawing more than 8 million monthly listeners on Spotify.Arjona began his musical career in the 1980s, and after his music didn’t initially attract many listeners, he briefly taught at a public school, he said in an interview in 2011. He returned to music, and his career took off in the 1990s, when he released songs like “Historia de Taxi,” the tale of a taxi driver’s love affair. The song remains one of his most popular hits to date, having been played more than 158 million times on Spotify. Multiple other hits followed and ranked him on the top Latin music charts for his signature songs of romantic lyrics and inventive storytelling.“Life and people have been immensely generous to this Guatemalan,” he wrote on social media, adding, “a public-school teacher, who by playing the guitar, adding some words and trying a melody, achieved a miracle that I never suspected.” More

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      Wu-Tang Clan Announces Las Vegas Residency

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      The first four concert dates will begin with Super Bowl weekend in February.Wu-Tang Clan will begin a Las Vegas residency in February as the city hosts its first Super Bowl, the Grammy-nominated rap collective announced on Tuesday.Though rap stars frequently perform in Las Vegas for concerts and appearances at nightclubs, it is unclear if a hip-hop group has held a traditional residency, which became popular in the city around the 1940s.“Wu-Tang Clan: The Saga Continues … The Las Vegas Residency” will begin next year at the Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, starting with concerts on Feb. 9-10, Super Bowl weekend, and March 22-23, when fans flock to the city to bet on the N.C.A.A. college basketball tournaments. Tickets go on sale on Friday, and more dates will be released in the coming months.Known for hits like “C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)” and “Protect Ya Neck,” Wu-Tang Clan recently concluded a tour with the rapper Nas. The group’s leader, Robert Diggs, known as RZA, said the residency had been in the works for about five years and was meant in part to elevate the genre, which has been celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.“Hip-hop is rich in its content and what it offers creatively to an audience,” he said, adding that the nine-member group, which was founded in New York in the early 1990s, wants “to put it on flagpoles to show that hip-hop can go where any other art form has gone before.”“I think the art form has evolved,” he added.Residencies in Las Vegas this year included the pop artists Adele and Katy Perry. The band U2 will conclude its residency at the Sphere, the video-screen-wrapped orb-like venue built by the Knicks owner James Dolan, in March. Usher Raymond, the R&B star who will headline the Super Bowl halftime show, recently completed a residency in the city.Las Vegas, which has long been known for hosting boxing and mixed martial arts fights, has also expanded its reputation as a destination for other top-caliber sporting events. In addition to hosting the upcoming Super Bowl, the city held its first Formula 1 race in November and saw its professional hockey and women’s basketball teams win championships this past season.RZA said he was hopeful that Wu-Tang Clan’s residency would inspire other rap artists to inject themselves into Las Vegas’s entertainment scene.“I’m in that spirit of loving where there’s a hub of art and then loving that I — in my talent and the Wu-Tang brothers — can add to that hub and of course eventually invite more hip-hop artists to come and play in this sandbox with us,” RZA said. More

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      Ye, Formerly Kanye West, Previews ‘Vultures’ With Ty Dolla Sign

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      For months, the rapper has teased “Vultures,” his first album since he made a string of antisemitic comments last year. He said the LP will be released Friday.Kanye West, the contentious artist and provocateur now known as Ye, appeared onstage in Miami after midnight on Tuesday wearing a pointed black hood that resembled a Ku Klux Klan robe — and the 10-year-old artwork for his song “Black Skinhead” — as the musician previewed his first new album since a string of incendiary and antisemitic comments threatened to tank his career in music and fashion last year.The listening event, which was dubbed a “rave” and streamed online amid technical difficulties, teased “Vultures,” an album that Ye has been plugging intermittently for months alongside the R&B singer Ty Dolla Sign, a frequent collaborator.In various appearances around the Miami area in the last week, Ye has played songs from the album and said that it would be released on Friday, Dec. 15, although false starts, delays and missed deadlines have long been a feature of Ye’s process and marketing prowess. Billboard reported in October that Ye and Ty Dolla Sign were considering label distribution partners for the release, since Ye’s longtime record company, Def Jam, distanced itself from him amid the controversies last fall.The two musicians had previously attempted to stage a concert or listening event at an arena in Italy for up to 100,000 people, then pivoted to teasing a “multi stadium listening event” last month, similar to the events Ye used to promote his album “Donda” in 2021. Both plans fizzled.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      YSL Defendant Shannon Stillwell Is Stabbed, Delaying Young Thug Trial

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      Mr. Stillwell, known as SB or Shannon Jackson, is among the six defendants currently on trial in the racketeering and gang conspiracy case underway in Atlanta.Shannon Stillwell, a co-defendant of the superstar rapper Young Thug in the racketeering and gang conspiracy case currently underway in Atlanta, was stabbed in jail on Sunday night, a lawyer for Mr. Stillwell said, delaying the blockbuster trial.Mr. Stillwell was being held at the Fulton County Jail, known as Rice Street, a facility that has faced criticism for its disorder and a recent spate of violence.“He is with us — he is alive,” Max Schardt, a lawyer for Mr. Stillwell, said in an interview on Monday. “But I fear that it was serious.”Mr. Schardt said that he was still gathering details about the circumstances of the attack, and that he had arranged to speak with his client this afternoon.Natalie L. Ammons, the director of communications for Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, confirmed that Mr. Stillwell was stabbed but did not immediately provide additional details. Jeff DiSantis, a spokesman for the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, declined to comment.Mr. Stillwell, known as SB or Shannon Jackson, is among the five defendants currently on trial alongside the popular Atlanta rapper Young Thug, born Jeffery Williams, who stands accused of being the leader of a violent criminal street gang known as YSL, or Young Slime Life. Mr. Williams, who has pleaded not guilty, has said that his gangster persona is fictional and that YSL is simply his record label.In addition to being charged with conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, and participation in criminal street gang activity, Mr. Stillwell faces two counts of murder, including involvement in the 2015 drive-by shooting of a rival gang member that prosecutors say set off a yearslong war that terrorized the area. Mr. Stillwell has pleaded not guilty to all charges.The case also includes claims that other members of YSL attempted to kill a rival, Rayshawn Bennett, known as the rapper YFN Lucci, by stabbing him at the Fulton County Jail. (Mr. Bennett is awaiting trial following a 2021 RICO indictment against YFN in Fulton County.)On Monday, the judge in the YSL case, Ural Glanville, called for a recess, citing a “medical issue” involving one of the trial participants. He called for the lawyers to return to court on Tuesday morning to decide how they would proceed.After court adjourned on Monday, Judge Glanville filed two orders in the case related to Mr. Stillwell. One stated that Mr. Schardt and his colleagues could visit Mr. Stillwell at Atlanta’s Grady Hospital, where he was being treated, “to the extent that it is medically cleared.” The other ordered that Mr. Stillwell, upon his recovery, be “kept separate from the other defendants in this case at all times,” including in jail, during transport and at the courthouse.The complex RICO case from the office of the prosecutor Fani T. Willis originally included 28 defendants, many of whom have pleaded guilty or had their cases severed. Since the initial indictments in May 2022, the case has seen disruptions from all sides, including nearly 10 months of jury selection.Opening arguments began on Nov. 27; the trial could last up to six months or more.“We’ve invested a large amount of time in this case to prepare for trial,” Mr. Schardt, the lawyer for Mr. Stillwell, said. “Quite frankly, we want Shannon to have his day in court because we believe that he is innocent. We don’t want unnecessary delays, but we’re going to defer to the doctors.” More