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    Future Designs the First Lanvin Lab Collection

    The LatestOn Monday, the French fashion house Lanvin will release its inaugural Lanvin Lab collection with Future, the rapper and producer. Earlier this year, Future was brought on, temporarily, to help design the collection for Lanvin Lab, the brand’s new design arm that will focus on rotating collaborations. More pieces from the unisex ready-to-wear collection, all designed by Future, will debut next year.Denim overalls feature typography from an old Lanvin perfume campaign. Joshua WoodsWhy It Matters: Fashion is strengthening ties with the entertainment industry.Lanvin, which was founded in 1889, has struggled to define its identity since Alber Elbaz was fired in 2015, and has cycled through a number of designers and owners. It is yet to announce a new creative director after Bruno Sialelli, who held the role since 2019, left earlier this year.The collaboration arrives at a moment when the love affair between music and fashion continues to flourish, most notably with Pharrell Williams’s recent appointment as Louis Vuitton men’s creative director. The entertainment industry also bolstered its ties to fashion after François-Henri Pinault, the billionaire and chief executive of the luxury goods company Kering, bought a major stake this year in one of Hollywood’s biggest talent agencies, Creative Artists Agency, through his family office.Future, who is known for his distinctive style and appreciation for luxury clothes, said in an interview that the line “is a perfect fit to introduce me to the fashion world on the next level.” The collaboration was “organic,” he said, because he loved the brand and had always wanted to design.“He was already in the universe of Lanvin as a customer,” said Siddhartha Shukla, Lanvin’s deputy general manager, adding that “it gave rise to a discussion around possibly doing something together.”The first pieces from the upcoming Lanvin Lab collection with Future.Joshua WoodsWhat It Looks Like: The collection is Lanvin with a touch of Future.The first drop includes pieces such as denim overalls, a studded leather jacket and a black bag with gold, feline-shaped hardware.“The vision from the beginning was to make sure we take the brand and make it about us,” Future said, “instead of just making it about me.”That approach can be seen in the collection’s light denim overalls and matching bucket hat, with an ear and neck flap, printed with typography from an old Lanvin perfume campaign . Eagle symbols, featured on a red and yellow blanket and on a pair of sunglasses, symbolized Future’s record label, Freebandz, he said.“I’m always thinking about how to incorporate the street style into fashion,” Future said, adding, “just from the neighborhood, with how people dress, just to bring that into the fashion world, man, that’s special.” (He said he was most excited about the tracksuits.)Mr. Shukla said he believed that Future had the capacity to animate the brand, “in a way that’s very, very personal and that will speak to the millions and millions of people around the world who are attracted to his universe, are attracted to his music, are attracted to his vibe.” More

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    David Del Tredici, Who Set ‘Alice’ to Music, Dies at 86

    David Del Tredici, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer who began as an experimentalist but became best known for a midcareer shift toward a style that came to be called the New Romanticism, which yielded a series of rich-hued, tuneful pieces based on Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” stories, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.The pianist Marc Peloquin, a longtime friend and collaborator and the executor of Mr. Del Tredici’s estate, said the cause was Parkinson’s disease.Flamboyant and gregarious, Mr. Del Tredici cultivated a reputation as a beloved scamp who did what he wanted. But he also had a gift for explaining his musical goals and how he had settled upon them. And he was frank about his personal life and his demons — alcoholism, for one. If the composer George Antheil had not already laid claim to the phrase “Bad Boy of Music,” Mr. Del Tredici could easily have adopted it himself.Mr. Del Tredici in 1973. He established himself as a young star of the experimental music world with a series of settings of the work of James Joyce.Jack Mitchell/Getty ImagesStarting as a teenager, when he decided to set aside a promising career as a pianist in favor of composition because of the way a piano teacher had spoken harshly to him, Mr. Del Tredici regularly redefined himself. He often abandoned approaches that had brought him success and went against the grain of the classical music world. Typically, he would face opposition at first, only to see his innovations win over listeners and other composers.He established himself as a young star of the experimental world with a series of settings of the work of James Joyce — most notably “Night-Conjure Verse” (1965) and “Syzygy” (1966), both of which showed how vividly angular, athletic vocal lines and pointillistic instrumental writing could magnify a work’s emotional depths.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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    Taylor Swift Fan Falls Fatally Ill at Brazil Concert Amid Heat

    Many fans fell sick at the show, where temperatures broke records and concertgoers complained of a lack of water. The pop star postponed Saturday’s show.One fan died and many others fainted at Taylor Swift’s concert on Friday in Rio de Janeiro, where temperatures felt like nearly 140 degrees Fahrenheit, a record for the city, and fans said they struggled to get water.Ana Clara Benevides, 23, lost consciousness at the concert and later was pronounced dead of cardiac arrest after being taken to the hospital, according to city officials and the Brazilian company organizing the show, Time for Fun.There were widespread complaints about the extreme heat and lack of water from fans inside the open-air soccer stadium, where Ms. Swift was performing for more than 60,000 people on Friday in the first of three sold-out shows in Rio this weekend as part of the South American stretch of her record-breaking Eras Tour.Hours before she was set to take the stage on Saturday night, Ms. Swift announced on social media that the show was being postponed because of the extreme temperatures in Rio.“The safety and well-being of my fans, fellow performers and crew has to and always will come first,” she wrote.Ms. Swift’s fans said on social media that they were prohibited from bringing water into the stadium on Friday, while other fans said vendors struggled to reach the people near the stage. Videos showed Ms. Swift throwing a water bottle to one fan and instructing stadium staff to get water to others as people in the crowd chanted for water.The tragedy paired two of the year’s major story lines: rising temperatures and the hysteria for Ms. Swift’s global tour.In Argentina, where Ms. Swift played last week, some fans camped out for more than five months to try to get a spot closer to the stage. In Brazil, a day after Ms. Benevides’s death, fans lined up early for entry to Saturday’s show even as temperatures continued to soar. It is the second show Ms. Swift has had to postpone because of extreme weather in the past week — her Nov. 10 show in Buenos Aires was moved to Nov. 12.In an online post, Ms. Swift said she was “devastated” by her fan’s death. “I’m not going to be able to speak about this from stage because I feel overwhelmed by grief when I even try to talk about it,” she said.A fan waiting for entry into the Taylor Swift concert in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday lay on the ground after the extreme heat made her feel sick.Pilar Olivares/ReutersWadih Damous, the head of Brazil’s consumer protection agency, said his agency had ordered the concert’s organizers to provide free water at various locations at Ms. Swift’s shows on Saturday and Sunday.“The decision to prevent thousands of people from drinking water in 60-degree Celsius heat is insane and irresponsible,” Mr. Damous said. He said the government would investigate Time for Fun.The company said on Saturday that it would add staff, provide free water and allow fans to enter the stadium with water and food.Parts of Brazil have been suffering under a sweltering heat wave this week, with temperatures breaking records and the national meteorological institute issuing safety alerts to 15 states. In Rio, temperatures surpassed 106 degrees Fahrenheit, or 41 degrees Celsius, on Friday. The heat index, a measure of how hot the air feels because of humidity, hit 139 degrees Fahrenheit, a record for the city.It appears almost certain that 2023 will be Earth’s hottest year on record, with global temperatures hitting record highs in each of the past five months, from June through October. Scientists have said that the year’s record heat has been driven by the continued emissions of heat-trapping gases, mostly from the burning of oil, gas and coal, as well as the return of El Niño, a cyclical weather pattern.Brazilian government institutions have said that since June, El Niño has changed the region’s weather patterns, increasing temperatures in the Pacific Ocean near South America by three degrees Celsius, while bringing more rain to the south and droughts to the north.Felipe Galvão, 28, a systems analyst, was on the field level near the stage on Friday when people started getting sick from the heat even before the concert started. By the time the show began, so many people had gotten sick and left their places that he was able to reach the railing along the stage.“I’ve been going to concerts since 2011, but I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he said. “There was little staff and unfortunately they couldn’t do much for the fans. You could tell that even they were a little lost.”Paulo Motoryn More

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    Black Thought of the Roots Is Here for ‘The Gilded Age’ and ’1883’

    Tariq Trotter, the Roots frontman and author of the new book “The Upcycled Self,” loves a period drama when it’s done right.Despite earning worldwide acclaim as the frontman of the Roots and achieving a degree of ubiquity when they became the house band for “The Tonight Show,” Tariq Trotter, also known as Black Thought, is an introvert and a bit of an enigma. There’s a good chance that fans who know every Roots verse still know little about the man behind them.That could change with the release this month of his memoir, “The Upcycled Self.” In it, Trotter, 50, reflects on growing up in Philadelphia during the 1970s and ’80s, zeroing in on how experiences like losing both parents by the age of 16 hardened him, and how his passion for the arts gave him much-needed direction. “The final frontier was to delve deeper into myself and become more introspective,” he said during a phone interview.Looking back, even to revisit his most painful memories, helped Trotter to move forward. He shared a few sources of creative inspiration, favorite works of art and timeless fashion pieces. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1DocumentariesThere’s a historical aspect to whatever story I’m telling, whether it’s my own or I’m talking about the world. My inspiration often comes from documentaries. Anything that Ken Burns touches — I just appreciate that style of storytelling. I’ll get a nugget from something in there that will spark the bar that leads to the song or whatever the composition evolves from. I recently watched “The American Buffalo,” and it makes you think about how much of the history of this country meets at that intersection.2‘The Source of Self-Regard’ by Toni Morrison“The Source of Self-Regard” is one of my go-tos. It really helped me get through the pandemic when the world shut down. It’s one of the first books that I took off the shelf, and in it, Toni Morrison said something about the role of the artist during turbulent times. It really put a battery in my back.3My Mom’s MusicGeorge Benson; Earth, Wind & Fire; Marvin Gaye. If I hear any of that stuff, or funk music like Parliament, Rick James, Teena Marie — anything post-disco through the ’80s is the music that really impacted me. The same stuff that I listen to when I’m making a meal, we’re having guests over or during a long drive, the sonic safe space for me is the music my mom used to play.4Stevie Wonder AlbumsIt’s definitely “Songs in the Key of Life” as an adult. But the Stevie album I heard the most growing up was probably “Hotter Than July.” Then, sometimes, you have to take a deep dive and do “Fulfillingness’ First Finale.” But in just talking about these three compositions, I appreciate the fact that there was space within the artist for all three to exist. The fact that that much range could exist within one person gives me hope as an artist and compels me to create more.5FunkI’m going to gravitate more toward Sly and the Family Stone and then maybe more toward Ohio Players. Midwest funk? Yeah. I think there’s something avant-garde; it’s almost like organized chaos. It feels very improvised and scattered sonically in a way that might seem all over the place to the untrained ear. But when you’re able to recognize those elements and tap all the way into them, it’s the ultimate liberty.6Historical Drama, When Done RightI really rock with shows like “The Gilded Age” or even some of the Westerns that are coming out. I’m not a huge “Yellowstone” fan, but I am a huge fan of both “1883” and “1923.” Because they’re done right, I feel like I’m transported to a place that I may have never seen.7Spike Lee JointsSometimes, I feel like “Mo’ Better Blues” is my favorite Spike joint. That, “Malcolm X,” “Do the Right Thing” and “Jungle Fever” are probably my favorites from him. You know how people say, “in no particular order”? If you asked me tomorrow, I might give you that exact same list in a different order.8Scorsese Movies Starring De NiroIf you’re talking about Martin Scorsese, strangely enough, “Cape Fear” is one of my favorites, if not the favorite. I’m also a huge Robert De Niro fan, and I feel he’s often underutilized. “Cape Fear” was a rare instance of us seeing De Niro moving in a different way. It was a much-needed curveball.9HeadwearI have a bunch of fedoras that were made by a brother named Isaac Larose who used to have a company called Larose Paris. The tan fedora that people see me wearing on that Funkmaster Flex freestyle? I have multiple versions.10Vintage ShirtsI’ve got this olive green military Gucci shirt with epaulets on the shoulders. It’s hand-painted with butterflies, flowers and all types of leaves. I’ve had it since 2000 and still rock it to this day. My wife does not like it, but I love it and feel like it’s never going out of style. More

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    Cassie Settles Lawsuit Accusing Sean Combs of Rape and Abuse

    The R&B singer Casandra Ventura and the music mogul did not disclose terms of the settlement, which came one day after Ms. Ventura filed an explosive complaint.Sean Combs and the singer Cassie have reached a settlement just one day after she filed an explosive lawsuit accusing the hip-hop mogul of rape and numerous instances of physical abuse.The parties announced on Friday evening that they had reached an agreement to resolve the case, though they disclosed no details about the terms of the settlement.“I have decided to resolve this matter amicably on terms that I have some level of control,” Cassie, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, said in a statement. “I want to thank my family, fans and lawyers for their unwavering support.”In a statement, Mr. Combs said: “We have decided to resolve this matter amicably. I wish Cassie and her family all the best. Love.”For Mr. Combs, the settlement quickly shuts down what could have been a risky and potentially embarrassing process of legal discovery — in which reams of evidence are made public — and a possible trial. And Ms. Ventura, who has already aired her accusations through a public complaint, avoids a cross-examination by Mr. Combs’s attorneys.In a lawsuit that drew international attention, Ms. Ventura — who signed to Mr. Combs’s Bad Boy label in 2005, when she was 19, and dated him for about a decade — accused Mr. Combs of what she said was years of beatings, controlling behavior and various forms of sexual abuse, including a rape. In response, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, Ben Brafman, said, “Mr. Combs vehemently denies these offensive and outrageous allegations.”According to Ms. Ventura’s suit, which was filed on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Combs assaulted her numerous times, leaving her bloodied and bruised; she said his employees sometimes took her to hotel rooms for days to recover out of the public eye.In one of the suit’s most disturbing allegations, Ms. Ventura said that for years she was forced to participate in sexual encounters with a succession of male prostitutes, as Mr. Combs watched, masturbated and recorded videos. According the suit, Mr. Combs called these events “freak offs,” and they took place in a number of high-end hotels throughout the United States.According to Ms. Ventura’s suit, Mr. Combs controlled nearly every aspect of her life, paying for her homes, car, clothes and other necessities, and even had access to her personal medical records. The suit says Ms. Ventura never went to the police because she feared it “would merely give Mr. Combs another excuse to hurt her.”Mr. Combs, who started Bad Boy in 1993, became one of the most powerful and successful figures in the hip-hop industry, working with stars like the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige, and helping to transform rap music and culture into a global pop phenomenon and a major business.Still, his rise to fame has been dotted with allegations of violence, including that he and his bodyguards beat a rival music executive, Steve Stoute, with a Champagne bottle and other items.Last year, Mr. Combs received a lifetime achievement honor at the BET Awards, and in September he was given the global icon award at MTV’s Video Music Awards.Even with the settlement, however, the damage to Mr. Combs’s reputation and legacy may be substantial. In the day since Ms. Ventura’s suit was filed, past allegations of violence and abuse have been resurfaced, and various musicians have publicly signaled their support for Ms. Ventura.In a statement, Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer for Ms. Ventura, said: “I am very proud of Ms. Ventura for having the strength to go public with her lawsuit. She ought to be commended for doing so.” More

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    Sean Combs Is Accused by Cassie of Rape and Years of Abuse in Lawsuit

    In the suit, the singer says Mr. Combs, known as Puff Daddy or Diddy, subjected her to a pattern of control and abuse over about a decade. Mr. Combs “vehemently” denied the allegations.Sean Combs, the producer and music mogul who has been one of the most famous names in hip-hop for decades, was sued in federal court on Thursday by Cassie, an R&B singer once signed to his label, who accused Mr. Combs of rape, and of repeated physical abuse over about a decade.In the suit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura — and who had long been Mr. Combs’s romantic partner — says that not long after she met him in 2005, when she was 19, he began a pattern of control and abuse that included plying her with drugs, beating her and forcing her to have sex with a succession of male prostitutes while he filmed the encounters. In 2018, the suit says, near the end of their relationship, Mr. Combs forced his way into her home and raped her.“After years in silence and darkness,” Ms. Ventura said in a statement, “I am finally ready to tell my story, and to speak up on behalf of myself and for the benefit of other women who face violence and abuse in their relationships.”In response, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, Ben Brafman, said: “Mr. Combs vehemently denies these offensive and outrageous allegations. For the past six months, Mr. Combs has been subjected to Ms. Ventura’s persistent demand of $30 million, under the threat of writing a damaging book about their relationship, which was unequivocally rejected as blatant blackmail. Despite withdrawing her initial threat, Ms. Ventura has now resorted to filing a lawsuit riddled with baseless and outrageous lies, aiming to tarnish Mr. Combs’s reputation and seeking a payday.”Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer for Ms. Ventura, said the parties had spoken before the suit was filed. “Mr. Combs offered Ms. Ventura eight figures to silence her and prevent the filing of this lawsuit,” he said. “She rejected his efforts.”Ms. Ventura’s case is the latest in a series of sexual assault civil suits filed recently against prominent men in the music industry, including Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, the executive L.A. Reid and Neil Portnow, the former head of the organization behind the Grammy Awards. (Mr. Portnow has denied the accusation; Mr. Tyler and Mr. Reid have not responded.)Mr. Combs, 54, founded Bad Boy in 1993 and became one of the primary figures in the commercialization of hip-hop, working with stars like the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige. His net worth has been estimated as high as $1 billion, and last year Forbes calculated Mr. Combs’s annual earnings at $90 million, attributing that amount largely to his former partnership in a liquor brand, Ciroc, that is owned by the spirits giant Diageo.Mr. Combs, who in his career has variously been known as Puff Daddy, Diddy and Love, may be the most famous music executive of his generation. But the suit depicts Mr. Combs as a violent person who, beyond repeatedly assaulting Ms. Ventura, asked her to carry his gun in her purse, and the suit suggests he was responsible for blowing up the car of a rival suitor. In one incident, the suit says, Mr. Combs dangled a friend of Ms. Ventura’s over a 17th-floor hotel balcony.In naming additional defendants, the court papers assert that others who worked with Mr. Combs had helped him to control Ms. Ventura, at times by threatening her with retribution — like suppressing her music if she did not obey his orders — or by helping to conceal his behavior. The suit, which names Mr. Combs and a number of his associated companies as defendants, seeks unspecified damages.“After years in silence and darkness,” Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura, said in a statement, “I am finally ready to tell my story.”Karwai Tang/WireImage, via Getty ImagesAccording to Ms. Ventura’s suit, she was swept into Mr. Combs’s jet-set lifestyle not long after meeting him and signing with Bad Boy, which released her debut album in 2006.But, the suit says, he soon began to assert an extraordinary level of command over her life. In addition to controlling her career, he paid for her car, apartments and clothing, and even had access to her personal medical records. According to the suit, the results from an M.R.I. scan she had — for memory loss, possibly caused by drug use or by a beating she said she suffered from Mr. Combs — went directly to Mr. Combs.Mr. Combs also provided Ms. Ventura with “copious amounts of drugs,” including ecstasy and ketamine, and urged her to take them, the suit says, and often became violent, beating her “multiple times each year.” The suit says Ms. Ventura never went to the police because she feared it “would merely give Mr. Combs another excuse to hurt her.”In one incident in Los Angeles in 2009, the suit says, Mr. Combs became enraged when he saw Ms. Ventura talking to another talent agent, then pushed her into a car and kicked her repeatedly in the face, making her bleed. According to the suit, Mr. Combs then had his staff bring her to a hotel room to recuperate for a week. She asked to go home to her parents, but Mr. Combs refused, the suit says.The suit says that after seeing the violent repercussions of rejecting Mr. Combs, and the extent to which he would isolate her from her support network, “Ms. Ventura felt that saying ‘no’ to Mr. Combs would cost her something — her family, her friends, her career, or even her life.” And though she tried to leave Mr. Combs, the suit says he sent his employees to lure her back.In one incident described in the court papers, Ms. Ventura says that in early 2012, Mr. Combs grew so angry about her dating the rapper Kid Cudi that he said he would blow up the rapper’s car. “Around that time,” the suit says, “Kid Cudi’s car exploded in his driveway.”Through a spokeswoman, Kid Cudi confirmed Ms. Ventura’s account that he had a car that exploded. “This is all true,” he said.A few years into Ms. Ventura’s relationship with Mr. Combs, the suit says, he began coercing her “to engage in a fantasy of his called ‘voyeurism,’” in which she was directed to have sex with a succession of male prostitutes, while Mr. Combs watched, masturbated, took pictures and shot video.According to the suit, Mr. Combs called these encounters “freak offs,” which involved costumes, like masquerade masks and lingerie. They continued for years, taking place at high-end hotels across the United States and in Mr. Combs’s homes. The suit says that he instructed Ms. Ventura to search the websites of escort services to procure male sex workers.Drugs were supplied at these events, which Ms. Ventura’s suit says she took because they “allowed her to disassociate during these horrific encounters.”According to the suit, Ms. Ventura would delete videos from these incidents that had been shot on her phone, but Mr. Combs told her he still had access to those videos, and on a flight once made her watch a video she thought she had deleted.The suit says that as a result of these sexual encounters in different cities, Ms. Ventura was a victim of sex trafficking. The suit also accuses Mr. Combs of sexual battery, sexual assault and violations of New York City’s gender-motivated violence law.Ms. Ventura’s suit includes several accounts of her unsuccessful attempts to escape Mr. Combs’s control.In one example, the suit says that during a “freak off” at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016, an intoxicated Mr. Combs punched Ms. Ventura in the face, giving her a black eye. He fell asleep and she tried to leave the room, but Mr. Combs woke up and followed her into the hallway, where he threw glass vases at her, sending glass shattering throughout the corridor, according to the court filing. The hotel’s security cameras captured that incident, but the suit says Mr. Combs paid the hotel $50,000 for the footage.The court filing says that in 2018, after Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura met for dinner, he forced himself into her apartment and raped her while she “repeatedly said ‘no’ and tried to push him away.” After that, the suit says, she left him for good. Ms. Ventura married Alex Fine, a personal trainer, the following year and now has two young children. According to the complaint, her association with Bad Boy ended in 2019.Ms. Ventura’s case, like other recent sexual assault lawsuits, is being brought under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law that allows people who say they were victims of sexual abuse to file civil suits after the statute of limitations has expired. The one-year window to bring cases under this law ends next week.That law is cited in Ms. Ventura’s complaint, and in a statement she addressed its importance.“With the expiration of New York’s Adult Survivors Act fast approaching,” she said, “it became clear that this was an opportunity to speak up about the trauma I have experienced and that I will be recovering from for the rest of my life.” More

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    George Brown of Kool & the Gang Dies at 74

    Mr. Brown kept time for a group that combined funk, disco, R&B and jazz to create some of the most memorable pop songs of the 1970s.George Brown, a founding member and drummer of the group Kool & the Gang, who played on funk, disco and pop hits that featured prominently in movies and have been sampled numerous times, died on Thursday in Long Beach, Calif. He was 74.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed in a statement by the band’s publicist, who said the cause was cancer. Mr. Brown had said publicly that he had lung cancer.Mr. Brown, known as Funky, was a key contributor to several of the band’s biggest hits, including “Ladies Night,” “Jungle Boogie” and the party anthem “Celebration.”In a July interview with NPR, he described Kool & the Gang as “the sound of happiness.”In 1964, Mr. Brown linked up with Ricky Westfield and the brothers Ronald Khalis Bell and Robert “Kool” Bell, as well as other friends — Spike Mickens, Dennis “Dee Tee” Thomas and Charles Smith — to form a band that would combine jazz, funk, disco and R&B and create some of the most memorable pop songs of their era.Formed in Jersey City, N.J., the band first played jazz while members attended Lincoln High School. The band performed under several names, including the Jazziacs, but eventually settled on Kool & the Gang in the late 1960s.One of the band’s early names was Kool and the Flames but the group changed the Flames to the Gang to avoid confusion with James Brown’s group, the Famous Flames.Kool & the Gang in the 1970s. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesGeorge Brown was born on Jan. 15, 1949. His father, George Melvin Brown Sr., worked in the coal industry while his mother, Eleanor White Brown, was a maid in Fort Lee, N.J., and also worked as a key puncher.Both made music a constant part of Mr. Brown’s upbringing, Mr. Brown recalled in his memoir released this year, “Too Hot: Kool & the Gang & Me.”Mr. Brown, who took to drumming at a young age, wrote that he saved up from a newspaper delivery route to buy his first drum set.In a 2015 interview with Red Bull Music Academy, Mr. Brown described using butter knives as drum sticks when he first started playing.“Then I went down to a music store on Newark Avenue in Jersey City and took a $3 lesson from a gentleman who used to play with the Shirelles. He said, ‘Hey man, you’re a natural!’” Mr. Brown recalled. “So he gave me ‘Buddy Rich’s 16 Essential Snare Drum Rudiments’ book. I took one more lesson and never went back.”The band was signed by the producer Gene Redd to De-Lite Records 1969.The members were in an early recording session in New York for their instrumental debut album, “Kool and the Gang,” when Mr. Redd encouraged Mr. Brown and Ronald Bell to just “do something.” It led to a freewheeling recording session that produced songs like “Raw Hamburger” and the album opener, “Kool & the Gang.”“It just flowed. And we’re just grooving,” Mr. Brown told The New York Times in an interview last year.George Brown on drums in 1974.Getty ImagesThe sound carried over into the 1970s as the band found fame and added the vocalist J.T. Taylor.Songs like “Jungle Boogie” “Hollywood Swinging” and “Funky Stuff” became Billboard chart staples. “Celebration” — with its cheery chorus “Celebrate good times, come on!” — made it all the way to the top.The group would go on to release dozens of albums, tour worldwide and appeared on the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack, which won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978.The group’s songs have frequently appeared on film and television soundtracks, including for “Pulp Fiction” in 1994.In 2015, the band was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Mr. Brown was a producer on an album that the band released this year, called “People Just Want To Have Fun” in anticipation of the group’s 60th anniversary.Kool & the Gang had a broad influence, particularly in hip-hop.According to the website WhoSampled, the band has been sampled in almost 2,000 songs, among the highest of all time. The band’s song “Summer Madness” accounts for 249 samples, by artists including Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and Mary J. Blige.Ronald Khalis Bell, a singer, songwriter and saxophonist for the band, died in 2020. Mr. Thomas, who played saxophone, died in 2021.Mr. Brown is survived by his wife, Hanh Brown, and five children: Dorian Melvin Brown, Jorge Lewis Brown, Gregory Brown, Jordan Xuan Clarence Brown and Aaron Tien Joseph Brown.Three years ago, Mr. Brown was diagnosed with lung cancer, according to an interview broadcast with the television station KCAL in Los Angeles. After surgery and chemotherapy, Mr. Brown recovered and returned to touring in 2022. But this year, the cancer returned.“I didn’t plan on being in a band known around the world, but I welcomed it when it came,” Mr. Brown wrote in his book. “I didn’t know where the music would lead me, but I knew that if I remained focused and persevered, it would happen as God had intended. And it did.” More

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    Who Is Cassie, the R&B Singer Suing Sean Combs?

    The R&B singer was poised for a big breakout after her 2006 hit song “Me & U.” But her second album never arrived.Cassie, the singer, model and actress who is suing the music mogul Sean Combs for physical and sexual abuse, was supposed to be the next Britney Spears or Janet Jackson.Such a high bar for success was set by Combs, who in addition to dating the singer for more than a decade beginning around 2007 was also her label boss at Bad Boy Records until 2019. “Those two great artists have paved the way,” Combs said in 2008, while hyping up the singer’s much-anticipated second album.But it never came.After a promising start to her career in pop and R&B — including an infectious debut single, “Me & U,” that peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2006, and a well-reviewed first album — the singer, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, subsequently struggled for years to regain her footing as an artist. In pop music circles, she has long represented a “what if?” of unfulfilled artistic potential, even as she gained cult-favorite status among R&B obsessives and turned to releasing music independently.Ventura’s lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Thursday, may cast her abbreviated career in a different, darker light. According to Ventura’s claims, Combs, whom she met when she was 19, began a pattern of control and abuse that fused the singer’s personal and professional life as he plied her with drugs, beat her and forced her to have sex with male prostitutes while he watched and recorded. As their relationship was ending in 2018, the suit says, he raped her after pushing his way into her home.Through a lawyer, Combs, 54, has denied the accusations, calling the lawsuit “riddled with baseless and outrageous lies, aiming to tarnish Mr. Combs’s reputation and seeking a payday.”When they first became acquainted, Ventura, now 37, was an aspiring singer and sometime model from New London, Conn., while Combs was a larger-than-life hitmaker — known as Puff Daddy or Diddy — who was credited with developing the careers of the Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige and more. In February 2006, according to the lawsuit, Ventura signed a 10-album deal with Bad Boy. That summer, her debut studio album was released, with writing and production from the R&B polymath Ryan Leslie.“Just what we need: a young singer and a young producer who want to be the next Aaliyah and Timbaland, or maybe the next Ciara and Jazze Pha,” the critic Kelefa Sanneh wrote in The New York Times, praising her minimalist R&B sound. “No, seriously: It is just what we need.”“Cassie,” released by Bad Boy and Atlantic Records, reached No. 4 on the Billboard chart, selling more than 100,000 copies in its first week. But promotional appearances on shows like MTV’s “Total Request Live” and BET’s “106 & Park” were rocky, with Ventura citing “significant performance anxiety” in her lawsuit.Combs, at the time, was her public defender, telling MTV, “It made me really appreciate what I really love about her: She’s a regular person.” He added, “You’ve got to understand that success for her is coming out of nowhere.”In the years that followed, despite singles featuring Lil Wayne (“Official Girl”) and Akon (“Let’s Go Crazy”), Ventura became known as much for her relationship and public appearances with Combs as for her music. A second album was routinely teased in the press — with Combs touting her artistic development: “she’s really cocooned into a butterfly” — but never materialized.Still, Cassie remained a pop culture presence. In 2008, she appeared as an actress and dancer in the film “Step Up 2: The Streets.” The following year, she signed a record deal with Interscope Records, in association with Bad Boy, but got even more attention for an experimental hairstyle in which she shaved half of her head. “I wanted to go all the way and kind of land in punk,” she said at the time.By 2012, with the release of the single “King of Hearts,” Ventura was still touting a comeback. “I’m just a laid-back person,” she told GQ of the six-year gap between albums. “Maybe laid-back to a fault.” She added, “It’s been too long, I know, but I got to start over and over again. It would be awesome to stay popular, but if I was only an underground artist, I would be OK with that.”In 2013, Ventura released a mixtape, “RockaByeBaby,” that was not promoted with the force of an official studio album, but was met with praise nonetheless. With appearances by the rappers Wiz Khalifa, Rick Ross and Meek Mill, the album showcased Ventura as “an on-mic presence that’s the equal to any of the rappers she’s recruited for features here,” a critic for Pitchfork wrote.It would be years before Ventura released music again. According to the singer’s lawsuit, on at least two occasions in 2009 and 2015, Combs beat her after seeing her speak to music managers at parties. “She had hoped speaking to this manager would allow her to further grow her career, and that Mr. Combs would be happy for her, but instead he became extremely angry,” the suit says of the 2009 incident.Following the filing of the lawsuit, two former Bad Boy artists expressed support for Ventura online. “Been trynna tell y’all for years,” the singer Aubrey O’Day, formerly of the Combs-backed group Danity Kane, wrote on Instagram. “Prayers up for this queen.” Dawn Richard, another former member of Danity Kane, wrote on X, “praying for Cassie and her family, for peace and healing. you are beautiful and brave.”In 2019, Ventura married the wellness consultant Alex Fine while pregnant with the couple’s first child; the “intimate backyard wedding,” with just 14 guests, was documented by Vogue. That year, Ventura also began releasing music again, putting singles online via her own Ventura Music label in what she called the Free Fridays Playlist.“I feel supported so I make decisions based on what’s best for me,” Cassie said in an interview about beginning a new creative phase as a mother. “I used to spend the most time overthinking the smallest things and always worrying about how people felt that I neglected how I really felt and what would make me happy. I wasn’t creating from the heart.”“The most valuable thing I’ve learned in starting a new chapter,” she added, “is that it’s OK to ask for help.” More