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      Peter G. Davis, Music Critic of Wide Knowledge and Wit, Dies at 84

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPeter G. Davis, Music Critic of Wide Knowledge and Wit, Dies at 84He wrote with passion and bite about classical music, and especially opera, over a 50-year career at The Times and New York magazine.Peter G. Davis in 1990 on a visit to Sissinghurst Castle Garden in England. As a student years earlier he toured  Europe’s summer music festivals.Credit…Scott ParrisFeb. 19, 2021, 2:43 p.m. ETPeter G. Davis, who for over 30 years held sway as one of America’s leading classical music critics with crisp, witty prose and an encyclopedic memory of countless performances and performers, died on Feb. 13. He was 84.His death was confirmed by his husband, Scott Parris.First as a critic at The New York Times and later at New York magazine, Mr. Davis wrote precise, sharply opinionated reviews of all forms of classical music, though his great love was opera and the voice, an attachment he developed in his early teens.He presided over the field during boon years in New York in the 1960s and ’70s, when performances were plentiful and tickets relatively cheap, and when the ups and downs of a performer’s career provided fodder for cocktail parties and after-concert dinners, not to mention the notebooks of writers like Mr. Davis, who often delivered five or more reviews a week.He wrote those reviews with a knowing, deadpan, at times world-weary tone. During a 1976 concert by the Russian violinist Vladimir Spivakov, an activist protesting the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union threw a paint bomb at the stage, splattering Mr. Spivakov and his accompanist. Mr. Davis wrote, “Terrorists must be extremely insensitive to music, for tossing paint at a violinist playing Bach’s ‘Chaconne’ is simply poor timing.”He maintained faith in the traditions of classical music not for the sake of perpetuating the past but for their intrinsic power, and he looked askance at those who tried to update them just to be trendy.In a 1977 review of the Bronx Opera’s staging of “Fra Diavolo,” by the 19th-century French composer Daniel Francois Auber, he decried what he saw as a “refusal to believe in the piece by treating it as an embarrassment, a work that needs a maximum of directorial gimmicks if the audience is to remain interested.”He could be equally dismissive of new music and composers who he thought were overhyped. The minimalist composer Philip Glass and Beverly Sills (early on “a dependable, hard-working but not especially remarkable soprano” who became a star, he felt, only after her talents had peaked) were regular targets.In a review of a performance of Mr. Glass’s work at Carnegie Hall in 2002, he wrote, “It was pretty much business as usual: the same simple-minded syncopations and jigging ostinatos, the same inane little tunes on their way to nowhere, the same clumsily managed orchestral climaxes.”Which is not to say that Mr. Davis was a reactionary — he championed young composers and upstart regional opera companies. His great strength as a critic was his pragmatism, his commitment to assess the performance in front of him on its own terms while casting a skeptical eye at gimmickry.“He was a connoisseur of vocal music of unimpeachable authority,” said Justin Davidson, a former classical music critic at Newsday who now writes about classical music and architecture for New York magazine. “He had a sense that the things he cared about mattered, that they were not niche, not just entertainment, but that they cut to the heart of what American culture was.”Peter Graffam Davis was born on March 3, 1936, in Concord, Mass., outside Boston, and grew up in nearby Lincoln. His father, E. Russell Davis, was a vice president at the Bank of Boston. His mother, Susan (Graffam) Davis, was a homemaker.Mr. Parris, whom he married in 2009, is his only immediate survivor.Mr. Davis fell in love with opera as a teenager, building a record collection at home and attending performances in Boston. During the months before his junior year at Harvard, he took a tour of Europe’s summer music festivals — Strauss in Munich, Mozart in Salzburg, Wagner in Bayreuth.He encountered European opera at a hinge point. It was still defined by longstanding traditions and had yet to fully emerge from the destruction of World War II, but poking out of the wreckage was a new generation of performers: the French soprano Régine Crespin, the Austrian soprano Leonie Rysanek, the Italian tenors Franco Corelli and Giuseppe di Stefano. Mr. Davis got to see them up close.Mr. Davis’s 1997 book is exhaustive, exhilarating and often withering history of opera in America.He graduated from Harvard in 1958 with a bachelor’s degree in music. After spending a year at a conservatory in Stuttgart, Germany, he moved to New York to complete a master’s degree in composition at Columbia University.Mr. Davis wrote a number of musical works of his own in the early 1960s, including an opera, “Zoe,” and a pair of Gilbert and Sullivan-esque operettas. But he decided that his future lay not in writing music but in writing about it. He became the classical music editor for both High Fidelity and Musical America magazines, as well as the New York music correspondent for The Times of London.He began writing freelance articles for The New York Times in 1967, and in 1974 was hired as the Sunday music editor, a job that allowed him to supplement his near-daily output of reviews — whether of recordings, concerts or innumerable debut recitals — with articles he commissioned from other writers. “He had a superb memory,” said Alex Ross, the classical music critic for The New Yorker. “Anything you threw at him, he was able to speak about precisely and intelligently.”Mr. Davis moved to New York magazine in 1981. There he could pick and choose his reviews as well as occasionally stand back to survey the classical music landscape.Increasingly, he didn’t like what he saw.As early as 1980, Mr. Davis was lamenting the future of opera singing, blaming an emphasis on “pleasing appearance and facile adaptability” over talent and hard work and a star system that pushed promising but immature vocalists past their physical limits.The diminished position of classical music in American culture that he documented did not spare critics, and in 2007 New York magazine let him go. He went back to freelancing for The Times and wrote regularly for Opera News and Musical America.For all his thousands of reviews, Mr. Davis seemed most proud of his book “The American Opera Singer” (1997), an exhaustive, exhilarating and often withering history in which he praised the versatility of contemporary American performers while taking many of them to task for being superficial workhorses.“I can’t think of a music critic who cares more deeply about the state of opera in America,” the critic Terry Teachout wrote in his review of the book for The Times. “Anyone who wants to know what is wrong with American singing will find the answers here.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Rupert Neve, the Father of Modern Studio Recording, Dies at 94

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRupert Neve, the Father of Modern Studio Recording, Dies at 94His equipment became the industry standard and influenced the sound of groups like Nirvana, Fleetwood Mac, the Grateful Dead, Santana, Chicago and the Who.Rupert Neve in 2009 at a mixing console at the Magic Shop recording studio in New York City. His revolutionary Neve 8028 console (not shown here) had a huge impact on the music industry.Credit…Joshua ThomasFeb. 19, 2021, 2:43 p.m. ETWhen the Seattle grunge band Nirvana recorded their breakthrough album, “Nevermind,” at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, Calif., in 1991, they used a massive mixing console created by a British engineer named Rupert Neve.The Neve 8028 console had by then become a studio staple, hailed by many as the most superior console of its kind in its manipulating and combining instrumental and vocal signals and as responsible in great part for the audio quality of albums by groups like Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd.For Dave Grohl, Nirvana’s drummer and later the leader of Foo Fighters, the console “was like the coolest toy in the world,” he told NPR in 2013 when his documentary film about the California studio, “Sound City,” was released. “And what you get when you record on a Neve desk is this really big, warm representation of whatever comes into it.”He added, “What’s going to come out the other end is this bigger, better version of you.”In 2011, long after forming Foo Fighters, Mr. Grohl purchased the console as Sound City was closing, took it to his garage and used it to record the band’s album “Wasting Light.”Mr. Neve’s innovative, largely analog equipment has been used to record pop, rock, jazz and rap — genres distinct from his preferred one: English cathedral music, with its organs and choirs.After his death last Friday, the influential hip-hop engineer Gimel Keaton, known as Young Guru, tweeted: “Please understand that this man was one of a kind. There is nothing close to him in the engineering world. RIP to the KING!!!”Mr. Neve (pronounced Neeve) died in a hospice facility in San Marcos, Tex., near his home in Wimberley, a Hill Country town that he and his wife, Evelyn, moved to in 1994. He was 94. The causes were pneumonia and heart failure, according to his company, Rupert Neve Designs.Arthur Rupert Neve was born on July 31, 1926, in Newton Abbott, in southwestern England. He spent most of his childhood near Buenos Aires, where his parents, Arthur Osmond and Doris (Dence) Neve, were missionaries with the British and Foreign Bible Society.Rupert developed a facility with technology as a boy taking apart and repairing shortwave radios. It accelerated during World War II, when he served in the Royal Corps of Signals, which gave communications support to the British Army.After the war, working out of an old U.S. Army ambulance, he started a business recording, on 78 r.p.m. acetate discs, brass bands and choirs as well as public addresses, like those by Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth II when she was a princess.His future father-in-law was unimpressed. When Mr. Neve spoke to him about marrying his daughter, Evelyn Collier, the older man couldn’t imagine recording as a way of making a living.“He’d never heard of it,” Mr. Neve told Tape Op, a recording magazine, in 2001. “To him a recorder was a gentleman who sat in a courtroom and wrote down the proceedings.”During the 1950s, Mr. Neve found work at a company that designed and manufactured transformers. He also started his own business making hi-fi equipment.With his expanding knowledge of electronics, he recognized that mixing consoles performed better with transistors than with vacuum tubes, which were cumbersome and required very high voltage.He delivered his first custom-made transistor console to Phillips Studios in London in 1964, and its success led to thousands more orders over the years — bought by, among others, Abbey Road Studios in London (in the post-Beatles years), the Power Station in Manhattan and the AIR Studios, both in London and on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, founded by George Martin, the Beatles’ producer.The singer-songwriter Billy Crockett bought a Neve console about eight years ago for his Blue Rock Artist Ranch & Studio, which is also in Wimberley. He is quick to extol its “warm, open, transparent” sound.“It’s all about his transformers,” he said in a phone interview, referring to the components that Mr. Neve designed that connect microphone signals to the console and the console to a recording medium like vinyl or a CD. “They provide something intangible that makes the mix fit together. So when people get poetic about analog, it’s how the sound comes through the transformers.”Mr. Neve received a Technical Grammy Award in 1997. In a 2014 interview with the Recording Academy, which sponsors the Grammys, he said he was pleased with the loyalty that his consoles had fostered.Mr. Neve in 2013 with the musician Dave Grohl at a screening of “Sound City,” Mr. Grohl’s documentary film about the famed recording studio in Los Angeles. The film was being shown at the SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Mr. Neve’s pioneering mixing console was at the heart of Sound City.Credit…Michael Buckner/Getty Images for SXSW“I’m proudest of the fact that people are still using designs of mine which started many years ago and which, in many ways, have not been superseded since,” he said. “Some of those old consoles are really hard to beat in terms of both recording quality and the effects that people will get when they make recordings.”In addition to his wife, Mr. Neve is survived by his daughters, Evelyn Neve, who is known as Mary, and Ann Yates; his sons, David, John and Stephen; nine grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.Mr. Neve was more aware of the engineers who handled his consoles than of the singers and bands whose albums benefited from his audio wizardry.That preference was borne out when rock stars approached him after the screening of Mr. Grohl’s “Sound City” documentary at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin in 2013.“They all wanted to take pictures with him,” Josh Thomas, the general manager of Rupert Neve Designs, said in a phone interview. “And after each picture, he asked me, ‘Why is he important?’”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Bad Bunny Tops 2021 Premio Lo Nuestro Awards With Seven Prizes

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      WENN

      The ‘YHLQMDLG’ star dominates this year’s Premio Lo Nuestro Awards by taking home a total of seven gongs including Artist of the Year and Album of the Year.

      Feb 20, 2021
      AceShowbiz – Bad Bunny led the winners at the 2021 Premio Lo Nuestro Awards on Thursday night (18Feb21), taking home all seven gongs he had been nominated for.
      The Puerto Rican rapper was named Artist of the Year, as well as winning the Album of the Year prize, and awards for Urban – Male Artist of the Year, Urban – Song of the Year, Urban – Album of the Year, and Urban/Trap – Song of the Year for “Vete”.
      Maluma had led the pack going into the awards, with 14 nominations, but only emerged with two gongs – for Song of the Year and Pop/Ballad – Song of the Year for “ADMV”.

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      Camilo, who had received 10 nominations, was presented with four gongs – including for New Artist Male and Pop – Artist of the Year, as well as Pop – Album of the Year for his record “Por Primera Vez”.
      Other notable winners at the ceremony, which was conducted in Miami, Florida, included Nicki Minaj, Travis Scott, and Dua Lipa, who all earned their first Premio Lo Nuestro awards – Nicki for “Tusa” with Karol G, Travis for Video of the Year for “TKN” with Rosalia, and Dua for ‘Crossover’ Collaboration of the Year for “Un Dia”, with Bad Bunny, J Balvin, and Tainy.
      The full list of winners at the 2021 Premio Lo Nuestro Awards is as follows:
      Premio Lo Nuestro Artist of the Year – Bad Bunny
      Album of the Year – “YHLQMDLG”, Bad Bunny
      Song of the Year – “Tusa”, Karol G and Nicki Minaj
      New Artist Female – Nicki Nicole
      New Artist Male – Camilo
      Remix of the Year – “La Jeepeta”, Nio Garcia, Anuel, Myke Towers, Brray and Juanka
      ‘Crossover’ Collaboration of the Year – “Un Dia (One Day) “, J Balvin, Dua Lipa, Bad Bunny ft. Tainy
      Video of the Year – “TKN”, Rosalia and Travis Scott
      Pop – Artist of the Year – Camilo
      Pop – Song of the Year – “ADMV”, Maluma
      Pop – Collaboration of the Year – “Si Me Dices Que Si”, Reik, Farruko and Camilo
      Pop – Group or Duo of the Year – CNCO
      Pop – Album of the Year – “Por Primera Vez”, Camilo
      Pop/Ballad – Song of the Year – “ADMV”, Maluma
      Urban – Female Artist of the Year – Karol G
      Urban – Male Artist of the Year – Bad Bunny
      Urban – Song of the Year – “La Dificil”, Bad Bunny
      Urban – Collaboration of the Year – “Tusa”, Karol G and Nicki Minaj
      Urban – Album of the Year – “YHLQMDLG”, Bad Bunny
      Urban/Pop – Song of the Year – “Si Me Dices Que Si”, Reik, Farruko and Camilo
      Urban/Trap – Song of the Year – “Vete”, Bad Bunny
      Tropical – Artist of the Year – Romeo Santos
      Tropical – Song of the Year – “La Mejor Version De Mi”, Natti Natasha and Romeo Santos
      Tropical – Collaboration of the Year – “Nuestro Amor”, Alex Bueno and Romeo Santos
      Regional Mexican – Artist of the Year – Christian Nodal
      Regional Mexican – Song of the Year – “Yo Ya No Vuelvo Contigo (En Vivo) “, Lenin Ramirez ft. Grupo Firme
      Regional Mexican – Collaboration of the Year – “Yo Ya No Vuelvo Contigo (En Vivo) “, Lenin Ramirez ft. Grupo Firme
      Regional Mexican – Group or Duo of the Year – Grupo Firme
      Regional Mexican – Sierrena Song of the Year – “El Guero”, Marca MP
      Regional Mexican – Banda Song of the Year – “Yo Ya No Vuelvo Contigo (En Vivo) “, Lenin Ramirez ft. Grupo Firme
      Regional Mexican – Norteno Song of the Year – “El Envidioso”, Los Dos Carnales
      Regional Mexican – Mariachi/Ranchera Song of the Year – “Se Me Olvido”, Christian Nodal
      Regional Mexican – Cumbia Song of the Year – “Tu Y Yo”, Raymix and Paulina Rubio
      Regional Mexican – Album of the Year – “En Vivo Desde Anaheim, CA”, Grupo Firme

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      Scrapped Plans for London Concert Hall Sour Mood for U.K. Musicians

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyScrapped Plans for London Concert Hall Sour Mood for U.K. MusiciansThe decision comes as classical musicians struggle to deal with the impact of the pandemic and Britain’s departure from the European Union.A computer-generated rendering of the proposed London Center for Music, by the architects Diller Scofidio & Renfro. London authorities announced Thursday that the project would not go ahead.Credit…Diller Scofidio + RenfroFeb. 19, 2021, 11:11 a.m. ETLONDON — Back in 2017, London music fans had high hopes for a reinvigoration of the city’s classical music scene.That year, Simon Rattle, one of the world’s most acclaimed conductors, became the music director of the London Symphony Orchestra, and Diller Scofidio & Renfro, the architects behind the High Line in New York, were appointed to design a world-class 2,000-seat concert hall in the city.Now, the situation couldn’t be more different.On Thursday, just weeks after Rattle announced he would leave London in 2023 to take the reins at the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich, London officials announced that plans for the new hall had been scrapped. Rattle had been the driving force behind the project.In a news release announcing the decision, the City of London Corporation, the local government body overseeing the proposal, did not mention Rattle’s departure; the new hall would not go ahead because of the “unprecedented circumstances” caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the release said.The announcement was not unexpected. Few private funders came forward for the project, and Britain’s government was reluctant to back the project, which critics had decried as elitist, after years of cuts to basic services.But some musical experts say the news is still a blow to Britain’s classical musicians, already suffering from a pandemic-induced shutdown of their work, and Brexit, which has raised fears about their ability to to perform abroad.“It’s a further confirmation of the parochialization of British music and the arts,” said Jasper Parrott, a co-founder of HarrisonParrott, a classical music agency, in a telephone interview.The mood among musicians was low, Parrott said, especially because of changes to the rules governing European tours that came about because of Brexit. Before Britain left the European Union, classical musicians and singers could work in most European countries without needing visas or work permits, and many took last-minute bookings, jumping on low-cost flights to make concerts at short notice.Classical musicians now require costly and time-consuming visas to work in some European countries, Parrott said. Changes to haulage rules also make it harder for orchestras to tour, he added: Trucks carrying their equipment are limited to two stops on the continent before they must return to Britain.Deborah Annetts, the chief executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, said on Tuesday during a parliamentary inquiry into the new rules that she had been “inundated with personal testimony from musicians as to the work that they have lost, or are going to lose, in Europe as a result of the new visa and work permit arrangements.”A British musician who wanted to play a concert in Spain would have to pay 600 pounds, or about $840, for a work permit, she said, adding that this would make such a trip unviable for many. She called upon the government to negotiate deals with European countries so cultural workers could move around more easily.Parrott said he expected many British classical musicians would retrain for other careers, or move outside Britain for work, if the rules were not changed.High profile departures like Rattle’s have only contributed to the impression of a sector in decline. On Jan. 22, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, a young Lithuanian conductor seen as a rising star, announced she would leave her post as music director of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2021-22 season. “This is a deeply personal decision, reflecting my desire to step away from the organizational and administrative responsibilities of being a music director,” she said in a statement at the time.Manuel Brug, a music critic for Die Welt, the German newspaper, said in a telephone interview that, viewed from the continent, classical music in Britain seemed in a bad way, “with all this horrible news.”The new London concert hall “was always a dream, but at least it was a dream,” he said.Given recent developments, many British musicians and singers may have to consider moving to Europe if they wanted to succeed, he said.Yet not all were downbeat about the future. British musicians could cope with the impact of the coronavirus, or Brexit — but not both at the same time, unless the government stepped in to help, said Paul Carey Jones, a Welsh bass baritone who has campaigned for the interests of freelance musicians during the pandemic.“British artists are some of the best trained, most talented and most innovative and creative,” he said. “But what we’re almost completely lacking is support from the current government. So we need them to grasp the urgency of the situation.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Don Letts, Mad Professor Team With Times on Carnival Story

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeBake: Maximalist BrowniesListen: To Pink SweatsGrow: RosesUnwind: With Ambience VideosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTimes InsiderBreaking Down the Sounds of Carnival, on Your PhoneThe pandemic has dampened the celebrations worldwide. But a Times special project, which includes an interactive music mixing feature, lets readers get into a party mood.The Notting Hill Carnival in 2019. Although parties over the past year have been canceled, a Times project seeks to keep the Carnival spirit alive this winter. Credit…Peter Summers/Getty ImagesFeb. 19, 2021Updated 10:48 a.m. ETTimes Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.The world could definitely use a party. Unfortunately, because of the coronavirus pandemic, cities around the globe have canceled or curtailed what is annually their biggest bash, Carnival.These celebrations, many of them pre-Lenten, trace back hundreds of years to the Caribbean islands, and the tradition has continued with the Caribbean diaspora in cities like New York (the West Indian American Day Parade), Toronto (Caribana) and London (Notting Hill Carnival).In the chill of February, readers of The New York Times can get a flavor of the sensory richness of these blowouts with Carnival in Winter, a special online package of multimedia experiences about the festivals produced by the Narrative Projects department.Carnival is all about history, community, costumes, food — and music. To immerse readers into the sonic experience, Narrative Projects teamed with the Graphics department and the R.& D. department to create a special effect on Instagram that puts you inside a classic Carnival song. The effect, through the Instagram Spark feature that can be downloaded on phones, uses augmented reality, which lays a computer-generated image or animation over a user’s view of the real world. (Click here from your phone.)In this case, you can hear a Carnival anthem broken down into four musical tracks — and you can “see” the tracks through Carnival-inspired 3-D animations and manipulate the music by moving in your physical space. The effect turns your phone — and living room —  into a virtual mixing board.Picking just one song to represent the music of Carnival — which incorporates soca, calypso, reggae, dub, house and more — is a near impossible task. So, as one of the editors on the project, I reached out to an expert.Don Letts at the Roxy in London in 1977. Recently, he suggested the song that was used in The Times’s interactive feature on Carnival music. Credit…Erica Echenberg/Redferns, via Getty ImagseDon Letts, a 65-year-old filmmaker, broadcaster and musical matchmaker, is an icon of the British music scene. In the 1970s as the D.J. at the Roxy in London, he introduced the club’s punk clientele to reggae, the rising sound from Jamaica, his parents’ homeland. Between his friendship with Bob Marley and his close ties to the fledgling punk scene (he later formed the band Big Audio Dynamite with Mick Jones of the Clash), Letts earned the nickname “The Rebel Dread” for bucking convention and orchestrating cultural collisions that changed the course of popular music.He also has been a regular at the Notting Hill Carnival for over 40 years. In 2009, he directed a documentary, “Carnival!,” on the history and politics of the festival.Asked to name a “typical” Carnival anthem, Mr. Letts at first dismissed the task as impossible. Upon reflection, though, he directed us toward an old friend, the producer Mad Professor, and his 2005 track “Elaine the Osaka Dancer” — “A strange title, I know,” said Mr. Letts — which was written for a performer, Panafricanist, on the Mad Professor’s label. Mad Professor, whose name is Neil Fraser, is himself a well-known name in British music history. He pioneered the emergence of the British dub sound and collaborated with performers like Sade and Massive Attack.Mr. Letts chose “Elaine” because, as he put it: “At Carnival you can stand on a street corner and hear a float going past with steel pans, along with the sound of a Jamaican sound system right around the corner. This song perfectly captures that sound: the collision of calypso and soca with the bass-heavy rhythms of reggae.”If you’re reading this article on a desktop computer or tablet, you can view the AR experience on Instagram by opening your camera on your device and point to this QR code. For those reading on their phones, the link in the story above will call up the effect. Credit… Mad Professor agreed to license the song, so we asked him to break it down into individual instrumental tracks or “stems,” each of which would then be manipulated by the user of the Instagram effect.This process proved to be slightly more analog — and painstaking — than anticipated. At one point, when asked for a progress report, Mad Professor relayed that he was “baking the tapes” — which might sound (or did to me, anyway) like a bit of music producer slang. In fact, it’s a literal description of the process in which analog master tapes are restored by exposing them to a high temperature for hours, reducing humidity that can affect the quality of the tapes.Once the tapes were baked and the stems were procured, our graphics and R. & D. team built the Instagram effect. With the effect, the user can play with the drums, bass, horns and steel pan tracks while seeing commentary from Letts on why each element is crucial to a Carnival song.It’s not the same thing as dancing to steel pans on a simmering street in London’s Notting Hill in the heat of summer. But in a year when Carnival has been canceled nearly everywhere, we hope it gets you as close to that feeling as possible.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Meek Mill Calls Out 'Internet Antics' Following Backlash Over Kobe Bryant Lyric

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      WENN/FayesVision/Avalon

      Defending himself for making a reference to the helicopter crash that killed the NBA legend in his song, he blames social media users who make ‘a narrative’ against him.

      Feb 19, 2021
      AceShowbiz – Meek Mill has spoken up after he came under fire for making a reference to Kobe Bryant’s tragic death in his yet-to-be-released song. The Philly rapper made use of his Twitter account defend himself after he became a trending topic on the platform for the wrong reason.
      Showing no remorse for the controversial lyric in his upcoming collaboration with Lil Baby, the “Tupac Back” spitter blamed critics’ “antics” for making “a narrative” against him. “somebody promo a narrative and y’all follow it…. y’all internet antics cannot stop me ….s**t like zombie land or something! Lol,” he wrote on Thursday, February 18.
      The 33-year-old star went on comparing the backlash to “mind control” as he wrote in a separate tweet, “They paying to influence y’all now … its almost like mind control ‘wake up.’ ”

      Meek Mill responded to backlash over Kobe Bryant lyric.

        See also…

      On Wednesday, a snippet surfaced online of Meek’s song featuring Baby in which he makes a reference to Kobe’s helicopter crash. “And if I ever lack I’m going out with my choppa it be another Kobe/ S**t I can tell they ain’t never know me,” he raps in the snippet.
      Baby also makes a reference to the former Los Angeles Lakers star. “I damn near wanna have a son so I can name him Kobe,” he spits in his part, but it’s Meek’s part which offended social media users to the point they’re dragging the “Ima Boss” emcee.
      “Absolutely not. Wth,” one reacted to the snippet. Another expressed his/her anger on Twitter as writing, “This is f**king disgusting.” A third critic slammed for the “Tupac Back” emcee, “Meek a f**king clown smh.”
      A fourth one agreed, adding, “Nah this ain’t it, at all.” Another reacted in disbelief, “Meek Mill said what about Kobe.. going out with your chopper?!” Someone else called him out for being “disrespectful” with the lyrics, tweeting, “F**k Meek Mill really disrespectful. Idgaf what anyone thinks.”

      Also putting Meek on blast was Wack 100, who previously engaged in a back-and-forth with the rapper over his run-in with Tekashi a.k.a. 6ix9ine. “Some metaphors SHOULD not be used .. Pretenders struggle to pretend when it’s not authentic – 1 man don’t speak for #Philli -Rip #Kobe&GIGI,” the music producer weighed in on the lyric while posting a picture of the late NBA star and his daughter Gianna, who was also killed in the helicopter accident.

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      HAIM Releases Remix of 'Gasoline' Featuring Taylor Swift

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      Instagram/WENN/Avalon

      The ‘Feel the Under’ hitmaker also shares an interesting behind-the-scenes anecdote about their collaboration with the ‘Cardigan’ singer, saying that the latter ‘had always told us that gasoline was her favorite.’

      Feb 19, 2021
      AceShowbiz – HAIM has treated fans to a new version of their song “Gasoline” off their “Women in Music Pt. III” album. The new version saw the group enlisting Taylor Swift for the track. Additionally, HAIM releases a new version of “3am” featuring Thundercat.
      They announced the new songs on their Instagram account on Thursday, February 18. “gasoline (feat. taylor swift) + 3 am (feat. thundercat) out now!!” the “Feel the Under” hitmaker excitely revealed. Sharing an interesting behind-the-scenes anecdote about their collaboration with the “Cardigan” singer, they penned, “since we released wimpiii in june, taylor had always told us that gasoline was her favorite.”
      [embedded content]
      “so when we were thinking about ways to reimagine some of the tracks from the record, we immediately thought of her,” HAIM further explained. “she brought such amazing ideas and new imagery to the song and truly gave it a new life. thank you @taylorswift for adding your incredible voice and spirit to a track that means so much to us.”

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      As for Thundercat, the group wrote, “we’ve known thundercat since 2013, and since then we’ve always talked about collaborating on something. so this past december, we were in the studio working on a cover and at the end of the session este mentioned that we’d always imagined 3 am as a duet. minutes later thundercat hopped on the song and put his magical twist on it. thank you @thundercatmusic for always keeping us laughing and sending us the best memes. we are ready for dragonball durag pt. 2.”

      This is not the first time for Taylor to collaborate with the sisters. The “Evermore” artist previously worked with Este Haim and Daniel Haim for “No Body, No Crime”, one of the tracks included in her chart-topping album “Evermore”.
      Taylor and HAIM will be going against each other at the 2021 Grammy Awards as both “Women in Music Pt. III” and “Folklore” are among the contenders for “Album of the Year” category. The pop rock group’s “The Step” is also nominated for “Best Rock Performance” at the upcoming award-giving event.

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      Post Malone Doesn't Hesitate to Say No to Idea of 6ix9ine Collab

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      Fans love his response as one of them writes in an Instagram comment that the 25-year-old ‘Hollywood’s Bleeding’ musician is ‘too big for a tekashi feature anyway.’

      Feb 19, 2021
      AceShowbiz – Post Malone is among the top rappers in current hip-hop music industry. Many rappers might hope to collaborate with the “Hollywood’s Bleeding” musician and he welcomed the idea of working with another musician. However, it didn’t seem to be the case for Tekashi69 (6ix9ine).
      In a video posted by DJ Akademiks, Post could be seen being hounded by paparazzi in West Hollywood earlier this week. When asked about any artists whom he would like to work with in the future, Post responded, “I’ve worked with a lot of different artists…I met Robin Pecknold from Fleet Floxes today, which was one of my favorite bands since middle school.” He added, “And it was really cool to be able to meet him and vibe with him.”
      When one of the reporters asked if he would want to collaborate with the “FEFE” rapper, the 2021 Grammy Awards Album of the Year nominee politely declined, “Would I? Chances are, no.”

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      Fans loved his response as one of them wrote in the comment section, “He said no respectfully.” Another fan added, “Post too big for a tekashi feature anyway.” Echoing the sentiment, one user said, “Post Malone too cool.”
      However, someone didn’t seem to buy Post’s words. “he capping. he’s gonna work w him sooner or later lmao,” the person alleged. Defending the “GOOBA” spitter, one person wrote, “69 wouldn’t work with him either.”
      Post has enjoyed a successful life and things are looking great for him this year as well. Despite the success, he never forgets to give back as he handed out a free pair of his custom-designed Crocs from Post Malone x Crocs Duet Max Clog collaboration to every single student at his alma mater Grapevine High School back in December 2020. Grapevine school principal Alex Fingers revealed the donation in a Twitter post that read, “Thank you @PostMalone for always giving back to your community! Your fellow @Grapevine_HS Mustangs are so proud of your success! #ThanksPosty #Posty.”
      Principal Fingers also made the announcement of the “Wow.” rapper’s charitable act through a video. Informing his students, he said, “One of our own Grapevine High School graduate Post Malone has noticed your work and decided to give you guys a little bit of something descending into the holiday season on the right foot.”
      “Post Malone does great and give him back to our community,” the educator continued to rave about the 25-year-old. “He loves Grapevine High School and the community that raised him here, and he wanted to do something to give back to his community that has kind of nurtured him and allowed him to have the levels of success that he’s had.”

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