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These Two Former Billboard Staffers Produced One of Rap’s Biggest Christmas Hits
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about how two former Billboard staffers produced the holiday hit “Christmas Rappin’” for then-up-and-coming rapper Kurtis Blow, originally ran in 2019. Since then, in 2020, Robert Ford passed away. One groundbreaking Christmas hit didn’t just make the Billboard charts — it was produced by two former employees. In 1979, J.B. Moore and Robert Ford left the magazine to produce “Christmas Rappin’ ” for an up-and-coming rapper named Kurtis Blow. Released on Mercury Records, the single went gold, and Blow became the first rapper to sign a major-label deal. At Billboard, Moore ...
Chart Rewind: In 1987, Belinda Carlisle’s ‘Heaven Is a Place on Earth’ Ascended to No. 1
By 1987, Belinda Carlisle had become a chart mainstay. Five years earlier, she and her Los Angeles pop-punk band The Go-Go’s became the first all-female group to top the Billboard 200 when their debut album, Beauty and the Beat, spent six weeks at No. 1 in 1982. The same year, the quintet followed with the top 10 LP Vacation and, in 1984, the top 20 Talk Show. They also scored five top 40 Billboard Hot 100 hits, including “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got the Beat.” The Go-Go’s went on hiatus after Talk Show, but Carlisle didn’t slow down. Her 1986 debut solo LP, Belinda, reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and spawned a No. 3 Hot 100 hit, “Mad About You.” It wasn’t until the end of the following year that Carlisle, then 29, made her first solo trip to the top of the Hot 100 with “Heaven I...
‘The Last Rocket’: 8 Verses to Remember Takeoff By
Takeoff — born Kirshnik Ball — was reportedly murdered in Houston early Tuesday (Nov. 1) following an altercation outside of 810 Billiards & Bowling when gunfire rang off and fatally struck the Migos rapper while leaving two others hospitalized. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In the hours since Takeoff’s death, there’s been an outpouring of support from the hip-hop community with touching tributes coming from the likes of Drake, Gucci Mane, Nas, Rich The Kid, Metro Boomin’, Chance The Rapper, Chuck D and more. As one-third of Migos alongside Quavo and Offset, Takeoff served as the backbone of the seminal trio, which played an integral role in changing the sound of 2010’s rap and turning Atlanta into the hip-hop capital of the world. Fans h...
Tee Grizzley Talks Becoming Rap’s Martin Scorsese With New Project ‘Chapters of the Trenches’
Storytelling has always been a pillar of rap, but nobody in the industry is doing it like Tee Grizzley right now. The Detroit native turned his cautionary street tales into a cinematic visual album, which will be packaged as Chapters of the Trenches. The vivid project arrives on Friday (Oct. 14). Inspired by real-life events, Tee’s “Robbery” series quickly caught fire earlier this year, and with fans thirsting for more, Grizzley delivered a connected universe of sorts with each heart-racing installment, leaving viewers with a thrilling cliffhanger more twisted than the last. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “I hear a lot of people speak on the trenches and a lot of people think it’s cool. Even Lil Durk would tell you, this s–...
Every Song Ranked on Drake’s ‘Honestly, Nevermind’ Album: Critic’s Picks
The 6 God goes for seven. Nine months after Certified Lover Boy‘s momentous arrival, Drake delivered another album with Honestly, Nevermind on Friday (June 17). His seventh LP, Drizzy went against his usually well-calculated ways to announce the surprise album just mere hours before it landed on streaming services. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The last time he pulled the surprise release was the critically acclaimed If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late in 2015. For once, Drake elected to keep his album shorter than his typically overstuffed albums with a modest 14 songs. Those expecting a rap album were sadly mistaken, as Drizzy leans on the house music scene and bars are a rarity outside of a few tracks. An expert collaborator,...
In 1983, Alan & Marilyn Bergman Were First to Land 3 Oscar Nods for Best Song in 1 Year
With the announcement on Saturday (Jan. 8) of the death of Oscar- and Grammy-winning lyricist Marilyn Bergman at age 93, it’s a good time to look back on one of the most impressive feats in Oscar history. When the nominations for the 55th annual Academy Awards were announced on Feb. 17, 1983, lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman accomplished an unprecedented feat: They had three of the five nominees for best original song. What’s more, all three songs were from different films and were written with with different composers. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In the nearly four decades since then, four other songwriters or songwriting teams have landed three best original song nods in the same year, but, in each case, all were from the same film. The...
CMA Awards 2021 Predictions: Who Will Win?
Entertainer of the yearEric ChurchLuke CombsMiranda LambertChris StapletonCarrie Underwood Newman: As many artists returned to the road as the pandemic began to wane, the focus on this award once will again will lean toward live efforts, even though that is not the only criteria. Church seemed a little befuddled when he finally captured the award last year, despite the shutdown, after three previous nominations — but he, Combs and Stapleton are the legitimate front runners this year as neither Lambert nor Underwood have mounted full tours in 2021. Combs just keeps getting stronger, and it feels like his time has come. Will win: Luke Combs Nicholson: Church is the presiding CMA entertainer of the year, and is poised to continue his reign. Over the past year, as the COVID-19 pandemic h...
‘It’s Made People More Paranoid’: How Artists and Writers Are Covering Their Bases in the Post-’Blurred Lines’ Era of Interpolations
Some of these include HookTheory, a database which breaks down melodies, or the Music Copyright Infringement Resource (MCIR), which compiles music copyright cases from the mid 20th century onwards, both from the U.S. and some foreign territories. Though musicologists employ various online databases, today these options are still rudimentary and are only used to supplement the musicologist’s expertise. Creating a truly accurate tool would necessitate more advanced artificial intelligence than is currently available. In music, there are two separate copyrightable elements: the sound recording and the underlying composition itself. For sound recording copyright disputes, it is much more straightforward: if an artist copied and pasted a portion of a sound recording (“sampling”) into a ne...
Maxo Kream Talks Carrying the Load Through the Highs and Lows With New Album ‘Weight of the World’
The title of Maxo’s latest effort, Weight of the World — released this past Monday (Oct. 18) — is appropriate as it arrives not only at a unique time in his life but for the world at large. Obviously much changed for him personally, but we are all still reeling from the stoppages caused by COVID-19, despite the fact a new normal has been created. In the time before vaccinations and loosened protocols, the Roc Nation signee took the time to be more thoughtful and strategic on his third studio album (and second under RCA), after a two-year hiatus following 2019 breakout album Brandon Banks. “The whole COVID [thing] gave me more time to really go deep and seep into my music,” he says. “Everything planned out perfectly, I feel like it’s the perfect time — and after this...
Five Ways the Music Industry Has Changed Since Adele Last Released an Album
What we’ve heard of “Easy On Me” so far sounds much like the Adele that the world fell in love with a decade-plus ago. But even if the sound of her new music is in line with her earlier blockbusters, the music industry has evolved at a rapid pace since 2015. Her continued streak of hits is close to a foregone conclusion, but what success looks like in 2021 is slipperier and harder to define by the old metrics. Here are five ways that the music industry has changed since we last heard from Adele. Streaming windows have gone out of style Back in the mid-2010s, streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music had already begun reshaping music consumption and driving down traditional sales even further from the decline previously brought about by filesharing at the turn of the centu...
Billboard’s Latin Editors Discuss Latin Grammy Nominations: What Went Right & What Needs Work
Jessica Roiz: I would say diverse. I noticed that in the “Big Four” there’s not only a variety of genres but also of generations. We have artists such as Caetano Veloso, Juan Luis Guerra, and Ricardo Montaner who have led long, prolific careers — and we also have Rauw Alejandro, C. Tangana, and Paula Arenas, who are paving the way for the new wave of music artists. Pamela Bustios: The list is varied, but overall, predictable. It lacks presence of world sounds and the amalgam of fusions that have bloomed in the last year such as electronic with Andean rhythms, electronica with Latin American folklore, psychedelic and electro-cumbia and indigenous sounds. Leila Cobo: Diverse, and yes, multi-generational and multi-cultural. That’s important because there are m...
YoungBoy Never Broke Again Returns to No. 1 on Artist 100 Chart Thanks to ‘Sincerely, Kentrell’ Debut
Rank, TitleNo. 28, “Bad Morning”No. 37, “On My Side” (up from No. 71; new peak)No. 40, “No Where”No. 48, “Life Support” (up from No. 79; new peak)No. 53, “Hold Me Down”No. 58, “Nevada”No. 59, “50 Shots”No. 61, “Smoke Strong”No. 62, “Break or Make Me”No. 67, “Sincerely”No. 69, “I Can’t Take It Back”No. 80, “Forgiato”No. 83, “Rich Shit”No. 92, “Baddest Thing”No. 99, “Toxic Punk” YoungBoy previously led the Artist 100 for a week in September 2020 when Top opened as his third No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Elsewhere on the Artist 100, Coldplay re-enters at No. 10, returning to the top 10 for the first time since D...
