Apple is looking to take out the competition! Jay-Z along with many other top celebrities own the streaming service Tidal. It's most famous for the exclusive release of Kanye's "Famous" featuring the naked wax bodies of several high-profile celebrities.
Apple isn't the only entity to be in talks. Tidal has reportedly been approached by Samsung, Spotify and Google. Tidal has garnered about 4 million subscribers despite it's artist ownership including Jay-z, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Prince, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Madonna, Usher and many more. “Why I gotta have the plumbers butt/ crack showing WAX figure?” Brown wrote on Instagram Saturday (June 25). “This n---a KANYE CRAZY, talented, but crazy.” "Famous" was screened to an arena full of fans on Friday night in Los Angeles. West premiered the powerful clip -- the sole single (so far) from his latest album, The Life of Pablo -- at the L.A. Forum as an 8-minute short film art piece. Voyeuristic, provocative and surreal throughout, in it, West is seen laying in bed with his wife Kim Kardashian alongside Swift, Ray J, Brown, Amber Rose, Rihanna, Caitlyn Jenner, Cosby, Anna Wintour, Trump and Bush -- each flanking the other while seemingly asleep. All of the celebrities are entirely lifelike but synthetic bodies. Kanye West debuted his music video for The Life of Pablo track "Famous" Friday night at a watch party at Los Angeles' Forum, where a 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. PST crowd witnessed perhaps the most provocative, controversial video of West's career thus far. The Forum event was live streamed via Tidal, where the "Famous" visual is nowstreaming exclusively. The video, an homage to Vincent Desiderio's painting "Sleep," offers a voyeuristic look at an orgy post-coital, with West and Kardashian surrounded by the sleeping bodies of famous friends (Rihanna and her ex Chris Brown, whose relationship violently disintegrated in the public eye), family (Caitlyn Jenner), former lovers (Ray J, Amber Rose), business associates (Anna Wintour) and controversial figures (Donald Trump, Bill Cosby and George W. Bush, who didn't "care about black people"). Lastly, directly next to West in bed, laid a nude Taylor Swift, who was the lyrical flint that sparked an uproar over the song to begin with. Many of the video's stars – Swift, Trump, Cosby and Bush for sure, the rest are up for debate – didn't actually appear in the video; instead their doppelgängers were created synthetically in almost lifelike detail. Real or not, during an interlude in the video, the credits gave "special thanks" to every celebrity involved "for being famous." West, along with wife Kardashian, was in attendance for the watch party and briefly spoke to the crowd, but did not perform. "I want to thank all y'all, my wife, and y'all supporting ideas and truth," West told the crowd before replaying the "Famous" video. "I got one question though would y'all like me to play that back?" Desiigner, 2 Chainz, Travis Scott and the Game also attended the event, Billboard reports. -Rolling Stone See a clip of this very "interesting" video HERE
Multi-platinum rapper Wiz Khalifa is suing his manager and label to end a decade-long contract he signed as a teenager, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
Khalifa, whose legal name is Cameron Thomaz, is suing Benjamin Grinberg and Rostrum Records to end a 360 deal he signed in 2005. Khalifa is seeking declaratory relief under California's seven-year rule, which says personal services contracts can't be enforced against the employee for more than seven years after the service begins. The statute holds that if the contract requires production of a specified quantity of "phonorecords" and the employee fails to meet that requirement, the employer can sue for damages — but Khalifa's suit claims the deal required him to deliver no more than five studio albums and he's already delivered six. The rapper also is suing for fraud and breach of fiduciary duty, claiming Grinberg induced him to waive his right to void the contract when he turned 18 and failed to disclose alternative agreements which would have been more beneficial to him than a 360 deal. "An artist’s most trusted advisor is his or her personal manager," says Khalifa's attorney Alex Weingarten. "Generally, nothing good comes out when the manager decides to go into business against his artist. Unfortunately, that is the case here." The lawsuit also claims Khalifa's managers induced him to enter into transactions by failing to disclose all the material information required to make an informed decision. He is seeking at least $1 million in damages, plus disgorgement of royalties, commissions and other compensation defendants gained through fraud. In a statement to Billboard, Grinberg says he was surprised and disappointed by the "egregious" lawsuit. Oscar and Grammy-winning and TV/Film producer John Legend, will do the honor of presenting the National Anthem at this year’s NBA Finals tonight.
Lebron and the Cavs will be taking on Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors. Tune into Game 1 at 9 p.m. ET on ABC live from Oakland's Oracle Arena. A Little Extra: John Legend and his wife, Chrissy Teigen from “Lip Sync Battle” purchased a $14 Million Dollar Beverly Hills Mansion earlier this year. See it here: Kanye West has returned to CAA for worldwide representation after departing the agency for UTA in March 2015, Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter have confirmed. Although he played a handful of festival dates in the past year, his last tour was 2013-14's Yeezus Tour. This February the rapper released his latest studio album, The Life of Pablo, as well as Season 3 of his Yeezy fashion line. West's new team at CAA comprises managing partner and music head Rob Light, Darryl Eaton, Emma Banks, Marlene Tsuchii and Jenna Adler. He was previously repped at CAA by veteran agent Cara Lewis, who spent 23 years at WME before moving to CAA in 2012. She then left the agency last November and opened her own firm, CL Group, this January. One of her other artists at CAA, Iggy Azalea, signed with WME last month. Music has been an active battlefield in Hollywood's ongoing agency wars, often led by musical chairs at the agent level. A year ago, UTA music department founder Rob Prinz left to become co-head of worldwide concerts at ICM Partners, bringing with him artists including Celine Dion, while Macklemore & Ryan Lewis followed their reps Peter Schwartz and James Rubin from The Agency Group, which was the world's largest independent music agency, to WME. The Agency Group as a whole was then acquired in August by UTA, adding the likes of Muse, Paramore, Nickelback and Guns N' Roses to their roster, although other TAG artists joined other firms instead: The Black Keys to Paradigm (following their TAG agent Dave Kaplan) and Tegan and Sara to WME. In other shuffles over the past 12 months, last summer Beyonce moved her touring business from ICM to CAA, which lost Mariah Carey to UTA. And this winter, Lady Gaga moved from WME to CAA (Maroon 5 made the opposite move) while Chris Brown left ICM for UTA. Another recent shift that represents the tangled touring business: Steven Tyler from CAA to WME as a solo entertainer in March, while Paradigm continues to handle Aerosmith's booking as a band. "I don't know why, but it feels like every eight to 10 years there's this sort of seismic shift," Prinz (who also has spent stints at WME and CAA) said in a recent interview. "All the chess pieces are thrown up in the air and reset. I'm not sure why, but it seems to happen every 10 years or so. It's not over, we know that." |
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