Chance the Rapper ft. 2 Chainz & Lil Wayne - No Problem (Official Video)
Mary J. Blige warned the audience at the Clive Davis Gala that she was not in a good place.
"I look happy, somewhat, but I"m going through some horrible stuff right now," said Blige, who was about to perform in tribute to Saturday night"s honoree, BET Networks President Debra Lee.
"It"s called a divorce."
Driven by her emotions, the R&B star went out to sing rousing renditions of "Thick of It" and "No More Drama" as the audience watched in awe. Diddy, Jennifer Hudson, French Montana, John Legend, LL Cool J and more stars stared closely from the front row, dancing along and cheering Blige on.
She screeched and screamed, ran from left to right, and even got on the floor to close her performance at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, held the night before the 2017 Grammy Awards.
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"We are behind you and we love you to death," Recording Academy CEO Neil Portnow said following the performance.
Others, too, had shining moments almost as good as Blige"s: Neil Diamond brought the house to its feet with "Sweet Caroline" and "Love on the Rocks" to end the black-tie event; Joe Jonas and his band DNCE was in strong form when singing the addictive pop hit "Cake by the Ocean"; and Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco, nominated for best rock album, hit all the right notes during an energetic performance that won over the crowd.
The night kicked off with Bell Biv Devoe, who sang their classic "Poison," which included full audience participation. Audience members included Stevie Wonder, Jane Fonda, Michael Keaton, Ringo Starr, Lena Dunham, Kris Jenner, Trevor Noah, Barry Gibb, Berry Gordy, Herbie Hancock and Wiz Khalifa, who was curled up with Amber Rose.
Lorde danced excitedly as seven-time grammy nominee chance the Rapper hit the stage, where he sang and rapped. And Hudson sang along as country singer and four-time nominee Maren Morris performed her hit, "My Church."
Maxwell paid tribute to Prince by singing "Nothing Compares 2 U," even changing the lyrics to also honor Whitney Houston.
"It"s been five years since this day, since you took your music away," he sang softly.
Houston died in 2012 at the Beverly Hilton, hours before the Davis" pre-Grammy gala was to take place at the hotel. Davis only acknowledged Houston after Hudson performed, saying the public may be focused on those rappers leading in music, but that the traditional singers matter, too.
Hudson, in all-white, earned applause when honoring Leonard Cohen, who died last year, with his "Hallelujah."
The night, like many recent Hollywood events, also took some political turns.
"Did you see those photos of President Obama enjoying kitesurfing?," asked House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. "I think President Obama is the only person who is happy Obama isn"t president."
"At BET we are saying "yes to us" and it"s something we all should be saying loudly. We must persist and say "yes to us" at a time when we are faced with so many no"s from growing economic, religious, racial, gender and sexual orientation barriers, bans and walls," said Lee, who is the first woman to receive the Grammy Salute To Industry Icons Award.
And Judy Collins, who sang in honor of attendee and icon Joni Mitchell, said the day after President Donald Trump won the election it became "the dark ages."
Davis"s annual gala, which also featured a performance by song of the year nominee Mike Posner, was tighter than most years, where the party could last into early Sunday. It ended at midnight.
"We started on time and it"s going to be a tight show," Davis said.
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Katy Perry matched Beyonc in terms of artistry when she performed her brand new single Chained to the Rhythm at the 2017 GRAMMYs.
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Performing on a rotating set that went from a utopian white picket dream to a shattered dystopian nightmare, perrywore a white suit with a black corset and an armband reading Persist. As the song progressed, the white picket fence she stood behindand which she references in the songgrew higher before she broke free only to discover that the world outside threatened to undo her.
The song took on a political note at the very end when Perry joined hands with Skip Marley and stood in front of a projection of the Constitution.
Her performance had extra star power at the start thanks to Little Big Town, who introduced Perrys performance by singing an a cappella snippet of her song Teenage Dream.
Ed Sheeran scrapped half the songs he"d recorded for his new album.
The "Shape of You" singer hadn"t had the reaction he"d hoped for on his third LP when he finished it last summer, so acted on the advice he was given by producer and frequent collaborator Rick Rubin and ditched some of the tracks.
"I was like, "Oh, ow." No one was jumping for joy at the label and I thought there must be a reason. So I looked at it again and scrapped six songs."
And the 25-year-old star wasn"t upset by the criticism as he knows the key to longevity is to be willing to take advice.
He told GQ magazine: "It is my vision - but the reason those artists who have a light that shines for five years then disappear is they don"t listen to other people.
"I can"t think I know everything. I know how to write a song and put together an album of good songs, but sometimes it"s difficult to tell which songs should or shouldn"t be on an album.
"But ultimately the album has improved because of it."
Ed - who is in a relationship with former school friend Cherry Seaborn - often writes songs that he has no intention of recording because he finds it a useful way of venting his feelings.
He explained: "I get out the darkness in my life through a song.
"There"s loads of songs that never get recorded that are just me being in a mood.
"Instead of sending a long email or having an angry phone call, I write a song then bin it. It happened on this album. It"s a very good outlet for emotion."
Al Jarreau, a Grammy Award-winning singer whose versatile tenor voice and vibrant stage style blurred the lines between jazz, soul and pop music, died Feb. 12 at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 76.
His publicist, Joe Gordon, announced the death, saying the singer had been treated for exhaustion, after announcing his retirement from touring last week. The cause of death was not immediately known.
Mr. Jarreau was loosely classified as a jazz singer, but his eclectic style was entirely his own, polished through years of obscure apprenticeship in lonely nightclubs. He did not release his first album until 1975, when he was 35, but within two years, he had won the first of his seven Grammy Awards and had begun to attract a wide following.
He was dubbed the acrobat of scat for the way he adopted the fast, wordless syllables of bebop jazz musicians, but he did not limit himself to the musical backdrop of an earlier generation. His approach emphasized the percussion-heavy and electronically amplified sound of rhythm-and-blues and funk music, and he had a particular gift for mimicking almost any kind of musical instrument or sound.
Jarreau imitates the electronic and percussive hardware of the 1970s, critic Robert Palmer wrote in Rolling Stone in 1979. But he does more than that. He stands there and makes it all sound natural, singing so sweetly and unaffectedly youd think he just happened on this remarkable vocal vocabulary.
After winning awards and plaudits as a jazz singer, Mr. Jarreau found a wider audience with his 1981 album Breakin Away, which sold more than 1 million copies and included a Top 20 hit, We"re in This Love Together. The album won Grammy Awards in the jazz and pop vocal categories, propelling Mr. Jarreau to widespread stardom.
He was soon appearing on television, touring with a 10-piece band and taking the stage with dramatic lighting and choreographed dance moves. He seemed poised for a popular breakthrough that never quite arrived. Despite his Grammy Awards and growing acclaim, Mr. Jarreau groused that Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder and Al Green sold more records, even though they in the view of many, including Mr. Jarreau could not match his vocal chops.
As the 1980s wore on, Mr. Jarreau explored rock, reggae and international music and recorded the theme song for the TV series Moonlighting. His 1992 album Heaven and Earth won a Grammy for best R&B vocal performance, giving Mr. Jarreau Grammys in three categories.
He branched out into other fields, performing with symphony orchestras and acting on Broadway in 1996 in the role of Teen Angel in Grease.
As time went on, Mr. Jarreau returned to his early inspiration in straight-ahead jazz. He recorded an album of jazz standards in 2004 called Accentuate the Positive, which included songs by Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Johnny Mercer and was considered a triumphant return to form.
It"s really the first jazz record Ive ever done, Mr. Jarreau told Billboard magazine. Everything else that came before was pop and R&B. This is a thanks to the kind of music that made me the person I am today.
Alwyn Lopez Jarreau was born March 12, 1940, in Milwaukee. His father, originally from New Orleans, was a former Seventh-day Adventist preacher, and his mother was a piano teacher. Mr. Jarreau sang gospel in church and doo-wop on street corners, absorbing the many musical styles of his melting-pot home town.
He had listened from an early age to Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, but his two greatest influences were jazz scat artist Jon Hendricks and the smooth ballad singer Johnny Mathis.
A lot of who I am is described in the qualities of those two guys the fiery jazz singer and the balladeer and how they performed, he said in 2005. Somewhere in there, too, is an R&B guy who went to Motown University.
An excellent athlete, Mr. Jarreau tried out with the Milwaukee Braves baseball team and played basketball at Wisconsins Ripon College, from which he graduated in 1962. He sang in dance bands in college and graduate school and, in 1964, received a masters degree in vocational rehabilitation from the University of Iowa.
After moving to San Francisco, Mr. Jarreau worked by day as a counselor for the disabled and sang in jazz clubs at night, quitting his counseling job in 1968 to devote himself to music. Working with a Brazilian guitarist, he learned to fill empty musical spaces with expressive improvisations. He devised inventive versions of songs by Joni Mitchell and the Beatles, wrote original tunes and seemed at home in any musical style.
In 2007, he won two more Grammys for a recording made with guitarist George Benson, Givin It Up. Mr. Jarreau remained in demand in recording studios and on concert stages around the world into his 70s. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2001, hosted a public television program on jazz singing and established a scholarship fund at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee for students interested in becoming teachers.
His marriage to Phyllis Hall ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife of 39 years, Susan Player, and a son from his second marriage.
Never one to stay in one physical or musical place for long, Mr. Jarreau described his constantly evolving approach to music to the Chicago Tribune in 1989.
Jazz, whatever we think its purest form is, is a dynamic and changing form, he said. It will never be the jazz of the 1930s and 40s and 50s, because its changing and responding to its environment. That environment includes the influences of Michael Jackson, Sting and hip-hop just as much as Charlie Parker or bebop.
Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud [Official Video] Comments(0)
Did you know that superstar Ed Sheeran once played a gig in Chelmsford for a fee of just 20?
The Grammy award-winning singer played a short set at the old Barhouse pub in Victoria Road in 2010 - and no one in the room knew who he was.
Ed, who grew up in Suffolk, sang some of his early songs in front of a crowd of just 20 to 30 people in the bar which is now BackTrack. Not only that, but the organiser only booked him as a favour to another act on the bill.
At the Shakster RnR gig, the first act was a singer called Benjamin Bloom from Suffolk. He asked the event organiser, Shakey from Shakster Records, if his mate from home could sing a few songs on the night too.
"I knew Benjamin a bit and I said "yeah tell him to come along"," Shakey remembered.
"The first thing I thought was a bit odd was that Benjamin told me I had better put Ed on after him.
"Normally an act would want to be on as late as possible."
Also on the bill that night were Stealing Signs and Essex act, Venkman.
"When I saw Ed Sheeran setting up with his two mics and his pedals and looping, I thought to myself "this is a bit different"," Shakey said.
"I text a few of my mates and told them they"d better get down to the Barhouse quickly because this guy Ed Sheeran was going to be pretty good."
READ MORE: Ed Sheeran drops into an Essex cafe for a full English
Ed played a short set which included an early version of The A Team in front of the small crowd.
"I knew straight away that he was amazing." Shakey said.
"Of course I had no idea just how successful he would become. He"s definitely the most successful act I"ve ever booked. His show was great and his voice was wonderful."
The audience were only charged 3 entry to see him - whereas fans now have to pay between 50 and 85 to see the star play live.
"ed was very polite and friendly and told me he had to shoot off to play two gigs in London. So I paid him his travel money and he gave me a copy of his first promo CD, which included A Team. I still have it now."
READ MORE: Could Ed Sheeran be playing at V Festival again this year?
Shakey also records all of his gigs on his camcorder, so he even has a copy of Ed"s early live show in Chelmsford.
Shakey then met Ed again a year later at the SXSW festival in Texas.
"We had a good chat and I gave him a copy of the Barhouse gig DVD and he seemed to like it," Shakey said.
"Everyone was buzzing around him by then as he"d had a few hits, but he still took the time for a chat and even recorded a voicemail message for my wife"s birthday."
A few years later, Ed performed at V Festival in 2012. He obviously still remembered the Barhouse gig as he referenced it during his set, Shakey said.
"He basically said "it"s nice to see the crowds here in Chelmsford as there weren"t many of you around the last time I played here"," Shakey recalled.
"We all thought he was amazing at the Barhouse gig but we couldn"t have guessed how he would go on to become such a household name."
Saturday marks the five-year anniversary ofWhitney Houstonsdeath, and her longtime producer, Clive Davis, tells PEOPLE he is dedicated to making sure that her legacy lives on.
Davis discovered Houston in 1983, and he says hes proud that their bond is highlighted in the upcoming documentary about his life,Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives which premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival in April.
This week I saw a sneak preview of a documentary that the Ridley Scott firm has done on my life, Davis told PEOPLE Thursday ahead of his annual pre-Grammys gala. It was quite a special experience because my feeling about Whitney comes out in this documentary, where I am dedicated to make sure that her legacy is known [and] celebrated the uniqueness of it.
Houston died after being found submerged in the bathtub in her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Feb. 11, 2012 the same day as Davis annual pre-Grammys party on Feb. 11, 2012.The cause of death was deemed accidental drowning, and an autopsy showed she had various drugs in her system.
Yes, she became afflicted and it led to her premature passing with drugs, Davis says. But those of us that knew Whitney, those of us who were aware of who she really was, and what her talent represented its so unique.
Frank Micelotta/Getty
And Davis, 84, says hes thrilled that the real Whitney comes through shining in the documentary as well.
Yes, it touches and it shows her battling this life-threatening and ultimately premature passing, he says. But her story and her incredibly unique talent comes soaring through.
Adds Davis: Its the fifth anniversary of her passing. The years go by quickly. But her music, her talent Im dedicated to making sure that people never forget her.
In a breaking news story that unfolded on the evening of February 10, 2017, breathlessly recanted by a succession of on-air hosts, CNN reported that multiple current and former U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials had informed the news organization that conversations between Russian officials, intercepted by U.S. intelligence services, provided corroboration of certain aspects of the so-called Trump Dossier, written by a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele. Steele had worked for British Intelligence (MI6) in Moscow during the 1990s, and after he left active service started his own business intelligence company.
While CNNs sources were not able to confirm which specific conversations linked to the dossier had been intercepted by U.S. intelligence, they did note that some of the intercepted conversations took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier, providing American investigators with greater confidence in the credibility of some aspects of the dossier.
Christopher Steele had been hired by political operatives opposed to the candidacy of Donald Trump to find Russian sources that could show a connection between Trump and the Russian government that would derail Trumps presidential bid. The dossier Steele assembled contained a diverse range of information, ranging from the salacious to the politically unsavory; any one of the reports, if proven to be true, could prove to be Trumps downfall.
Steeles employers were trying to prevent Trump from prevailing in the Republican primary; when Trump won, they rescinded their interest in the dossier. steele maintains that he was so shocked by the contents of the dossier that he sought a way to publicize the contents. After shopping the documents around various political and journalistic outlets, the dossier and its contents came to light in January 2017, after Trump had won the presidential election.
The timing of the revelation of the dossiers existence, coinciding as it did with the release of an assessment by the U.S. Intelligence Community that Russia had sought to influence the 2016 presidential election in Trumps favor, guaranteed maximum exposure for Steeles information. But the dossier contained some errors which, when combined with the unverified nature of the allegations contained within, damaged its credibility until CNNs alarming breaking news report gave it new life.
The White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, when asked for a comment on the CNN story, was dismissive of the report. We continue to be disgusted by CNNs fake news reporting, Spicer declared. Spicer and the White House had every reason to be frustrated by the CNN report, which lacked any specificity to back up the conclusions reached. President Trump had already dismissed the dossier in its entirety, echoing Spicers charge of fake news.
By CNN standards, this was real news, and the reporters were just doing their job.
But was it fake news? CNN would undoubtedly argue against such a label. The reporters involved, Jim Sciutto and Evan Perez, claimed to have sources that presumably met whatever journalistic standard CNN uses to measure source credibility. According to the Journalism 101 formulation in play at CNN, the sources provided information, and CNN dutifully reported it. By CNN standards, this was real news, and the reporters were just doing their job.
On the surface, this is a damning piece of information that would definitely be newsworthy if it were true. One of the major problems with the dossier in question, however, is that it doesnt provide nearly the level of detail the CNN report claims. The dossier, by way of example, never states anywhere that Named Person A spoke to Named Person B. Instead, the dossier reports that a trusted compatriot spoke to Source A (a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure), Source B (former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin) and Source C (a senior Russian financial official), among others. When names are provided, they were always at least one person removed from the named individual a Source close to MEDVEDEV (the former prime minister), a Close confidant to IVANOV (a presidential advisor), or even a separate source close to IVANOV who confided to a compatriot.
Moreover, nowhere in the dossier is there any linking of the reporting provided with a specific date of the event in question. Each report within the dossier contains a date the report was written, but this far different from being the date a specific activity is to have taken place. The reports contained in the dossier provide vague time frames June 2016, late July 2016, mid-September 2016 but do not provide a specific date, let alone a specific location, for any of the information provided. Any contention by CNNs sources that the U.S. intelligence community had intercepted conversations that conform to the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier is facially false something any competent journalist would have been able to confirm prior to airing the report.
CNN also reported U.S. intelligence agencies checked out the former MI6 operative and his vast network throughout Europe and found him and his sources to be credible sources that, as CNN notes, were heavily involved in gathering intelligence damaging to Hillary Clinton. Here, too, the dossier falls short. One of the primary sources cited in the dossier pertaining to the collection of information on Hillary Clinton by the Russians Source B (the former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin) reported (via a trusted compatriot) that Department K of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) had collated reports for many years derived from bugged conversations and phone intercepts that focused on things that [Clinton] had said which contradicted her current position on various issues.
There are several problems with this report. First and foremost, Department K is part of the Economic Security Service of the FSB, responsible for customs enforcement, smuggling and corruption. Collecting and collating a dossier of compromising information on a first lady/secretary of state is far removed from the legal and operational mandate of Department K, unless Mrs. Clinton was involved in credit card fraud, caviar smuggling, or some other untoward activity. But the stated purpose of Department K was to collect political intelligence; the likelihood that Department K would have been given such a sensitive task, when there are other intelligence agencies and departments who are specifically trained, equipped and tasked with this sort of collection, is so remote as to verge on nil.
The author of the Trump Dossier, Christopher Steele, served in Moscow with MI6, one of the worlds premier intelligence services. MI6 officers have a well-founded reputation for being very knowledgeable and exceptionally well briefed. Any MI6 officer with Moscow experience would know the opposition intelligence services organizational structures, responsibilities and capabilities like the back of his hand. This level of professionalism would be expected to continue after retirement, especially if contracting out services as a Russian expert, as was Mr. Steele; Steele would have known Department K would not be involved in collecting political intelligence against Hillary Clinton. The same holds true for Source B (the former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin), if he was indeed that which the dossier claimed.
The inclusion of such easily refutable information in the Trump Dossier (i.e., that Department K was collecting political intelligence on Hillary Clinton) sheds genuine doubt on the reliability of Steeles so-called vast network that U.S. intelligence sources and CNN found to be so credible. It also reflects poorly on the viability of both Christopher Steele and the very law enforcement and intelligence sources CNN relied upon for its reporting. Source B fails the credibility test, something Christopher Steele would have known when he reported it, and any U.S. intelligence officer worth their salt would have assessed after a cursory analysis of the information. The same, too, can be said of any journalist who responsibly verified the information provided by their sources. Despite all this, CNN still aired the report.
Genuine criticism of the Trump administration is one thing; there is a plethora of legitimate investigatory paths CNN can follow in this regard.
How did this happen? Occams razor suggests that the answer is obvious. Christopher Steele, when he wrote the reports in question, was not an intelligence officer; he should not be treated as one, and as such his dossier should not be viewed as the product of an intelligence officer. Steele was a paid rumormonger, hired by politically motivated persons for the sole purpose of collecting information that would be harmful to Donald Trump. Steeles job wasnt to tell the truth so much as it was to provide a product acceptable to his employer. His sources were not credible on their face, something Christopher Steele, the MI6 professional, knew only too well. So would any credible law enforcement or intelligence professional that CNN may have been in contact with about this story.
Steeles aggressive peddling of what he knew to be poorly sourced information, combined with law enforcement and intelligence sources giving the dossier undeserved credence, and CNN airing the resultant in such a high profile manner, points to the existence of a shared motive centered around the undermining of public confidence in the presidency of Donald Trump.
Genuine criticism of the Trump administration is one thing; there is a plethora of legitimate investigatory paths CNN can follow in this regard, including National Security Advisor Michael Flynns communications with Russian authorities and the sources and methods used by the U.S. Intelligence Community in preparing its assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. These are desirable and necessary journalistic inquiries that CNN, and all other journalistic outlets, should be strongly pursuing.
CNN chose instead to breathe life into a discredited dossier whose very existence screams partisan politics. It is one thing to report on the nuts and bolts of a story about the politicization of intelligence. Deliberately using CNNs journalistic cache to give credence to highly politicized intelligence that everyone in the informational chain of custody including the journalists involved knew (or should have known) was factually unsustainable, is something else altogether.
That is the very definition of fake news, and in this case, at least, CNN is guilty as charged.
