The mother of late rapper Tupac Shakur is trying to stop his former record label selling unreleased recordings as part of a bankruptcy settlement.
Afeni Shakur is seeking an injunction in a bankruptcy court claiming Death Row Records is attempting to sell material that belongs to his estate.
Unreleased material should have been turned over to the estate as part of a 1997 agreement, her lawyer said. The court is expected to consider the request in the next month. At the same time, it will decide whether Death Row should be allowed to release an album with the unreleased tracks to help pay its debts, according to Ms Shakur’s lawyer Donald David.
After Tupac’s death, Death Row and the rapper’s family settled for an undisclosed sum amid allegations that the label had defrauded Shakur. But Death Row’s fortunes – and those of its owner, Marion “Suge” Knight – started to slide after the shooting in 1996.
In 2005, Suge Knight was ordered to pay $107m (£51.8m) to a woman who claimed she helped found the record label, but was forced out once Knight realised how lucrative it had become.
Knight sought bankruptcy protection in April 2006, claiming debts of more than $100m (£48.5m) for both himself and the record label. Last month, the rap mogul placed his seven-bedroom home on the market for $6.2m (£3m) as part of his financial overhaul.
Afeni Shakur was an important member of the Black Panther Party editing and writing columns for the Panther Post with cunning that it misled the FBI to believe that the Black Panther Party was defunct, while in fact it was growing. While pregnant with Tupac, she was incarcerated for withholding information that could have led to the arrest of leading members of “Panther 21″. While in prison, Afeni Shakur reportedly obtained a court order to have one boiled egg per day because the food within the jail was unfit for an expecting mother. Since her son’s death she has overseen Tupac’s unreleased material. By bringing in the best producers Tupac has sold millions of albums posthumously. Afeni has revealed this month Tupac recorded 147 songs when he was on Death Row Records.
Prince launched his new Planet Earth album as a free giveaway with a national Sunday newspaper in the UK and has drawn widespread condemnation from music retailers.
Cee-Lo Green recently spoke about his upcoming projects including a new Gnarls Barkley record and a comeback album with former group Goodie Mob.
Wu-Tang Clan will unleash their first album since 2001, The 8 Diagrams, in October. The track “Life Changes” is a tribute to late clan member Ol’ Dirty Bastard. “He left a piece of himself in each and every one of us,” group member RZA tells Billboard.com. “Even in the performance of some of the lyrics, you’ll hear a style or attitude that he injected.”
Atlantic Records and Sprint have inked a groundbreaking new deal where the telecommunications giant will underwrite a new song that will be distributed via P2P file-sharing networks. According to the New York Post, the Sprint name and logo will be embedded in the file and appear on a listener’s computer screen or MP3 player when the song is played.
Is R’n'B / Rap the new prog rock?
Someone once said rap was the new punk rock.
Early hip hop was an independent truth from the streets and has often been credited with helping to reduce inner-city gang violence by replacing physical violence with hip hop battles of dance, rap and art.
During the early 1990s however, a commercial strain emerged with many rappers boasting about drugs, weapons, misogyny, and violence. Socially and politically conscious hip hop has long been disregarded by mainstream America in favour of a gangsta, bling/ego, indulgent rap and R’n'B.
Unfortunately, what started on the streets in reaction to events of social injustice and individual and communal alienation is now, according to many observers, an orgy of ego and excess.
Rewind back to late seventies UK. Punk bands stood aggressively against the excesses of mainstream 1970s rock. Windswept guitar histrionics, gushing key boards, lyrics full of mystical allusions and song titles bearing no relation to the music.
The icons for the era would be Yes, ELP and King Crimson. But more credible characters weren’t without blame, as one modern critic has said, “without doubt the most singularly pernicious and damaging influence on the shape and future direction of pop is the Who’s ‘Tommy’. After ‘Tommy’ no one wanted to say in 3 minutes what they could drag out over as many hours. It introduced the era of the rock opera and the concept album, the most celebrated vehicles of rock’s demented pretensions.’
But the critics of the day were seemingly fooled; “listening to an early test pressing round Bob Fripp’s flat the other day, it was impossible not to be awed by the sheer scope and size of the music. It has scale and grandeur unparalleled in rock, and its inner complexities rival those of the great classical composers. You get the feeling that if Wagner were alive today he would be working with King Crimson.”
So what has this got to do with now? Well, there are parallels between what we have now and what punk was reacting against. The great and the good of Hip Hop and R’n'B seem to be intent on highlighting their wealth and possessions in their music and videos. They have a tendency to seek out others of a similar standing and talent to perform collaborations and, even worse, supergroups. We even have a mimicking of the dreaded concept album with the insertion of meaningless skit or filler tracks in rap albums.
If you’re not bored with the bling-dulgence of rap and R’n'B there’s the boy bands, the girl bands, the re-issues, the re-unions, the stadium bands, the c*ck rock and c*nt rock.