Kidd Creole, a member of foundational hip-hop group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for manslaughter, after stabbing a homeless man in New York City. The rapper, real name Nathaniel Glover, 62, was convicted of the crime last month. Prosecutors said that Glover killed John Jolly, 55, with a steak knife after the two engaged in conversation;...
His wife, Kelsey, said on Instagram: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that we confirm Tom passed away peacefully earlier today with all of his family by his side. Our hearts are broken, Tom was the centre of our world and we can’t imagine life without his infectious smile and energetic presence.” She said she and Parker’s family were “truly thankful for the outpouring of love and support” he...
The Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins had at least 10 substances in his body when he died suddenly in Bogotá, according to a preliminary toxicology test carried out by Colombian authorities. The 50-year-old musician was found dead in his hotel room on Friday afternoon, hours before the band was due to perform at Colombia’s Estéreo Picnic festival as part of its South American tour. The Grammy...
Kanye West has been suspended from Instagram for 24 hours, after he used a racial slur to describe TV presenter Trevor Noah. A spokesperson for Instagram’s parent company Meta told TMZ and HuffPost that the suspension was due to West violating the company’s policy on hate speech, bullying and harassment. Noah had criticised West while presenting The Daily Show, saying of West’s numerous recent...
Songwriters L Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer allege that the opening melody to the hit single, the longest-running Top 10 song ever by a female artist on the US Billboard Hot 100, is a “duplicate” of the melody to their 1979 song Wiggle and Giggle All Night and their 1980 song Don Diablo. “Defendants have levitated away plaintiffs’ intellectual property,” lawyers for Brown and Linzer wrote in a...
There are prosaic career benefits to a big Pyramid stage slot at Glastonbury: the crowds of 100,000 people or more contain everyone from sixtysomethings on folding chairs to glitter-strewn millennials and surly teenagers, massively broadening your fanbase. But whether it stems from leylines or macrodosed cider, there’s also an intangible, unquantifiable magic in this setting that can elevate an...
Fleetwood Mac’s songs span the full range of human emotion and pop expression, but the chances are that if you’ve danced to one at a wedding, it was written by Christine McVie. Everywhere, Little Lies, Don’t Stop, You Make Loving Fun – the band’s greatest joie de vivre was invariably channelled by her. And as her solo material is reissued on a new compilation this month, she joins us to answer...
Given that the music business has spent most of the last two years in a kind of suspended animation, there’s something quite startling about the rise of Leeds quartet Yard Act. They appeared to come out of nowhere – they released their first single, the attention-grabbing Fixer Upper, at the height of the first national lockdown – and swiftly rocket to the forefront of the strain of alt-rock that...
The American opera singer Maria Ewing, who has died aged 71, excited both acclaim and controversy for her seductive portrayals and frequently idiosyncratic vocal delivery. Much of her early career was made in the US, initially under the mentorship of the Metropolitan Opera’s music director James Levine, though British audiences will recall more readily the vivid performances she gave of several...
Sinéad O’Connor has criticised the Irish authorities after the death of her 17-year-old son, Shane, whom she alleges left hospital while “on suicide watch”. The singer announced the news of Shane’s death on social media on Saturday, writing: “My beautiful son, Nevi’im Nesta Ali Shane O’Connor, the very light of my life, decided to end his earthly struggle today and is now with God. “May he rest...