Joe Coscarelli

The rapper, born Robert Rihmeek Williams, was initially found guilty more than a decade ago of possessing drugs and a firearm, with a detective testifying at trial that Williams, then 19, pointed a gun at him during a 2007 arrest. Williams served eight months in prison before being placed on probation for 10 years.

In 2017, after two arrests that did not lead to convictions, a Philadelphia judge, Genece Brinkley, sentenced Williams to up to four years in prison for violating his parole, leading to an outcry by celebrities and advocates of criminal justice reform. The rapper served five months before he was granted bail.

Since then, as the rapper has become a cause célèbre and outspoken reformer himself, Williams’ legal team has argued that Brinkley had become overly involved in the case and was no longer impartial. In calling for a new trial, they also pointed to the fact that the only witness to testify against Williams at trial was a former Philadelphia police officer, Reginald Graham, who has since resigned from the department after an internal investigation found him guilty of theft and lying.

In a rare twist, prosecutors for the district attorney’s office backed Williams’ request for a new trial, acknowledging that it would never again call Graham to testify.

In its decision Wednesday, a three-judge appeals panel reversed a lower court’s ruling and granted Williams a new trial, noting that “Graham was the only witness to incriminate Williams at trial.” The decision added that “reassignment to a different trial judge is necessary to avoid appearances of unfairness and partiality.”

In a statement, Meek Mill said, “The past 11 years have been mentally and emotionally challenging, but I’m ecstatic that justice prevailed.” He added: “Unfortunately, millions of people are dealing with similar issues in our country and don’t have the resources to fight back like I did. We need to continue supporting them.” (The rapper previously wrote about the “arrest-jail-probation cycle” in an Op-Ed for The New York Times.)

Prosecutors could now choose to drop the case against Williams altogether. As part of its appeal, the rapper’s legal team included a sworn affidavit from another officer present at Williams’ 2007 arrest, who said he did not see Williams point his gun but rather attempt to discard it.

The district attorney’s office said in a statement that it was “pleased that the Pennsylvania Superior Court has validated our position that Robert Rihmeek Williams deserves a new trial before a court that has no appearance of partiality,” adding that it would review the court’s opinion and “begin to review options.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/arts/music/meek-mill-new-trial.html" id="459a9ada-0b36-343d-ae7c-f13144528e5c">The New York Times</a>.

Meek Mill, the platinum-selling Philadelphia rapper, was granted a new trial and a new judge by a Pennsylvania appeals court Wednesday, after fighting a 2008 drug and gun conviction that his lawyers have argued should be overturned.

Meek Mill Granted New Trial and New Judge in 2008 Conviction

“The Race,” a song McIntyre released online the same day he was apprehended by U.S. marshals after three months on the lam in 2017, included boasts from the rapper about violent crime and eluding law enforcement. The video, which has been viewed more than 173 million times on YouTube, featured a baby-faced Tay-K posing with a handgun next to his own wanted poster, and caused a stir online for its unabashed muddying of the line between art and life.

The track was remixed widely by artists including 21 Savage, Lil Yachty and Fetty Wap as #FreeTayK became an online rallying cry, and “The Race” was eventually certified platinum, reaching No. 44 on the Billboard Hot 100.

McIntyre, now 19, faces between five and 99 years in prison, though he was found not guilty of capital murder, which would have carried a mandatory sentence of 40 years without parole. The jury had begun deliberating Thursday afternoon when the defense opted not to call a single witness. Tarrant County prosecutors moved immediately into the sentencing phase of the trial after the verdict Friday, with a decision expected next week.

McIntyre had already pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated robbery and was found guilty of a third count tied to the incident, but his lawyers argued that he should not be convicted of murder because he was not the gunman in the killing. Six others were charged in the robbery that left Ethan Walker, 21, dead in July 2016. Prosecutors argued that McIntyre knew a shooting would occur when he and the others agreed to commit a robbery in hopes of finding drugs and money.

The rapper, who was 16 at the time, was certified as an adult to stand trial. He had been placed on house arrest with an ankle monitor when he escaped in the spring of 2017, setting off a manhunt for what the U.S. Marshals Service deemed a “violent fugitive.”

According to prosecutors, McIntyre committed a separate murder in San Antonio while on the run, and he has also been charged with beating and robbing a 65-year-old man in an Arlington park. Both trials are forthcoming.

Brian Butcher, a lawyer representing the families of Walker and two other alleged victims of McIntyre, said in a statement that lawsuits against the rapper were ongoing. “I am glad a Fort Worth jury delivered justice,” he said, but added that “justice will not be fully complete until every penny of profit from McIntyre’s music is awarded as compensation to his victims.”

Representatives for Tay-K declined to comment Friday.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/arts/music/tay-k-guilty.html" id="9e7b3f8c-87b4-35ad-a8f8-9bbd7c4d1e51">The New York Times</a>.

Tay-K, Rapper Who Went Viral With 'The Race,' Is Found Guilty of Murder

Taymor McIntyre, a Texas teenager best known as rapper Tay-K (or Tay-K 47), was found guilty of murder Friday for his role in a 2016 armed robbery that left one man dead and, in a controversial series of events, helped to kick-start Tay-K’s brief, viral rise in hip-hop.

Famously private and often inscrutable, the singer, who died of an accidental opioid overdose at the age of 57, had announced the project just weeks before he was found dead at his Paisley Park estate in Chanhassen, Minnesota.

“We’re starting right at the beginning — my first memory — and hopefully we can move all the way to the Super Bowl,” Prince, who played the halftime show in 2007, told a small crowd at a mini-concert to celebrate news of the book in March 2016.

“The good people of Random House have made me an offer that I can’t refuse,” he added. “You all still read books, right?”

Prince had enlisted writer Dan Piepenbring, an editor at the Paris Review, as a collaborator on the autobiography, calling him “not a yes man at all.” The re-envisioned version, a partnership with the Prince estate, will feature the “early pages” of the memoir, along with an introduction by Piepenbring, who briefly collaborated with the singer at “a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he’d so carefully cultivated,” the publisher said.

The book was originally acquired by Random House nonfiction imprint Spiegel &amp; Grau, which closed this year, and will now be released by the larger company. Editor Chris Jackson said of Prince: “His death was an unfathomable loss, but this book — full of writing from his own hand and images that he carefully preserved at Paisley Park — is a beautiful tribute to his life.”

Along with the lyrics and “never-before-seen photos,” “The Beautiful Ones” will include original scrapbook material from the singer, including the original handwritten treatment for “Purple Rain,” the 1984 film and album, and other behind-the-scenes material that was preserved at Paisley Park.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/arts/music/prince-memoir-beautiful-ones.html" id="6da9354f-7c7c-3946-a834-c64260eddf7b">The New York Times</a>.

“The Beautiful Ones,” a memoir that Prince started not long before his death in 2016, will be released in October as a “newly envisioned” book featuring rare photographs and handwritten lyrics, publisher Random House announced Monday.

Prince's Unfinished Memoir Will Be Released After All

The singer — who perfected the secret album drop in 2013, and has since toyed with the tactic for releases like “Lemonade” and “Everything Is Love,” with her husband Jay-Z — did it again in the early morning hours Wednesday, one-upping the arrival of her own Netflix documentary, “Homecoming,” with a previously unannounced live-album version of the same concert.

Both the film and the album, also titled “Homecoming,” capture Beyoncé’s performance at last year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, in which the singer — the first black woman to headline the event — was backed by dozens of dancers and an elaborate marching band for a set that nodded to the musical legacy of historically black colleges.

“There’s not likely to be a more meaningful, absorbing, forceful and radical performance by an American musician this year, or any year soon,” critic Jon Caramanica wrote of the show in The New York Times. “It was rich with history, potently political and visually grand. By turns uproarious, rowdy, and lush. A gobsmacking marvel of choreography and musical direction.”

Now, the concert — which was live-streamed at the time and recreated for Coachella’s second weekend, but has existed only in bootleg form since — has been preserved for history in multiple mediums. The documentary, a Netflix exclusive billed as “a film by Beyoncé,” features footage from rehearsals and quieter backstage moments — “the emotional road from creative concept to cultural movement,” Netflix said.

“Homecoming: The Live Album” is a more straightforward recreation of the concert that became known as Beychella. It breaks the more than two-hour performance into 40 tracks, many of which are packed with multiple musical references and sections of other songs.

Beyoncé’s set list, which varied slightly over the two Coachella performances, included solo hits like “Get Me Bodied,” “Baby Boy” and “Formation,” the Destiny’s Child songs “Say My Name” and “Soldier” (with her former group mates Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams) and various interludes with titles here such as “So Much Damn Swag” and “The Bzzzz Drumline.” She also included a rendition of the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song often referred to as the black national anthem.

The album also includes an a cappella version of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by Blue Ivy, Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s oldest daughter, and two bonus tracks: a new cover of “Before I Let Go,” the 1981 song by Maze featuring Frankie Beverly, which appears in the end credits of the documentary, and an alternate version of “I Been On.”

While some recent Beyoncé releases have been available, at least for a time, only on Tidal, the streaming service owned by Jay-Z, the live album was released across all major streaming platforms, including Apple Music, Spotify and Google Play.

Since Coachella, Beyoncé has been largely quiet professionally, though she toured with Jay-Z last summer, surprising fans with the nine-track collaborative effort “Everything Is Love” along the way. She has not announced a follow-up.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/arts/music/beyonce-netflix-homecoming.html" id="94805bab-2f34-35f5-a2dd-9b832b137364">The New York Times</a>.

When it comes to Beyoncé releases, there is usually an element of surprise.

Beyoncé Surprises With a Live Album to Go With Her Netflix Documentary

The mysterious project, which has been teased for months, features Glover as Deni, a singer hoping to bring the mystical island of Guava together with a music festival, while Rihanna plays his girlfriend, Kofi, and provides voice-over during a fairy-tale-like animated introduction about the fictional location and its valuable blue silk. Nonso Anozie (“Game of Thrones”) and Letitia Wright (“Black Panther”) also appear.

With a plot involving exploited workers, the struggles of musicians and a society divided between red and blue, the film incorporates themes present in much of Glover’s recent work, from the hit FX series “Atlanta”to his viral, Grammy-winning song and video for “This Is America,” which is interpolated in “Guava Island.”

The film was written by Glover’s brother Stephen and directed by his longtime collaborator Hiro Murai, who was also behind the camera for much of “Atlanta” and “This Is America.” Following its premiere on the grounds of Coachella on Thursday, and the Childish Gambino show on Friday night, “Guava Island” was made available for anyone to watch on Amazon for 18 hours starting Saturday at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time; it will then be available exclusively to Amazon Prime subscribers.

Shot in Cuba and inspired by the Brazilian crime epic “City of God” and Prince’s “Purple Rain,” “Guava Island” does not ultimately feature much new music from Childish Gambino — or any singing from Rihanna. The movie opens with a breezy unreleased number from Glover (“If the world ends/I think I wanna die with you”) and has elements of another song with the lyrics, “Maybe the sky will fall down on tomorrow/but one thing’s for certain baby/we’re running out of time.”

It also incorporates alternate versions of recent Childish Gambino singles like “Summertime Magic” and “Feels Like Summer,” along with “Saturday,” which Glover debuted on “Saturday Night Live” last year (“God, this 9 to 5 just keep on killing me,” he sings). In one scene set in a factory, another character tells Deni that he hopes to save enough money to make it to America. “It’s different there,” the man says. “I heard people are their own bosses.”

Deni responds: “This is America. Guava’s no different than any other country,” adding, “America is a concept. Anywhere where in order to make yourself rich, you have to make someone else richer is America.” He then leads a choreographed dance to the song that mirrors some of the music video.

At Coachella on Friday night, Glover — who has thrown his own festival, Pharos — did not make a show of plugging “Guava Island,” though he did incorporate tropical imagery and sounds into his set. For one unreleased song, he cleared a section in the crowd to scream over a cacophonous burst of complex drum rhythms, bathed in almost-apocalyptic red lights. He also performed the still-unreleased track “Human Sacrifice,” which debuted in a Google ad during the Grammy Awards in February.

Glover was overcome by emotion onstage while discussing the deaths of his father and rappers Mac Miller and Nipsey Hussle. “What I’m starting to realize is all we really have is memories at the end of the day,” he told the crowd. “All we are really is like, data — you pass it on to your kids, you pass it on to your friends, your family.”

“While we’re here,” Glover added, “feel something and pass it on.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/arts/music/coachella-guava-island-donald-glover.html" id="978d585f-6d84-358b-a46d-b225d6d5062e">The New York Times</a>.

“Guava Island,” a new 55-minute film starring Donald Glover and Rihanna, was released as a limited-time free stream on Amazon overnight Saturday, during Glover’s headlining set as Childish Gambino at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

Donald Glover's 'Guava Island' Debuts After Coachella Set as Childish Gambino

That winsome formula, although particularly compelling from Grande, can be traced back through recent pop history on a global scale: There are elements of the sound in a K-pop track by the girl group Red Velvet from 2015; a JoJo kiss-off from 2016; a Fifth Harmony single from 2017; and a Grammy-nominated Christina Aguilera number from last year. Even “High Hopes,” the sugary comeback hit from pop-punk survivors Panic! at the Disco, which peaked at No. 4 in January, shares some of that DNA in its ecstatic vocal runs and melodic precision.

The common link comes via songwriter Taylor Parks, an ebullient 25-year-old former child actress with a brightly dyed bob and an air of benevolent mischief, who was credited on each. Known in the industry as a top-liner, Parks, who performs as Tayla Parx, contributes melodic and lyrical ideas to some of the biggest artists in the world, and those aspiring to be.

For the past few years, she has done so quietly, cutting a meticulous yet low-key warpath through popular music on a personal quest to land a No. 1 single on every genre chart — a lofty goal that’s no longer far-fetched.

“I only have a few more to go,” Parx said recently, while putting the finishing touches on her own debut album. “I need a country, I need a gospel, and I need a hip-hop.” She tackled Latin pop back in 2016, before its crossover explosion, and Nashville was already in her sights, she teased, after recent interest from Kacey Musgraves and Keith Urban.

They are not the only ones to take notice. Parx was credited as a co-writer on half of Grande’s blockbuster “Thank U, Next” album, which rebooted the pop singer’s sound and public narrative. For Parx, the release worked as a springboard from workaday writer to A-list studio presence and, ideally, viable solo artist — an elusive final hurdle for many young female songwriters, from Ester Dean and Jessie J to Julia Michaels and Starrah.

“Most songwriters fail to become an artist the same size they were a songwriter,” acknowledged Richie Kipp, one of Parx’s managers. “But I’ve never seen anyone wired like Tayla.”

A Texas-born protégée of actress and choreographer Debbie Allen, Parx moved with her family — a mother who worked in software and a father in mortgage underwriting — to Los Angeles to pursue show business.

She played Little Inez Stubbs in the 2007 film adaptation of “Hairspray” before landing a few small television parts, including on Nickelodeon shows where she first crossed paths with Grande. Although they kept in touch intermittently on AOL Instant Messenger — and Parx helped write the title track for Grande’s second album, “My Everything,” in 2014 — the women did not really reconnect in person until the making of “Thank U, Next” late last year.

In the meantime, Parx had clocked studio time with Babyface, contributed to a Mariah Carey divorce anthem while still a teenager and become a voice actor on “The Sims” and “The Walking Dead” video games. (Parx’s song “Me vs. Us” has a Simlish version, sung entirely in the fictional language.)

Now, with Grande in her corner and on her résumé, Parx is trying to balance studio sessions for hit-seeking artists like Sam Smith, Haim and Dua Lipa with signing artists and producers of her own, going on acting auditions, working on a screenplay for an animated film, conceiving a clothing brand and promoting her Atlantic Records release, “We Need to Talk.” The new album, like Parx’s best hits, is playful and conversational, blending pop, R&amp;B; and traces of rap with plenty of Grande-esque high notes.

“It’s been nuts,” Parx said. “I really had to jump through all the hoops of fire. First of all, being black, and then being a woman, and then being a young black woman. But we got through all of them.” (A recent study by the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that of the 633 songs to chart from 2012 through 2018, just 12.3 percent included female songwriters.)

In addition to her contagious pluck and facility across genres, Parx credited her listening skills and discretion as crucial to endearing her to major artists. “There are a lot of things in my vault from the biggest stars in the world,” she said. “I would never betray them or take advantage of that trust.”

Her acting background helps, too. “When I write these songs after having conversations with artists,” she said, “I’m embodying that and becoming them in that moment.”

Aguilera compared Parx to a little sister, one who introduced her to “Black Mirror” and Instagram stories, while also gamely battling Aguilera’s children with Nerf guns. “She just has this natural personable quality that makes you feel at ease,” Aguilera said. “You want to be in a room with her.”

As a former child performer herself, Aguilera said she was thrilled with the recognition now heading Parx’s way after her work with Grande. “I can hear Tayla in those songs, for sure,” Aguilera said, praising Parx’s ability to collaborate with “another young artist and really take them to that next place in their career, where you’re like: ‘Oh, wait, who is this again? Ariana Grande!?’”

Parx was brought into the “Thank U, Next” sessions in October by her longtime friends and collaborators Victoria Monét, another top-liner, and producer Tommy Brown, or TB Hits, who had both worked on Grande’s four previous albums.

Grande had just released the album “Sweetener” that August, but with the death of her ex-boyfriend, rapper Mac Miller, and the flame-out of her high-profile romance with Pete Davidson of “Saturday Night Live,” she had plenty more material to work through.

“We were kind of there through the breakup and the makeup and the breakup again,” Parx said, “which is why records like ‘NASA’ and ‘Make Up’ came.”

The group wrote about nine songs in a week, six of which ended up making the “Thank U, Next” album. But none were as crucial as the title track, which existed in multiple versions, including the internet-melting one where Grande addressed her exes by name.

“They all felt like the one until we got to ‘Thank U, Next,’ and then we were like, ‘This is the one one!’” Parx said.

Brown recalled Parx as an advocate for specificity. “She was a big supporter of using the names,” he said, citing her tendency to speak her mind. “All big stars need people who are honest with them,” Brown added. “Too many times these people are lied to or just agreed with. Tayla’s not going to do that.”

Parx noted that she, Monét and Grande were not only collaborators but also peers and friends. “For me to connect to a young female is a completely different perspective than when you have a Max Martin talking to a young female,” she said, referring to the longtime pop hitmaker.

As for the criticism that Grande received about appropriating black music and style, Parx brushed it off, noting that many critics failed to recognize the pop star’s black collaborators. “She’s actually supporting the black producers and writers that she works with more than some of the black artists that I’ve worked with,” Parx said.

“I think the free exchange is important for the evolution of music,” she added. “If we didn’t take from each other, genre-wise, everything would sound the same. As long as the proper credit is given, that’s the most important thing.”

Parx’s technical skills, like a knack for arranging and producing vocals, also help set her apart. “I might find a breath or a word that I like — it’s like surgery,” she said of the process, which can include coaching singers toward certain emotional registers and chopping up different takes into fine-tuned final versions.

As she spoke, Parx was using one ear to track the progress of her own vocals on a song that needed to be finished for her album. In the editing process, a line that should have been “teach me” had morphed into “tease me.”

“It sounds like I have a lisp,” she told her audio engineer, barely missing a beat in conversation.

Seeming genuinely sated by all of the success coming her way, Parx was typically buoyant about the possibility that “We Need to Talk” may not be her own commercial breakthrough, but merely another baby step in an atypical career.

“That would be very ungrateful of me to look at the records that I’ve broken, the career that I’ve had from 9 until now, and measure my success against someone else’s,” she said, flashing her disarmingly confident grin. “There’s a lot of things that the biggest artists in the world haven’t done that I’ve done.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/arts/music/tayla-parx-ariana-grande-thank-u-next.html" id="8e815fd1-3d63-3571-a10d-9435b998cf11">The New York Times</a>.

Tayla Parx Helped Ariana Grande Evolve, and Now It's Her Turn

For 15 weeks since fall, the top spot on the Billboard singles chart was occupied by one of two Ariana Grande mega-smashes — “Thank U, Next” and “7 Rings” — that drip with the mettle and coquettish swagger of a pop diva, while borrowing from hip-hop beats and cadences.

“Homecoming,” teased by the streaming service as “a film by Beyoncé,” will be available April 17, according to a trailer released Monday, which shows concert footage and backstage preparations from the singer’s headlining performance at Coachella last year.

The documentary will provide an “intimate, in-depth look” at the concert, revealing “the emotional road from creative concept to cultural movement,” Netflix said.

The nearly two-hour show at the Empire Polo Club in California featured dozens of musicians backing Beyoncé in the style of historically black college marching bands and traced “a lineage of Southern black musical traditions from New Orleans second line marches to Houston’s chopped-and-screwed hip-hop,” said critic Jon Caramanica in The New York Times.

“There’s not likely to be a more meaningful, absorbing, forceful and radical performance by an American musician this year, or any year soon,” he wrote. “It was rich with history, potently political and visually grand. By turns uproarious, rowdy, and lush. A gobsmacking marvel of choreography and musical direction.”

Beyoncé had been scheduled to headline the festival in 2017 but pushed her performance back a year after becoming pregnant with twins.

“Thank you for allowing me to be the first black woman to headline Coachella,” she told the crowd at her comeback show.

The trailer for “Homecoming” features clips from rehearsals and Beyoncé’s workout routine, in addition to moments with her children and husband, rapper Jay-Z, who made a cameo appearance at Coachella. Using a 2013 interview with poet and activist Maya Angelou, not long before her death the next year, a voice-over on the trailer says, “What I really wanted to do is be a representative of my race — of the human race.

“I have a chance to show how kind we can be, how intelligent and generous we can be,” Angelou continues. “I have a chance to teach and to love and to laugh. And I know that when I finish doing what I’m sent here to do, I will be called home.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/arts/music/beyonce-homecoming-netflix.html" id="102d1ec8-4fc1-3d40-ad9c-4992117ef056">The New York Times</a>.

A year after one of the most critically lauded festival performances in recent pop history, Beychella is coming to Netflix.

Beyoncé's 'Homecoming' Documentary on Netflix Showcases Coachella Performance

“When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” (Darkroom/Interscope), which was written and produced entirely by Eilish and her 21-year-old brother, Finneas, earned a total of 313,000 album equivalent units, including a robust 170,000 in sales and 194 million streams in its first week, according to Nielsen. Those numbers gave Eilish the second-largest sales week of the year so far, behind only Ariana Grande, whose “Thank U, Next” debuted with 360,000 units in February.

Eilish’s album succeeded across formats: Its streaming total was the third-highest ever for a female artist (behind Grande and Cardi B), while the LP also sold 15,000 copies on vinyl, Billboard reported, the best sales week in that format this year.

At No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart is Nipsey Hussle, the Los Angeles rapper who was shot and killed March 31. Interest in his music surged amid the outpouring of grief in the wake of his death, leading “Victory Lap,” his major-label debut from last year, to its biggest week yet. “Victory Lap” (Atlantic) debuted at No. 4 in March 2018, but surpassed those totals after his slaying, with 62 million streams and 17,000 in sales for a total of 66,000 units.

Grande’s “Thank U, Next” (Republic) is No. 3 in its eighth week on the chart, owing largely to another 63 million streams, while George Strait’s “Honky Tonk Time Machine” is No. 4, with 44,000 in sales and 7 million streams. “Death Race for Love,” by emo rapper Juice WRLD, is No. 5.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/arts/music/billie-eilish-nipsey-hussle-billboard.html" id="16b85df1-ad88-3271-a542-0550606c2ed4">The New York Times</a>.

The mainstream arrival of a new 17-year-old pop star reached its final stage this week as Billie Eilish’s first album put up big numbers and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart.

Billie Eilish Has Huge Billboard Debut as Nipsey Hussle Climbs Chart After Death

He often traveled without security. He did not anchor his image to brick-size piles of money and fleets of foreign cars, opting rather for a few thick gold chains with a flannel or a hoodie.

Instead of multimillion-dollar brand deals, high fashion collaborations and appearances on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Hussle partnered with a developer to buy a local strip mall and helped with the opening of a co-working space and a Fatburger.

“Nipsey’s there kissing babies, taking selfies,” recalled Mark Webster, who worked with Hussle on branding for the burger joint.

Most casual listeners are familiar with hip-hop’s 1 percent — Jay-Z, Drake, Cardi B. But Hussle represented a less visible, less glamorous, but increasingly ascendant hip-hop archetype: the regional legend, a member of rap’s middle class who can do well for themselves without ever reaching mainstream mega-fame.

With the rise of streaming and the 24/7 personalized reality show of social media, it’s a boom time for this in-between tier of artists. Even outside hip-hop strongholds like New York, Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles, rappers from cities like Charlotte, North Carolina; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Pompano Beach, Florida; have been able to develop and sustain national fan bases.

Many like Hussle earn a healthy living, if not ultra-wealth, without broad radio play or platinum plaques. And in the tradition of the pre-internet hometown heroes that came before them, many stay close to home for a combination of financial and personal reasons.

But that same accessibility and dedication to their communities can also make them reachable targets, a harsh reality that has resonated in the hip-hop world this week. Police said Hussle, 33, was killed in front of his South Los Angeles clothing store by someone he knew, likely because of a neighborhood dispute. On Thursday, prosecutors charged Eric R. Holder Jr., 29, with Hussle’s murder.

“Everything about Nipsey was Crenshaw and Slauson,” the Game, a friend and Los Angeles rapper who collaborated with Hussle, said in an interview. “Those are the two streets that ended up taking his life.”

Hussle, whose given name was Ermias Asghedom, has been mourned by major artists, athletes, actors and politicians who remembered his entrepreneurship and philanthropy. But the biggest outpouring of grief was in Crenshaw, where the rapper was still “just a regular dude from LA.” the Game said.

Najee Ali, an activist in South Los Angeles who knew Hussle, said: “He walked in the community every day. People could walk up and touch him.”

A product of the CD mixtape era, Hussle, a classic West Coast stylist reminiscent of ’90s gangster rap, would pass out his music by hand or sell it from the trunk of his car before things went truly digital. But as hip-hop transitioned to free music online and eventually to YouTube and streaming services, regional artists of Hussle’s caliber suddenly had access to broader audiences for little cost. At Spotify and Apple Music, hip-hop revealed itself to be the most in-demand genre, and niche rappers like Hussle found greater opportunities.

For artists like Hussle — or his southern peers Kevin Gates, Yo Gotti and Young Dolph, among countless others — concerts might take place in nightclubs instead of stadiums, and without sophisticated celebrity infrastructure, they try to capitalize on viral moments and guerrilla marketing.

Nearly 15 years into his career, Hussle appeared to be on the cusp of crossover stardom. He had a GQ spread, and with management from Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, he released his first official studio album, “Victory Lap,” on Atlantic Records, a major label, last year. It was a modest success, debuting at No. 4 on the Billboard chart and earning a Grammy nomination, though his numbers still paled in comparison to rap stars like Drake or J. Cole, who regularly top 100 million Spotify plays on a track.

Hussle, who never had a breakout hit, was earning about a 10th of that, though his reputation was outpacing his commercial impact. But rather than use his success as a one-way ticket to the gated communities of Calabasas, he rarely strayed from the blocks where he came up as a member of the Rollin’ 60s Crips gang.

Wack 100, a prominent rap manager and a self-described Piru Blood from Los Angeles, noted that despite Hussle’s background, his killing did not conjure the East Coast vs. West Coast war of 1990s gangster rap, which saw the shooting deaths of the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. “It wasn’t an outsider that came over here and did that” to Hussle, he said.

Bloods and Crips frequently work together in music and violence in hip-hop rarely stems from those affiliations these days, Wack said. He credited that to the formation more than a decade ago of a council of elders — regional gang leaders who were involved in rap and wanted to prevent bloodshed that could undermine big business, while also uniting communities. “We knew we made mistakes and we were part of the problem of laying the foundation of the negativity,” he said.

Hussle had reinvested his earnings back into Crenshaw, maintaining street-level ties even as his star grew. And like many in his situation, Hussle’s comfort in the neighborhood that treated him like a king resulted in a casual presence. When he was shot Sunday afternoon in front of his Marathon Clothing store, Hussle was with only two friends, and taking photos with fans.

“Sometimes keeping it real is too much,” Wack said. “When you’re that accessible, that common, then it becomes easy to get to you and easy to plot on you.”

For other rappers who looked to Hussle’s career as a blueprint, his killing has resulted in increased paranoia and anxiety.

Mozzy, a Sacramento, California, rapper who frequently wrestles with the consequences of his gang ties in music and interviews, said that Hussle “was supposed to be untouchable,” and represented the aspirational “big dog” in his lane “as far as being a gangster rapper and trying to transition into being a mogul and a role model.”

“I ain’t going to lie; I’m kind of shaking right now,” Mozzy said, having recently had a “mini-altercation” in his own neighborhood. He cited the fatalistic advice of Louisiana rap veteran Boosie: “Most rappers die in their own city,” and added: “Every day you’re taking one of the biggest risks of your life by being a rapper and living in your community, or continuing to pull up there. But you take that risk out of a love for the people.”

Charlamagne Tha God, author and rap radio host for Power 105 in New York, said that Hussle’s death would “absolutely affect the way people move through their hood” in the future.

“It makes you constantly question yourself and say, ‘Should I give back and go back, or should I give back and not go back?’ And how much going back is too much?” Charlamagne said.

The Game, a native of Compton, California, who remains a presence there, described the constant nagging feeling that the place with the most love for you could also be the place with the most festering hate. He said that less than 24 hours before Hussle was shot, the two spoke about “how to move, and dip in and dip out” of the neighborhood to stay safe.

“I know, I know,” he recalled Hussle telling him, “I just gotta get this right for my people.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/arts/music/nipsey-hussle-shooting-death.html" id="6d2538b6-f3b7-3a97-a0e6-264058db85b2">The New York Times</a>.

For Nipsey Hussle and Rap's Thriving Middle Class, Staying Close to Home Can Have a Price

Though far from a struggling musician, Nipsey Hussle, the Los Angeles rapper who was shot and killed Sunday, was not living the luxury fantasy of hip-hop superstardom.

Azriel Clary, 21, and Joycelyn Savage, 23, told Gayle King of “CBS This Morning” that they were “absolutely” in love with Kelly, 52, who was charged last month in Chicago with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving four women, three of whom were minors at the time.

Beyond his criminal case, Kelly also has been accused of harboring a so-called sex cult, in which he abused women and controlled every aspect of their lives, including when they can go to the bathroom.

The interview with Clary and Savage, who have stood by Kelly in court, seemed unlikely to settle questions about what exactly goes on in the singer’s home. While the women’s parents say they are brainwashed and much of the world now sees Kelly as an unrelenting sexual predator, who has been trailed for decades by accusations of abuse and sex with underage girls, Clary and Savage lashed out at their families and said they were happy as Kelly’s girlfriends.

The interview followed the airing on Wednesday of a heated conversation between Kelly and King of CBS, in which the singer denied all of the accusations against him. “I have been assassinated,” said Kelly, who was sometimes shouting, swearing and in tears. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

King said that Kelly had agreed not to be present for the interview with Clary and Savage, but that he entered the room behind them after it began. King said Kelly would “cough very loudly,” and that the women were “certainly aware that he was there.”

Kelly, who had been out on bond since last week, was sent back to jail Wednesday night for his failure to pay his ex-wife more than $160,000 in child support. The Detroit Police Department also said Wednesday that it was investigating allegations that Kelly had sex with a 13-year-old girl there in 2001. “We have reached out, at the direction of the victim, to her lawyer and we are eagerly waiting to speak to her,” James Craig, the Detroit police chief, said in a statement, adding that they had not yet made contact with her.

Clary said she met Kelly at one of his concerts when she was 17. “When I first met Robert, my parents told me to lie about my age,” she said. “He thought that I was 18.”

She denied having sex with Kelly while underage, but said her parents had encouraged her “to take photos with him, sexual videos with him” in case “they ever have to blackmail him.”

“What they’re doing right now is all for money,” Clary added. “If you can’t see that, you’re ignorant, and you’re stupid,” adding expletives.

Savage, who met Kelly when she was 19, backed up Clary’s version of events. Her parents were “just out here trying to get money and scam, because they didn’t agree on what happened with music,” Savage said.

Both women’s parents have said their daughters were aspiring singers seeking Kelly’s guidance in music. Clary and Savage denied that they wanted to pursue music careers.

Clary’s parents, in a statement Thursday through their lawyer, Michael Avenatti, denied ever having asked Kelly for money. “Sadly, like so many girls before them,” the statement said, “Azriel and Joycelyn Savage have been manipulated and convinced by Kelly to lie to protect him from serious criminal charges.”

Savage’s family held a news conference in Atlanta on Wednesday, in which they also denied asking Kelly for money and said they felt she was being controlled. “From Day One, the only thing we want to do is hear from our daughter and know she’s fine,” said Savage’s father, Timothy.

Later, the Savage family received what it said was its first call from Joycelyn in two years. “You know that I’m happy,” she could be heard telling them. “You know exactly where I’m at.”

Timothy Savage and his wife, Jonjelyn, first spoke out publicly about their daughter’s relationship with Kelly in a 2017 Buzzfeed article about the women living with the R&amp;B; star. The Savages later appeared in the Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” which aired in January and led to renewed law-enforcement interest in the allegations against Kelly.

The Savages said they had told the FBI, as well as police in Georgia and Illinois, that Joycelyn was “being held against her will” by Kelly. Representatives for the singer said at the time that authorities in Atlanta and Chicago had “made ‘wellness’ visits to check on the women in question and have found nothing to cause alarm.”

In January, a man identified as a manager for Kelly, Henry James Mason, was arrested and charged with making violent threats against Savage; Mason denied the charges and said that he had in fact tried to re-establish a connection between Joycelyn and her family. Savage said he had also been threatened by another associate of Kelly’s — who said he could “ruin him, his reputation, business and family” — before the Lifetime documentary aired.

Kelly, in his interview, had told King that he loved the women. “We have a relationship. It’s real,” he said. “I’ve known guys all my life that have five or six women, OK. So don’t go there on me.”

He added that he had no reason to hold the women captive. “Why would I?” Kelly said. “How stupid would it be for me, with my crazy past and what I’ve been through — oh, right now I just think I need to be a monster, hold girls against their will, chain them up in my basement, and don’t let them eat, don’t let them out!”

CBS said it would air more from the interviews with Kelly and the two women in a primetime special on Friday.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/arts/azriel-clary-joycelyn-savage-r-kelly.html" id="d83b65f5-74cd-382d-a069-1928a6335d9a">The New York Times</a>.

2 Women Living With R. Kelly Denounce Their Parents and Deny Being Brainwashed

Two women whose parents say they are being held in emotional and sexual captivity by the R&amp;B; singer R. Kelly vociferously defended the musician in an interview that aired Thursday, claiming that their parents are blackmailing him and just out for money.

Beyond his criminal case, Kelly also has been accused of harboring a so-called sex cult, in which he abused women and controlled every aspect of their lives

The interview with Clary and Savage, who have stood by Kelly in court, seemed unlikely to settle questions about what exactly goes on in the singer’s home. While the women’s parents say they are brainwashed, Clary and Savage said they were happy as Kelly’s girlfriends.

Kelly, who had been out on bond since last week, was sent back to jail Wednesday night for his failure to pay his ex-wife more than $160,000 in child support. The Detroit Police Department also said Wednesday that it was investigating allegations that Kelly had sex with a 13-year-old girl there in 2001.

Clary said she met Kelly at one of his concerts when she was 17. She denied having sex with Kelly while underage, but said her parents had encouraged her “to take photos with him, sexual videos with him” in case “they ever have to blackmail him.”

Savage, who met Kelly when she was 19, backed up Clary’s version of events.

Both women’s parents have said their daughters were aspiring singers seeking Kelly’s guidance. Clary and Savage denied that they wanted to pursue music careers.

The interview with Clary and Savage, who have stood by Kelly in court, seemed unlikely to settle questions about what exactly goes on in the singer’s home. While the women’s parents claim they are brainwashed and much of the world now sees Kelly as a ceaseless sexual predator, who has been trailed for decades by accusations of abuse and sex with underage girls, Clary and Savage lashed out at their families and said they were happy as Kelly’s girlfriends.

The interview followed the airing on Wednesday of a heated conversation between Kelly and King of CBS, in which the singer denied all of the accusations against him. “I have been assassinated,” said Kelly, who was sometimes shouting, swearing and in tears.

Kelly, who had been out on bond since last week, was sent back to jail Wednesday night for his failure to pay his ex-wife more than $160,000 in child support.

Clary’s parents, in a statement on Wednesday through their lawyer, Michael Avenatti, denied ever having asked Kelly for money. “All of the victims and parents cannot be lying,” they said.

But in the age of the 21st-century superfan, perhaps no group is more emphatic, organized and passionate online than the devotees of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop whose legacy includes decades of innuendo and court cases regarding what he did or did not do with young boys.

Across blogs, message boards, podcasts, YouTube videos and especially social media feeds, where a Jackson avatar broadcasts one’s allegiance, they circulate exhaustive evidence that they view as exonerating for the singer, while shouting down news outlets they consider inaccurate and biased.

Brewing for weeks, their fight kicked into a new gear Sunday with the airing of the first half of “Leaving Neverland,” an HBO documentary about two men who say Jackson repeatedly sexually abused them as children.

Ads for MJInnocent.com on buses in London and digital billboards in the United States are proclaiming: “Facts Don’t Lie. People Do.” Under the Twitter hashtag #MJFam, dozens of fan accounts have encouraged counterprogramming to the film, instructing followers to stream Jackson’s music instead of watching. And Sunday night, fans deluged the #LeavingNeverland hashtag with thousands of tweets, dominating discussion of what they called a “mockumentary” and attacking the two men at its center.

Dan Reed, director of “Leaving Neverland,” which concludes Monday, said that his company had received “dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens” of emails from Jackson fans — “a deluge of hatred” beginning within 20 minutes of the film’s announcement in January. He and the two men in the film, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, said that some fans had taken it even further, with threats of violence.

“One can only compare them to religious fanatics, really,” Reed said. “They’re the Islamic State of fandom.”

Jackson’s supporters don’t see it that way. Since accusations in 1993 by a boy and his family ended with a $23 million settlement, the fandom’s party line has been that any allegations amounted to extortion plots by hangers-on hellbent on tarnishing Jackson and exploiting his naiveté.

A specific strain of the Jackson faithful has pored over the granular details of his life and cases, including the 2005 trial in which he was acquitted of charges he molested another boy, in hopes of proving his innocence. Those fans — including the young and old, from Queensland, Australia to Moscow to Huntsville, Alabama — view “Leaving Neverland” as a manipulative, one-sided hit piece that rehashes old allegations from inconsistent sources.

The film has also turned what was for years a niche obsession for many Jackson fans into a mainstream battle.

“If you’ve been a fan for a long time, you’ve seen this over and over again,” said Casey Rain, 30, a musician and YouTuber living in Birmingham, England. He called “Leaving Neverland” a “sick attempt at hijacking the Me-Too moment.”

Many Jackson fans resort to indiscriminate, anonymous hate mail targeting journalists and Jackson’s accusers. Others like Rain show their devotion in deeper ways, painstakingly constructing videos and epic polemics that weave together court papers and obscure interviews, then sharing and resharing their work across multiple platforms.

“There’s nothing about Michael that the fan community doesn’t know,” said Rain, whose blog post about “Leaving Neverland” became a go-to text even before the documentary aired. “I really don’t think that we lack objectivity on him.” (Rain and others who had not yet seen the film said their information came from a few Jackson fans who attended the Sundance premiere and took “very, very detailed notes.”)

Susanne Baur and Elena Ovchinnikova, who co-author the blog Vindicating Michael, said they prefer not to be called Jackson fans at all because fan “has a too negative connotation of adoration and worship,” Baur, 60, wrote in an email from southern Germany.

Instead they identify as researchers and activists who view Jackson as a civil rights case. In a post about “Leaving Neverland” that totaled more than 10,000 words, Ovchinnikova, who is 65 and based in Moscow, parsed the changing stories of the two men in the film and concluded that they are liars.

“The reaction of the MJ community is absolutely adequate,” Ovchinnikova said via email. “It is the reaction of knowledgeable people who have to talk to ignoramuses.”

Linda-Raven Woods, a 56-year-old from Huntsville, called herself a former “die-hard metalhead” whose lingering questions about Jackson’s guilt after his death had led her to fansites.

Wowed by the depth of their research, Woods realized, “This is why they defend him so passionately,” she said. She is now an administrator of @MJJLegion, a Twitter account with more than 80,000 followers that has been busy coaching fans on how to counteract the documentary.

Some of these supporters acknowledge that the elaborate lengths of their writing and reasoning invites comparisons to conspiracy theorists, or as Damien Shields put it, a “ranting mob.”

But Shields, the author of a book on Jackson’s music and a fan for more than two decades, said it is all a matter of perspective: “We also view the media as a ranting mob in some circumstances.”

He said that the fans’ support comes from a place of love and passion, comparing those on social media to the Britney Spears fan Chris Crocker, who cried “Leave Britney alone!” in an infamous viral video.

“That’s Michael Jackson fans on Twitter times a million,” Shields said.

In the cases of Robson and Safechuck, fans note that both had previously testified that Jackson never abused them, and that they later unsuccessfully sued the singer’s estate. (Their claims are now under appeal.)

Both men said that it took them years to accept that they were abused and that they had felt pressured to testify on Jackson’s behalf. Reed, the director, said the film was, by design, “about how Wade changed his mind and confronted the truth about what happened to him” — a “radical reassessment of what it all meant.”

In an interview, Robson said that he understood the way many still cling to Jackson’s “very particular angelic persona.” He added, “That was so palatable for so many people, including myself.”

Robson and Safechuck said they, too, had faced an onslaught since coming forward, with Robson describing “thousands of extremely volatile and nasty emails or social media comments.” They cited the intensity of Jackson’s defenders as a possible reason more people do not come forward. “It’s an extremely terrifying thing to do,” Robson said.

As the film’s television premiere approached, some fans struggled with keeping up the fight for Jackson’s reputation as they also girded themselves for the increased scrutiny.

While some said they would boycott the film because it does not include outside context or interviews with defenders, others said they would stomach it for the good of the community.

“I need to know what we’re up against,” said Woods of @MJJLegion.

Shields said he could not help but feel a sense of dread about the coming months: “This literally could be the end of Michael Jackson if — big if — someone in a position of repute doesn’t decide to tell the other side of the story,” he said.

In the meantime, it was “almost like therapy” for fans to do their part to push back on the claims. “Even if their part doesn’t actually make any impact,” he said, “at least they tried their best.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/arts/music/michael-jackson-leaving-neverland-fans.html" id="63a68ba9-6997-3a28-ad95-8ee55ed2dd84">The New York Times</a>.

Beyoncé has the BeyHive and Nicki Minaj the Barbz, fan groups who swarm online against anyone who disparages their idols. The Deadheads may have provided a blueprint, though these days they are more likely to bicker among themselves.

Michael Jackson Fans Are Tenacious. 'Leaving Neverland' Has Them Poised for Battle.

Following an article published by The New York Times on Wednesday about Adams’ treatment of women, from a teenage fan to his ex-wife, Mandy Moore, FBI agents in the bureau’s New York office took the first steps to open a criminal investigation. They are responding to an accusation that Adams exchanged sexually explicit images with the teenager, who said her communication with the singer began when she was 14 and ended when she was 16. They never met in person, and through a lawyer, Adams has denied ever engaging in sexual conversations with someone he knew was underage.

The release of a new album by the singer-songwriter Ryan Adams has been canceled amid a report that the FBI is looking into his communications with an underage fan.

Joe Coscarelli

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