NEW YORK - Music's first couple Beyonce and Jay-Z are encouraging fans to go vegan for a month with a contest to give one lucky winner a lifetime of free tickets to their shows.
Queen Bey announced the challenge to her 123 million Instagram followers late Wednesday, saying it was in support of the Greenprint Project that promotes adopting even a partial vegan diet to limit environmental footprints.
Fans can sign up for the contest online and one will be chosen at random to win a pair of tickets annually for 30 years to concerts by Beyonce and/or Jay-Z, an estimated retail value of $12,000.
The superstar known for her groundbreaking "Lemonade" album said she was going meatless on Mondays and eating plant-based breakfasts, while husband and rap mogul Jay-Z vowed 2 of his daily meals would be plant-based.
Beyonce's personal trainer, Marco Borges, is behind the project. The superstar musicians wrote the introduction to his December book elaborating on its vision.
The pop-inflected R&B idol has been vocal about embracing veganism in the past, having adopted the diet prior to her stunning May 2018 performance at the Coachella music festival one year after giving birth to twins.
She is joined by fellow singers Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande in promoting veganism, which prohibits consumption of all animal products including meat, dairy products, eggs and honey as well as wearing leather.
Research has shown that cutting meat and dairy products can boost the planet's health by reducing farmland use and planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
NEW YORK -- Australian pop band 5 Seconds of Summer stunned Beyonce and Jay-Z by opening Sunday at the top of the US album chart, with the couple's surprise collaboration ending the superstars' streak of number one debuts.
5 Seconds of Summer had stepped up promotion of their album "Youngblood" after Jay-Z and Beyonce dropped "Everything Is Love," with the Australians telling fans they were in a close race for number one and encouraging listeners over social media to stream their songs continuously to drive up their totals.
"Youngblood" wound up selling 142,000 copies or the equivalent in downloads and streams in the week through Thursday, edging out "Everything Is Love" which clocked up 123,000 copies, tracking service Nielsen Music said.
5 Seconds of Summer, who emerged in 2011 as YouTube sensations when the then students in Sydney uploaded covers of popular songs, becomes the first Australian act to top the Billboard 200, the benchmark US chart, with three different albums.
Jay-Z and Beyonce, two of the biggest names in US pop culture, put out "Everything Is Love" with no warning on June 16 after a concert in London.
A musical celebration of their marriage, "Everything Is Love" initially came out only on Tidal, the fledgling streaming service led by Jay-Z, but went out widely including on rival Spotify on June 18 -- the fourth day of the counting period for the latest weekly chart.
"Everything Is Love" becomes the first solo studio album by Beyonce not to debut at number one. All of Jay-Z's studio albums have also opened at number one since 1998's "Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life" with the exception of a poorly reviewed 2002 collaborative album with R&B singer R. Kelly.
Beyonce and Jay-Z both opened at number one with their last solo albums, "Lemonade" and "4:44" respectively, despite refusing to stream them on Spotify.
Number three on the latest US album chart is "?" by the controversial rapper XXXTentacion, with interest spiking after he was shot dead on June 18 at age 20.
"?," which sold 94,000 copies in the week, had opened at number one in March. XXXTentacion's success took the music world by surprise with his songs full of references to suicide and the rapper awaiting trial on charges of beating his pregnant former girlfriend.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
NEW YORK -- Jay-Z, who once boycotted the Grammys as biased against hip-hop, was hailed Saturday by the music industry's power brokers ahead of the latest awards where he leads nominations.
The rapper who rose from a broken home to become a hip-hop multimillionaire was contrite over his previous attacks on the Grammys when he accepted a prize as an "industry icon" at a pre-award gala thrown by veteran music executive Clive Davis.
Jay-Z refused to attend the Grammys in 1999 because the Recording Academy which administers the awards snubbed fellow rapper DMX.
He stayed away, upset at the lack of recognition for hip-hop, until coming in 2004 with wife-to-be Beyonce, who joined him on Saturday.
"I realize like, man, art is super subjective and everybody is doing their best and the Academy, they are human like we are," Jay-Z told the packed ballroom in New York's Times Square.
"We can pretend we don't care, but we really care," he said of Grammy recognition. "We care because we see the most incredible artists stand on that stage and we aspire to be there."
A who's who of top artists performed in Jay-Z's honor, with soul legend Gladys Knight singing her classic "Midnight Train to Georgia" and Luis Fonsi dancing through his viral hit "Despacito."
Alicia Keys weaved Jay-Z's songs from "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)" to their collaboration "Empire State of Mind" into a piano medley, in which she raised her hands and led a chant of the rapper's nickname Hov.
Breakthrough year for rap
Jay-Z is in the running for eight awards at Sunday's Grammys including Album of the Year for "4:44," a strikingly introspective work in which the rapper apologizes for infidelity to Beyonce and supports his mother as she comes out as lesbian.
The music industry's premier awards gala -- which has returned to New York after 15 years in Los Angeles -- is shaping up to be a big night for hip-hop, which for the first time makes up a majority of nominations in the top categories.
Jay-Z is already one of the most accoladed artists in Grammy history with 21 awards. But until this year he had always been passed over for the main categories.
Jay-Z grew up fatherless in Brooklyn and became a small-time drug dealer.
He is now worth an estimated $1 billion with Beyonce after amassing a business empire that includes fashion, entertainment and the Tidal streaming service.
In an interview aired Saturday on CNN for a new show of Van Jones, the community activist and former aide to president Barack Obama, Jay-Z urged African American entrepreneurship.
"Until we come to the table with our own... power base, nothing will change," he said.
Jay-Z is nominated for Record of the Year, which recognizes the top song, for "The Story of O.J.," which explores the persistence of racism with his own success as a backdrop.
Tough competition
While Jay-Z is ahead for Sunday, music industry prognosticators see fewer clear-cut favorites compared with previous years.
West Coast rapper Kendrick Lamar closely trails Jay-Z with seven nominations amid acclaim for his album "DAMN.," a return to a classic hip-hop sound by an artist known for his experimentation.
Lamar's previous album, "To Pimp a Butterfly," offered an unofficial musical soundtrack for the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality -- but, to the disappointment of many music industry watchers, was denied Album of the Year two years ago.
Album of the Year contenders also include two high-selling pop albums -- "24K Magic" by Bruno Mars, who has revived fun-loving retro funk, and "Melodrama" by Lorde, the 21-year-old pop prodigy from New Zealand.
A dark horse in the category is "'Awaken, My Love!'," the psychedelic, R&B-infused album of Childish Gambino, the rap alter ego of actor and comedian Donald Glover.
Lorde is the only woman nominated in one of the two top categories -- despite the growing attention to gender discrimination in the entertainment industry following revelations of sexual misconduct by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
In a show of support for the #MeToo movement, performers selected for the televised Grammy show include Kesha, who has taken on sexism in the industry after accusing her producer of raping her.
A group set up by female entertainment executives plans to hand out white roses as a show of solidarity with women fighting abuse.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
LOS ANGELES - Jay-Z released a music video on Friday that features the rapper addressing the pain of infidelity as he appears in a confessional booth opposite his wife Beyonce.
Set partly in a church and also featuring the couple's 5-year-old daughter Blue Ivy, the "Family Feud" video pays tribute to family ties and female empowerment.
"We all lose when the family feuds," Jay-Z sings. "A man that don't take care of his family can't be rich."
The video is the latest from Jay-Z's hit album "4:44," in which he responds to allegations of cheating revealed by Beyonce in her 2016 Grammy-winning album "Lemonade." It briefly shows an unidentified couple having sex, until the woman stabs the man in the back.
Within an hour of its release, the video was the top trending item on Twitter.
Jay-Z, 48, confirmed in a New York Times interview in November that he had been unfaithful to Beyonce earlier in their nine-year marriage.
The rapper's soul-baring "4:44" album on love, life and social issues was widely seen as an apology to his wife.
The couple, one of the richest and most influential in the music industry, have reconciled and Beyonce gave birth to their twins in June.
Heavy on symbolism, the eight-minute-long "Family Feud" video shows the musician walking into a church holding the hand of a white-clad Blue Ivy and taking a seat in the confessional booth.
Beyonce, dressed in a black, priestess-like robe, watches silently from a pulpit and later sits listening on the other side of the confessional screen.
Directed by filmmaker Ava DuVernay, the video also envisions a future in which a grown-up Blue Ivy and other women of color, portrayed by actresses Mindy Kaling, Rosario Dawson, America Ferrera, Thandie Newton and Niecy Nash, appear to rule the world.
Jay-Z has a leading eight nominations for the Grammy Awards in January, including the top prizes of best album, song and record of the year.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
