The Ronald Reagan State Building in Los Angeles houses California's 2nd District Court of Appeal, which ruled Thursday in favor of Top Dawg Entertainment on a doxing claim. (Coolcaesar/Wikimedia Commons)
Top Dawg Entertainment won a significant legal victory Thursday when a California appeals court ruled that the record label could publicly identify two women who had sued its executives for alleged sexual misconduct, despite their decision to file the case anonymously.
The ruling removes a doxing claim against the influential hip-hop and R&B label but leaves the women's underlying allegations of sexual assault, harassment and unpaid work unresolved.
In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel of California's 2nd District Court of Appeal found that TDE's decision to name the women in a February 2025 press release was protected under state law. The women had filed their lawsuit as Jane Doe and Jane Roe but had never asked a judge for permission to keep their identities confidential.
That omission proved decisive.
The court said TDE's response to the lawsuit was protected by California's anti-SLAPP law, which guards certain speech and petitioning activities against litigation. It also found that the disclosure of the women's names qualified for protection under the state's fair report privilege, which covers accurate reporting about judicial proceedings.
"TDE violated no court order or rule when it disclosed Plaintiffs' names," Justice Anne Richardson wrote for the panel.
The decision reverses a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge who had refused to dismiss the doxing claim in June 2025.
TDE, the label that helped launch Kendrick Lamar's career and established SZA as a major R&B star, has been fighting the lawsuit since December 2024.
One plaintiff alleges that Brandon Tiffith sexually battered her and that fellow executive Anthony Tiffith Jr. sexually harassed her while she provided services to the company between 2019 and 2024. She also alleges she was not paid for her work.
The second woman alleges that David Harrell, identified in court documents as a TDE employee, sexually assaulted and harassed her while she lived in a company-owned home in 2020 and 2021.
The allegations have not been proven in court.
The dispute over the women's identities began after their attorneys publicized the lawsuit on Jan. 31, 2025, using the pseudonyms from their complaint.
TDE responded the following day with a statement that identified both women by name, rejected their allegations as fabricated and described the lawsuit as a shakedown. The company also claimed the women, through their attorneys, had demanded $48 million and disputed that either had been an employee.
Four days later, the women amended their complaint to accuse the label of doxing them.
The trial judge initially sided with the women, reasoning that TDE did not need to reveal their identities to defend itself publicly.
The appeals court disagreed.
The judges emphasized that the women could have sought court authorization to proceed anonymously and might have had substantial grounds for such a request. But without that protection, the court found, their use of pseudonyms did not prevent TDE from accurately identifying who had filed the lawsuit.
The ruling does not establish that defendants are always free to identify anonymous plaintiffs. It turns on the absence of a court order, a pending request for anonymity or another applicable legal protection in this case.
Nor did the panel determine whether the original allegations were true.
Instead, it directed the trial court to grant TDE's motion to strike the doxing claim and awarded the defendants their costs on appeal.
The broader lawsuit remains unresolved, with the women still pursuing allegations stemming from their experiences with the label and people associated with it.
Megan Thee Stallion performs at the Superbloom Festival in Munich in September 2022. Ebony named her among its 2026 Power 100 Music Innovators. (Valerie Albert/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Jay-Z, Megan Thee Stallion and T.I. are among the music names on Ebony’s 2026 Power 100, while some of the other best-known musicians on the list landed in categories that have little to do with chart position.
Ebony unveiled this year’s list Monday, naming the three Music Innovators alongside Gamma co-founder and CEO Larry Jackson and HarbourView Equity Partners founder and CEO Sherrese Clarke.
The rest of the music crowd is scattered across the list.
Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz were named Artists in Residence. Common and Vic Mensa are Community Crusaders. Questlove is an Entertainment Powerhouse.
For readers who first knew those names from radio, CDs and music television, the categories come with some interesting job changes.
Ebony unveiled its 2026 Power 100 list Oct. 5, honoring figures across music, entertainment, business, sports, media, technology and community leadership. (EBONY Media Group/PR Newswire)
Ebony identifies Jay-Z as an entrepreneur and founder of Roc Nation. T.I. gets both rapper and entrepreneur. Questlove is listed as a musician, filmmaker and author. Common is identified as a rapper, actor and activist.
Megan Thee Stallion gets the simplest description of the group: Grammy-winning rapper.
The list is broader than music. Debbie Allen and novelist Colson Whitehead join Keys and Swizz Beatz among the Artists in Residence. Keke Palmer and filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood are Entertainment Powerhouses alongside Questlove.
Naomi Osaka and WNBA Players Association President Nneka Ogwumike are among the Leaders in Sports. So are five New York Knicks players: Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges.
San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama appears in Generation Next, while streamer iShowSpeed is among the Influential Creators.
See the complete 2026 Ebony Power 100
Ebony's full list includes honorees across music, entertainment, business, sports, media, technology and community leadership.
Ebony’s 2026 theme is “The Stories We Shape,” with the publication putting an emphasis on who gets to tell and control stories about Black life and culture.
“The Power 100 has always documented the people moving our culture forward,” Ebony CEO Eden Bridgeman said in announcing the list.
The 2026 Power 100 spans 10 categories.
The honorees will be celebrated Nov. 9 at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. The event is being produced with Jesse Collins Entertainment, whose credits include the BET Awards, Emmy Awards and multiple Super Bowl halftime shows.
Chris Brown performs at Jamaica National Stadium on Aug. 27, 2023. Brown is disputing harassment allegations made by Diamond Brown, the mother of his daughter Lovely, in an ongoing custody and child-support case. (Pelpa Time Production via Wikimedia Commons)
Chris Brown and the mother of his 4-year-old daughter are offering sharply different accounts of why the singer has gone months without seeing the child as their custody dispute expands to include allegations of threats, harassment and a request for at least $30,000 a month in child support.
Diamond Brown alleges in an Oct. 1 court declaration that Chris Brown threatened men she dated after their relationship ended and has harassed her both privately and on social media.
The singer denies the allegations.
He responded Monday on Instagram, accusing Diamond Brown of preventing him from seeing their daughter, Lovely Symphani Brown, while presenting what he called a “false narrative” to the court.
“I JUST WANNA SEE LOVELY!” Brown wrote in one of several posts responding to the allegations.
The dispute exposes directly conflicting accounts of the singer’s absence from his daughter’s life in recent months.
Diamond Brown alleges Chris Brown has not asked to see Lovely in six or seven months and has been uninterested in her attempts to arrange time between them, according to the declaration obtained by USA Today.
Chris Brown says the opposite.
“I HAVEN’T SEEN MY DAUGHTER IN 7 months,” he wrote Monday, accusing Diamond of not allowing him to spend time with Lovely.
Neither version has been established by the court.
Diamond Brown filed the Los Angeles case April 3, seeking legal and physical custody of Lovely while proposing visitation for Chris Brown. Her filing said the singer had previously acknowledged paternity through a voluntary declaration.
Chris Brown responded by asking for joint legal and physical custody.
Lovely was born Jan. 7, 2022.
Instagram Story screenshot
A CLOSER LOOK: In this screenshot from Instagram Stories, Chris Brown responds Monday to allegations made by Diamond Brown in an ongoing custody and child-support dispute involving their daughter, Lovely. (Chris Brown/Instagram Stories via screenshot)
The case has since widened beyond custody.
In her new declaration, Diamond Brown alleges the singer became angry when she began dating other men after their relationship ended about two years ago.
She alleges he made death threats against her most recent boyfriend and threatened the man’s twin brother. She also alleges third parties made threats and that similar conduct by Brown contributed to the end of an earlier relationship.
No court has ruled that those allegations occurred.
Diamond Brown also describes Brown’s behavior toward her as frightening and alleges he recently became angry with her in front of Lovely at a birthday party.
She says her attorney has asked Brown’s attorney since March to have him stop the alleged conduct.
According to TMZ, an email attributed to Brown’s attorney denied the allegations and asked Diamond Brown’s legal team for specific incidents that could be addressed.
Diamond Brown says in the declaration that she has tried to avoid seeking a domestic violence restraining order.
She is not requesting one in the current filing.
“I feel that I have been living under siege,” she wrote, according to USA Today.
Money has become another major point of contention.
Diamond Brown says Chris Brown agreed to pay $7,000 a month but alleges he sometimes deducts money from that amount. She is now asking the court for at least $30,000 a month in child support, along with full payment of certain additional expenses for Lovely, including medical costs, insurance, school tuition and extracurricular activities.
She is also seeking $350,000 in attorney and accounting fees.
Diamond Brown reports earning about $1,500 a month as a social media influencer and esthetician and contends that Chris Brown has not turned over financial records she says are necessary to determine support.
She estimates his net worth at more than $50 million but acknowledges in the filing that his actual income remains unknown, according to USA Today.
A separate income-and-expense declaration reported by TMZ lists Diamond Brown’s current monthly expenses at about $8,400 and proposed expenses exceeding $45,000.
That figure is not her requested monthly child-support payment.
Chris Brown disputes her characterization of what he provides.
He said Monday that he pays for two vehicles, her housing and Lovely’s schooling and medical expenses in addition to $10,000 a month.
“There is no 50/50 co parenting,” Brown wrote. “I LITERALLY PAY FOR EVERYTHING.”
The singer said those payments are documented and accused Diamond Brown of trying to provoke him into giving her material to use in court.
Diamond Brown, meanwhile, argues that the support being provided is insufficient for their daughter and alleges Brown has delayed efforts to obtain financial information in the case.
Jermaine Dupri and Jacquees are at the center of a federal copyright lawsuit brought by brothers Patrick and Van Watler of the ’90s Miami rap duo Home Team, who allege the artists’ 2023 “Pick It Up” infringes their 1992 composition of the same name.
More than three decades after Miami rap duo Home Team told listeners to “Pick It Up,” the group says Jermaine Dupri and Jacquees picked up too much.
Brothers Patrick and Van Watler have sued Dupri, Jacquees and Mass Appeal Media Inc. in federal court, alleging the 2023 Jermaine Dupri single “Pick It Up,” featuring Jacquees, infringes their 1992 song of the same name.
The lawsuit, filed Sept. 21 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleges the newer recording copies protected lyrics and musical elements from Home Team’s song without permission.
Neither the allegations nor the songs’ shared title establishes copyright infringement, and the court has not ruled on the Watlers’ claims. The defendants had not filed a substantive response to the complaint as of Tuesday.
The dispute reaches back to Miami’s early-1990s rap scene.
Home Team released its “Pick It Up” through Luke Records, the label founded by Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell and closely associated with the rise of Miami bass. Campbell was credited as an executive producer on the duo’s 1992 album, “Via Satellite From Saturn.”
HEAR THE ORIGINAL
Home Team — “Pick It Up” (1992)
The Luke Records single at the center of Patrick and Van Watler’s copyright lawsuit was released more than three decades before Jermaine Dupri and Jacquees’ recording of the same name.
The song reached Billboard’s Hot 100 in December 1992, peaking at No. 90. It also appeared on Billboard’s R&B and rap charts.
Federal copyright records identify Patrick and Van Watler as the writers of the composition’s words and music. The work, registration No. PA0000858142, is listed as having been created in 1992, published Aug. 4 of that year and registered in 1997. Lil’ Joe Wein Music Inc. is identified as the copyright claimant in the registration record.
The lawsuit gives a slightly different date, saying Home Team released the song on or around July 3, 1992.
Thirty-one years later, Dupri released another “Pick It Up,” featuring Jacquees.
WATCH
Jermaine Dupri feat. Jacquees — “Pick It Up” (2023)
Jermaine Dupri featuring Jacquees, “Pick It Up.” Official video via Jermaine Dupri/Mass Appeal.
The 2023 recording was produced by Dupri and Bryan-Michael Cox and released through Mass Appeal. Its official video features Dupri and Jacquees moving through Atlanta locations while Jacquees handles the record’s sung vocals.
The Watlers contend the similarities go beyond the title.
Their complaint alleges the newer “Pick It Up” reproduces protectable elements of Home Team’s lyrics and melody or harmony. It says the defendants did not seek or receive a license, permission or clearance to use the earlier composition.
The lawsuit, however, does not identify in its 12 pages the particular lyric, melodic phrase or harmonic passage the brothers contend was copied.
Instead, the Watlers allege that the two works are substantially similar and say the defendants have profited from the newer recording.
The complaint alleges, on information and belief, that the defendants have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from sales, streaming, licensing and other exploitation of the 2023 song. It does not provide royalty statements or other financial records supporting that figure.
The brothers are asking for considerably more than a single damages award.
Their complaint seeks an accounting of revenue connected to the newer song, songwriter credit and publishing percentages, as well as damages, attorneys’ fees and an injunction.
The prayer for relief asks for more than $150,000 in what the lawsuit describes as general damages and more than $150,000 in special damages. It also requests statutory damages under federal copyright law and additional relief against Mass Appeal.
The Watlers further want Dupri, Jacquees and the other defendants to recognize them as writers of the allegedly infringing material and to direct third parties under their control to update the song’s credits accordingly.
They have requested a jury trial.
The case is Watler et al. v. Mauldin et al., No. 1:26-cv-26546, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Summonses were issued Sept. 22 for Dupri, whose legal name is Jermaine Dupri Mauldin; Jacquees, whose legal name is Rodriguez Jacquees Broadnax; and Mass Appeal Media.
Stevie Wonder performs at the White House in Washington on Feb. 25, 2009. Wonder marked the 50th anniversary of his landmark 1976 album, “Songs in the Key of Life,” on Monday by releasing four previously unheard recordings from the album’s original sessions. (Pete Souza/Official White House Photo)
Fifty years after Stevie Wonder finished "Songs in the Key of Life," he has gone back into the vault to show there was even more music in the key.
Wonder marked the landmark album's 50th anniversary today by releasing four previously unheard recordings from its original sessions, offering a new glimpse into one of the most celebrated creative periods in popular music.
"It's Easier," "My Life Story of Love," "I Can See the Sun In Late December" and "I'm Into Livin'" make up the new four-song "Songs in the Key of Life" EP.
All four were recorded during the sessions for the sprawling double album, which was released Sept. 28, 1976.
"We've lived with 'Songs in the Key of Life' for fifty years, but there's still more to hear," Wonder said in a statement announcing the release. "We didn't add these songs to the album, but they were part of what I was feeling and discovering as we made it."
Wonder, 76, personally selected the recordings for the anniversary release. John Fischbach and Gary O Adante, two of the engineers who worked on the original album, returned to mix the previously unreleased material. Adante was credited as Gary Olazabal on the 1976 LP.
The new songs also bring back musicians whose careers became intertwined with Wonder's extraordinary run in the 1970s.
Greg Phillinganes, Michael Sembello, Ben Bridges, Jim Horn, Raymond Pounds and longtime Wonder bassist Nathan Watts are among the musicians heard on the recordings.
"I'm Into Livin'" features background vocals from Thelma Houston, Deniece Williams and Shirley Brewer. Houston was months away from taking "Don't Leave Me This Way" to No. 1, while Williams was nearing the beginning of a solo career that would produce hits including "Free" and "Let's Hear It for the Boy."
Former Supremes member Susaye Greene co-wrote "My Life Story of Love" with Wonder. Greene and Wonder later co-wrote "I Can't Help It," recorded by Michael Jackson for his 1979 album "Off the Wall."
There is even a piece of studio lore connecting the new release to the marathon sessions that produced the original album.
According to Wonder's team, the final session ended at 4:54 a.m., prompting Watts to exclaim, "Fo'FiftyFo'!" The phrase became an inside joke used around Wonder's circle to mark the end of a session.
The four recordings arriving 50 years later make that ending a little less final.
"Songs in the Key of Life" was already unusually expansive when Wonder finally released it. The original package contained two LPs and a four-song bonus EP, "A Something's Extra," after roughly two years of recording.
It entered Billboard's album chart at No. 1, making Wonder the first American artist to debut an album in the top spot, and remained No. 1 for 14 weeks.
The album produced two No. 1 singles, "I Wish" and "Sir Duke," while songs including "Isn't She Lovely," "As," "Pastime Paradise" and "Love's in Need of Love Today" became enduring pieces of Wonder's catalog.
It also completed one of the most remarkable Grammy runs in music history.
"Songs in the Key of Life" won album of the year in 1977, giving Wonder his third victory in the category in four years following "Innervisions" and "Fulfillingness' First Finale." The Recording Academy inducted the album into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002, and the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2005.
Wonder isn't limiting the 50th anniversary to the vault.
He will take "Songs in the Key of Life" back on the road beginning Oct. 13 in Birmingham, England, performing the album in its entirety on an 18-date tour through Europe and the United States.
The U.S. leg begins Nov. 19 at Madison Square Garden in New York and includes stops in Chicago and Washington before a two-night homecoming in Detroit on Dec. 8-9. The tour is scheduled to close Dec. 19 at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.
Stevie Wonder • 18 Dates
“Songs in the Key of Life Performances — 50th Anniversary Tour”
Lil Durk, whose legal name is Durk Banks, is shown in an Oct. 24, 2024, booking photo. A federal jury in Los Angeles acquitted the Grammy-winning rapper Friday on all five counts in his murder-for-hire trial. (Broward Sheriff's Office)
Lil Durk was acquitted Friday on all five counts in the federal murder-for-hire trial that threatened to send the Grammy-winning Chicago rapper to prison for life.
A jury in Los Angeles rejected prosecutors' case that Durk, whose legal name is Durk Banks, helped organize and finance a 2022 plot to kill rapper Quando Rondo in retaliation for the death of King Von.
Rondo survived the attack.
His cousin, Saviay'a Robinson, 24, was killed.
The five not-guilty verdicts cleared Durk of every charge the jury was asked to decide in this trial, including stalking and murder-for-hire allegations stemming from the Aug. 19, 2022, shooting near the Beverly Center.
Durk wiped away tears as the verdicts were read, according to courtroom reporting from the Los Angeles Times.
The decision came after two weeks of testimony and three days of deliberations in a case built largely around whether prosecutors could connect Durk to an attack carried out by other men.
The shooting itself was not the central dispute.
Prosecutors said gunmen tracked Rondo, whose legal name is Tyquian Bowman, through Los Angeles before opening fire near a gas station. Robinson was killed while Rondo, the government's alleged intended target, escaped the gunfire.
The question for jurors was whether prosecutors had proved Durk's criminal responsibility for what happened.
The government argued that the attack grew out of the November 2020 killing of Dayvon Bennett, better known as King Von, after a fight involving Rondo outside an Atlanta nightclub.
Prosecutors alleged Durk sought revenge, put money behind the effort to kill Rondo and used people and resources connected to his Only the Family organization to help make it happen.
Durk was never accused of being one of the gunmen in Los Angeles.
Instead, prosecutors relied on conspiracy and other theories of liability that did not require him to personally pull a trigger. They presented travel records, financial evidence and testimony from three cooperating witnesses who had been inside Durk's circle or involved in the attack.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Yanniello told jurors during closing arguments that Durk had his "shooters on speed dial," arguing that the attack would not have happened without his money and influence.
The defense told a very different story.
Durk's lawyers argued that former personal assistant Kavon Grant organized the attack himself and had access to Durk's money and other resources without needing authorization for everything he did.
They also attacked the credibility of Grant and two other cooperating witnesses, arguing that each had powerful reasons to help prosecutors after becoming implicated in the case themselves.
Attorneys Brian Steel and Drew Findling repeatedly argued that the government had witnesses who could describe the plot but lacked reliable proof tying Durk himself to an agreement to carry it out.
Jurors appeared to focus closely on that distinction during deliberations.
On Thursday, the panel asked U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald questions involving intent and conspiracy. Jurors had previously requested easier digital access to the evidence admitted during the trial.
By Friday, they had reached their answer.
Not guilty on all five counts against Durk.
The result was different for the two men tried alongside him.
Deondre Wilson and David Lindsey were convicted of conspiracy to commit stalking, stalking with a dangerous weapon and stalking resulting in death. They were acquitted on the murder-for-hire charges.
For Durk, however, Friday's verdict does not resolve every federal allegation hanging over him.
Fitzgerald ruled in July that newly added racketeering-related charges would be separated from the murder-for-hire trial and considered in a later proceeding.
Those allegations broadened the government's case beyond the 2022 Los Angeles shooting and included accusations of other violence connected to what prosecutors characterize as a criminal enterprise associated with Durk and OTF.
Durk has denied the allegations. He remained in federal custody Friday pending the separate case. That means the acquittal represents a complete victory for Durk on the five charges decided by Friday's jury, but not the end of his federal legal problems.
Timothy “Buc Wild” Joseph, the broadcaster who helped take “Star & Buc Wild” from Manhattan public-access television to MTV and one of the most visible morning shows in New York hip-hop radio, has died. He was 47.
His older half-brother and longtime broadcasting partner, Troi “Star” Torain, announced Joseph’s death during a livestream Wednesday, saying his brother died Sunday, Sept. 6.
A cause of death has not been publicly confirmed.
Torain described Joseph as someone who was “like a son” to him and spoke about a side of his brother that listeners rarely heard on the air. Joseph struggled with dyslexia, Torain said, and the two worked on his reading while they were at Hot 97, with station executives Tracy Cloherty and Judy Ellis among those who supported him.
For listeners who remember New York hip-hop radio at the turn of the millennium, Buc Wild was part of a name that seemed to turn up everywhere for a while — in print, on television and eventually in morning drive.
The idea started with Torain’s “Reality Check” column in The Source, where he developed the Star and Buc Wild characters during the 1990s. In 1998, the concept became a public-access television show on Manhattan Neighborhood Network, with Joseph beside his brother as Buc Wild.
A year later, MTV brought the pair to “Beat Suite,” a weekday music program that gave the act a national platform.
Radio made the name considerably bigger.
By March 2000, Hot 97 had moved Star and Buc Wild into morning drive alongside Miss Jones and DJ Enuff. Contemporary radio-trade coverage identified Joseph as Torain’s partner as the station assembled a show designed to compete in one of the most important and closely watched radio markets in the country.
The timing mattered.
This was an era when New York terrestrial radio could still shape the daily conversation around hip-hop. A record could gain momentum because Hot 97 played it. An interview could become news before the morning show was over. On-air personalities were not merely introducing songs; they were part of the culture surrounding them.
Torain supplied much of the confrontation that made “Star & Buc Wild” famous — and frequently infamous. Joseph played a different role.
Torain later described Buc Wild as the younger voice who helped keep him connected to artists, records and changes in the culture. That dynamic gave the show its balance: Star pushed, provoked and argued, while Buc Wild operated closer to the music and the younger audience the program was trying to reach.
The Hot 97 run lasted until 2003. Star & Buc Wild subsequently signed with Clear Channel and worked in Hartford before the brand returned to New York at rival Power 105.1.
That part of the history is more complicated than many retrospectives suggest.
By July 2005, Torain told the radio trade publication Radio & Records that Joseph had been the original Buc Wild, but another staffer, Kaheem, was then filling the role. By that point, “Buc Wild” had effectively become both Joseph’s broadcasting identity and a character within the larger Star & Buc Wild franchise.
It is an important distinction when tracing Joseph’s career.
The Power 105.1 show ended in 2006 after Torain made threatening, racist and sexually explicit remarks involving the family of rival Hot 97 personality DJ Envy. Clear Channel fired Torain after the broadcast.
Contemporary reports attributed those remarks to Torain, not Joseph.
Joseph eventually reunited with his brother on the air. In late 2007, The Associated Press reported that Torain and Joseph were preparing to return together to New York morning radio, and Pulse 87 launched in 2008 with “Star & Buc Wild” in its morning lineup.
By then, the media environment that had made their name was beginning to change.
The kind of personality-driven, free-form hip-hop conversation that once required space in a magazine, a public-access slot or a terrestrial radio signal was moving online. Blogs, streaming video, podcasts and social media would eventually make that style of commentary available to anyone with an audience.
Torain followed it there, building “The Star Report” online and continuing the confrontational broadcasting style that had defined much of his career.
Joseph became far less visible.
That makes Torain’s remembrance of his brother more revealing than another rundown of radio stations and controversies. Behind the deliberately outsized Buc Wild character was a younger brother navigating dyslexia, learning the business and helping turn an idea that began in a magazine column into a recognizable name in hip-hop media.
“Star & Buc Wild” was never built to be restrained. Provocation was part of the product, and the show repeatedly pushed — and sometimes crossed — the limits of what radio stations were prepared to put on the air.
But Joseph’s place in that history is more specific than the controversies surrounding the brand.
He was there before the major stations and before the national exposure. He was beside Torain when “Star & Buc Wild” was a public-access show, when MTV came calling and when Hot 97 put the pair in front of New York every morning.
The Buc Wild role would eventually be filled by someone else.
Stevie Wonder performs at the White House in Washington on Feb. 25, 2009. Wonder has announced an 18-date tour celebrating 50 years of his 1976 album “Songs in the Key of Life.” (Pete Souza/Official White House Photo)
There are anniversary tours, and then there is Stevie Wonder going back to "Songs in the Key of Life."
Fifty years after releasing the sprawling album that gave him his third Grammy Award for album of the year, Wonder will perform it in its entirety during an 18-date tour of Europe and the United States this fall.
The "Songs in the Key of Life Performances — 50th Anniversary Tour" opens Oct. 13 in Birmingham, England, and runs through Dec. 19 at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. The U.S. portion begins Nov. 19 at Madison Square Garden in New York, followed by Chicago, Washington, D.C., two nights in Detroit and the California finale.
Few albums are better suited to the treatment.
Released in 1976, "Songs in the Key of Life" stretched across two LPs and an additional four-song EP, with Wonder moving through love songs, childhood memories, social criticism, spirituality, jazz, funk and celebrations of Black history and achievement.
"I Wish" looked back at childhood. "Sir Duke" saluted Duke Ellington and the Black musical tradition that preceded Wonder. "Isn't She Lovely" celebrated the birth of his daughter Aisha. Elsewhere, songs including "Village Ghetto Land," "Black Man" and "Pastime Paradise" confronted inequality, history and the world Wonder saw around him.
The scale of the record was matched by its reception.
"Songs in the Key of Life" won album of the year at the 1977 Grammy Awards, giving Wonder his third victory in the category following "Innervisions" and "Fulfillingness' First Finale." He also won producer of the year, non-classical, at the same ceremony.
The Library of Congress added the album to the National Recording Registry in 2005.
Its account of the sessions describes a process that sometimes stretched to 48 hours at a time and notes contributions from musicians including Nathan Watts, Raymond Pounds, Greg Phillinganes, Ben Bridges, Mike Sembello and Herbie Hancock.
The album's reach also extended far beyond the generation that bought it in 1976.
"Pastime Paradise" became part of the foundation for Coolio's 1995 smash "Gangsta's Paradise," while Wonder's melodies, arrangements and production have continued to echo through R&B, hip-hop and pop. That makes the anniversary particularly relevant for listeners who may have first encountered pieces of "Songs in the Key of Life" through records made decades later.
Wonder has revisited the album onstage before. He mounted a North American "Songs in the Key of Life" performance tour beginning in 2014, later extending the run into 2015.
The difference now is the calendar.
The music Wonder took on the road a decade ago was already part of the canon. Fifty years after its release, "Songs in the Key of Life" has had another decade to travel through generations, genres and other artists' records.
This fall, Wonder is going back to the source.
Stevie Wonder • 18 Dates
“Songs in the Key of Life Performances — 50th Anniversary Tour”
The cover art for "Muse," the upcoming album by John Legend. Produced entirely by Pharrell Williams, the 16-track project is scheduled for release on Oct. 23. (Photo courtesy of Republic Records)
John Legend and Pharrell Williams have known each other for more than two decades.
Somehow, they had never made an album together.
That changes Oct. 23 with “Muse,” a 16-track John Legend album produced entirely by Pharrell and built around an idea that sounds considerably different from the piano ballads that have defined much of Legend’s career.
Legend announced the album Tuesday alongside “Daylight,” its first single. He previewed the song Monday during CBS’ “America’s Tailgate” special in Nashville.
The collaboration may seem overdue for two artists whose careers have overlapped since the early 2000s. Legend said that was essentially his reaction when Pharrell approached him.
“A lot of people would have imagined we’d done something like this already, but we hadn’t,” Legend said in the album announcement. “It felt past due.”
The path to “Muse” began with another reunion from that era.
Legend appeared on “The Birds Don’t Sing,” from Clipse’s 2025 comeback album, “Let God Sort ’Em Out.” Pharrell, who produced that album, heard something in Legend’s performance that made him want to build an entire project around his voice.
The two convened in Paris in January 2025, working from Pharrell’s studio at Louis Vuitton headquarters, where he serves as men’s creative director.
The idea was not to make another conventional John Legend record.
“I think my repertoire has always been very diverse, but the piano-driven ballads have gotten the most traction throughout my career,” Legend said. “I wanted to shake up the formula and do something fresh and new.”
Pharrell’s concept reached across generations of Black music, drawing from gospel, doo-wop, classic soul, standards, Afrobeat and hip-hop. Legend cited Nina Simone, Nat King Cole and Marvin Gaye among the album’s musical reference points.
The visual and sonic shorthand the pair settled on was even more specific.
Legend described Pharrell’s original vision as a “Black James Bond aesthetic” — classic and cinematic, but driven by a modern beat.
That approach can be heard across a record that puts horns and strings alongside contemporary production and occasionally pulls Legend considerably farther from his usual territory.
It also required him to surrender some control.
Legend said he recorded songs Pharrell wrote entirely himself, something he “almost never” does. Pharrell appears on six of the album’s 16 tracks, while Clipse returns the favor by appearing on “Bodies on the Floor.”
For Legend, the unusual arrangement became an exercise in trust.
“It’s not about winning the argument or ego,” he said. “It’s about the music winning. Every battle should be won by the art.”
The album also reaches backward without being designed as a nostalgia project.
Legend said the title “Muse” partly refers to the Muses of Greek mythology, but he connected the idea directly to the Black artists and traditions that shaped his own music.
“Our ancestors are our muses,” Legend said. “My music has always been me channeling the ancestors, taking what they gave us and making something new.”
Listeners have already heard one piece of the collaboration without necessarily knowing an album was coming.
“Pray For Ya,” another “Muse” track, debuted during Louis Vuitton’s Fall-Winter 2026 men’s show in January. The newly released “Daylight” is the project’s first official single.
Other songs include “Her,” which draws from gospel and doo-wop; the horn-and-string-heavy “Get Back”; “Are You OK?”; “Under the Bridge”; “Doing Me”; “Fireflies”; and “Sail Off.”
The project arrives more than 20 years after Legend introduced himself with “Get Lifted” in 2004 and Pharrell helped define the sound of the same era through his work with Chad Hugo as the Neptunes.
Legend is not treating that longevity as permission to coast.
“There are plenty of artists who get to a point in their career where they don’t make anything new,” he said. “We can just play the hits; we can stay in our comfort zone.”
For “Muse,” he chose the other option.
“I believe it’s important to keep the mindset that I have to continue to prove myself,” Legend said. “I wanted this album to have that sense of urgency — to feel like something that needed to be made and is fully worthy of my audience’s attention.”
“Muse” will be released Oct. 23 through Republic Records.
Cassandra Wilson performs at the Ottawa Bluesfest in Ottawa, Ontario, on July 3, 2008. The two-time Grammy Award winner, whose rich contralto and adventurous approach brought jazz into conversation with blues, R&B, folk and other musical traditions, died Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026, in her native Jackson, Mississippi. She was 70. (Photo by Scott Penner/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Cassandra Wilson, the two-time Grammy-winning singer whose unmistakable contralto carried blues, R&B, folk, country and the sounds of her native Mississippi into some of the most adventurous jazz recordings of her generation, has died. She was 70.
Wilson died Tuesday morning in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, Hinds County Coroner Jeramiah Howard confirmed. Her longtime manager, Robert Torre, announced her death Wednesday, saying Wilson died peacefully at home surrounded by family and close friends.
A cause of death was not announced.
Wilson emerged as a major voice in the 1980s and became one of jazz's most distinctive stars during the following decade, challenging expectations about both what a jazz singer should sound like and what songs belonged in a jazz repertoire.
Her breakthrough 1993 album, “Blue Light ’Til Dawn,” drew from blues, jazz, folk and popular music and included her interpretations of songs associated with Robert Johnson, Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell.
“New Moon Daughter” pushed the idea further in 1995, moving from Billie Holiday and Son House to Hank Williams, Neil Young and the Monkees without losing the musical identity holding it together.
The album earned Wilson her first Grammy Award for best jazz vocal performance.
She would win again for “Loverly,” released in 2008, and received four Grammy nominations during her career.
Wilson's reach also extended into hip-hop during a period when the genre's relationship with jazz was rapidly evolving. She appeared on “Swept Away” from the Roots' 1995 album “Do You Want More?!!!??!,” a record that helped establish the Philadelphia group's live-band approach to hip-hop.
For Wilson, crossing those boundaries was less a detour than an extension of where she came from.
Born in Jackson in 1955, she grew up listening to music that included Motown, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. Her father, Herman B. Fowlkes, was a musician, and Wilson began piano lessons at 6 before taking up other instruments.
After spending time in New Orleans, she moved to New York in the early 1980s and became associated with saxophonist Steve Coleman and the M-Base Collective, the experimental group of musicians whose ideas helped reshape contemporary jazz.
Wilson eventually moved toward the spacious, acoustic sound that became one of her signatures.
Her low, instantly identifiable voice could make familiar material sound as though it had originated somewhere else entirely.
That quality allowed Wilson to move through musical traditions that were often separated by genre labels — Delta blues, jazz standards, rock, folk, R&B and country — while keeping Mississippi at the center of her sound.
Jon Batiste, who toured with Wilson early in his career, remembered that quality Wednesday.
In a tribute posted after her death, Batiste wrote that Wilson's combination of folkloric, R&B, diasporic, experimental and popular music had a major influence on him. He said her Mississippi heritage remained present regardless of how far her music traveled stylistically.
“She was one of the first people to take me on tour around the world, the great Cassandra Wilson,” Batiste wrote.
Jackson Mayor John Horhn also paid tribute to Wilson, saying the city had lost an extraordinary native daughter and the world a singular musical voice.
Wilson's later work continued to resist easy categorization.
In 2015, she released “Coming Forth by Day,” an album honoring Billie Holiday released during the centennial of Holiday's birth. It would become Wilson's final studio album.
The National Endowment for the Arts named Wilson a Jazz Master in 2022, placing her among recipients of one of the nation's highest honors for jazz musicians.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, shown in a 2023 booking photo, was found guilty Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, of first-degree murder in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur. The Las Vegas jury deliberated for less than three hours before convicting Davis, the only person ever charged in the nearly 30-year-old case. (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department)
Nearly 30 years after Tupac Shakur was gunned down on a Las Vegas street, the only person ever charged in his killing has been convicted of murder.
A Las Vegas jury found Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon Monday, delivering the first criminal conviction in a case that spent decades as one of hip-hop’s most infamous unsolved killings.
Jurors deliberated for less than three hours.
Davis, 63, was not accused of firing the shots that killed Shakur. Prosecutors instead argued that the former South Side Compton Crips leader helped organize the retaliatory attack and provided the gun used in the shooting.
Under Nevada law, prosecutors did not have to prove Davis pulled the trigger to hold him criminally responsible for Shakur’s death.
The verdict caps a case with an unusual history: For years, authorities could not bring charges in Shakur’s killing. Then Davis began publicly telling the story himself.
His accounts in interviews, a documentary, conversations with investigators and his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” eventually became central to the prosecution’s case against him.
Shakur was shot Sept. 7, 1996, after attending a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Earlier that night, Shakur, Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight and others encountered Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, inside the hotel. Surveillance video captured Shakur and members of his entourage attacking Anderson.
Prosecutors argued that the beating set a revenge plot in motion.
Davis and three other men got into a white Cadillac and went looking for Shakur and Knight, prosecutors said. They eventually found the pair in a BMW stopped near the Las Vegas Strip.
Someone inside the Cadillac opened fire.
Shakur was struck multiple times. Knight was wounded but survived.
Shakur died six days later at a Las Vegas hospital. He was 25.
Davis has acknowledged being in the Cadillac but maintained that he was not the shooter. In previous accounts, he described passing a gun toward the vehicle’s back seat.
Prosecutors used those accounts to argue that Davis was not merely a witness to the killing but an active participant in it.
During closing arguments Monday, Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that determining who actually pulled the trigger was not necessary to determine Davis’ guilt.
The defense offered a striking counterargument: Davis could not be trusted.
Defense attorney Michael Sanft argued that Davis embellished or fabricated portions of his accounts and that prosecutors lacked physical evidence independently tying him to the murder. The defense also pointed to inconsistencies in Davis’ various versions of what happened that night.
That argument required jurors to consider whether the man who spent years publicly describing his presence in the car and his involvement in the events surrounding Shakur’s death had been telling the truth then — or was telling the truth now when he denied criminal responsibility.
The jury sided with prosecutors.
The conviction provides a courtroom resolution to a killing that became inseparable from the mythology surrounding one of rap’s most influential artists.
Shakur was already a major star when he was killed, but 1996 had pushed his career to another level. His fourth studio album, “All Eyez on Me,” had arrived in February as a sprawling double album featuring “California Love,” “How Do U Want It” and “I Ain’t Mad at Cha.”
His death also came during a turbulent period in hip-hop, amid the heavily publicized rivalry involving artists and labels associated with the East and West coasts.
For years afterward, theories about Shakur’s killing flourished while the case remained officially unresolved.
Davis increasingly inserted himself into that history.
A once-secret 2008 interview with investigators became particularly important at trial. Davis spoke to authorities while they were investigating the killing of Christopher Wallace, the rapper known as the Notorious B.I.G., who was fatally shot in Los Angeles six months after Shakur’s death.
Davis later discussed the Shakur shooting publicly, including in the 2018 documentary series “Death Row Chronicles” and in “Compton Street Legend,” published the following year.
Those public disclosures ultimately helped investigators take another look at the long-dormant case.
Las Vegas police arrested Davis in September 2023 after a grand jury indicted him on a murder charge.
By then, the three other men authorities identified as occupants of the Cadillac were dead, leaving Davis as the only person from the vehicle who could face prosecution.
Three decades after the gunfire that killed Shakur, a jury has now held him criminally responsible.
Rapper Lil Durk, whose legal name is Durk Devontay Banks, is shown in an October 2024 booking photo following his arrest in Broward County, Fla. Banks has pleaded not guilty to federal charges stemming from an alleged murder-for-hire plot targeting rapper Quando Rondo in Los Angeles in 2022. (Broward Sheriff’s Office)
Lil Durk’s federal murder-for-hire trial opened with two sharply different explanations for a 2022 Los Angeles ambush that left one man dead.
Prosecutors told jurors Monday that the Grammy-winning Chicago rapper financed a revenge plot against Quando Rondo after the killing of King Von.
Durk’s defense says the government has the wrong mastermind.
Attorneys for the rapper, whose legal name is Durk Devontay Banks, instead pointed to former personal assistant Kavon Grant, one of three alleged co-conspirators who have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
“This is a case about revenge, stalking and premeditated murder,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel H. Weiner told jurors, according to the *Los Angeles Times*.
Banks, 33, has pleaded not guilty.
The federal case centers on the Aug. 19, 2022, shooting outside a gas station near the Beverly Center in Los Angeles.
Prosecutors allege Banks wanted Tyquian Bowman, the Georgia rapper known professionally as Quando Rondo, killed in retaliation for the November 2020 death of Dayvon “King Von” Bennett.
Von was fatally shot following a confrontation outside an Atlanta nightclub involving members of Bowman’s entourage.
Nearly two years later, prosecutors say a group associated with Banks traveled from Chicago to Southern California, tracked Bowman and eventually attacked his vehicle.
Bowman survived.
His cousin, 24-year-old Saviay’a Robinson, was shot and killed.
In his opening statement Monday, Weiner portrayed Banks as the person who supplied both the motive and the resources behind the alleged plot.
“It was defendant Banks’ beef, it was defendant Banks’ money, it was defendant Banks’ hit men,” Weiner told the jury, according to the *Times*.
Banks was not at the scene of the shooting, a point his defense highlighted as it challenged the government’s attempt to connect him to the attack.
Attorney Marissa Goldberg told jurors that Grant — not Banks — arranged the operation.
According to the defense, Grant booked hotels, obtained vehicles and purchased ski masks before the shooting. Goldberg argued that Grant later implicated Banks after becoming a cooperating witness, giving prosecutors the celebrity defendant she described as a “big fish.”
“Mr. Banks had nothing to do with it,” Goldberg told jurors.
That dispute could become one of the trial’s defining questions.
Grant has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify for the government. So have Keith Jones and Kacey “OTF Jam” Hester, according to prosecutors.
Banks is being tried alongside Deondre Dontrell Wilson and David Brian Lindsey. Both men also deny the charges against them.
Federal prosecutors contend the group followed Bowman around Los Angeles before gunmen opened fire at the gas station. Robinson was struck several times and died from his injuries.
The defense is attacking not only the government’s cooperating witnesses but also one of the more culturally sensitive elements of the prosecution: Banks’ music.
Goldberg told jurors prosecutors are expected to introduce songs and lyrics while trying to establish Banks’ state of mind and connection to the alleged revenge plot.
She characterized the material as artistic expression rather than evidence of a murder agreement.
“This is art, this is performance,” Goldberg said.
Banks’ lawyers also say prosecutors cannot show that he actually paid or promised to pay anyone for Robinson’s killing.
“There is no money to follow,” Goldberg told the jury.
The distinction matters because prosecutors are asking jurors to find that Banks was not merely angry about Von’s death or acquainted with people who committed the shooting, but that he knowingly participated in an agreement to have Bowman killed.
The government says financial and logistical evidence, communications and testimony from cooperating defendants will establish that connection.
The defense says those same cooperating witnesses have powerful reasons to shift responsibility toward Banks as they await sentencing.
Banks’ music career adds an unusual backdrop to the proceedings.
He won his first Grammy in 2024 for “All My Life,” his collaboration with J. Cole, taking home the award for best melodic rap performance. He is also the founder of Only the Family, commonly known as OTF.
The trial does not include every allegation federal prosecutors have made against Banks.
A federal grand jury added separate racketeering-related allegations this summer involving other alleged violence in Chicago and Atlanta. Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald ordered those counts tried separately, keeping the current proceeding focused on the Los Angeles case.
Those allegations remain unresolved and are not evidence of Banks’ guilt in the trial now before jurors.
Banks has remained in federal custody since his October 2024 arrest in South Florida.
Monday’s opening statements were only the beginning of what is expected to be a closely watched trial built around competing interpretations of the same relationships, communications and witnesses.
Prosecutors say Banks used his money and influence to turn grief over King Von’s death into a murder plot.
His lawyers say the people who actually organized the attack are now trying to save themselves by putting Lil Durk at the center of it.
A collage of C+C Music Factory album covers traces the group’s recording history from “Gonna Make You Sweat” in 1990 through “Anything Goes!” in 1994 and the self-titled “C+C Music Factory” in 1995. Co-founder Robert Clivillés is suing Freedom Williams over rights to the group’s name and federal trademark.
The dispute asks a surprisingly complicated question about one of the biggest dance acts of the early ’90s: Who has the right to call something C+C Music Factory?
The argument over who gets to use the C+C Music Factory name has moved from interviews, trademark proceedings and social media into federal court.
Robert Clivillés, who created the hitmaking dance act with the late producer David Cole, filed a nine-count lawsuit against rapper Freedom Williams and two companies associated with him, accusing them of improperly exploiting the C+C Music Factory name.
The defendants are Williams, Freedom Williams Entertainment LLC and Big Mac Entertainment LLC, along with 20 unidentified defendants.
Clivillés alleges trademark infringement, false designation of origin, fraud on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, unfair competition, unjust enrichment, fraud, defamation and breach of contract. He is also asking the court to cancel the federal trademark registration held by Freedom Williams Entertainment.
The filing seeks at least $10 million in compensatory damages. Clivillés asks the court to treble that amount under the federal Lanham Act, which would bring that portion of his requested award to at least $30 million. He is additionally seeking punitive damages, defendants’ profits, costs and injunctive relief.
No court has awarded him any of that money.
At the center of the case is a name familiar to anyone who was near a radio, dance floor or MTV in 1991.
Clivillés argues that the two C’s refer specifically to himself and Cole.
“The name C+C Music Factory stands for Clivillés and Cole Music Factory,” the complaint says.
He contends that Williams was a featured rapper and vocalist on C+C recordings rather than a founder or owner of the act and therefore never acquired the right to turn the group name into his own performing brand.
Williams’ side disputes that conclusion.
Attorney Charles F. Schmitt, who has represented Freedom Williams Entertainment in trademark matters, told Billboard that the new claims are meritless and that Williams is the lawful owner of the registered mark. Schmitt also argues that an earlier trademark challenge brought by Clivillés was dismissed with prejudice and that Clivillés should not get another attempt to undo the registration.
That earlier case makes the current dispute considerably more complicated than a simple fight between a founder and a former performer.
Freedom Williams Entertainment owns federal Registration No. 4775972 for the mark C & C MUSIC FACTORY, covering entertainment services.
USPTO records show the company applied for the mark in October 2014. The registration was issued July 21, 2015 and has since been maintained.
Clivillés challenged it before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in December 2016. That proceeding never produced a decision deciding who originally owned the name.
Instead, the board issued an order in May 2018 after Clivillés failed to file his trial brief. When no response was filed to that order, the board entered judgment against him and dismissed the cancellation proceeding with prejudice on June 25, 2018.
Clivillés emphasizes in his new complaint that the board did not decide the underlying ownership allegations on their merits.
Williams’ attorney emphasizes the other half of the equation: The proceeding was nevertheless dismissed with prejudice.
Whether that earlier judgment prevents Clivillés from pursuing some or all of his present claims is now one of the legal issues hanging over the federal case.
The fight has roots stretching much further back.
Clivillés and Cole emerged from New York’s dance-club scene and became an in-demand production and remixing team before launching C+C Music Factory around 1990.
Their debut album, “Gonna Make You Sweat,” became one of the defining crossover dance records of the period.
Its title track, “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” featured Williams’ rap and Martha Wash’s powerhouse vocal. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in February 1991, while the album later climbed to No. 2.
“Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll)” and “Things That Make You Go Hmmm...” extended the run, with Williams prominently featured on both.
The structure of C+C Music Factory was never as straightforward as a traditional band standing together behind microphones.
Clivillés and Cole were its central production team, while different rappers and singers appeared across its records. Contemporary coverage routinely identified Williams as the rapper associated with the group, while Columbia releases billed tracks such as “Gonna Make You Sweat” as C+C Music Factory featuring Freedom Williams.
The act’s history also includes one of the era’s best-known disputes over performer credit.
Wash sang the explosive vocal heard throughout “Gonna Make You Sweat,” but Zelma Davis appeared lip-syncing that part in its original music video. After Wash objected and sued, MTV added an on-screen notice distinguishing Wash’s vocals from Davis’ visual appearance.
Long before the current trademark case, Williams had his own legal dispute with Clivillés and Cole.
In 1992, Williams filed a $10 million lawsuit alleging the producers had cheated him out of royalties and breached obligations connected with his recording and management agreements.
Williams subsequently pursued a solo career.
Cole died in New York in January 1995 at 32. Clivillés continued working as a producer, songwriter and remixer.
The current complaint alleges that Williams later began performing concerts under the C+C Music Factory name and eventually obtained trademark registrations without Clivillés’ authorization.
Williams has publicly offered a different account.
In a 2019 interview, he said he had continued performing and representing the music when Clivillés was no longer touring with him and defended his decision to secure the trademark.
The dispute flared publicly again this year.
After Williams became associated with a planned Freedom 250 concert series in Washington, D.C., Clivillés used social media to distance himself from Williams’ participation and comments and argued publicly that Williams did not speak for the C+C Music Factory legacy.
Clivillés threatened legal action in June.
Ten days after that warning, according to the new complaint, Big Mac Entertainment released “Into the Future,” a new recording marketed on digital services under the C+C Music Factory name alongside Williams and Mark Walker.
The June 12 release is independently listed by digital music services under C+C Music Factory, Freedom Williams and Walker, with Big Mac Entertainment as the label.
Clivillés cites that release as evidence that what had been a long-running dispute over live appearances had expanded into new recordings.
He is asking the federal court to stop Williams and the other defendants from using the C+C Music Factory name for performances, recordings and other commercial activity.
He also wants Registration No. 4775972 canceled, “Into the Future” and other disputed recordings removed from digital services, and administrative control of the long-running C+C Music Factory Instagram account transferred to him.
Clivillés filed a separate motion seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction on the same day as the complaint.
None of those requests should be confused with a court ruling.
At this stage, they are Clivillés’ allegations and requested remedies, and Williams disputes his underlying claim to the name.
Thirty-five years after C+C Music Factory made “Gonna Make You Sweat” unavoidable, the new lawsuit is not really asking a court to decide who audiences remember from the record.
Williams’ voice is part of that history. So are Wash’s vocals, Davis’ image and the work of numerous singers and musicians who passed through what was deliberately constructed as a “music factory.”
The legal question is narrower — and potentially much harder.
