Timothy Joseph, the Original Buc Wild of ‘Star & Buc Wild,’ Dies at 47

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.

Timothy Joseph was the original.

Stevie Wonder to Play ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ From Start to Finish on Anniversary Tour

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”

Europe & United States • Fall 2026

Oct. 13

Birmingham, England
Utilita Arena

Oct. 15

Paris
Accor Arena

Oct. 18

Copenhagen, Denmark
Royal Arena

Oct. 20

Oslo, Norway
Unity Arena

Oct. 22

Stockholm
3Arena

Oct. 24

Hannover, Germany
ZAG Arena

Oct. 26

Cologne, Germany
LANXESS Arena

Oct. 28

Amsterdam
Ziggo Dome

Nov. 1

Dublin
3Arena

Nov. 3

London
The O2

Nov. 8

Manchester, England
Co-op Live

Nov. 11

Glasgow, Scotland
OVO Hydro

U.S. Dates

Nov. 19

New York
Madison Square Garden

Nov. 21

Chicago
United Center

Nov. 23

Washington, D.C.
Capital One Arena

Dec. 8

Detroit
Fox Theatre

Dec. 9

Detroit
Fox Theatre

Dec. 19

Inglewood, Calif.
Intuit Dome

John Legend Steps Outside His Comfort Zone With Pharrell-Produced ‘Muse’

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.

Beyoncé Reopens ‘B’Day’ 20 Years Later With Selena, Celia Cruz and Unreleased Music

Beyoncé poses with an alligator in an image from the “B’Day” era photographed by Max Vadukul. The image is part of the album’s 20th-anniversary rollout, which includes a 31-track digital deluxe edition, previously unreleased material and newly remastered videos. (Max Vadukul/Parkwood Entertainment)

Beyoncé marked her 25th birthday with the worldwide release of "B'Day."

Twenty years later, she is celebrating her 45th by opening the vault.

The superstar released an expanded 20th-anniversary edition of her second solo album Friday, turning what could have been a routine remaster into a 31-track revisit of one of the most aggressive records of her early solo career.

"B'Day (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)" brings together the original album, B-sides and previously unreleased material while adding new recordings that connect Beyoncé's Texas roots to Selena and reach into Afro-Cuban music through Celia Cruz.

The biggest surprise is “Irreemplazable (Como La Flor),” a new posthumous pairing that combines Beyoncé's Spanish-language “Irreplaceable” with Selena's “Como La Flor.”

 

According to Parkwood Entertainment, Selena's estate approved the use of her music for the recording. Beyoncé has said she grew up hearing Selena on the radio in Houston and credits her as an inspiration for "Irreemplazable," the Spanish-language EP Beyoncé released in 2007.

The connection is more than convenient anniversary packaging.

Beyoncé and Selena were both Texas-born performers who crossed musical and cultural boundaries on their way to international stardom. Beyoncé even recalled briefly meeting Selena at The Galleria in Houston before Selena's 1995 death, a story she discussed years later while reflecting on the singer's influence.

The anniversary edition makes that connection musical.

It also gives “Get Me Bodied” a new life.

“Cuerpo (Tumbao),” featuring Colombian star Maluma, reworks the "B'Day" favorite while sampling Celia Cruz's “La Negra Tiene Tumbao.” Parkwood said Beyoncé chose the Cruz connection in part because of her admiration for the Cuban singer's pride in her African culture and her refusal to bend in the face of racism, colorism and narrow standards of beauty.

For an album turning 20, those additions push "B'Day" outward rather than simply asking listeners to remember it.

The original was released worldwide Sept. 4, 2006, on Beyoncé's 25th birthday, with its U.S. release following a day later. It arrived three years after "Dangerously in Love" established Beyoncé as a solo superstar and while the final chapter of Destiny's Child was still fresh.

She made it quickly.

Beyoncé recorded the core of "B'Day" during an intense two-week studio stretch, working with producers including Swizz Beatz, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, Rich Harrison and the Neptunes.

Two decades later, Beyoncé says the urgency was intentional.

“I wanted the album to be big, percussive, hard, up-tempo, and energized, and it was important to me that we used live instrumentation,” she recalled in a statement accompanying the anniversary release.

At a moment when hip-hop was increasingly driving popular music, Beyoncé said she wanted to preserve the bridges, melodies and harmonies she considered fundamental to R&B while finding a way to make those traditions coexist with hard drums, sampling and 808s.

 

You can hear that tension throughout "B'Day."

“Déjà Vu,” featuring Jay-Z, opens with live bass and builds into horns and percussion. “Ring the Alarm” turns relationship fury into something nearly militaristic. “Get Me Bodied” is built for movement. “Freakum Dress” makes getting dressed sound like retaliation.

Then there is “Irreplaceable,” the comparatively restrained breakup song that became one of the biggest records of Beyoncé's career.

The anniversary edition doesn't try to smooth those differences out.

Instead, it makes the album bigger.

“Morning Dew (Donk),” which Beyoncé officially released July 4 after the song leaked in 2023, is included. Beyoncé subsequently released a separate remix featuring Jay-Z in August.

The expanded set includes “Can I Watch You,” produced by Beyoncé and Pharrell Williams, along with “Lost Yo Mind,” “Creole” and “Back Up.”

“My First Time” reaches even further back. The song was originally recorded for Beyoncé's 2003 solo debut, "Dangerously in Love," but did not make that album's final track list.

The digital deluxe also gathers music from elsewhere around the "B'Day" era and its subsequent expanded releases, including “Check on It,” “Beautiful Liar” with Shakira and earlier Spanish-language recordings.

Altogether, the digital deluxe runs 31 tracks and just under two hours.

The physical rollout is substantial, too. A four-LP deluxe edition is pressed on 180-gram Bayou Blue vinyl and includes a 60-page commemorative booklet and two double-sided art prints. A standard anniversary edition is also available on vinyl and CD; the standard two-LP edition includes a 16-page booklet with never-before-seen imagery.

Beyoncé has also returned to the visual side of the project.

Parkwood describes "B'Day" as essentially an early visual album, anticipating the approach that would later become central to Beyoncé's work. Videos originally captured on 35mm have been remastered, recolored and finished in 4K, including the Sophie Muller-directed video for “Déjà Vu,” released Friday in its upgraded form.

The anniversary project also includes previously unseen photographs shot in New Orleans, where Beyoncé's family has deep Louisiana roots and where the city was rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina when "B'Day" was made.

That context makes the anniversary particularly fitting.

The Beyoncé who recorded "B'Day" was already famous, but she was still defining what a Beyoncé album could be without Destiny's Child attached to it.

Twenty years later, there is little left to prove on that front.

Instead of simply polishing an old blockbuster for its anniversary, she has gone back inside it — restoring its visuals, emptying out parts of the vault and connecting a 2006 album to musical traditions that stretched far beyond it.

"B'Day" arrived worldwide on Beyoncé's 25th birthday.

At 45, she has given it another one.

Lizzo’s Touring Company Wins Dismissal of Former Wardrobe Worker’s Remaining Claims

Lizzo appears in an Instagram video posted Tuesday after a federal judge dismissed the remaining claims against her touring company in a lawsuit brought by former wardrobe worker Asha Daniels. Lizzo, who had been dismissed as an individual defendant in 2024, said she was “relieved” by the ruling. (Lizzo/Instagram)

Lizzo has scored another major legal victory, but one of the most important distinctions in the singer's long-running court battles remains easy to miss.

A federal judge has thrown out the remaining claims brought by former tour wardrobe worker Asha Daniels against Lizzo's touring company and other defendants, ending the case at the trial-court level nearly three years after Daniels sued.

U.S. District Judge Fernando L. Aenlle-Rocha granted summary judgment Tuesday to Big Grrrl Big Touring Inc. and the remaining defendants.

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Lizzo, whose legal name is Melissa Jefferson, had already been dismissed as an individual defendant in the case in December 2024.

Daniels worked in wardrobe during the European leg of Lizzo's “Special” tour in 2023. She later sued alleging sexual and racial harassment, disability discrimination and other mistreatment.

The judge concluded that the evidence Daniels presented did not establish several of her claims under the legal standards required to send them to trial.

Among other findings, the court concluded that Daniels had not shown conduct demonstrating generalized hostility toward women or that men and women were treated differently in a way that supported her Title VII claims.

The court also rejected her racial-discrimination and disability claims.

Lizzo celebrated the ruling Tuesday on social media.

She said she was relieved by the outcome and maintained that the allegations against her and her company were unfounded.

Daniels' attorney disputed that interpretation of the case, arguing that the court improperly evaluated evidence that should have been considered by a jury and indicating that Daniels is considering her next steps.

The ruling is significant, but it does not end all of the litigation surrounding Lizzo's workplace.

Daniels' case is separate from the lawsuit filed in 2023 by former dancers Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez.

That lawsuit generated widespread attention with allegations involving sexual harassment and a hostile work environment. Lizzo has denied the allegations.

Some claims in the dancers' case have been dismissed, but the litigation has not been completely resolved.

That distinction is particularly important because the two cases were filed within weeks of each other and have frequently been conflated in coverage of the allegations surrounding Lizzo.

Tuesday's decision concerns Daniels and her work with the wardrobe department.

For that case, at least at the federal trial-court level, there will be no jury trial on the remaining claims.

Nearly three years after Daniels sued, the remaining defendants have won summary judgment.

Dame Dash’s Life Story Is Going Up for Auction to Pay His Creditors

Damon “Dame” Dash, left, and Singa B pose for a photo in 2019. Dash, the Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder, is facing the court-approved auction of his life-story rights, name, image and likeness and more than 100 hours of archival material as part of his bankruptcy case. (Photo courtesy of Singa B/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Dame Dash spent decades insisting on ownership.

Now a bankruptcy court is preparing to sell the rights to tell his story.

A Florida bankruptcy judge has approved plans to auction a package of assets tied to the Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder that includes rights to his life story, name, image and likeness, along with more than 100 hours of video footage, photographs and memorabilia.

The opening bid: $37,000.

The money won't go to Dash.

It will go toward paying his creditors.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Roberta A. Colton approved the bidding process Tuesday as part of Dash's bankruptcy case, moving forward with a sale proposed by court-appointed trustee Traci K. Stevenson.

Everlasting Films LLC has submitted the $37,000 initial bid.

Dame Dash is aggravated after seeing Loren Lorosa report on his bankruptcy pic.twitter.com/JJvfonTTSe

— 2Cool2Blog (@2Cool2Blog) August 7, 2026

Other prospective buyers have until Sept. 23 to submit competing offers. Because bids must increase by at least $10,000, another bidder would have to offer at least $47,000.

If qualifying competing bids are received, an auction is scheduled for Oct. 1. Colton is expected to consider final approval of the winning sale Oct. 27.

The unusual collection of assets goes considerably further than the right to make a conventional authorized biography.

Court filings describe rights to Dash's biography, voice, image, likeness and other identifying characteristics, as well as the ability to portray events from his life.

The package also includes more than 100 hours of video, photographs and memorabilia and rights connected to an unreleased film project involving Roc-A-Fella.

That footage could prove particularly valuable because Dash was present for one of the most consequential runs in modern hip-hop business.

Dash co-founded Roc-A-Fella Records with Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and Kareem “Biggs” Burke in the 1990s. The label became the home of Jay-Z's rise from independent rapper to one of music's biggest stars and later released records by artists including Kanye West, Cam'ron, Beanie Sigel, Memphis Bleek and Freeway.

The company also became part of Dash's public identity as he championed entrepreneurship and ownership while expanding into fashion, film and other businesses.

The irony of that history is difficult to miss.

A man who spent years publicly preaching the importance of controlling one's work could soon have another party acquire the contractual rights to commercially tell his life story.

The proposed sale follows a long series of financial and legal problems for Dash.

He filed for bankruptcy in September 2025 after years of judgments, tax liabilities and other debts.

His once-substantial interest in Roc-A-Fella has already been sold.

Dash's one-third stake in the company was auctioned in 2024 after a federal judge ordered the sale to satisfy a judgment against him. New York state ultimately acquired the stake with a $1 million bid, with proceeds applied toward Dash's debts.

The life-rights sale would turn another part of Dash's history into an asset for creditors.

Everlasting Films, the initial bidder, would receive a $3,700 breakup fee if another buyer ultimately wins the assets under the proposed bidding terms.

Dash did not appear at Tuesday's hearing, according to Complex, and had not publicly commented on the court's latest decision as of Wednesday afternoon.

The $37,000 bid should not be confused with a final valuation of Dash's life story. It establishes the floor for a competitive sale that could produce higher offers before the Sept. 23 deadline.

What the eventual buyer could acquire, however, is unusually broad: not simply permission to make a film about a former music executive, but an archive of material from someone who was inside Roc-A-Fella during a formative period in hip-hop history.

Nearly three decades after helping build a record company around ownership and independence, Dash is watching bankruptcy court turn his own story into something that can be sold.

Cassandra Wilson, Singular Voice Who Connected Jazz, Blues and R&B, Dies at 70

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.

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“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.

Jury Convicts Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis of Murder Nearly 30 Years After Tupac Shakur’s Death

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.

Davis faces the possibility of life in prison.

Wacko, Rapper Whose ‘Nolia Clap’ Became a New Orleans Anthem, Dies

The cover of UTP's 2004 “Nolia Clap” release. The title track, co-written by Damon “Wacko” Grison, Juvenile, Skip and producer Donald “XL” Robertson, reached No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Rap-A-Lot Records)

Damon “Wacko” Grison, the New Orleans rapper whose work with Juvenile and Skip helped turn “Nolia Clap” into a national hit and an enduring piece of the city's hip-hop history, has died.

News of Grison's death was announced by New Orleans Room on Instagram, followed by a remembrance from Mia X and condolences from Young Buck, DJ Paul and Big Freedia. His age and cause of death have not been publicly confirmed.

For listeners who encountered UTP during its national breakthrough in the mid-2000s, Wacko was one of the three rappers behind “Nolia Clap.”

His connection to the record ran considerably deeper than that.

Juvenile said so himself.

“That's really more like Wacko's song,” Juvenile told Complex in 2013 while breaking down the most important records of his career.

According to Juvenile, Wacko had been singing the “Nolia Clap” hook around the studio before the group traveled to the West Coast and connected with producer Donald “XL” Robertson. They began building the track around Wacko's idea, with Juvenile saying Mannie Fresh and producer Slice T later added touches to the record.

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The songwriting credits support Wacko's creative role.

Grison shares credit on “Nolia Clap” with Terius Gray, better known as Juvenile; Clifford Nicholas, better known as Skip; and Robertson.

The record became UTP's biggest national hit, reaching No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 9 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart.

That success arrived after UTP had undergone considerable change.

Juvenile formed the Uptown Project Playas as he was separating from Cash Money Records. The early collective had fluid membership and included appearances from Wacko, Skip, Soulja Slim, Corey Cee and Young Buck. After Young Buck left for G-Unit and Soulja Slim was killed in 2003, UTP narrowed into the Juvenile-Wacko-Skip trio most listeners came to know.

Their album “The Beginning of the End...” arrived in May 2004 through Rap-A-Lot Records, with “Nolia Clap” opening the record.

The “Nolia” referred to the Magnolia Projects, officially the C.J. Peete Public Housing Development, in New Orleans' Central City neighborhood. The complex became an important incubator of the city's music across generations and was home to artists including Juvenile and Soulja Slim.

A Closer Walk, the New Orleans music-history project presented by WWOZ, includes “Nolia Clap” among the recordings tied to the Magnolia and traces the development's role in the rise of New Orleans hip-hop.

Wacko and Skip remained part of Juvenile's musical orbit after UTP's breakthrough. Both appeared on Juvenile's 2006 album “Reality Check,” including Wacko's appearances on “Sets Go Up” and “Way I Be Leanin'.”

By 2007, Juvenile was out of UTP and Wacko and Skip continued the group without him, releasing “Back Like We Left Something” through Rap-A-Lot.

Mia X said in her remembrance that Wacko had continued creating music before his death, praising his wordplay and distinctive cadence and saying he had been working on material she considered special.

Wacko's national profile may have been tied most closely to one record. But the history of that record gives him a larger role than the shorthand of “UTP member” suggests.

Years before there was any reason to argue about Wacko's legacy, Juvenile had already made the most important point about the song.

It was, he said, “more like Wacko's song.”

Rap Pioneer Keith Keith Dies at 64

Funky 4 + 1 performs “That’s the Joint” on “Saturday Night Live” on Feb. 14, 1981. Keith Caesar, known as Keith Keith, was 18 when the pioneering Bronx group made the landmark television appearance. Caesar died Aug. 21, 2026, at 64. (Screengrab/NBC)

Keith Keith was 18 years old when hip-hop walked onto “Saturday Night Live” for the first time.

He would turn 19 the next day.

On Feb. 14, 1981, Blondie singer Debbie Harry introduced Funky 4 + 1 as some of “the best street rappers in the country.” Then Keith Keith and his Bronx crew launched into “That’s the Joint,” passing the microphone through a performance that became one of early hip-hop’s defining crossings from neighborhood culture to national television.

Keith Caesar, the pioneering MC known as Keith Keith, died Friday, Aug. 21, at 64, his family told News 12 The Bronx.

His family said he died from medical complications. No further details were announced.

Caesar was a lifelong Bronx resident and one of the original voices of a group whose list of firsts can sound almost impossible in retrospect.

Funky 4 + 1 is widely credited as the first hip-hop group to secure a record deal. It featured Sha-Rock, one of the culture’s foundational female MCs. And when the group appeared on “Saturday Night Live,” it became the first hip-hop group to perform on the program and, according to contemporary histories and later accounts, the first authentic Bronx hip-hop crew to perform live on national television.

None of that was inevitable when Caesar started rhyming.

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Sha-Rock has recalled that when she became an MC in the late 1970s, Keith Keith and K.K. Rockwell were already the two male MCs in the organization that would become the Funky 4. Rahiem joined soon afterward, completing an early version of the group before lineup changes brought in performers including Lil’ Rodney C and Jazzy Jeff.

These were not artists entering an established recording industry called hip-hop.

The infrastructure barely existed.

Their stages were parks, community centers, clubs and neighborhood parties. Flyers preserved by institutions including Harvard’s Hiphop Archive and the Smithsonian now read almost like archaeological documents from a culture that would eventually reshape popular music.

Keith Keith’s name is on those documents.

By 1979, Funky 4 + 1 had moved from the live Bronx circuit onto vinyl with “Rappin’ and Rocking the House” on Bobby Robinson’s Enjoy Records. Caesar shares a writing credit on the sprawling early rap record.

The group later joined Sylvia Robinson’s Sugar Hill Records and recorded the song that would become its signature.

“That’s the Joint” was different from a modern rap single in nearly every obvious way.

The original performance stretched for roughly nine minutes. Instead of centering one star, the record operated like a recorded version of a Bronx MC routine: voices traded off, joined together and handed momentum from one rapper to another.

Caesar was one of its credited writers.

Its influence lasted far beyond the group.

A 1980 Bronx flyer advertises a Funky Four Plus One More appearance and names Keith Keith among the pioneering group’s MCs. Keith Caesar, known professionally as Keith Keith, died Aug. 21 at 64. The flyer is held by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. (Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture/Public Domain)

Decades later, Rolling Stone placed “That’s the Joint” among its 500 greatest songs of all time. Its DNA also traveled directly into later generations of hip-hop. The Dust Brothers drew from it while constructing the Beastie Boys’ sample-heavy “Paul’s Boutique,” including material heard on “Shake Your Rump” and “Shadrach.” Positive K’s 1992 hit “I Got a Man” also drew from the record.

That afterlife helps explain why Funky 4 + 1 occupies a strange but essential place in hip-hop history: Millions of people know music shaped by the group without necessarily knowing the names of the teenagers who made the original.

Debbie Harry did.

Her decision to bring Funky 4 + 1 onto “Saturday Night Live” was not a celebrity stunt built around a passing musical curiosity.

Harry and Blondie guitarist Chris Stein had spent time around New York’s emerging hip-hop scene. Years later, Harry identified “That’s the Joint” with what she described as her hip-hop epiphany, recalling the impact of seeing DJs scratching and rappers performing at an event in the South Bronx.

When Harry hosted “Saturday Night Live” on Valentine’s Day 1981, she used part of the episode to put that music in front of a national audience.

Funky 4 + 1 took the stage.

For Caesar, the date carried an accidental bit of symmetry that becomes more striking now: He was born Feb. 15, 1962.

The kid helping introduce hip-hop to much of television America was performing on the final night of his 18th year.

Sha-Rock has said the group did not fully understand what it had accomplished at the time. They were already known around New York through performances and tapes circulating from neighborhood to neighborhood.

National television was something else.

Years later, she remembered what it meant to “have the entire world hear us rhyming.”

It is difficult to watch that performance now without seeing everything that came after it.

Run-DMC had not released a record. LL Cool J was still a child. “Yo! MTV Raps” was years away. There was no Grammy category for rap, no hip-hop radio format stretching across the country and no guarantee that the music being created in the Bronx would become a permanent part of American culture.

Keith Keith was already on the microphone.

The group’s recording career was relatively brief. Funky 4 + 1 never made the kind of studio-album catalog later generations would use to measure rap careers, and its members eventually moved in different directions.

But longevity is not the only way to measure importance.

Some artists dominate an era.

Others help create one.

Grandmaster Flash, another architect of the Bronx scene, responded to Caesar’s death by placing him firmly in the latter category.

In a Facebook tribute, Flash called Caesar “one of our originators from the beginning of the culture.” He said he had seen him recently and was stunned by the news.

“You will not be forgotten,” Flash said.

For Keith Keith, the historical record gives those words weight.

Before hip-hop became an industry, he was on the flyers.

Before rap television had a format, he was on national television.

And before the world knew where hip-hop was going, Keith Keith was already there.

Lil Durk Murder-for-Hire Trial Opens as Defense Blames Cooperating Witness for Quando Rondo Plot

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.