SHAVONE.

Photo: Curtis Taylor Jr.

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This Is SHAVONE.: Creative Renaissance Woman, Tech Titan, Artistic Force & Proud Advocate

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As a voice of experience, swagger and inspiration for women of color in the tech and creative industries, SHAVONE. is crafting a new intersection between music, fashion and tech
Rachel Brodsky
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Jul 10, 2019 - 5:37 pm

SHAVONE. has presence. Not just the online type of presence so many chase these days, but real, tangible presence. She's warm and engaging in the way you want your friends to be, yet commanding and articulate in the way you'd expect from someone with her track record as a creative Renaissance woman. Everywhere she's been, she became a star, leaving a path of meaningful progress, inspired innovation and lasting relationships in her wake. That's presence.

SHAVONE.'s story started in a familiar way, as a child wild about music. But her path took a turn toward tech, where she blazed trails and broke molds, launching her career at Google before creating her own role at Twitter as the first Head of Global Music and Culture. She went on to become Instagram's Head of Global Music and Youth Culture, developed and refined her own personal fashion style Elle dubbed "Instagram Cozy Queen" and was a shoo-in on Forbes' coveted "30 Under 30" list earlier this year.

Most important, she's become an ardent advocate for women of color, especially in the tech and creative spaces, traveling the country to inspire and advise. Recently, she's appeared at BET Experience and—fitting as SHAVONE. has spent the majority of her career in the Bay Area—at the San Francisco Women's Summit. When she was at Twitter, she created BlackBirds, a resource group for African-American employees. Forever ahead of the curve, SHAVONE. knew what to do to support and empower her colleagues before anyone else.

"I joke around with my friends and mentees about like being black in tech before it was cool to be black in tech," says SHAVONE. "When it wasn't like, 'Yes, we need you here to check a box,' when it was, 'What are you doing here?'"

But now SHAVONE., the artist, has her sights set on new creative horizons. After leaving Instagram earlier this year, she shifted her focus to developing both her own artistry and an artistic community around her. In March she dropped the empowering single "4C" with a striking video, showcasing the beauty of inclusivity.

She's also launching Magic In Her Melanin, her very own creative collective and in-house agency to serve as creative HQ for all her art and music projects. With music, fashion and tech overlapping more than ever before, it's hard to imagine someone better positioned to lead the way for creatives into whatever is coming next, which is exactly what she's doing.

SHAVONE. let us into her world for a conversation with Recording Academy, discussing the twist and turns of her inspirational, one-of-a-kind career and how her transition from tech change agent to authentic artist came "right on time." Jump into a portion of our conversation with her below, and follow her on social so you aren't left behind.

[this conversation has been edited down from the original for length]

I read that your family's also very musical—how did you spend your childhood and how did you get into tech?

As a younger person, I think my parents quickly figured out I'd need an outlet. I had a lot of energy, a lot of sh*t to say, and needed some sort outlet and, early on, I was already very intrigued by music.

My grandfather is from Trinidad, and so I've always been attracted to the Caribbean West Indies. And my grandfather's son, my uncle Terry, he's classically trained in classical and jazz across pretty much any woodwind instrument… He'd pick up the sax, he'd pick up the clarinet, he put down the sax, picked up the flute. This guy was just jamming out. He'd have a piccolo, so that already piqued my interest.

My brother JJ started off playing the flute. He switched over to sax because he thought that was a more masculine instrument, whatever JJ. [Laughs.] But I got attracted then, took piano lessons early on… I ended up shifting over to flute just because it was something that was familiar to me. My uncle told me "You're a bull in a china factory. When you play the flute, handling this instruments very delicate. It's very difficult. Are you sure you want to do this? This is going to take a lot of time a lot of hard work." I was like, "I'm sure I want to do this. Now that you said all that, I definitely want to do it! You know it's a challenge. Let's do it." So in second and third grade, I started on the recorder. That's what you start on.

Oh yeah, I remember. I think every young adult of a certain age had to play the recorder in grade school.

And I was like, "this is cute but like I'm trying to upgrade to that really shiny, blinged out thing that you have, Uncle Terry." So I started taking lessons. Then like upgraded to a beginner flute, and then kept playing.

I was in band in elementary school and middle school. Then I started playing competitively in high school, I was flute section leader in band and in marching band wind symphony. I basically went crazy with it.

But, in between me doing flute, writing had always been a huge piece of my self-expression, and I wrote a lot of poetry in middle school and elementary school, and then my brothers started rapping. And my dad, seeing that they were interested, he had a friend who had a studio space in San Diego and Downtown so he helped pay for their studio time, just to kind of more so support again positive outlet for them.

So then, I seen them rapping and I was like, "That's tight." I'm definitely really into music and rap so I'm like, "maybe I could do that was like my poetry?" So I started rapping. I didn't start seriously rapping until about end of middle school, going into high school, that's when I actually was like good enough to actually be heard publicly. So I kind of mixed it together but I always kept my flute musicianship separate, because flute is all about structure.

Now I'm working to break down all the structure that I've built up in my mind around flute. Because I'm now learning Ableton to basically make my set fully electronic and be able to improv DIY style in the moment. It's not structured, it's just feeling versus structure. So I'm tearing these walls down to bring the two worlds together now.

You held prominent roles at Twitter and Instagram... You're a self-proclaimed Data Queen. How did you end up getting into these hugely prominent roles in the tech world?

I interned at Google my junior year of college, and I had interned at BET. I did a talent relations PR internship there, and I also did a bunch of internships in public service. I interned on the Hill. I interned at the DOJ. I was actually kind of thinking more of a governmental route. Just because I'm a huge supporter of public service and community and civic engagement. I had to wear these stockings and these clothes and I've got to worry about my hair.

Pencil skirts?

Yeah. I interned there two of the years the Republicans took over the House. I was like, "you know what, this is getting kind of crazy."

But, I went to Google anyways, interned there at the Googleplex in Mountain View. I interned on the Global Communications and Public Affairs team, and I worked on Google Play when it started. I worked on the launch of Google Plus, which was very interesting at the time. I worked on Google Apps for education, that's how I got exposed to traditional tech world, but in a non-traditional way. I got to work on consumery topics, and I interned on their PR team but it was consumer PR. So I got a chance to scratch all my itches, but also still be in the epicenter of tech.

And I think at that time I just realized just how central tech was going to be to music and the industry. Even with Google Play and I saw all arrows pointing in that direction.

I knew, tech was the marriage of all these different, eclectic things that were stimulating for me. That's how I got into tech.

It's crazy, because right after college I had a job offer from MTV that, that was a real job, but I turned it down to go intern at Twitter. Because it was paid, number one, and it's like they're a startup but they're going IPO at some point, I just felt it was a good opportunity that I can try to mold. I'd have to work hard as hell, but maybe...

I think the numbers would support your decision.

So that's how I kind of got over there. I started out on the PR team covering everything. Fashion, music, culture, politics. Pretty much any cultural zeitgeist moments.

"I still need to learn. As a woman in music, you have to protect yourself with knowledge and knowing." -SHAVONE.

As a woman of color working in tech, how did you navigate that kind of stereotypically homogenous environment? 

Yeah, it's tough. It's still tough, honestly, it's still hard. I joke around with my friends and mentees about being black in tech before it was cool to be black in tech. When it wasn't like "Yes, we need you here to check a box," when it was "What are you doing here?"

And it was hard. I definitely believe in God and like, higher powers in the universe and I feel like the universe has always showed up to show support through people around me and mentors when I need them the most. I don't have a ton of mentors, but I feel like people move into the right place at the right time for me.

When I went to Twitter, there's a gentleman, whose name is Scott T, shout out to you. He was at Facebook, he left Facebook, and he's doing some other amazing work now. But he was a huge mentor of mine at Twitter... Scott is African, and there were not many faces of color there, but he was there when I needed him.

I also had allies, and people who I had actually met at Google. Because all the people from the tech company they go, "I'm with this company, I was at that company, I was at that company." So I had a lot of familiar faces. Having that support system really did help me stay grounded and confident about who I was and my skill sets. Because it's easy to go into those places and shrink. Number one you kind of just want to be invisible to avoid confrontation. And then the other piece is figuring out how to tap into your skill sets and who you are in a way that doesn't compromise what you stand for.

So as a person of color, having a role that's culture oriented, it's like, "okay, that's great. But how are you enlightening without like self-exploitation?" And enlightening in a way that's going to somehow help increase access, hopefully, and leave the door open for more... Beyond just bringing the company money, how are you kind of shifting what's normalized and normalizing your blackness and your diversity in the space. And this is a lot to carry around for anybody in a workspace.

Especially somebody that hasn't been in the workforce for that long.

Yeah, it was like my first job.

What was the impetus for you to make the transition from tech to music? And how did you find a way to professionally integrate all of your passions?

Yeah, I'd say it was a long time coming. When I left Twitter, I still felt like there was a little bit more to learn. I kept kind of stepping along in the background of music, making music when I could in the Bay Area. I recorded when I could, I wrote, I always kept writing. I have so many songs written, and kept recording where I could. And I was always around music, so I never felt so starved because I was always behind the scenes. I was working in the music industry.

Part of me, it was torturing, right? When you feel like you have your story, or a voice that you want to create. Then another part of it was so amazing because I got to be around my people. I was around you guys, I was around my people, I got to talk about cool things, tell cool stories. I was learning still.

You have got to say, "enough is enough." How much is enough? When is your thirst going to be quenched? When do you step up into your own purpose? And for me, it came down to me, figuring out that it's either now or never. And thinking a lot about trajectory for me long-term. I set out to do certain things in tech, and I felt like I gave it my all. A lot of me being motivated to have one foot in, one foot out as more of a multi-hyphenate creative was, I noticed that, even from within you can only do so much to increase access. Because you work for the company, no matter what, you got to stick to their agenda, their roles, their bottom line. If they say something's not important, you can't come back and say "Yes it is and forget you, here's what I'm going to do." You can't.

You're working as a full-time musician now, and you're launching a creative collective and in-house agency. I'd love to learn a little bit about that and any other initiatives that you're spearheading.

Yeah, so for Magic In Her Melanin, it's been a long time coming. I got Magic in Her Melanin trademarked a of couple years ago. It was sort of another one of those projects after work that I was like this needs to be done. Again, with just seeing the gaps up front, and like going out in the Tenderloin, working at Twitter in San Francisco, walking outside and seeing, feeling the gaps. Working with the Boys and Girls Club and literally feeling the gaps. I was able to take notes, go home and figure out, how can I be accountable outside of my tech job, right? What can I do outside of showing up like, "Hey kids, here's where you can be. All right, bye."

Well it's so easy to stay cloistered in your little comfy bubble.

Yeah, it's so easy. I mean it's normalized. It's like not actually frowned upon if you do do that, actually the opposite, right? So that allowed me to really notice the gaps and I couldn't just sit by, and I've been indexing the gaps, basically.

Magic is a result of me indexing the gaps and figuring out, "How do I show up in a way that's really valuable and true to me? And how can I make myself a resource for other people?" And I found that a lot of my network, even a lot of my friends and colleagues, contemporaries, even mentees, mentors are all these people of color who were amazingly creative who work in these different functions and tech, and music too. Just because my role was culture and youth and these new topics, I got exposed to people who covered similar realms at Spotify or Beats or Apple or wherever.

Magic is basically a collective, and it's literally a network of all the people I know who have a passion to give back in some way but will never have the time to start their own org. I basically want to leverage those relationships to do good out in the world, to create more access for underrepresented voices in the corporate space.

There's a gentleman named Quil Lemons who is a photographer. He's super young, Gen-Z photographer who does partnerships and is making a living off of just partnering and having value. Whether you're Pharrell, or whether you're me or you guys and you want to work for the company, you should be able to do both. You should be able to choose what you want to do, there should be accessibility. 

Then with Magic, I also have basically kind of made it, I guess what I Am Other is to Pharrell, or what Saint Heron is to Solange, it's sort of my in-house creative suite.

So my friends who are passionate about like the music and the art I'm creating, and incubating the videos that you see, the visuals, and sort of everything SHAVONE. does as a creative, I want to continue incubating with that group. And keep reading with other people, but really keeping Magic as the nucleus of everything I put out into the world.

Earlier we were talking about your video for "4C," which you said you recorded late last year in Brooklyn. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you recorded it at a salon owned by a woman who works with Solange?

Yeah, she blew up mainstream-wise from her doing a number of Solange's tribal inspired, like American-inspired braid looks, and Beyoncé's braid looks. She's incredible. She's a Nigerian hairstylist.

It looks like you got together a lot of your contacts, friends and familiars and that video serves as symbol for almost everything you're trying to achieve, the diversity of people's interests, and it all coming together. What are you trying to do next in terms of your music?

Right now I'm super focused on really honing in on my sound. I'm working with new producers. I'm also getting my like show set tight and together. That's the thing I'm most excited about. I'm actually, like holding off on performances until I get it right where I want it with me adding the flute instrumentation into it, in a way that, again, is authentic to me. And even tech kind of continuing to be this huge part of who I am and what I do. And really, I kind of more so envision an electronic vibe for my set like more of a kind of EDM energy just because of my tie to software and hardware as a person. I'm a tech person still at heart. So keeping that visible in my instrumentation, I'm excited about.

But I'm also working on,I don't know if it's going to be EP or a mixtape, I'm still kind of deciding. But, I'm basically working on a project which I maybe by the summer or fall. I'm collaborating with folks also who have reached out. I played a set for GRAMMY week at Soho House with 1500 or Nothin'. They're amazing. Larrance [Dopson], and my guy Mars, they're just incredible. They did Nipsy Hussle's Victory Lap. There are pillars of L.A. and the community.

So, yeah, they're amazing. I'm excited to just take it one day at a time and really put in the work. I think a lot of my experience and my knowledge, even with PR and music, only it goes so far. It's different from the scope of an artist. You can't skip putting in the rest of the work. And I feel like a lot of my work has been foundational with being able to read and write music, being able to write music and I feel like there's a new challenge now for me with writing music for consumption versus as a hobby. Writing music as a business is different, so I'm up for the challenge.

Someone once told me, "if something scares you, you should probably do it." But in many ways as an artist, stepping out on your own, you're the most qualified to navigate tech from the artist side. Do you feel that way?

Yeah, I do. I feel like where I have a leg up, I feel like, in a conversation with, even with some of the artists that I know, friends that I know, I'm learning from them and they're learning from me.

It's sort of like this: You realize you're so good at this, or you're so good at that, like, the sort of midway point. But it has been interesting to apply what I've learned in a sort of a different dimension to my artistry and getting the word out. And I think Instagram was truly the cherry on top of my experiences, because I really got a chance to see how important community is, and community online. Not just community in terms of fandom, but community for a cause, community behind topics that matter, body positivity, mental wellness, mental health, latte art. I mean, anything you care about, it's online. Even at Twitter, all the data stuff, I feel like my whole life is sort of this moment. So I do feel good in that sense. You start to think, "Oh, did I wait too long? Should I have like left earlier?" But I feel like no, I feel like I'm right on time.

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Brenda Lee

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Where Do You Keep Your GRAMMY: Brenda Lee

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The Lifetime Achievement Award winner shows the Recording Academy where she keeps her golden gramophone
Jennifer Velez
GRAMMYs
Sep 18, 2019 - 3:57 pm

Brenda Lee keeps her golden gramophone where she can see it, but rest assured, "It's nothing to do with vanity," she told the Recording Academy in the latest edition of Where Do You Keep Your GRAMMY?

The "I'm Sorry" singer, who became a big pop star in the '60s, has been nominated for a GRAMMY four times, but it was her Lifetime Achievement Award that came as a surprise to her. The award "was far beyond anything I'd ever hoped for," she said.

Sep 18, 2019 – 3:53 pm

Where Brenda Lee Keeps Her GRAMMY

Lee also reminisces about the period of time when she, Peggy Lee, Elvis Presley and Diana Ross were all over the charts. Though longtime producer Owen Bradley and songwriter Ronnie Self contributed to her success, it was country star Red Foley who ultimately helped her get her start in the music industry. "I was just lucky to be a part of that era, I don't think they'll be another one like it," she said. "I truly don't, so I am so proud to be a part of that and to be recognized as a part of that."

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Nicholas Britell

Photo by Dominic Nicholls

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Nicholas Britell On Scoring 'Succession' And 'The King' & Learning From Steve McQueen

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The Emmy-winning composer talks to the Recording Academy about moving between film and television, working with auteurs like Adam McKay and Barry Jenkins and more
GRAMMYs
Sep 18, 2019 - 10:58 am

It's safe to say that Nicholas Britell is living the dream—his dream, at least. "Ever since I was five years old, I loved movies and I loved music," the 38-year-old film and TV composer tells the Recording Academy over the phone. "As a composer, the dream is that you can write things and that people can feel the things that you're feeling."

That's exactly what Britell’s work does: It stirs up feelings, whether it’s the bittersweet strings that adorn director Barry Jenkins' 2018 tragic romance If Beale Street Could Talk, or the cascading pianos that usher viewers into the rareified air of the Roy family, the dysfunctional super-wealthy clan at the hardened heart of HBO's Succession. Britell's ear and knack for translating emotion have helped him build quite an impressive IMDb page over the past few years. He's collaborated with some of the most respected filmmakers active today—Jenkins, Steve McQueen, Adam McKay—which means his songs have appeared in two of this decade’s Best Picture winners (McQueen's 12 Years A Slave and Jenkins' Moonlight). Britell has earned some awards attention of his own, as well; he's been nominated for two Oscars for Best Original Score (for Moonlight and Beale Street, respectively) and, more recently, took home a Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music (for Succession, naturally). Odds are, if you have any friends who spend too much time on Film Twitter, they're fans of his.

The Recording Academy chatted with Britell about working alongside a series of auteurs, his score for the second season of Succession (which is presently dominating the TV discourse online), and his compositions for the upcoming Henry V-centric film The King, set to hit theaters on Oct. 11 before debuting on Netflix on Nov. 1. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

To start at the beginning of your recent run: What was it like being a young composer, working on a film as heavy and sobering as 12 Years A Slave and working with a master like Steve McQueen? 

Steve is incredible. It was truly inspiring and really a life-changing experience for me, to work closely with an artist like Steve, and to learn from him and just to see the way that he approaches things, his decision-making process, the way that he thinks about artistic choices. I often think back on that experience and I’ve stayed in close touch with Steve, and he’s been a very dear friend as well, since then. 

On IMDb, it says "Additional music" for your credit on 12 Years A Slave. Can you clarify: What was your level of involvement? You didn't handle all of the scoring, but you did some of it? 

Actually, I wasn't involved in the score of 12 Years A Slave. I wrote and researched and arranged all of the music that appears on-camera in the film. 

All of the diegetic music.

Exactly, all of the diegetic music. Everything from working with Chiwetel [Ejiofor] and coordinating, researching the type of fiddle tunes that an African-American violinst in 1841 in New York state might have played. Everything from that to exploring the field songs and dances in the South and collaborating with Steve on figuring out the best way to execute those performances. It was actually a huge research endeavor to figure out what's possible to be known about those types of performances and music, and also what are the limits of our knowledge on that. 

You've also collaborated with Barry Jenkins, who has such a distinct visual style, obviously, and favors a lot of close-ups of his characters, a lot of eye contact. What's it like composing for sequences and shots that are so direct, where the audience and the performer are both so vulnerable? 

One of the things about Barry's filmmaking style is that he creates a very full, rich aesthetic experience for the films that he makes. What you’re talking about, that sort of directness, is really emblematic of the way that he approaches all of the departments of the films: the colors, the cinematography, the music, the sound. There is a directness and a boldness with his choices, but it’s all in service of the feeling. A lot of what we’re trying to do, from my perspective, it’s about finding musical landscapes that can convey those feelings and the fullness of those feelings. 

And every film is different. There's no right score for something, there's just the score that you craft in collaboration with the director, at that moment in time. There are lots of possible scores, but I think one of the beautiful things about scoring is that it's so dependent on the process, and how it comes together, and that's what makes it unique to that film. Above all, it’s about finding a sound that feels like—for you and for the director—that it’s really woven into the fabric of the movie somehow. Some things just feel connected, in a way, and some don't. We ourselves don't really know, and the process is us experimenting together. 

You've also worked on two films with Adam McKay, who's an executive produer on Succession. Can you talk about how you got invovled with the show specifically? 

Well, actually, Succession was a result of those two films. I first worked with Adam on The Big Short, and it was after we finished The Big Short that we talked about Succession, and he told me about the premise and the ideas behind the show and asked if I wanted to be a part of the pilot, and of course I said yes. It was quite a few years ago, actually. My mental calendar is sort of a blur—but we did the pilot and I worked on that and then it was after the pilot, after some time, we then did the rest of the series and put it all together. 

I started talking to Adam about it before they shot the pilot and was able to go to set and be there for when they were shooting the pilot, which, it’s always a great experience because you get to see things up close. So, it directly came out of that experience of first working with Adam on The Big Short. I finished scoring Succession, the first season, while we were making Vice, actually, so I was doing those in parallel to some extent. 

The goal for me musically was that it had both this kind of gravitas to the seriousness of that world, which is—it’s a real issue in the world, that there are these increasing concentrations of wealth and power amongst fewer and fewer people. There's a darkness there, but there’s also this absurdity and I think that finding a tone that could balance both of those things was really the key. And it was very interesting, actually, working on Vice at the same time, because I feel working with Adam has been so crucial for me as a learning experience, too, and thinking about that interplay between drama and comedy.

How has the Succession score changed or developed from season one to season two? 

Season one really laid the groundwork for the thematic ideas and for the tone. Season two, I think it was really important for me that as the story evolved, I definitely wanted the music to continue its own evolution. I remember talking to Jesse [Armstrong, creator and showrunner of Succession] about this idea of, "Imagine a symphony that is Succession, what's the second movement sound like? What do we do?"

Also, you never want to overstay your welcome with certain musical ideas. There's definitely a sort of dark, maniacal streak to some of the music, and I want to make sure that when we’re using certain ideas, that we know exactly where and they have a power still. There’s certain new elements for Kendall, there are certain elements that are Shiv-focused. It’s the same Succession universe, but hopefully a bit more. 

How does working on a TV show compare to working on a feature-length film? 

The difference between film and TV is pretty large, actually. There's just so much more real estate in TV. Certainly, there's the micro-level approach, which is thinking episode to episode. But I really try to think about it as one entire piece, in a way. So, you're always thinking about, "Where do certain ideas get seeded, where do certain ideas come back? How does what we hear in episode one impact what we hear in episode 10?" It's actually quite challenging to think about that. 

That's something that I really love about film music, is thinking about the architecture of the ideas, like, where you start one idea and then how does it evolve, how does it change, where does it come back? And also, importantly, where do you not have music? That’s always really important, too. Each film has its own musical logic, and you’re trying to have the film tell you where it needs music and where it doesn't want music. 

You just won a Creative Arts Emmy for the Succession theme. There's always so much talk about awards campaigning, mostly about the Oscars. What does campaigning look like for a film composer? And how does it differ between the Oscars and the Emmys? 

I’m new to the TV world a bit. The film awards season and that process is very linked with the release of those films, so I view it very much as you're participating in helping bringing the film into the world. I remember last year, with Beale Street for example, it wasn’t even so much necessarily campaigning as it was, we would do a lot of Q&As at movie theaters, and really be there sharing what the story of the film is. 

With TV, actually, I haven’t done quite as much, I guess. In the sense that that kind of natural, going to movie theaters and doing Q&As and stuff, there really isn't as much of that. And I think that’s partly also just the nature of the medium. Which, I would actually add to that and say that I've been really awed by the level of audience that is possible from television. I love movies, and I love the movie theater experience, but I also think it is a wonderful thing that television is actually able to get out to more people, and more people, on a weekly basis, can participate in the stuff that you’re making. That’s been something of a new experience that I’ve had with working on a TV show. 

You worked on a film that's coming out in October, The King. Did you have to get into a dramatically different headspace as a composer, working on something that’s set that far back in the past? 

I definitely did not change my process. When I approach a new project, I try to have a blank slate in a way, where you’re trying to be open to feeling what that film or that series need in the way of music, and seeing what that is. Obviously, you don’t figure that out without talking to the director, and having that conversation: What are they feeling and what are they looking for? 

I remember with The King, the first thought that I had when I saw a rough cut of the movie was, "What would it be like if I imagined that the 1400s was actually like the 2500s?" You say to yourself, "What is that sort of sense of distance and time mean?" So I tried to create sounds early on that felt like they could be linked with the world that we were witnessing, but that also felt like they weren’t necessarily "period." I was very specifically not trying to say, "All of these instruments are from 1413."

So, the sound that I settled on, working with David [Michôd, director of The King], was this sound where it's a mixture of these bass clarinets that I pitched through this sort of tape filter that created a very strange texture. And then there’s the sound of a boys' choir, which emerges over the course of the film, and there's definitely some symbolism there, emotionally and musically, with the fact that this is a young man who is becoming king. And there were a lot of musical experiments that we did, too, with morphing some brass and morphing these sort of metallic sounds. I think it's about creating something that makes you lean into this world, to want to explore it—but at the same time, you need something that feels like it connects with you.        

I've seen a lot of people tweeting about your music, saying things like, "Just working all day to the Beale Street soundtrack." I imagine that if you're a film composer, it'd be rewarding to put your music out, but there would maybe be this fear that your work would be entombed with the movie it's for, just inseprarable from it. But it seems like people are more than happy to associate your compositions with the films, but also to break them out and use them in their own lives. 

Well, thank you. I definitely feel like when I’m writing, it's very important that the music for film can exist both inside and outside the project. I think that's maybe a little bit of an aesthetic criteria for me, of whether something works. For any piece that I’m writing for a movie, the music has to be able to exist on its own, hopefully, as an idea. So, I do think about its ability to exist outside of the project, but certainly, the number one goal is that it's right for the project. That's its only reason for being there. 

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Taylor Swift

Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/VMN19/Getty Images

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Taylor Swift Plots 2020 World Tour With U.S. Dates For Lover Fest East & West

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Following dates in Europe and South America, Swift will land in the U.S. for Lover Fest East and West, where the pop star will open Los Angeles' brand new stadium
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Sep 17, 2019 - 3:38 pm

Taylor Swift  will be spreading the love in support of her hit album Lover.in 2020, but it may or may not be in a city near you. The GRAMMY winner announced plans for her summer 2020 tour in support of her seventh studio album, including two shows each in Foxborough, Mass. and Los Angeles for Lover Fest East and West respectively as the only four U.S. dates announced so far.

The tour kicks off in Belgium on June 20 and hits festivals in seven European countries before heading to Sao Paulo, Brazil on July 18 then heading to U.S. Swift will then present Lover Fest West with back-to-back Los Angeles July 25 and 26 at the newly named SoFi Stadium. The concerts will serve as the grand opening of the much-anticipated NFL venue. The tour will wrap a double header at Gillette Stadiuim in Foxborough July 31 and Aug 1

"The Lover album is open fields, sunsets, + SUMMER. I want to perform it in a way that feels authentic," she tweeted. "I want to go to some places I haven’t been and play festivals. Where we didn’t have festivals, we made some. Introducing, Lover Fest East + West!" 

Lover was released Aug. 23 and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Her sold-out tour for her previous album, 2017's Reputation, was the highest grossing U.S. tour ever, breaking her own record.

Tickets for the new dates go on sale to the general public via Ticketmaster on Oct. 17. 

 

Photo courtesy of Epix

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Swizz Beatz Talks Executive Producing The 'Godfather Of Harlem' Soundtrack: "It's Like Meeting Heritage With Today"

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Executive produced by Swizz Beatz and featuring music from Dave East, A$AP Ferg, Wale and more, the 'Godfather Of Harlem' soundtrack joins the past with the present, aligning history with an emotional undercurrent that resonates in the new millennium
Randee Dawn
GRAMMYs
Sep 17, 2019 - 12:59 pm

Flashback: It's 1963. It's Harlem, New York. Gangster Bumpy Johnson, freshly released from Alcatraz, has just made a handshake alliance with activist Malcolm X: they're going to use X's manpower and Johnson's guns to clean up a drug-infested part of the hood.

It's a scene straight out of Epix's new drama series Godfather Of Harlem (premiering Sept. 29), and while it might surprise a few viewers, what comes next is even more startling: the soundtrack kicks in. Dave East and A$AP Ferg kick it with a beat straight outta the future, with "Business is Business," a track that unspools with slick modern production and street-smart, trap-influenced rap vocals that are perfectly in sync with 2019—and yet, also 1963. It's a neat musical trick that joins the past with the present, aligning history with an emotional undercurrent that resonates in the new millennium.

But that was always the intention.

East and Ferg's tune are just one of 19 original compositions created specifically for Godfather, curated by executive producer Swizz Beatz as part of a rare undertaking in television: composing modern tunes for a series that takes place entirely in the past, a soundtrack designed to both draw in younger viewers and provide perspective on how the issues of yesterday remain the issues of today.

"The whole concept was to make the music have the heritage of the time period, but also give it a 'today' handshake," Beatz tells the Recording Academy. "It's like meeting heritage with today."

In Godfather, Johnson's goal is to reclaim Harlem from the Italian gangsters who are flooding the streets with drugs. This sets him on a collision course with Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, but also ensures he crosses paths with the civil rights movement and historical figures like X and Rep. Adam Clayton Powell. The story may be based in the '60s (each season's time period is set to advance by one year) but the messages about racism and civil rights echo loudly today—something star Forest Whitaker (Johnson) and Beatz wanted reflected in the soundtrack.

Still, it's not just about creating new hip-hop tunes; the Godfather soundtrack dabbles in a number of genres and styles to make its point.

"The show allows us to look at today through the prism of the past," says the Academy Award-winning Whitaker, who is also executive producing the series. "The marriage of those two things is important, and it's important to do it in an organic way. Swizz has an openness to the whole tapestry of the universe, and you can't pigeonhole this music. It has so many different influences—from pop to reggae to hip-hop."

Bringing Beatz on to oversee the curation of the soundtrack made sense on a number of levels. The GRAMMY-winning producer born Kasseem Dean has worked as a producer on Empire and has been contributing songs to soundtracks for 20 years. But Godfather was a much bigger project, and required a new way of thinking about adding music to a TV series.

"Normally, for a first season TV show you don't do a ground-up new soundtrack," says music supervisor Stephanie Diaz-Matos, who worked alongside Beatz to make all the pieces fit together. "We finished editing several episodes and were able to look at it as a movie instead of an hour at a time and say holistically, 'This is what we need.'"

The result: a musically diverse set of tunes written specifically for particular scenes and montages that are meant to weave the sound as tightly into the story as the dialogue. Artists including Skip Marley and French Montana, Cruel Youth, Jidenna, Sean Cross, Samm Henshaw, Savage, Rick Ross and John Legend have all contributed original bespoke songs (Beatz contributes solo tunes while landing credit on several others) to the soundtrack, which will be released concurrent with the series. Two tunes, "Just In Case" by Swizz Beatz, Rick Ross and DMX and "Hallelujah" by Buddy, A$AP Ferg, and Wale dropped at digital retailers on Aug. 30. Further tunes will be released the Friday before each episode premieres, with a full soundtrack also planned.

"I'm bringing musical characters to actual visual characters," explains Beatz. "For me, the whole thing is to make you feel the characters and the music and be emotionally attached."

"You're going to hear Latin, Afrobeats—all styles of music," says Diaz-Matos. "We didn't rely just on trap, which is the sound that's the most streamed style of music at the moment—there's blends of all kinds of rhythms and textures and voices. We're speaking to being based in Harlem."

One additional unique element to the soundtrack is the way in which it was created. Epic Records EVP of A&R Zeke Lewis explains that he and Epic chair/CEO and industry veteran Sylvia Rhone coordinated an "elaborate writing trip" to Beatz' Jungle Studios in New York City, where over the course of two weeks writers worked simultaneously in different rooms to create the tracks that would go with the selected scenes.

"99 percent of the artists came in and worked in the studio with us," says Beatz. "Everybody was part of the energy. We had like five different rooms going, and I was bouncing in and out of the rooms. We were letting people do what they do and getting direction—and it really worked. You have to have everybody under the same roof to have that energy."

Whitaker, who regularly vetted the remixes and different score pieces, also showed up at Jungle from time to time, says Lewis. "He came to the studios with us, met every artist on the soundtrack and we were able to dig into the specificity of the show so the music would fit to a T. The music is such an important companion piece to the visual—I couldn't imagine one without the other."

The "writing camp," as showrunner Chris Brancato calls it, was a revelation. "I realized a music producer is a showrunner of the music," he says. "Swizz did a lot of the things a showrunner does to get great outputs from his talented collaborators—and this was a new experience for me, watching all these artists collaborating under Swizz' direction."

In addition to the bespoke songs, there's plenty of period-specific music in the series, plus a score from GRAMMY winner Mark Isham; episodes frequently feature of-the-era concert performances. But in many ways the original songs shine the brightest, and are perhaps ushering in a new era for hip-hop's role on soundtracks.

"This is 100 percent a new maturity level," says Lewis. "This is not just taking a hot rapper and trying to attach a song to a soundtrack. This is a surgically orchestrated hip-hop masterwork from Swizz Beatz and team. This is sophisticated hip-hop."

And of course it helps provide an entry point for younger viewers who might not immediately turn to a historical series—even if it does feature Whitaker and lots of snazzy gunplay and dialogue. "You want to open the tent to the widest possible audience," says Brancato. "A contemporary soundtrack can attract a younger audience—and an audience around the world."

Whether all these lofty ambitions lead to charting hits, bigger ratings—or a Season 2 sequel soundtrack—remains to be seen, though Beatz says he's on board if there is a second collection to be curated. "Every season we get to change the landscape because the year [in which the show takes place] changes," he says. "When the story changes, it gets more interesting every time."

"Music is an essential element of the African-American experience in this country," says Brancato. "Whether it's slave anthems or gospel music or church-inspired music—all of it plays a part in giving people hope, sustenance and aspiration to become part of the fabric that is America."

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