Betye Saar, Black Arts Pioneer Who Reclaimed Racist Images, Dies at 99

Artist Betye Saar, right, and basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, left, pose with scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. during Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Medal ceremony in Cambridge, Mass., in October 2022. Saar and Abdul-Jabbar were among seven honorees recognized for their commitment to social justice. Saar, whose assemblage art confronted racist stereotypes and reclaimed Black imagery, died Sunday at 99, four days before her 100th birthday. (Photo credit: FAH1223, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Betye Saar collected the objects America used to belittle Black people — mammy figurines, pancake advertisements, washboards and cheap souvenirs — then made them tell a different story.

Saar, the pioneering assemblage artist whose landmark “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” transformed one of America’s most enduring racist caricatures into an armed figure of Black resistance, died in her sleep Sunday at her Los Angeles home. She was 99, four days shy of her 100th birthday.

Her death was announced by Roberts Projects, the Los Angeles gallery that represented her for nearly 20 years.

“Her singular vision transformed the course of contemporary art,” gallery co-founder Julie Roberts said in a statement.

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For Saar, found objects were never simply old things. They carried the history of who made them, who used them and what America once believed it could sell without shame.

She used racist collectibles, domestic tools, family photographs, clocks, cages, dolls and discarded materials to confront Black identity, sexism, memory, spirituality and liberation. Her work made her a central figure in the Black Arts Movement and one of the most influential assemblage artists of the past century.

Her best-known work, the 1972 assemblage “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” was roughly the size of a shoebox.

At its center stood a stereotypical mammy figurine, the smiling domestic servant once used to reassure white consumers and romanticize Black servitude. Saar left the broom in the figure’s hand but also armed her with a rifle and a grenade.

The servant had become a soldier.

Saar created the work for an exhibition devoted to Black heroes at the Rainbow Sign cultural center in Berkeley, California. The assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. four years earlier had pushed her work in a more openly political direction.

King’s death “triggered a rage within me, and the mystic transformed into the warrior,” Saar later said.

Saar understood the danger of putting racist imagery back on display. She worried about how white viewers might interpret it and how such images had shaped Black people’s perceptions of themselves.

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“What saved it was that I made Aunt Jemima into a revolutionary figure,” she said.

The work preceded Quaker Oats’ decision to retire the Aunt Jemima brand by nearly five decades. When the company acknowledged in 2020 that the brand’s origins were rooted in a racial stereotype, Saar celebrated the decision but noted how long it had taken.

“The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” became a defining work of Black feminist art. Angela Davis later credited it with helping inspire the Black women’s movement.

Saar did not abandon the stereotype or pretend it had never existed. She forced it to surrender its original meaning.

That question — whether racist images could be reclaimed without repeating their damage — remained central to Saar’s work and later placed her in one of the Black art world’s most contentious arguments.

In 1997, Saar participated in a letter-writing campaign criticizing Kara Walker, who had received a MacArthur Fellowship for her provocative silhouette scenes depicting slavery, sexual violence and the antebellum South.

Walker’s supporters viewed the work as an unsparing confrontation with America’s racist imagination. Saar feared that its imagery reinforced the degradation it sought to expose.

She called Walker’s work “revolting and negative” and said it served the “amusement and the investment of the white art establishment.”

The dispute became an art-world version of a larger argument running through 1990s Black culture: Who controls images of Black suffering, who profits from them and when does exposure become exploitation?

Saar’s position was consistent with the work she had been making for decades. Racist images could be used, she believed, but they had to be stripped of their authority and redirected toward Black liberation.

Born Betye Irene Brown in Los Angeles on July 30, 1926, Saar spent part of her childhood in Watts, where she watched Simon Rodia construct the Watts Towers from broken ceramics, glass, shells, metal and other salvaged materials.

The towers showed her early what discarded objects could become in the hands of an artist.

Saar studied design at UCLA and initially worked in interior design, greeting cards and decorative arts. She later became a printmaker before a 1967 exhibition of Joseph Cornell’s shadow boxes inspired her move toward three-dimensional assemblage.

Her 1969 work “Black Girl’s Window” placed the silhouette of a Black woman behind glass, surrounded by moons, stars, a skeleton, astrological signs and family imagery. The Museum of Modern Art acquired the work in 2019, decades after it was created.

Recognition from major institutions often came late.

Saar received a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975, but large museums showed her work only sporadically for much of the following four decades. In 2019, the Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art mounted concurrent solo exhibitions.

She continued creating well into her 90s from the Laurel Canyon home and studio where she had lived since 1962. Her work moved among politics, family history, mysticism and the spiritual energy she believed objects carried from their earlier lives.

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Even with her centennial approaching, Saar appeared less interested in assessing her legacy than in making something new.

“That’s what art is,” she told the Los Angeles Times in June. “Making something where there was nothing.”

Her 100th birthday is being commemorated with “Betye Saar’s Black Dolls,” an exhibition at The New York Historical in Manhattan. The exhibition, featuring 26 dolls from a promised collection of 100, continues through Oct. 4. Another exhibition, “Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar,” remains on view at Roberts Projects through Aug. 22.

Saar is survived by her daughters, artists Lezley Saar and Alison Saar and writer Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh; six grandchildren; and Rojo, her red-footed tortoise.

For more than six decades, Saar showed that reclamation required more than placing an old stereotype in a new frame.

She gave the figure a weapon, changed who held the power and dared America to look at it again.

More Than 20 Years After His Death, ODB Gets a Brooklyn Street Sign

Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s widow, Icelene Jones, second from left, holds an “ODB Jones Way” sign with members of the late rapper’s family during a street co-naming ceremony July 25, 2026, in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. The honorary designation at Franklin and Putnam avenues recognizes the Wu-Tang Clan co-founder, born Russell Tyrone Jones. (Ol’ Dirty Bastard Legacy via Instagram)

Ol’ Dirty Bastard spent his career refusing to fit neatly anywhere. Brooklyn has now found a permanent place for his name.

Family members, friends and fans gathered Saturday in Bedford-Stuyvesant as the city unveiled “ODB Jones Way” at the intersection of Franklin and Putnam avenues, honoring the late Wu-Tang Clan co-founder born Russell Tyrone Jones.

The location was not selected simply because it offered an available signpost.


A mural modeled after the cover of ODB’s 1995 solo debut, “Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version,” has watched over the corner for years. His brother Ramsey Jones said their grandmother still lives on the block.

“I am very honored to be here because my grandmother’s house is on this block on Putnam Avenue,” Jones said during the ceremony.

That family connection gives the honor more weight than the usual celebrity street designation. Brooklyn placed ODB’s name where his relatives still have roots and where residents had already created a neighborhood monument to him.

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The New York City Council formally approved the intersection co-naming in December. The measure became Local Law 48 on Jan. 17, designating “ODB Jones Way” at Franklin and Putnam avenues. It adds an honorary intersection name rather than replacing either street’s legal name.

Council Member Chi Ossé, whose district includes Bedford-Stuyvesant, worked with ODB’s estate and family on the dedication. Ossé previously led the successful effort to designate Nov. 15 — Jones’ birthday — as Ol’ Dirty Bastard Day in New York City.

While presenting that resolution in 2023, Ossé called Jones “a pioneer in the world of music, and one of New York’s immortal sons.”

ODB’s immortality was built on a voice that could sound like a rap verse, a singalong, an argument and a warning — sometimes before the same record ended.

He joined cousins RZA and GZA as an original member of Wu-Tang Clan, whose 1993 debut, “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers),” rewrote the possibilities for a large rap group. Where other members arrived with dense lyricism, street reportage or martial-arts discipline, ODB seemed governed by an entirely separate set of laws.

His delivery was ragged but deliberate, moving between rapping and singing without respecting the border between them. He could blow apart the structure of a song while becoming the part listeners remembered most.

That presence helped make “Protect Ya Neck,” “Shame on a N---a” and “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” essential pieces of Wu-Tang’s early sound. Away from the group, “Brooklyn Zoo” and “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” turned his unpredictability into the center of the record rather than something producers needed to contain.

“Return to the 36 Chambers” received a Grammy nomination and established ODB as the first Wu-Tang member to release a solo album after Method Man. He later reached an even wider audience through “Got Your Money,” featuring Kelis, and his appearance on the remix of Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy.”

That Carey collaboration became a model for the rap-and-R&B remix long before record labels turned the combination into a dependable chart formula. ODB did not arrive to smooth out the song. His unpolished energy was the point.

His fame also came with arrests, addiction, incarceration and public episodes that were often treated as entertainment while he was alive. The spectacle sometimes swallowed the music and reduced a complicated person to a collection of outrageous clips.

Jones died Nov. 13, 2004, two days before his 36th birthday.

More than two decades later, the parts of his work once dismissed as disorder sound increasingly influential. Generations of rappers have adopted his cracked melodies, abrupt vocal shifts and willingness to make personality as important as technical precision.

There was no father to his style, as the famous explanation of his name went, and attempts to copy him usually proved why.

New York’s recent honors have moved ODB beyond the caricature. The City Council’s 2023 resolution recognized him as a distinctive MC whose influence outlived him. The new sign places that recognition directly into the Brooklyn landscape that helped create him.

The mural had already made Franklin and Putnam a destination for Wu-Tang fans. ODB’s face, drawn from the welfare-card image used on his debut album, turned the side of a neighborhood building into an unofficial memorial.

Now the city has added its own marker.

Plas Johnson, Saxophonist Who Gave ‘The Pink Panther Theme’ Its Voice, Dies at 94

The cover of Plas Johnson’s Capitol Records album “Mood for the Blues.” Johnson, whose tenor saxophone gave Henry Mancini’s “The Pink Panther Theme” its unmistakable sound, died July 15 at 94. (Courtesy Photo: Capitol Records)

Most people heard Plas Johnson long before they knew his name.

His tenor saxophone slides into Henry Mancini’s “The Pink Panther Theme” with a low, bluesy prowl, giving the animated cat in the film’s opening credits its cool, its mischief and its unmistakable strut.

The melody became part of popular culture. The musician behind it spent much of his career outside the spotlight.

Johnson died July 15 at his Los Angeles home, his children, Eric Johnson and Stephanie Oliver, told The New York Times. He was 94. A cause of death was not announced.

He died six days before his 95th birthday. His children said he had performed at his retirement community about a month earlier.

“The Pink Panther Theme” was Johnson’s most famous performance, but it accounted for less than three minutes in a recording career that crossed jump blues, jazz, R&B, soul, rock, pop, television and film.

His saxophone appeared on recordings by the Platters, Larry Williams, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, Nancy Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Dr. John, the Beach Boys and scores of others. He played tenor on the Platters’ “The Great Pretender” and piccolo on Bobby Day’s “Rockin’ Robin.”

 

Johnson was part of a generation of Black studio musicians whose work moved across genres more freely than the music industry’s marketing categories did.

A record might be sold as pop, rock, easy listening or a Hollywood soundtrack. Johnson brought to it the phrasing he had developed in Louisiana dance halls, blues bands, jazz clubs and Los Angeles recording rooms.

Other musicians knew what his name meant.

Louisiana arranger and producer Harold Battiste recalled that when producers could not hire Johnson, they looked for someone who sounded like him. Harmonica player and producer Bob Corritore remembered him after his death as a “musician’s musician.”

Mancini did not want an imitation.

He composed “The Pink Panther Theme” with Johnson’s tenor in mind after watching David Niven play the sophisticated jewel thief at the center of Blake Edwards’ comedy.

“Plas has the sound and the style I wanted,” Mancini wrote in his autobiography.

The theme was recorded in 1963 for the film, which opened in the United States in 1964. Johnson played during the introduction, returned for the central solo and closed the piece.

He later recalled that the arrangement felt special from the first run-through. When the musicians finished, the string section joined the rest of the room in applauding — an unusual response during a professional studio session.

Mancini’s music from “The Pink Panther” won three Grammy Awards, while the score received an Academy Award nomination. The American Film Institute later ranked it No. 20 on its list of the 25 greatest American film scores.

Johnson’s identity remained less familiar than the solo.

He sometimes met listeners who told him that his performance sounded exactly like the musician heard in the movie. Johnson would explain that they were listening to the same man.

He returned to the theme decades later, rerecording it for the 2004 tribute album “Ultimate Mancini” and the 2006 remake of “The Pink Panther” starring Steve Martin.

Johnson was born July 21, 1931, in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, and grew up in a family of professional musicians. His mother played piano, while his father played saxophone and banjo.

The family later moved to Thibodaux and then New Orleans. Johnson began as a singer before his father gave him a soprano saxophone. He switched to tenor at 15 and formed the Johnson Brothers Combo with his older brother, pianist Ray Johnson.

The brothers played dances around the New Orleans area, mixing the popular music of Louis Jordan, Dinah Washington and Charles Brown with the bebop of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

The crowd did not always ask for bebop. The brothers played it anyway.

In 1951, singer and pianist Charles Brown heard Johnson perform at the Dew Drop Café in New Orleans and hired him. The job lasted about six months before Johnson was drafted into the Army, where he continued playing in a military band.

Johnson moved to Los Angeles with his siblings in 1954. Jam sessions led to recording dates, and his blues-touched sound proved valuable as rock and roll expanded the market for musicians who could combine Black musical language with the precision demanded by commercial studios.

A session with Johnny Otis brought him to the attention of Capitol Records executive Dave Cavanaugh. Johnson soon found himself recording behind Cole, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and other major stars.

He could bring personality to a record without crowding the singer or arrangement.

“You just have to know when to start and when to stop,” Johnson said in a 2005 interview.

That judgment kept him working through decades of changes in recording technology and popular taste.

Johnson remained active in jazz while handling commercial studio work. He released albums under his own name, including “This Must Be the Plas!” and “Mood for the Blues,” and maintained a long association with trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison.

In 1970, he joined the studio band for “The Merv Griffin Show,” beginning a 15-year run that placed a working jazz ensemble inside a five-day-a-week television production. He continued accepting outside recording dates during the show’s run.

Johnson later appeared in Denny Tedesco’s documentary “The Wrecking Crew,” which brought wider attention to the Los Angeles session musicians behind generations of familiar records. The film also featured New Orleans drummer Earl Palmer, with whom Johnson had worked frequently.

By then, Johnson had spent more than half a century demonstrating how much identity a musician could fit into an introduction, a background fill or a few measures between a singer’s lines.

Alley Boy, Influential Voice From Atlanta’s Mixtape Era, Dies

Alley Boy, the Atlanta rapper whose hard-edged records helped make Duct Tape Entertainment one of the city’s most recognizable mixtape-era movements, died Monday, his daughter confirmed on Instagram.

Multiple outlets reported his death was caused by kidney failure.  He was in his early 40s. His exact age remains the subject of conflicting reports, with music publications placing his age at 42, while biographical databases list his birth date as March 3, 1981, which would make him 45.

The confirmation followed a day of confusion. Reports of Alley Boy’s death began circulating Sunday, but his daughter said Monday morning that he was still alive and criticized people for spreading the news prematurely.

Later Monday, she posted photographs in his memory, including a childhood image of Alley Boy holding her and another showing her hand resting on his. She marked the second photograph with the date July 20, 2026, confirming his death.

Alley Boy, smiles while holding two young children in an undated photograph. His daughter shared the image to her Instagram story on Monday, overlaid with an emotional message, to confirm the mixtape pioneer's death.

Alley Boy, whose real name was Curt Freeman, had publicly documented serious kidney problems and his need for a transplant. He said in 2023 that he had begun dialysis and later described undergoing treatment three times a week.

He attributed the damage to his kidneys in part to years of drinking codeine cough syrup, commonly called lean, and used later interviews to warn younger people about the habit. 

Alley Boy never became one of Atlanta’s biggest crossover stars. His standing came from somewhere else.

During a period when mixtapes could establish a rapper’s weight without a national radio hit, his voice carried through East Atlanta, Southern street rap and the artists who understood what Duct Tape represented. His performances were blunt and pressurized, often making anger, fear and desperation sound like parts of the same thought.

He told The Fader in 2011 that he grew up in Edgewood Courts, began rapping at 9 and entered a recording studio by the time he was 10 or 11. With both parents struggling with drugs, he lived with his grandmother and began paying for studio sessions once he could earn his own money.

“I always fell back to the music,” he said.

Freeman and longtime friend Big Bank Black co-founded Duct Tape Entertainment, an independent East Atlanta operation whose identity was built as much around loyalty and neighborhood ties as music. The company later became home to Trouble, another respected Atlanta rapper whose death in 2022 left a lasting wound inside the group.

Alley Boy introduced himself to a wider Southern rap audience with the 2009 mixtape “Da Don.” He followed it with “The Definition of F--- S---” and its 2011 sequel, records that established his reputation as an uncompromising street rapper during one of Atlanta’s most competitive mixtape periods.

“The Definition of F--- S--- 2” also earned attention well outside the usual mixtape circuit.

Pitchfork praised the urgency of the project and Alley Boy’s consistency, noting how easily his threats and more vulnerable moments ran into one another. The tape featured Trouble, Jeezy, Yo Gotti and Freddie Gibbs, but Alley Boy’s intensity remained its center.

His catalog eventually connected him with artists including Pusha T, Meek Mill, Future, Master P and Fat Trel. “Your Favorite Rapper,” with Pusha T, challenged performers whose public images did not match the lives they described on records. “War Cry,” released in 2013, included “Stack It Up” with Meek Mill, “Mama’s House” with Trouble and collaborations with Future, Master P, Yo Gotti and Young Scooter.

His 2012 project “The Gift of Discernment” showed more of the reflection beneath the confrontation. It arrived through Duct Tape Entertainment and was followed by projects including “War Cry,” “Alley Shakur (The Soul of a Runaway Slave),” “Definition of F--- S--- Pt. 3” and “AlleyGod.”

The Duct Tape name never became the commercial empire its founders envisioned, but its influence survived the label deals and internal fractures that slowed its momentum.

Less than a month before Alley Boy’s death, he joined Big Bank for an extended episode of the “Perspektives” podcast. The two revisited Duct Tape’s rise and spoke candidly about business inexperience, industry politics, financial problems and the decisions that kept the movement from reaching its full potential.

 

The conversation also turned to grief, mental health and life after the deaths of people close to them, particularly Trouble. Alley Boy spoke less like a rapper protecting an image than a man taking account of what the years had cost.

News of his death brought tributes from across Atlanta rap.

21 Savage called him an East Atlanta blueprint and legend. DJ Scream remembered him as one of the best rappers the city produced. Master P, who recorded with Alley Boy as part of the Louie V Mob period, praised him as a soldier and recalled the street records they made together.

Those reactions reflected a career whose importance was never best measured by chart positions. Alley Boy helped represent an East Atlanta rap world that existed outside the city’s most famous label systems, carrying Duct Tape’s name through mixtapes, collaborations and a voice that rarely softened itself for wider approval.

His final public chapter was different. He spoke openly about dialysis, his need for a kidney and the damage he believed codeine had done to his body. The same rapper who built his name on survival began using his experience as a warning.

“What was meant to destroy me woke me up,” he wrote after starting dialysis. “Now I know my purpose.”

Sparky D, Pioneering ‘Roxanne Wars’ Battle MC, Dies at 61

Sparky D, born Doreen C. Broadnax, is shown in an undated publicity photo. Broadnax, the Brownsville, Brooklyn, rapper whose 1985 answer record “Sparky’s Turn (Roxanne You’re Through)” made her a key voice in the Roxanne Wars, died July 4 at 61. No cause of death has been announced.

Sparky D, born Doreen C. Broadnax, the Brownsville, Brooklyn, MC whose 1985 answer record “Sparky’s Turn (Roxanne You’re Through)” made her one of the defining voices of the Roxanne Wars, has died. She was 61.

Her death was announced over the holiday weekend by her family. No cause of death has been announced.

She first recorded with the Brooklyn group The Playgirls, then broke out on her own with “Sparky’s Turn,” a direct response to Roxanne Shanté’s “Roxanne’s Revenge.” The record arrived during one of rap’s earliest full-scale lyrical wars, when answer records were not social media events but actual vinyl releases, pressed, shipped and judged by DJs, radio listeners and crowds.

The Roxanne Wars began after UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne,” a 1984 record built around a fictional woman who rejected the group’s advances. Roxanne Shanté, then a teenage MC from Queensbridge, answered with “Roxanne’s Revenge.” The response was sharp, funny and ruthless enough to create its own industry.

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Then came the replies to the reply.

Sparky D’s entry stood out because it did not sound like a novelty record or a quick cash-in. She came at Shanté with a hard Brooklyn delivery and the confidence of someone who understood the assignment before there was a phrase for it. “Sparky’s Turn” was not just part of the Roxanne craze. It became one of the records that made the feud feel like a real fight.

The rivalry soon moved beyond wax. Sparky D and Shanté appeared together in staged battles, sometimes leaning into the boxing imagery that surrounded the feud. In 1985, the conflict was captured on “Round One: Roxanne Shanté vs. Sparky Dee,” one of the most memorable documents from rap’s first great answer-record era.

For a later generation raised on diss tracks, beef timelines and endless commentary, the Roxanne Wars can sound almost quaint. They were anything but. They proved that rap audiences would follow conflict across records, boroughs, radio stations and personalities. They also proved that women MCs were not side characters in hip-hop’s competitive tradition.

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DJ Premier, in an Instagram tribute, called her “one of the 1st Female Battle MC’s” and said her “relentless voice and delivery” made her a force.

“I became an instant fan,” Premier wrote, recalling her battles with Shanté.

MC Sha-Rock, one of hip-hop’s first women on record and a founding member of Funky 4 + 1, wrote that “the HIP HOP WORLD has taken a tremendous loss.”

Grandmaster Flash called Sparky D “one of the dopest female MCs from back in the day.”

That praise carries weight because Sparky D’s career connects two crucial eras: the foundational days when women such as Sha-Rock helped open the door, and the mid-1980s moment when MCs such as Shanté and Sparky D kicked it wider through battle records, street-level radio and live performance.

Sparky D understood that lineage. At a 2021 Bronx event honoring MC Sha-Rock, she said, “Without MC Sha-Rock, my mother, there would be no me.”

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After “Sparky’s Turn,” she continued recording through the 1980s. Her catalog included “He’s My DJ” with Kool DJ Red Alert, “Throwdown,” “Sparky’s Back” and the 1988 album “This Is Sparky D’s World” on B-Boy Records. The records placed her in the same gritty independent ecosystem that helped define New York rap before major labels fully understood the music’s commercial power.

Her life after the first wave of fame was not easy. Sparky D later spoke publicly about addiction, abuse and the doors that closed once her early rap run slowed. In a 2007 profile, she described herself as a woman who had been through hardship and come out with faith intact.

“You gotta go through something in order to grow,” she said.

In later years, Broadnax turned toward Christianity, gospel rap and ministry. She moved to Atlanta, founded Treasure Ministries and won a Gospel Choice Award in 2007 for “This Is for the Church.” That part of her story mattered, too. It was not a footnote after hip-hop. It was how she chose to keep using her voice.

Victor Willis, Village People Singer and “Y.M.C.A.” Co-Writer, Dies At 74

Victor Willis is shown in a promotional photo from the Village People’s “Cruisin’” album era. Willis, the group’s original lead singer and a co-writer of “Y.M.C.A.,” “Macho Man” and “In the Navy,” died Tuesday after a short but aggressive illness. He was 74.

Victor Willis, the original lead singer of the Village People and the voice behind some of disco’s most durable records, has died. He was 74.

Willis died Tuesday after a “short, but aggressive illness,” according to a statement posted to his official Facebook page by his wife, Karen Huff-Willis.

“It is with profound sadness that I must announce the death of my husband, Victor Willis,” the statement said. “The family requests privacy at this time of great loss.”

Willis was the visual and vocal center of the Village People, best known for performing as the group’s policeman and, later, in a naval officer’s uniform. But his place in music history is larger than the costume.

He was the group’s original lead singer and a key songwriter behind its biggest records, including “Y.M.C.A.,” “Macho Man” and “In the Navy.” Those songs turned the Village People into one of the defining acts of the disco era and kept Willis’ voice moving through weddings, sporting events, Pride celebrations, political rallies and dance floors for nearly 50 years.

For all the camp and theater built into the Village People’s image, Willis brought a real R&B foundation to the records. The son of a Baptist preacher, he developed his voice in church before moving through theater and eventually into the studio with French producer Jacques Morali.

That background mattered. Willis’ baritone gave the group’s biggest hits a force that could cut through the glitter. The records were fun, but they were not lightweight. The hooks worked because Willis delivered them like he believed every command.

His catalog kept him in the news long after disco’s commercial peak.

In the 2010s, Willis became a major figure in the fight over copyright termination rights, using provisions of U.S. copyright law to win back control of his share of Village People songs. The case was closely watched across the music business because it showed how legacy songwriters could challenge old publishing deals decades after signing them.

Willis also spent his later years protecting the meaning, ownership and use of the group’s music. He objected at times to the use of Village People songs in politics, later defended Donald Trump’s use of “Y.M.C.A.” and repeatedly pushed back against descriptions of the song as a gay anthem, even as the record remained deeply tied to LGBTQ culture in the public imagination.

Beau Williams, Houston-Born Gospel And R&B Singer, Dies At 76

Beau Williams, the Houston-born gospel and R&B singer known for “Wonderful” and his national exposure on “Star Search,” is shown in an undated promotional photo. Williams died June 17 after battling cancer. He was 76.

Beau Williams, the Houston-born gospel and R&B singer best known to old-school audiences for winning on “Star Search” and to gospel fans for his signature song “Wonderful,” has died. He was 76.

Williams died June 17 after battling cancer, according to a family statement posted to his Facebook page and a remembrance from PATH MEGAzine publisher Kris Patrick, who wrote that Williams had been “quietly fighting cancer.”

Born and raised in Houston, Williams grew up in a musical church family. His father was a pastor, his mother led the choir and his siblings sang. He later moved to Los Angeles, where George Benson helped him land a recording contract with Capitol Records.

Williams crossed into national view in the 1980s after appearing on “Star Search,” where he dethroned a longtime champion Sam Harris, who had become one of the show’s early breakout stars.

But Williams’ deepest mark came in gospel.

After recording R&B albums for Capitol, Williams signed with Light Records and returned to gospel music. His 1989 project “Wonderful” became his defining release, reaching No. 2 on Billboard’s gospel albums chart.

The Recording Academy lists Williams as a 1990 Grammy nominee for “Wonderful” in the best soul gospel performance, male category.

Williams’ catalog also included “Walk Around Heaven,” “Say Yes,” “Higher,” “Love” and “Power.” 

A public homegoing celebration is scheduled for Saturday, June 27, at The Fountain of Praise, 13950 Hillcroft Ave. in Houston. Public viewing is scheduled from 9 to 11 a.m., followed by the Celebration of Life service at 11 a.m.

Williams is survived by his wife, Elvina; daughters Nicole, Monica and Janetta; and son James.

Clive Davis, Visionary Record Executive Who Shaped Global Pop Culture, Dies at 94

 

Record executive and music industry mogul Clive Davis speaks during the Kennedy Center Honors Gala dinner at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 2, 2023. Davis, the visionary architect who built the global commercial infrastructure for 1990s and 2000s R&B and hip-hop through landmark joint ventures with LaFace Records and Bad Boy Records, died Monday at his home in Manhattan at age 94.

The legendary music executive, whose unparalleled ear and ruthless business acumen guided the careers of Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, The Notorious B.I.G., and Alicia Keys, died Monday at his home in New York City. He was 94.

His longtime representative Aliza Rabinoff confirmed the death, stating that Davis passed away peacefully from age-related illness. The executive had recently been hospitalized in May with a respiratory tract infection but was released in early June. His family also released a statement on social media confirming the passing.

While history will primarily remember him as the executive who discovered and championed Whitney Houston to global superstardom at Arista Records, for 90s and 00s culture, his legacy is far heavier.

He was the one of the first executives who understood that the future of global pop music was being constructed in Atlanta and Brooklyn, and he funded the blueprints.

In 1989, Davis engineered a joint venture with L.A. Reid and Babyface to create LaFace Records. That single executive decision effectively relocated the center of the music industry to Atlanta, providing the launchpad for TLC, Usher, Toni Braxton, and Outkast to permanently redefine the sound of the 1990s.

Four years later, Davis repeated the maneuver in hip-hop. He partnered with Sean “Diddy” Combs to launch Bad Boy Records as an Arista joint venture in 1993. The move gave a young Brooklyn executive the major-label distribution machinery needed to turn The Notorious B.I.G., Faith Evans, Mase, and 112 into an unstoppable, platinum-certified commercial empire.

When the industry shifted at the turn of the century, Davis did not lose his grip. After leaving Arista, he founded J Records in 2000 and immediately proved his instincts were still on-point. He signed a young Alicia Keys, guiding her 2001 debut studio album, "Songs in A Minor", into a multi-platinum, Grammy-sweeping juggernaut that shifted the entire trajectory of 2000s neo-soul.

Tay Keith, Producer Behind 'Look Alive,' 'Nonstop' and 'Sicko Mode,' Dies at 29

Grammy-nominated producer Tay Keith is shown in an undated promotional portrait. Keith, born Brytavious Lakeith Chambers, was found dead in his Nashville apartment on Thursday. The Memphis native fundamentally shifted the sound of late-2010s hip-hop, bringing his city's signature heavy bounce to global hits like Travis Scott's Sicko Mode and Beyoncé's Before I Let Go from her "Homecoming" live album.

The tag told you who made it. The drums told you where he was from.

“Tay Keith, f--- these n----- up” was crude, unmistakable and usually followed by something stripped down, hard and built to move. It was not just a drop. It was a producer’s signature at a moment when producers were becoming part of rap’s front-facing language.

Keith, the Grammy-nominated producer born Brytavious Lakeith Chambers, was found dead Thursday in his Nashville apartment, police said. He was 29.

Metro Nashville Police said Chambers was found in his Martin Street apartment during a welfare check. Police said no foul play is suspected. His death remains unclassified pending autopsy results.

Keith’s death lands hard because he helped put Memphis back in the middle of mainstream rap’s daily conversation.

He came from a city that had already changed Southern rap through Three 6 Mafia, 8Ball & MJG, Playa Fly, DJ Squeeky, Gangsta Pat, Project Pat, Yo Gotti, Young Dolph and a long line of producers and rappers who made darkness, bounce and bass feel like local language. Keith did not clean that language up for the mainstream. He made the mainstream come to it.

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“I always knew music was gonna be my outlet,” Keith told The Fader in 2018. “I just didn’t know when, or how it was gonna happen.”

It happened with BlocBoy JB.

Keith and BlocBoy were not an industry pairing cooked up after the city was already hot. They were Memphis kids who knew each other’s timing before the rest of the country caught on. When “Look Alive” arrived in 2018 with Drake on it, the record did not sound like a local act being invited into pop. It sounded like one of the biggest rappers in the world stepping into their room.

The beat was stripped down and cold. BlocBoy gave it movement. Drake gave it reach. Keith gave it the floor.

That year, his run got ridiculous. He produced or co-produced Drake’s “Nonstop,” Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode,” Eminem’s “Not Alike” and Lil Baby and Gunna’s “Never Recover,” featuring Drake. “Sicko Mode” brought him a Grammy nomination for best rap song.

Keith was barely in his 20s, and his sound was already moving through some of the biggest records in the country.

That is usually where the industry starts sanding off the regional edge. Keith’s records kept their accent. The drums stayed dry. The bounce stayed Memphis. The empty space was not empty; it was where the record got its nerve.

Memphis rapper BlocBoy JB, left, and producer Tay Keith pose in an undated throwback photograph shared to BlocBoy JB's Instagram Story on Thursday. The rapper posted the image with the caption "Damn Cuz You Just Hurt Me Bad" following the announcement of Keith's death at age 29. The long-time friends and collaborators rose to global prominence together with their 2018 hit Look Alive. (Screen capture via Instagram/blocboy_jb)

He could still move outside the expected lanes. Keith produced Beyoncé’s version of “Before I Let Go,” the Frankie Beverly and Maze classic that became part of her “Homecoming” release. He later helped push Sexyy Red into the wider conversation with “Pound Town,” a record plenty of people laughed at until the beat, the joke and the personality all started working at once.

Keith heard it before the room did.

“People were trolling the shit out of me,” he told Billboard in 2024. “It wasn’t much good feedback. It was coming from even people around me, ‘What you doing?’ I saw the potential. That’s as simple as it was, me believing in her.”

That was the job. Hear it early. Stand on it. Let everybody else catch up.

Keith’s production did not beg for approval. It gave rappers a hard, open lane and made them decide what to do with it. BlocBoy could dance inside it. Drake could turn it into chart language. Travis Scott could fold it into spectacle. Sexyy Red could make it blunt and funny.

The center still held because the center was Memphis.

Keith also finished college while his career was exploding. Middle Tennessee State University said he graduated in December 2018 with degrees in integrated studies and media management. By his last week of school, he had his first No. 1 single.

“There wouldn’t be any point for me to come to college if I didn’t want to finish it — I could have just focused 100% on music,” Keith told MTSU. “By my last week of college, I had my first number one single, so it didn’t make any sense to drop out.”

After news of his death, BlocBoy JB posted the kind of grief that does not need polish.

“Damn Cuz You Just Hurt Me Bad,” he wrote in an Instagram Story.

In another tribute, he wrote, “We talked everyday.”

Fellow Memphis producer Hitkidd wrote, “I ain’t even got the words, we been doing this since 2010 @taykeith.”