Results tagged “shawncarter”

Earlier this month, Sarah Lewitinn (Ultragrrrl) brought her label, Stolen Transmission, back to the bedroom after leaving Island/Def Jam. This was just one of many things that signaled more changes for the major, and now it turns out that the president of Def Jam, Jay-Z, is stepping down from his position. The NY Times reports:

Jay-Z made the announcement with Def Jam’s parent, Universal Music Group, as his employment contract was expiring. Under a separate long-term recording contract with Def Jam, Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, still owes the company one or more albums.

Upon his departure he stated, “It’s time for me to take on new challenges.” What's left after already having his hand in a fashion line, nightclubs, the New Jersey Nets and of course the music industry? Looks like the most immediate project is a downtown 5-star hotel. Jay-Z purchased a development site in Chelsea which will be home to a 150,000 square-foot luxury hotel called The J-Hotel -- he hopes this will be the flagship of what a chain that will span the nation's major cities.

Distributer of royalties, BMI, filed a federal lawsuit against Jay-Z's 40/40 Club yesterday. The performing right organization holds the licensing rights to 6.5 million songs, and apparently plenty of them are being played at the club, the lawsuit cites "unauthorized public performance of musical compositions." In other words, Jay-Z has been holding out and skimping on royalties owed to fellow musicians!

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on Lenox Ave. in Manhattan, a shooting on Farragut Rd. in Brooklyn, and a home invasion robbery on 84th St. in Queens.
• The City honored Jay-Z's mom, Gloria Carter, today for her work overseeing the Shawn Carter Scholarship Fund, a college-oriented educational charity that helps disadvantaged and non-traditional students.
• A Queens man, already under arrest for threatening a police officer with a gun in front of the officer's children, multiplied his troubles by attempting to hire a hitman to kill that cop before he could testify. The would-be hitman is now also under arrest.
• After robbing a bishop of $1,500 at gunpoint in his Queens church, one of three thieves returned to the neighborhood to target the pizza place next door to the church, where he proceeded to rob an old lady while beating her with her own cane. He was stopped by an off-duty cop and held for arrest.
• Stock up on or increase the use of those subway-themed condoms while you have the chance, because the city's health commissioner will stop distributing them unless New Yorkers pick up the pace and start justifying the program. Get busy people; those condoms aren't going to use themselves.
• Former NYSE chairman Dick Grasso got four counts closer to winning his court case to keep his full compensation package, after a judge ruled in his favor on technical issues.
• Organizers of PrideFest and the city are fighting over which gay-friendly neighborhood should host the post-parade bash. The city wants to keep the event in the West Village and organizers want to move to Chelsea.
• The Dept. of Education found a temporary home for the Khalil Gibran International Academy next year. The school will be split between existing schools approximately 12 blocks apart in Park Slope.

(Superheroes at Jamba Juice, by d.wen at flickr)

Yesterday, officials welcomed Barclays as the winner in the $400 million naming rights derby for Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. The NY Times reports that the Nets looked at various entities to pitch the idea of becoming lucky one to pay lots of money to have its name on the Frank Gehry-designed arena and decided Barclays Bank "needed a game changer, that they don’t have as big a presence or brand recognition here as in the U.K." As they say, a sucker is born every minute!

Embattled Brooklyn apartment dwellers have taken their fight against the proposed site of the new arena for the "Brooklyn Nets" all the way to Athens. A group called Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn unveiled a banner on one of the endangered apartments which reads "Dr. Rogge and the International Olympic Committee, Please Don't Destroy Our Homes." If New York City is awarded the Olympic Games in 2012, the proposed basketball arena would be used to house the gymnastics competition. Local residents hope that by appealing to the International Olympic Committee, a new space for the arena can be found where the current populace won�t be forced to give up their apartments via eminent domain.