Zack O'Malley Greenburg's Blog, page 112

Steve Jobs: The Death Of The Most Important Man In Music

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Click for full photo gallery: In Palo Alto, Mourning Local Hero Steve Jobs

Within minutes of Steve Jobs's passing last night, the superlatives started pouring in. Rupert Murdoch called him "the greatest CEO of his generation," Michael Bloomberg compared him to Edison and Einstein, and Barack Obama placed him "among the greatest of American innovators."

There's another title that seems to have been somewhat overlooked in the mainstream media coverage surrounding the death of the Apple ...

Music Money Roundup: Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Sean Parker and EMI

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Click for full photo gallery: The World's 25 Highest-Paid Musicians

The worldwide economy and the music industry itself may be hurting, but the show goes on. This week, we take a quick look at a few of the artists, executives — and, apparently, politicians — who've been raking in hefty sums of money from music-related enterprises.

50 Cent's Next Move

The $100 million pocketed by 50 Cent during the 2008 sale of VitaminWater parent Glaceau to Coca-Cola established a new...

Steve Stoute On "The Tanning Of America"

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Click for full photo gallery: Cash Kings 2011: Hip-Hop's Top 20 Earners

This summer, as Beyoncé's set at Live Nation's Glastonbury music festival in the U.K. was winding down, she took a break from singing her own songs and launched into a rendition of "Happy Birthday," exhorting the crowd to join her.

The lucky recipient of this attention from one of the world's premier entertainers, backed by nearly 200,000 amateurs, wasn't Beyoncé's husband, Jay-Z, or the chairman of her record l...

Who Will Be Hip-Hop's First Billionaire?

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Click for full photo gallery: Hip-Hop's Future Billionaires

Yesterday marked the launch of the Forbes 400, our annual list of America's richest citizens. Headed by Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison, the group doesn't include any hip-hop artists–yet.

There are five artists on our watch list: Sean "Diddy" Combs (featured in this year's issue), Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter (who appeared on the cover of last year's, alongside Warren Buffett), Andre "Dr. Dre" Young, Bryan "Birdman"...

50 Cent's Next Move: Get Rich, Or Feed The Poor Trying

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Click for full photo gallery: 50 Cent: Hip-Hop Mogul Extraordinaire

Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson isn't someone who often seems uneasy. He has maintained his unapologetically aggressive stage persona and trademark scowl through myriad battles with other rappers and real physical violence, famously surviving nine close-range gunshots in 2000. But standing on a leather armchair in the Hudson Hotel, 50 proclaims that he's a bundle of nerves.

"I thought I was supposed to be finished with...

Billionaire Richard Branson On Being A Rock Star Businessman

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Click for full photo gallery: Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson's extracurricular résumé doesn't necessarily scream "businessman." The 61-year-old chairman of Virgin Group has hosted his own reality television show, appeared on Baywatch, and launched all manner of aeronautical escapades including an attempt to circumnavigate the globe in a hot air balloon.

It's all part of the package. Branson, whose personal fortune stands at $4.2 billion by FORBES' latest estimate...

Hip-Hop's Cash Kings On Canvas

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Click for full photo gallery: Seven Hip-Hop Cash Kings On Canvas

"You take a mouth off someone, you'll be surprised how they look," says artist Jason "Borbay" Borbet, considering the painting in front of him. "It's a very different person."

The mouth in question belongs to Hillary Clinton. Her image rests upside-down in the middle of a colorful collage that Borbay has painted to depict another Empire State power broker: Jay-Z. The rest of the canvas is covered with...

Pay To Rock: The Top Tickets Money Can Buy

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Click for full photo gallery: Ten Of The Top Tickets Money Can Buy

Every time Bon Jovi performs, the group's biggest fans have a chance to become part of the inner circle, in a physical sense at least. The closest seats form an arc around the stage, encircled by a ring-like extension upon which the band members periodically strut; only those who have purchased VIP ticket packages may sit in this rarefied sphere.

Though nose-bleed tickets start at just $20, fans must pony up for the ...

Music Money Roundup: Lil Wayne, Birdman, EMI and Elvis

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Click for full photo gallery: The World's 25 Highest-Paid Musicians

It's September, which means that those pesky out-of-office email replies are on the wane, and things are starting to happen again behind scenes in the music world. Or are they? With a cloudy economic outlook hanging over the markets, some of the deals expected to start rolling in the fall are moving slower than anticipated.

Meanwhile, the artists themselves haven't slowed down amid the summer heat. Here...

Why Lil Wayne's 'Carter IV' Outsold Jay-Z and Kanye's 'Throne'

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Click for full photo gallery: Lil Wayne

The numbers for Lil Wayne's Tha Carter IV came in this morning, and they were staggering: 940,000 copies sold in the first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan, placing the album firmly atop the Billboard 200 chart.

Tha Carter IV was Lil Wayne's third No. 1 debut; remarkably, its first-week sales total was more than twice that of Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch The Throne, which moved 436,000 units when it hit stores last month. So...