Zack O'Malley Greenburg's Blog, page 113

Learning From Jay-Z's Successes — And Failures

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

Six years ago, Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter found himself on the verge of finalizing one of the biggest deals of his life. The prize: A Jay-Z branded Jeep Commander that would roll off the lot boasting an audio system preloaded with all of Jay-Z's songs, an interior swathed in butter-cream leather and an exterior slathered in a coat of patented Jay-Z Blue paint. For his efforts, the rapper would receive a 5-10...

Flashback: How The Goo Goo Dolls Got Their Name

The Goo Goo Dolls: What's in a name?

With the Goo Goo Dolls on the road to celebrate their 25th anniversary, it seems now's a good time for a flashback (This story is adapted from a piece I wrote years ago for my college paper). Enjoy.

The Sex Maggots are coming to Connecticut. Or at least, they would have been, had the Goo Goo Dolls not changed their name two decades ago. As legend has it, the band was forced to find a new moniker when a club owner refused to put the old name on his...

Rebranding Beyonce And Jay-Z As Parents

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Click for full photo gallery: Beyonce's Baby Reveal

In August, Jay-Z and Beyoncé finished second on FORBES' annual accounting of the top-earning celebrity couples, raking in a combined $72 million, second only to Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and supermodel Gisele Bundchen. In fairness, the "Crazy In Love" couple could have easily topped the list–the musicians were between album cycles and did little or no touring in the past year.

Now, pundits say, that earning power...

U2, Gaelic Football, And The Price Of Fame In Ireland

Irish footballers see a different kind of green.

Before attending my first Gaelic football match, I had absolutely no idea how the game worked. All I knew was that it incorporated elements of soccer, rugby and Australian football, and that, according to a cheerful Dublin pubgoer I met, it was incumbent upon any self-respecting Irishman to root for Donegal.

After watching the aforementioned footballers fall to Dublin the next day at hallowed Croke Park, I can't say that I now have a much...

Chuck Leavell: The Rolling Stone Who Gathers Moss

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Click for full photo gallery: The Life and Times of The Rolling Stones' Chuck Leavell

When Chuck Leavell was 30 years old, he found himself in the midst of a career-related quandary. The Alabama-born keyboardist had spent the better part of the decade playing alongside the Allman Brothers; now, he was doing gigs with a trio in small clubs around Macon, Georgia. But he'd developed an affinity for forestry, spending much of his free time tending to the trees on the 1,000 acre-farm...

Music Money Roundup: Bieber, Buffett, Beans and Bronfman

"Psst. Barack. Make Bieber pay more, too!"

It's the middle of August and most major music executives have long ago set up their out-of-office email alerts, as have their assistants, and their assistants' assistants. But interesting news continues to percolate out of the music and entertainment world.

In the first installment of what will become a regular feature on this blog, we take a look at some of the more interesting tidbits to emerge in the past week. Here are a few:

Did Justin Bieber...

Hip-Hop Cash Kings 2011: Aftermath & Analysis

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

A week ago today, FORBES released its annual Hip-Hop Cash Kings list, chronicling the genre's top earners over the past 12 months. For the fourth time in five years, Jay-Z took home top honors with $37 million, edging second-place Diddy ($35 million) and partner-in-rhyme Kanye West ($16 million). Birdman and Lil Wayne ($15 million each) rounded out the top five.

Many of the rappers themselves reacted to the...

HTC Deal Could Soon Make Dr. Dre Hip-Hop's Richest

High Payroll: Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine stand to take home nine-figure sums from their deal with HTC.

Superproducer and rapper Dr. Dre is already among hip-hop's wealthiest — he was one of only five artists to register a net worth of $100 million or more, sitting on a personal fortune of $125 million by FORBES' last count — and he's about to get a lot richer.

Late on Wednesday, officials from HTC Corp told my colleague Eric Savitz that they had agreed to invest $300 million in Beats...

Cash Kings 2011: Hip-Hop's Top Earners

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

This week Jay-Z and Kanye West unveiled their long-awaited collaboration, Watch the Throne. The album's timing and title couldn't have been more appropriate—the Empire State of Mind rapper is hip-hop's top earner with $37 million in the past 12 months, claiming his fourth Cash Kings crown in five years; his partner-in-rhyme ranked third.

Fueled by the tail end of his Blueprint 3 Tour and a vast portfolio of...

Wiz Khalifa's High Earnings

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Click for full photo gallery: Wiz Khalifa's Smokin' Hot Merchandise

The Camp Bisco music festival in upstate New York is a morass of sunburned teenagers stumbling around drunkenly in the mud–a distant echo of Woodstock, for better or worse. But when I knock on Wiz Khalifa's trailer behind the main stage, I find myself tumbling down a slightly different rabbit hole.

The door opens, releasing a cloud of marijuana smoke that dissipates to reveal the rapper sitting by himself ...