Tina Turner, the earthshaking soul singer whose rasping vocals, sexual magnetism and explosive energy made her an unforgettable live performer and one of the most successful recording artists of all time, died on Wednesday at her home in Küsnacht, Switzerland, near Zurich. She was 83.

 

Her publicist Bernard Doherty announced the death in a statement but did not provide the cause. She had a stroke in recent years and was known to be struggling with a kidney disease and other illnesses.

 

Ms. Turner embarked on her half-century career in the late 1950s, while still attending high school in East St. Louis, Ill., when she began singing with Ike Turner and his band, the Kings of Rhythm. At first she was only an occasional performer, but she soon became the group’s star attraction — and Mr. Turner’s wife. With her potent, bluesy voice and her frenetic dancing style, she made an instant impression.

 

Their ensemble, soon renamed the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, became one of the premier touring soul acts in Black venues on the so-called chitlin’ circuit. After the Rolling Stones invited the group to open for them, first on a British tour in 1966 and then on an American tour in 1969, white listeners in both countries began paying attention.

Ms. Turner, who insisted on adding rock songs by the Beatles and the Stones to her repertoire, reached an enormous new audience, giving the Ike and Tina Turner Revue its first Top 10 hit with her version of the Creedence Clearwater Revival song “Proud Mary” in 1971 and a Grammy Award for best R&B vocal performance by a group.

 

“In the context of today’s show business, Tina Turner must be the most sensational professional onstage,” Ralph J. Gleason, the influential jazz and pop critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, wrote in a review of a Rolling Stones concert in Oakland in November 1969. “She comes on like a hurricane. She dances and twists and shakes and sings and the impact is instant and total.”

 

But if the Ike and Tina Turner Revue was a success, the Ike and Tina Turner marriage was not. Mr. Turner was abusive. After she escaped the marriage in her 30s, her career faltered. But her solo album “Private Dancer,” released in 1984, returned her to the spotlight — and lifted her into the pop stratosphere.

 

Working with younger songwriters, and backed by a smooth, synthesized sound that provided a lustrous wrapping for her raw, urgent vocals, she delivered three mammoth hits: the title song, written by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits; “Better Be Good to Me”; and “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

 

Referring to its “innovative fusion of old-fashioned soul singing and new wave synth-pop,” Stephen Holden, in a review for The New York Times, called the album “a landmark not only in the career of the 45-year-old singer, who has been recording since the late 1950s, but in the evolution of pop-soul music itself.”

 

At the 1985 Grammy Awards, “What’s Love Got to Do With It” won three awards, for record of the year, song of the year and best female pop vocal performance, and “Better Be Good To Me” won for best female rock vocal performance.

 

The album went on to sell five million copies and ignite a touring career that established Ms. Turner as a worldwide phenomenon. In 1988 she appeared before about 180,000 people at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, breaking a record for the largest paying audience for a solo artist.After her “Twenty Four Seven” tour in 2000 sold more than $100 million in tickets, Guinness World Records announced that she had sold more concert tickets than any other solo performer in history.

 

Ike and Tina Turner in performance in Texas in 1964. Their ensemble became one of the premier touring soul acts on the Black circuit; after the Rolling Stones invited the group to open for them, white listeners began paying attention.

 

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on Nov. 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tenn., northeast of Memphis, and spent her earliest years on the Poindexter farm in Nutbush, an unincorporated area nearby, where she sang in the choir of the Spring Hill Baptist Church.

 

Her father, Floyd, known by his middle name, Richard, worked as the farm’s overseer — “We were well-to-do farmers,” Ms. Turner told Rolling Stone in 1986 — and had a difficult relationship with his wife, Zelma (Currie) Bullock.

 

 

Her parents left Anna and her older sister, Alline, with relatives when they went to work at a military installation in Knoxville during World War II. The family reunited after the war, but Zelma left her husband a few years later and Anna lived with her grandmother in Brownsville.

 

After rejoining her mother in St. Louis, she attended Sumner High School there. She and Alline began frequenting the Manhattan Club in East St. Louis to hear Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm.

 

“I wanted to get up there and sing sooooo bad,” Ms. Turner recalled in “I, Tina: My Life Story” (1986), written with Kurt Loder. “But that took an entire year.”

 

One night, during one of the band’s breaks, the drummer, Eugene Washington, handed her the microphone and she began singing the B.B. King song “You Know I Love You,” which Mr. Turner had produced. “When Ike heard me, he said, ‘My God!’” she told People magazine in 1981. “He couldn’t believe that voice coming out of this frail little body.”

 

In his book “Takin’ Back My Name: The Confessions of Ike Turner” (1999), written with Nigel Cawthorne, Mr. Turner wrote: “I’d be writing songs with Little Richard in mind, but I didn’t have no Little Richard to sing them, so Tina was my Little Richard. Listen closely to Tina and who do you hear? Little Richard singing in the female voice.”

 

Mr. Turner used her as a backup singer, billed as Little Ann, on his 1958 record “Boxtop.” When Art Lassiter, the group’s lead singer, failed to show up for the recording of “A Fool in Love,” she stepped in. The record was a hit, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 27 on the pop chart.

 

Mr. Turner gave his protégée — who by now was also his romantic partner — a new name, Tina, inspired by the television character Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. And he renamed the group the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.

 

It was a dynamic, disciplined ensemble second only to the James Brown Revue, but until “Proud Mary,” it never achieved significant crossover success. Up to that point it had only one single in the pop Top 20 in the United States, “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” in 1961. The group did generate several hits on the R&B charts, notably “I Idolize You,” “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” and “Tra La La La La,” but most of its income came from a relentless touring schedule.

 

 

Ms. Turner’s relationship with Mr. Turner, whom she married in 1962 on a quick trip to Tijuana, Mexico, was turbulent. He was dictatorial, violent at times and, in the 1970s, hopelessly addicted to cocaine. She left him in 1976, with 36 cents and a Mobil gasoline card in her pocket, and divorced him two years later. He died of a cocaine overdose in 2007.

 

 

“When I left, I was living a life of death,” she told People in 1981. “I didn’t exist. I didn’t fear him killing me when I left, because I was already dead. When I walked out, I didn’t look back.”

Her marriage provided much of the material for the 1993 film “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” with Angela Basset and Laurence Fishburne in the lead roles. Ms. Turner rerecorded some of her hits, and a new song, “I Don’t Wanna Fight,” for the film, but otherwise declined to participate. “Why would I want to see Ike Turner beat me up again?”

she said at the time.

A Second Career

In 1966, the record producer Phil Spector, after hearing the Ike and Tina Turner Revue at the Galaxy Club in Los Angeles, offered $20,000 to produce their next song, on condition that Mr. Turner stay away from the studio. The result, “River Deep, Mountain High,” is often regarded as the high-water mark of Mr. Spector’s patented “wall of sound.” It failed in the United States, barely reaching the Top 100, but it was a big hit in Britain, where it marked the beginning of a second career for Ms. Turner.

 

“I loved that song,” she wrote in her 1986 memoir. “Because for the first time in my life, it wasn’t just R&B — it had structure, it had a melody.” She added: “I was a singer, and I knew I could do other things; I just never got the opportunity. ‘River Deep’ showed people what I had in me.”

 

After she walked out on her marriage, encumbered with debt, Ms. Turner struggled to build a solo career, appearing in ill-conceived cabaret acts, before signing with Roger Davies, the manager of Olivia Newton-John, in 1979. Guided by Mr. Davies, she returned to the gritty, hard-rocking style that had made her a crossover star and would propel her through the coming decades as one of the most durable performers on the concert stage.

 

Her fellow artists took notice. In 1982, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, of the band and production company known as the British Electric Foundation, recruited her to record the Temptations’ 1970 hit “Ball of Confusion” for an album of soul and rock covers backed by synthesizers. Its success led to a second collaboration, a remake of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” A surprise hit in the United States and Britain, it was the turning point that led to “Private Dancer.”

 

Ms. Turner followed the runaway success of “Private Dancer” with two more hit albums: “Break Every Rule” (1986) and “Foreign Affair” (1989), which contained the hit single “The Best.”

 

She made an impact onscreen as well. Ten years after she solidified her persona as a rock ’n’ roller with a riveting performance as the Acid Queen in Ken Russell’s film version of “Tommy,” the Who’s rock opera, she drew praise for her performance as Aunty Entity, the iron-fisted ruler of postapocalyptic Bartertown, in “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” in 1985.

 

That film also provided her with two more hit singles, “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)” and “One of the Living,” which was named the best female rock vocal performance at the Grammys in 1986.

 

In 1991 she and Mr. Turner, in prison at the time for cocaine possession, were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. (She was inducted again as a solo artist in 2021). She received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2005 and a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2018.

 

In 1985 she began a relationship with the German music executive Erwin Bach, whom she married in 2013 after moving with him to Küsnacht and becoming a Swiss citizen. He survives her. Ron, her only child with Mr. Turner, died of colon cancer complications in 2022. Another son, Craig, from her relationship with Raymond Hill, the saxophone player for the Kings of Rhythm, died by suicide in 2018. Her sister, Alline Bullock, died in 2010. Ms. Turner raised two children of Mr. Turner’s, Ike Jr. and Michael

 

Complete information on her survivors was not immediately available.

After releasing the album “Twenty Four Seven” in 1999, at 60 and touring to promote it, Ms. Turner announced her retirement. It did not last. In 2008, after performing with Beyoncé at the Grammy Awards, she embarked on an international tour marking her 50th year in the music business.

 

She announced her retirement again a few years later, but she remained active in other ways. In 2018, she published her second memoir, “My Love Story.”

 

She and Mr. Bach were executive producers of “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” a stage show based on her life and incorporating many of her hits, which opened in London in 2018 and in Hamburg and on Broadway in 2019; Ms. Turner worked with the show’s choreographer and shared memories with its writers.

 

While reviews were mixed, the musical earned 12 Tony Award nominations; Adrienne Warren, who starred as Ms. Turner, won the award for best actress in a leading role. “In a performance that is part possession, part workout and part wig,” Jesse Green wrote in a review for The Times, “Adrienne Warren rocks the rafters and dissolves your doubts about anyone daring to step into the diva’s high heels.”

 

The show closed after four months because of the pandemic lockdown, reopening in October 2021 before closing again a year later and embarking on a U.S. tour.

 

Through it all, Ms. Turner’s music endured.

Actor and musician Jamie Foxx remains in the hospital more than three weeks after suffering a medical emergency. While the exact details of his condition remain under wraps, those closest to him have championed the phrase “Pray for Jamie,” per TMZ.

 

Jamie Foxx is a prolific player in Hollywood, known for his roles in films such as Ray, Django Unchained, and Just Mercy. He is also the host of the popular music lyric game show, “Beat Shazam,” on FOX. However, his hospitalization has sent shockwaves through the entertainment industry, with studios scrambling to adjust schedules and plans.

 

It was Foxx’s daughter, Corinne, who first announced her father’s medical complication on April 12. Foxx was in Atlanta for work on the film “Back in Action” when he fell ill. Since then, a stunt double and body double have been seen filling in for him on that project.

 

Since then, little has been revealed about his condition, with family members keeping a tight lid on the situation. Sources close to Jamie have echoed the plea for fans to send their prayers and well-wishes during this difficult time. While it remains unclear what exactly is the problem, it’s clear that his condition is serious enough to require extended hospitalization.

 

Unfortunately for fans of “Beat Shazam,” Foxx will not be appearing on the upcoming season of the show. Production was set to begin just days after he was hospitalized, and the studios have had to scramble to find a replacement host. Corinne, who DJs on the show, will also not be appearing as she has been by her father’s side at the hospital in Atlanta.

 

 

Teyana Taylor has opened up about her time as a teen pop star signed under Pharrell Williams.

 

Within the latest episode of Angie Martinez’s IRL Podcast, the multi-hyphenate talent reflected on her past desire for Williams to work harder for her music career.

During the intimate conversation, the 32-year-old explained how she initially connected with the “Happy” performer.

 

“Getting signed to a man, it was like a figure to me…I looked at these people like figures. Whether it was as a dad, as a brother, it didn’t matter. So it’s like, you didn’t see me, you didn’t hear me, you didn’t protect me. you kind of just like fed me to the wolves type-sh*t without probably even knowing. Some of those conversations still need to be had.”

 

 

“I had a really really really really deep and honest conversation with Pharrell because you know, he was the first person to sign me. He was Skateboard P, I was Skateboard T. You cannot tell me that wasn’t my pops. I really looked up to him. He didn’t have kids at the time, and he wanted kids. He’d be like ‘Yo she call me her pops.’ He was really proud of that.”

She continued “He didn’t know any of those things,” explaining to Martinez that the producer was not aware of her troubled relationship with her biological father. “For me, I was like his baby twin.”

 

 

As the conversation went on, she further detailed the entire ordeal.

“He’s not confrontational at all. He’s literally one of the sweetest people in just the whole wide world, you know what I’m saying? So, it wasn’t that he didn’t protect me, it’s just that a lot of hands started going into the cookie jar…it’s P, he not bout to be like ‘no, yall ni**as back up,” she said.

 

“Maybe he was hurt about some things. You don’t know. It could’ve been a thing of pride and ego at the time. We don’t know. To me, as a 15-year-old, it was, you didn’t protect me. You let everyone mishandle me. I signed to you. You let everybody get in the way and everybody break us apart. You didn’t protect me.”

 

 

Despite the past, the two creative superstars are on good terms.

“I just recently shared that with him. It might’ve been right after “Fade” came out,” elaborated the “Rose In Harlem” singer. “That’s what made it even doper. Because for me, I was at the top top top when that sh*t came out. And for me, I love that I was able to share that with him during a high and not like hitting somebody up while you’re angry and sitting around somewhere bitter, nah it wasn’t that. I was in a poised, graceful place, and just let him know how proud I was of just us and how far we’ve come.”

 

“I be basking in my blessings, and I will be having them moments when I just think, damn, no matter how I felt when I was younger, none of these doors would have ever opened for me if it wasn’t for P,” she said

 

 

The Harlem native signed to Williams’s Star Trak Entertainment imprint in 2007 before being released in 2012. At the time she cited “politics,” however confirmed that there was “no beef” between the two parties. In the months following her departure, the A Thousand And One star signed to Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music.

 

In the full interview, the mother of two also discussed her faith, raising children, her relationship with Beyoncé, and more. Watch the IRL podcast below.

 

Next year marks the 50th anniversary of Labelle’s classic single, “Lady Marmalade.” During Patti LaBelle’s recent appearance on Sherri, the Godmother of Soul and talk show host talked about the hit record‘s history with the legendary singer offering a hilariously admission about the song’s lyrics.
 

When asked if she knew at the time of recording that it’d become the smash hit, LaBelle, 78, replied, “For once, I can say yes and really mean yes.” Back when the trio—LaBelle, Sarah Dash, and Nona Hendryx—was traveling with their late producer, Allen Toussaint, she reflected on the immediate need to record the single. “I said, ‘We have to record this because it’s a hit,’ and it was,” she added.

 

What she didn’t know was that the lyric, “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?,” translates into “do you want to sleep with me tonight?”

 

LaBelle confessed, “I had no clue. I didn’t know no French. I knew it was a hit…Yeah, that’s what that song was all about. It was a hit.” In a 1986 interview with NME, the songstress joked, “What will my mother think?,” when learning of the song’s meaning. Years later, she told JET, “I didn’t know what it was about. Nobody—I swear this is God’s truth—nobody told me what I’d just sung a song about.”

 

 

“Lady Marmalade” topped the Billboard Hot 100 and the Hot Soul Singles charts in 1975 and is certified gold by the RIAA. In 2001, it was reimagined for Moulin Rouge by Christina Aguilera, Mya, Lil Kim, and Pink. uDiscoverMusic described the cover as a nod to each artist’s signature style: “Lil Kim’s raunchy raps, Pink’s soulful tone, Mya’s sultry coos, and Aguilera’s theatrical vocal runs.” It sat at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for five consecutive weeks.
 

20 years later, Labelle’s version was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. Watch the “If Only You Knew” singer talk about fan interactions to the song and more above.

 

The trio Labelle's 1974 single "Lady Marmalade" is a French-infused dance track inspired by the red-light district in New Orleans. The hit song was added to the National Recording Registry today. #NatRecRegistry pic.twitter.com/idfWxol0WM

— Library of Congress (@librarycongress) March 24, 2021

Alicia Keys’ entire discography has been rereleased in Spatial Audio on Apple Music. To celebrate the moment, Keys hosted an intimate listening session featuring select tracks from her discography.

 

“The exciting part is that we were really able to reimagine the whole thing from beginning to end,” Keys shared during her opening remarks on Wednesday night (April 26). “…We went in and took every single file, every single sound, every single part of each song and really create it for this Spatial experience, so it’s not in any way generic. And as the producer and arranger of my music, it’s really important that you’re able to hear all the parts that we intended you to hear in a way that you’ve never been able to hear them before. Definitely in a way that I’ve also never heard them before because this is so unique and a new way to experience it.”

 

 

During the playback, attendees heard a mix of B-sides and hit records like “Brand New Me” from Girl On Fire, “Unthinkable” from The Element Of Freedom, “Wake Up” from The Diary Of Alicia Keys, “No One” from As I Am, “Sure Looks Good To Me” also from As I Am, and the enchanting preview of “If I Ain’t Got You,” reimagined for Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.
 

Ahead of the latter’s 20th anniversary, the new version includes composition from a 70-piece orchestra, comprised entirely of women of color. After listening, Keys shared, “This is the first time that I’m hearing it in Spatial as well, so we all just caught the same spirit. I can’t wait for you to see these women and see the visual […] It was really, really amazing. Everything means nothing, if I ain’t got you and that’s truly how I feel. I really mean it.”
 

The new “If I Ain’t Got You” will be available on Thursday, May 4 with the video to follow on Monday, May 8. Keys will hit the road yet again in June for the KEYS TO THE SUMMER Tour which will feature an all new, 360-degree immersive concert experience.

Nick Cannon is relishing the news that Jada Pinkett Smith's "toxic" Red Table Talk show has been canceled.

 

The comedian celebrated Meta's "good" decision to shutter all of its Facebook Watch originals on his "Daily Cannon Show" on Thursday, April 27, the same day the news was shared.

 

“If there was no Red Table Talk, then he wouldn’t have slapped the s**t out of Chris Rock,” Nick declared, referring to Will Smith's infamous 2022 Oscars slap after presenter Chris poked fun at his wife's hair loss.

 

According to Nick, Will's anger stemmed from Jada bringing their relationship woes "to the table" in 2020 to discuss her "entanglement" with singer August Alina.

 

"I don’t want to know all this s**t about y’all," the 42-year-old said of the A-list couple, pointing out the Smiths were considered "royalty" before they started airing out their dirty laundry. “I just want to mind my black own business."

 

“I don’t want to be up in everybody else’s kitchen. Keep that s**t to y’all selves,” he pleaded, though co-host and baby mama Abby De La Rosa disagreed with the father of her kids.

The mother-of-three told Nick to “stop” bashing the “toxic table," arguing: “It was an honest table."

“They are still [royalty]. It feels human, like, they’re human," she continued, “It feels relatable. They’re trash too, like the rest of us.”

 

When Abby told the father-of-12 that she's going to get a red table of her own, he replied: “Then you’re getting that table all by yourself. F**k that table.”

Nick and Abby are parents to 1-year-old twins Zion and Zillion, as well as newborn Beautiful. The stunner gave birth to their little girl in November 2022, making Beautiful the 11th child to join Nick's brood. The latest addition to his unconventional family, daughter Halo with Alyssa Scott, was born in December 2022 — one year after the coparents lost their son Zen following his battle with brain cancer.

He was five-months-old.

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While a red table may not be in the cards for the duo, Nick and Abby have gotten candid about their non-traditional relationship on their own podcast. Abby recently told Nick on a podcast episode that she has "love for all the women,” referring to his five other baby mamas, including ex-wife Mariah Carey.

 

“For me, I think at times because I am so calm and chill, what it’ll do for me is kinda turn me on a little bit," she admitted. "I’m a little jealous, but at the same time, it’s just kinda like, you know, ‘This is my baby daddy.'”