Legendary drummer James Gadson, who backed iconic artists including Diana Ross, Bill Withers and Marvin Gaye, has died. He was 86.

Gadson’s wife, Barbara, confirmed his passing to Rolling Stone on Thursday (April 2), noting that he had recently faced health challenges, including a surgery and a fall that injured his back.

“He was a wonderful man,” Barbara said. “He was a great husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, and one hell of a drummer.”

Gadson became one of the defining funk, soul, and disco drummers of the 1970s, providing the beats on classics such as Withers’ “Lean on Me” and “Use Me,” The Jackson 5’s “Dancing Machine,” and Ross’ “Love Hangover.” During that decade, he also played on Gaye’s “I Want You,” Thelma Houston’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” and Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band’s “Express Yourself.”

“Most grooves, especially for dance music, are very simple,” Gadson told Modern Drummer in 2007. “Even so, to learn them, you have to slow them down. A lot of times we do all these rudimental things to see how fast we can play. I think you have to slow it all down and simplify it. Then you can kind of feel whether it’s danceable or not.”

As a highly in-demand session player, Gadson also recorded with the Temptations, Leonard Cohen, Bobby Womack, B.B. King, Barbra Streisand, Ray Charles, Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle, Herbie Hancock, Paul McCartney, D’Angelo, Beck, Kelly Clarkson, Justin Timberlake, Lana Del Rey, and Harry Styles.

Born on June 17, 1939, in Kansas City, Missouri, Gadson grew up in a musical family. His father was a drummer who bought him and his brother cornets to play in their school’s drum and bugle corps. As a teenager, he sang doo-wop with a group called the Carpets and later discovered funk music while stationed in Louisiana with the Air Force, according to Rolling Stone. After leaving the service, he joined his brother’s band, playing keyboards and singing, while also teaching himself to play the drums.

Gadson later began playing drums with Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band and recorded several albums. He also served as a drummer at various times for artists touring through Kansas City, including Hank Ballard & the Midnighters, Jimmy Reed, Sam Cooke, and Otis Redding.

“At first, during the time I didn’t really know how to play R&B, it was awful,” he told Modern Drummer. “I wouldn’t even charge them it was so bad. I felt bad about wasting their studio time. I couldn’t keep a steady pattern because I was coming from a free-jazz mindset.”

Numerous artists paid tribute to Gadson following his passing.

“My heart is heavy at the passing of my old friend the legendary drummer James Gadson,” Beck wrote on Instagram. “He played drums on many of my records over the decades, from midnite vultures on and has been a significant part of the sound of so many of my songs.”

The musician added, “I feel fortunate to have known this gentle giant of a man who was such a musical force and left his mark on so much classic music, from bill withers to I will survive.”

Questlove also remembered Gadson, writing on Instagram, “Some drummers are soulful. Some drummers are funky. Some drummer are a rockin. Some drummers are swinging——but NO drummer, has impacted the art of breakbeat drummer (danceable drums) like James Gadson.”

Ray Parker Jr. commented on Instagram, “We played together over 50 years. He changed the world.”

The Lux Tour’s stop in Madrid continues to generate buzz. On the third night at the Movistar Arena (April 3), Aitana was the guest for the segment preceding “La Perla,” a confessional where Rosalía invites well-known figures to speak candidly. The singer sat in the confessional alongside Rosalía, visibly nervous at the start of the exchange.

“Is this going to be published somewhere?” she asked, eliciting laughter from the crowd. Rosalía reassured her, encouraging her to continue. “Well, in that case, I have a few things to share,” Aitana replied, still jokingly.

“I’ve been with a lot of people… athletes, actors, singers,” she said, before focusing on a specific experience. “It was very good — definitely not bad — but there came a point where I didn’t know what was going on,” she added. “When we were about to hit the one-year mark, he told me: ‘After a year, I can be unfaithful.’ And I thought, ‘Well, at least he’s honest.’” Rosalía reacted immediately. “He knew from the start that he had an expiration date.”

Aitana continued with the second part of the story, now without the lighthearted tone. “The problem is that sometimes you go back… you try again,” she said. “A few months later, I decided to give it another shot, but then those statements came out.”

“What statements?” Rosalía interjected. Aitana confirmed it was about another singer, to which Rosalía responded, “Singers are always making statements… and then it’s us [who deal with it].” “And there was nothing to declare,” Aitana said. “That’s where it ended… kind of sad, really. When that came out, I thought, ‘How embarrassing.’”

The moment took another turn when Rosalía tried to connect the dots. “Could it be the one who pulled some marketing stunt by saying something about me?” she asked, adding after Aitana’s positive reaction. “I knew it. I have to confess something else here: he apologized to me, and I didn’t forgive him — sorry.” To which Aitana replied, laughing, “You were much smarter than I was.”

The exchange ended with one of the most celebrated comments of the night: “If in the first year he says there are problems, that’s not it, sister,” Rosalía said.

Although Aitana didn’t mention the name of the ex she was referring to, fans on social media immediately speculated that it was Colombian singer Sebastián Yatra, with whom she was romantically linked between 2022 and 2023.

Billboard Español has reached out to representatives for both artists for comment. A publicist for Yatra responded that they will not make any statements regarding the matter.

Aitana’s appearance adds to the list of guests at the “confessional,” which has become one of the most distinctive and entertaining elements of the Lux Tour in its early dates, following previous apprearances like Esty Quesada and singer Metrika.

Rosalía’s residency in Madrid concludes this Saturday (April 4). The Lux Tour will continue in Lisbon (April 8 and 9) before wrapping up its Spanish leg in Barcelona (April 13, 15, 17 and 18). The tour will head to the U.S. this summer, starting on June 4 in Miami and stoping at cities like Boston, New York and Chicago.

Watch Aitana at Rosalías confessionary in the video shared by the Movistar Arena in Madrid.

Ye amped up the star power at his second comeback concert at SoFi Stadium.

The 48-year-old hip-hop artist, formerly known as Kanye West, returned to the stage for his second sold-out show at the Inglewood, California, stadium on Friday (April 3), surprising fans with numerous special guests, including Lauryn Hill and Travis Scott.

Halfway through the show at the 70,000-capacity venue, Ye brought out Ms. Hill, who emerged through a dense cloud of smoke to join him for a show-stopping performance of “All Falls Down.” The track, which reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2004, samples Hill’s 2002 song “Mystery of Iniquity” from her MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 live album.

Hill remained on stage for several performances, including a rendition of “Doo Wop (That Thing)” that transitioned into West’s “Believe What I Say.” She then brought out her sons, Zion Marley and YG Marley, for performances of “Heartbeat,” “Crisis” and “Praise Jah in the Moonlight,” the latter of which YG co-wrote with his mother.

Last year, Ye compared his then-unreleased Bully album to Hill’s seminal 1998 album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

“Yeah, because you lean on a bar that brings somebody down — that was always rap,” West said on The Download podcast in February 2025. “This is more the way I remember Lauryn Hill[‘s] album, the way I remember Miseducation. I feel it is my Miseducation. It is my Gnarls Barkley album. Because Bully has a title and connotation that a lot of people are anti-bully. But I’m just hyper-next-level frequency right now.”

Earlier in Friday’s show, Ye welcomed Scott for a collaborative performance of Bully lead single “Father,” with Scott wearing a mask and a shirt emblazoned with the word “Unsane.” La Flame also performed his Utopia hit “Fein.”

Other guest appearances included CeeLo Green, who joined Ye for a performance of Bully‘s title track, and Ye’s 12-year-old daughter, North West, who rapped on “Bless Me” and “Piercing on My Hand.” North had also appeared during Ye’s opening SoFi show earlier in the week. André Troutman was also brought onstage for a performance of “All the Love.”

Following the release of Bully, Ye appears to be planning performances across the globe, including three nights headlining Wireless Festival in London from July 10–12. His return to Finsbury Park will mark his first U.K. show since 2014. He also has another show scheduled in Italy about a week later this summer.

In the fourth week of Live Nation’s antitrust trial, key defense witnesses took the stand as the concert giant continued to make its case to the jury — and the company also accused its biggest competitor of using underhanded tactics to prevent a key witness from testifying.

You’re reading Billboard’s weekly Live Nation trial recap, a weekly one-sheet of everything that happened in the monopoly case against the concert giant. Stay tuned here each Friday for all the testimony and big events you might have missed.

WHAT HAPPENED: After the state attorneys general wrapped up their case last week, Live Nation continued presenting its own case to the jury this week — trying to persuade them to reject the narrative that the company is an illegal monopolist that bullies music venues into using Ticketmaster.

The blockbuster trial has been chugging along in Manhattan federal court since early March. It was initially led by the U.S. Department of Justice, but the feds reached a settlement with Live Nation a week into the trial. New York, California and dozens more states said that deal wasn’t strong enough and have moved ahead with the trial, with the goal of breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

This week was a relatively short one in the trial, with no jury testimony on Wednesday (April 1) or Thursday (April 2) as the judge and the parties dealt with legal issues. The trial will continue Monday (April 6), with the potential for closing statements and the start of jury deliberations at some point in the next week.

WHO TESTIFIED: Weeks after the ex-boss of Brooklyn’s Barclays Center testified that he believed Live Nation had threatened to withhold major artists if the venue switched from Ticketmaster to SeatGeek, the arena’s current top exec took the stand and pushed back on that story.

Laurie Jacoby, CEO of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, testified Tuesday about problems during SeatGeek’s tenure as the venue’s ticketer, including with on-sales for concerts by The Strokes and My Chemical Romance, according to Inner City Press. She told jurors those issues made it hard to attract and retain acts, which was what ultimately prompted the venue to switch back to Ticketmaster.

Other Live Nation witnesses similarly countered earlier testimony. In the first week of the trial, an exec at the NHL’s Minnesota Wild told jurors that he’d stuck with Ticketmaster because he feared the “catastrophic” problem of losing Live Nation concerts. But on Monday, as reported by MLex, an official at the NHL’s Washington Capitals testified that Ticketmaster is a “great business partner.”

“Their professionalism and the way they treat partners is outstanding,” said Jim Van Stone, president of business operations at Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which also owns the NBA’s Washington Wizards and D.C.’s Capital One Arena. “Ticketmaster … that has met all our needs. We believe in the fact that an exclusive relationship [with Ticketmaster] is better for us.”

Also testifying this week was expert witness Eric Budish, a University of Chicago professor, who said Ticketmaster has a genuine competitive edge against rival ticketing services, per MLex. But during cross-examination, he also admitted to having been paid more than $1 million by Live Nation for his services as an expert economic witness in the case.

Perhaps the biggest fireworks of the week came not in the form of live testimony to the jury, but in legal filings to the judge. In a scathing motion filed Thursday, Live Nation demanded sanctions (judicial punishment) against the states over accusations that AEG had secretly supplied them with a “dossier of personal information” about a former employee, which they then exploited to prevent him from testifying.

“This blatant attempt to dissuade a witness from providing truthful testimony through intimidation is intolerable,” Live Nation’s lawyers wrote, asking the judge to inform jurors that AEG and the states have been “closely coordinating” and that they had tried to suppress testimony that AXS was “never of comparable quality to Ticketmaster.”

WHY IT MATTERS: Jacoby, Van Stone and Budish’s testimony goes to the very heart of Live Nation’s defense: That it has secured its massive market share over the past 15 years not through anti-competitive behavior, but by simply being better than its rivals.

Threats to Barclays Center if it went with SeatGeek? No, Jacoby said — Ticketmaster was just the better ticketing option for the arena. Improper use of exclusivity contracts to make it harder for venues to switch? No, Van Stone said — exclusivity is just what some venues themselves prefer.

The sanctions motion serves that same argument. Live Nation alleges that the reason AEG and the states went to such lengths to suppress the ex-employee’s testimony is because it would have shown that AEG’s AXS ticketing system was simply not as good as Ticketmaster — something Live Nation says would “fundamentally undermine plaintiffs’ case.” If granted, it would send a powerful message to jurors that the government was worried that argument might succeed.