Wyclef Jean

J Records was an American record label, owned and operated by Sony Music Entertainment, and was distributed through the RCA Music Group. J Records was founded in 2000 by industry veteran Clive Davis with $150 million in financing from BMG, after his ousting from Arista Records the same year, and... initially operated as an independently managed company distributed through BMG. Olivia was the first artist to sign to J Records, but was later dropped due to poor album sales. In 2001, the label found success with its multi-platinum record inaugural release, Songs in A Minor, the debut album of Alicia Keys, which sold over 12 million copies worldwide. The same year, the label had another success with the platinum-selling debut album by O-Town. Later, established artists like D'Angelo, Luther Vandross, Jamie Foxx, and Monica would join the J roster, the latter three going on to find multi-platinum success with the label. In 2002, BMG bought a majority stake in the label. The same year, J Records began functioning under the RCA Music Group, where Davis had been appointed president and CEO, and signed American Idol winners Fantasia and Ruben Studdard.
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Koch Entertainment was a music, film and television distribution company. It was purchased by E1 Entertainment in 2005 and now operates under the name E1 Entertainment. The company began in 1975 as Koch International. Founded by Franz Koch, Koch International was an independent Austrian record... label and music distribution company that specialized in German and classical music recordings. For over 20 years, the company operated under the name Koch Entertainment, a music, film, and television distribution company that was started in 1987 by Franz's son Michael. By 1991, Koch had become one of the first national independent distributors of domestic labels in the U.S. by offering an alternative to the traditional system of regional independent distribution or national major label distribution. In 1992, Koch was ranked #315 on Inc. Magazine’s list of America’s 500 fastest-growing private companies, and has since grown into an entertainment conglomerate. It acquired the German label Schwann of Bill Schwann, renamed Koch Schwann. Koch expanded into the Canadian market in 1995 by forming the Toronto-based Koch Entertainment Canada.
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Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company—successor to the Volta Graphophone Company.... Columbia is the oldest brand name in pre-recorded sound, being the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of notable singers, instrumentalists, and bands. From 1961 to 1990, its recordings were released outside the U.S. and Canada on the CBS Records label before adopting the Columbia name in most of the world. Until 1989, Columbia Records had no connection to Columbia Pictures, which used various other names for record labels they owned, including Colpix and later Arista; rather, it was connected to the original owner, CBS, which stood for Columbia Broadcasting System.
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Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican... music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady. Reggae is most easily recognized by the rhythmic accents on the off-beat, usually played by guitar or piano , known as the skank. This pattern accents the second and fourth beat in each bar and combines with the drums emphasis on beat three to create a unique feel and sense of phrasing in contrast to most other popular genres focus on beat one, the "downbeat". The tempo of reggae is usually felt as slower than the popular Jamaican forms, ska and rocksteady, which preceded it. It is this slower tempo, the guitar/piano offbeats, the emphasis on the third beat, and the use of syncopated, melodic bass lines that differentiates reggae from other music, although other musical styles have incorporated some of these innovations separately. The 1967 edition of the Dictionary of Jamaican English lists reggae as "a recently estab. sp.
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Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African-American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally... used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular. The term has subsequently had a number of shifts in meaning. In the early 1950s, the term rhythm and blues was frequently applied to blues records. Starting in the mid-1950s, after this style of music contributed to the development of rock and roll, the term "R&B" became used to refer to music styles that developed from and incorporated electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music. By the 1970s, rhythm and blues was used as a blanket term for soul and funk. In the 1980s, a newer style of R&B developed, becoming known as "Contemporary R&B". Jerry Wexler of Billboard magazine coined the term "rhythm and blues" in 1948 as a musical marketing term in the United States. It replaced the term "race music", which originally came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world.
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