Step Aside, Khaled. Big Sean Has the Real Key.
Rapper Big Sean has been awarded Detroit’s Key to the City, and is officially the youngest person to be bestowed with the honor. Big Sean, real name Sean Anderson, started the Sean Anderson Foundation back in 2012 with a mission to make the lives Detroit’s impoverished children easier. Specifically, the Foundation combats homelessness, provides health care assistance to those who are uninsured or underinsured, offers supplemental educational support, and facilitates arts and recreational programs. In the last two years alone, the Foundation raised $100,000 in its #HelpFlintsKids campaign, sponsored South Oakland Shelter’s Holiday Party for Homeless Families and Children, awarded a $25,000 scholarship to a Detroit college student, among several dozen other notes of altruism. It’s this inspiration unto Detroit’s youth that the city’s mayor has awarded the rapper with the honor. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has been in office since 2013, and in that time has given three keys to the city: Big Sean, Berry Gordy, and Stevie Wonder.
RIAA Announces Successor to Former Chairman/CEO
The Recording Industry Associate of America has announced Mitch Glazier as the successor to Cary Sherman as its chairman and CEO. Glazier has been with the RIAA since 2000, following a tenure as chief counsel for intellectual property to House Judiciary Committee. He’s been promoted to President of the RIAA in the interim period leading to Sherman’s retire next year. Cary Sherman has been with the association for two decades, playing an important role in just about every major change to copyright law in that time, playing a major advocate for artists receiving fair compensation, namely in the way of digital access. Sherman’s tenure with the association has seen digital music and pirating as its main adversary, making Sherman instrumental in the creation of the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act in 1995 and Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998. He’s spent the past seven years as chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, pushing for lawmakers to update the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
