Rosanne Cash wins prestigious MacDowell arts medal
NEW YORK » Rosanne Cash’s latest honor is a medal previously awarded to Toni Morrison, Stephen Sondheim and Georgia O’Keeffe, among others.
The singersongwriter is this year’s winner of the Edward MacDowell Medal, presented by the MacDowell artist colony. In a statement issued through MacDowell, Cash said she was “profoundly humbled” to receive an award that Morrison and others had been given.
“I do not place myself in any way equal, but I accept this honor with deepest gratitude, as an encouragement to do my best work, and in the service of future inspiration,” she said.
NEW YORK » The-Dream has won Grammys for his songwriting skills, but the performer doesn’t plan to break down the formula for his latest hit, the Megan Thee Stallion “Savage” remix costarring Beyonce.
The viral song, which has reached the No. 2 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, has nine songwriters listed on the track, including The-Dream, JayZ, Beyonce and Megan Thee Stallion.
“It’s not about revealing the magic of how things happen and how they come about, and it’s not for me to say the breakdown of how a thing is done,” the four-time Grammy winner said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I mean, everybody knows what I do so I’m definitely not in the part of my career where I have to say, ‘Yeah, I did so and so and then I did this part.’ ”
The-Dream has steadily penned hits for nearly 15 years for megastar artists like Beyonce, Rihanna, Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber, while also vocally assisting hip-hop heavyweights such as Jay-Z and Kanye West.
The 42-year-old, who has also written hit songs for himself, said he felt a strong connection to Megan Thee Stallion on a personal level since they both lost their mothers.
“It’s just one of those things where you gravitate toward artists that we feel like ... (you) have something to say,” he said. “And it was the mother thing that kind of got me with her — that was the connection. I lost my mom when I was 15.
“And so I understood what that was, you know, kind of reading and getting a read of just her life.”
Apart from music — The-Dream released the album “SXTP4” last month — the hit maker has been busy in fashion school.
He’s currently enrolled at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, where he’s studying luxury fashion.