Kelly Clarkson has reached a confidential settlement in her battle with ex-husband Brandon Blackstock over the millions in commission he paid himself as her manager.
Court documents show Clarkson requested a dismissal of the case on Tuesday, May 21, while Blackstock’s company, Starstruck Management Group, requested a dismissal on May 22. “Everything has settled,” a source close to the situation confirmed to Rolling Stone.
The private pact means the parties are no longer facing the public bench trial that a judge recently scheduled for late August. The potentially bruising trial was set to determine whether Blackstock violated the law when he procured deals for Clarkson, such as her judging gig on NBC’s The Voice, and then paid himself related commissions.
A California Labor Commissioner first ruled on the dispute last November, largely siding with Clarkson and awarding her $2.6 million. Blackstock appealed the ruling last December, setting the stage for the so-called “de novo” trial in state court, meaning a fresh trial starting from the beginning.
It was back in September 2020 that Starstruck started the legal skirmish when it sued Clarkson for alleged breach of her oral management agreement and purportedly unpaid commissions. The filing, which came three months after Clarkson filed for divorce from Blackstock, led the singer-songwriter and TV personality to file a petition against Blackstock and Starstruck with the California labor commission.
After a multi-day hearing with witnesses held in March of 2023, a labor commissioner issued a ruling last November that ordered Blackstock to repay Clarkson $2.6 million. The commissioner found that Blackstock collected fees on multiple projects in violation of California’s Talent Agencies Act, which prohibits anyone other than licensed talent agents from procuring engagements for professional artists. The projects included Clarkson’s judging gig on The Voice and promotional deals with home goods retailer Wayfair and a cruise line. In a win for Blackstock, the commissioner found that Blackstock could keep the roughly $750,000 in commissions for The Kelly Clarkson Show that the singer wanted him to repay. At the upcoming August trial, the fees for the daytime talk show were going to be back on the table, along with everything else, according to a recent court ruling.
The August trial was expected to last at least five days and include live testimony from several witnesses who were not available for the labor commission hearing in March 2023. Expected testimony from two music agents at Clarkson’s talent agency, CAA, could have been pivotal. According to Blackstock, CAA music agents Rick Roskin and Darryl Eaton were with him at The Voice’s studio on May 9, 2017, in the minutes before he allegedly spoke with the NBC executive who first extended the lucrative judging gig to Clarkson for which Blackstock collected a commission. Blackstock claims the agents asked him to approach the executive for the negotiation, meaning he wasn’t acting alone in violation of the labor code. According to filings obtained by Rolling Stone, Roskin and Eaton deny they were with Blackstock at The Voice compound that day.
In testimony at the labor commission hearing last year, CAA agent Cat Carson confirmed Roskin and Eaton did not broker TV deals at CAA and that none of them asked Blackstock to negotiate anything wtih NBC or anyone else, and that she was upset when he did so on his own.
In a prior statement to Rolling Stone, one of Blackstock’s lawyers faulted Clarkson for fighting for the millions in commissions. “It is morally, ethically and legally wrong to attempt to get monies back from your ex-husband who not only helped her as her manager but used those earnings on their children and Kelly and Brandon’s lifestyle during the marriage,” lawyer Bryan Freedman said.
Clarkson also testified at the Labor Commission hearing last year, saying she was never approached by NBC to work on the American version of The Voice before Blackstock reached out to them. She said Blackstock had advised her that NBC wasn’t interested because the network was looking for “a more sex symbol type.” Asked how she could recall that description so specifically, Clarkson testified, “Well, a wife doesn’t forget a time she gets told she’s not a sex symbol, so that stays.”
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.