Paris Jackson Calls Estate Executor’s $109 Million Fee Request ‘Offensive,’ Seeks Reduction

Michael Jackson’s daughter claims attorney John Branca failed to justify the hefty compensation rate

Paris Jackson on Feb. 1, 2026 in Los Angeles.

Paris Jackson is reigniting her feud with the executor of her father’s estate, accusing John Branca of “persistent incompetence” and asking a judge to reject his nearly $110 million fee request for work on the late pop star’s estate from 2023 through 2024.

In a new motion filed Friday and obtained by Rolling Stone, Michael Jackson’s only daughter claims Branca missed his own self-selected Sept. 15 deadline to submit complete financial accountings for 2023 and 2024, instead filing documents that were either incomplete or “nothing more than a placeholder.” Despite the alleged deficiencies, she says, Branca sought $109,219,648 in combined compensation for himself, his lawyers, and his late co-executor, John McClain, who died in May at age 71.

“It is unclear how executor could calculate and distribute such an amount with any confidence and yet be unable to file complete and accurate accountings years later,” her new 12-page motion states. “Paris respectfully submits that the gap between executor’s level of compensation and his persistent incompetence is intolerable.”

Calling the fee request “particularly offensive” in light of the allegedly “delinquent” financial accountings, Paris is asking the retired judge overseeing the long-running estate to reduce Branca’s compensation from 15 percent to 10 percent of the estate’s gross entertainment-related income. She wants the reduction applied retroactively to 2023 and kept in place until Branca submits complete and accurate accountings through 2026.

“It is an understatement to say that this motion is completely without merit,” a spokesperson representing the Branca-led estate said in a statement shared with Rolling Stone. “[Paris’] attorneys have motioned for a reduction in executor compensation, when in fact the executors waived that from the estate’s beginning, and have never taken any executor compensation. They are paid a separate, court-ordered management fee for operating the hugely successful Michael Jackson business.”

Michael Jackson was 50 when he died on June 25, 2009, from an accidental overdose of the surgery-strength anesthetic propofol at his rented mansion in Los Angeles. Branca quickly stepped in to manage his affairs, and his lawyers have long credited him with transforming Jackson’s estate from one saddled with more than $500 million in debt into an enterprise valued at roughly $2 billion.

Paris’ new motion comes nearly six months after she won a separate legal battle to force three lawyers who worked for her father’s estate to return $625,000 in bonuses authorized by Branca. In an April 29 ruling, the retired judge, Mitchell Beckloff, found that the estate had failed to demonstrate the payments were “just and reasonable based on the information provided.”

“In fact, on the evidence presented, the bonus amounts paid appear arbitrary — what Mr. Branca determined was appropriate,” Beckloff wrote. “While Mr. Branca may, in fact, know better than anyone about the value of legal fees, there must be some specific and detailed factual basis for an order finding fees are just and reasonable.”

Paris, 28, is a beneficiary of her father’s estate along with her brothers, Prince, 29, and Bigi, 24. In other recent court filings obtained by Rolling Stone, her lawyers said she did not undertake her battle with Branca lightly.

“This litigation is painful for Paris. It is a distraction from her own life and her own career,” they wrote.

Noah Kahan at Rolling Stone Stateside Festival held at Hutton Brickyards on July 04, 2026 in Kingston, New York.

Following fans’ feverish anticipation for more shows, Noah Kahan has revealed a massive stadium run for 2027: The Last of the Bugs World Tour.

The 31-date trek kicks off on April 24 — the anniversary of his No. 1 album The Great Divide — in Athens, Georgia. The trek includes four more dates at Boston’s Fenway Park in late May, and includes a stop at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium on June 18 (a makeup date for fans, after one of his two Citi Field shows last summer was cancelled due to inclement weather). Kahan will continue the tour in Europe, and wrap with three consecutive nights at London’s Wembley Stadium in late July.

The news arrives after a cryptic graphic teasing the tour was posted on Instagram, featuring imagery from The Great Divide. The record coincided with Kahan appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone; Grammy nominations are likely to follow.

Earlier this month, Kahan released “Draw You Out,” off The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping soundtrack. In September, just before he brought The Great Divide Tour to Australia, he played his second annual “Folk and Fairways” charity event in his home state of Vermont. The two-day event raised over $3 million in support of mental health resources, through Kahan’s benefit organization the Busyhead Project.

General tickets for The Last of the Bugs World Tour go on sale Thursday, Nov. 12th at noon local time.

April 24 – Athens, GA @ Sanford StadiumApril 27 – Birmingham, AL @ Protective StadiumApril 29 – Tampa, FL @ Raymond James StadiumMay 4 – Nashville, TN @ Nissan StadiumMay 6 – Charlotte, NC @ Bank of America StadiumMay 9 – Norman, OK @ Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial StadiumMay 12 – Houston, TX @ Reliant StadiumMay 15 – Austin, TX @ Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial StadiumMay 19 – San Francisco, CA @ Levi’s StadiumMay 21 – Las Vegas, NV @ Allegiant StadiumMay 26 – Madison, WI @ Camp Randall StadiumMay 29 – Boston, MA @ Fenway ParkMay 30 – Boston, MA @ Fenway ParkJune 1 – Boston, MA @ Fenway ParkJune 2 – Boston, MA @ Fenway ParkJune 5 – Columbus, OH @ Ohio StadiumJune 10 – Detroit, MI @ Ford FieldJune 12 – Buffalo, NY @ Highmark StadiumJune 15 – Montréal, QC @ Parc Jean-DrapeauJune 18 – East Rutherford, NJ @ MetLife StadiumJuly 1 – Groningen, NL @ Stadspark^July 2 – Berlin, DE @ WaldbühneJuly 4 – Milan, IT @ I-DaysJuly 7 – Seville, ES @ Plaza de EspañaJuly 10 – Paris, FR @ Hippodrome ParisLongchampJuly 13 – Glasgow, UK @ Hampden ParkJuly 17 – Dublin, IE @ Aviva StadiumJuly 18 – Dublin, IE @ Aviva StadiumJuly 23 – London, UK @ Wembley StadiumJuly 24 – London, UK @ Wembley StadiumJuly 25 – London, UK @ Wembley Stadium

Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.

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.

After six years between studio albums, Protest the Hero returned this summer with Within, a new record that finds the Canadian progressive metal band turning inward while retaining the technical intensity that has defined its sound for more than two decades. Now, the Whitby, Ontario, group is bringing the album home for a coast-to-coast Canadian tour spanning November and December.

Released on July 17, Within follows 2020’s Palimpsest and is the band’s first fully independent release. For vocalist Rody Walker, one of the album’s defining characteristics emerged without a deliberate plan.

He recalls being told that Palimpsest rarely drew from his own perspective, while the new record felt considerably more personal.

“I went, ‘Oh, fuck.’ I didn’t even realize,” he said. “I made a subconscious choice.”

That shift began with “Fishhook,” the second song on the record. “I sat down and got most of that song done in under an hour,” he said. “It just came out.”

The experience influenced his approach to the rest of the album, moving him toward more direct songwriting rather than the historical figures, fictional narratives and political subjects that have frequently informed his lyrics.

“I like my storytelling simple,” Walker explains. Simplicity, however, doesn't mean abandoning the intricate arrangements that have made Protest the Hero a reference point for progressive metal musicians. Walker traces the band's identity to its punk roots, which he considers essential to its sound.

“What makes us sort of special is that we come to progressive heavy metal via punk rock,” he says. “If you left that element out, we'd really just be like everyone else.”

For Within, the band also changed the way they record, opting for a more DIY approach, inspired in part by bands like Periphery and TesseracT. No longer having the constraint of having to all be present together in a big studio and being able to record each instrument independently and remotely, he says, has been freeing. So has their decision to release the record independently.

“I think it’s really just about having control of our own destiny. Over the years, different people have owned the rights to different records in different territories, and so many stupid things have happened,” Walker says. “If you go on our Spotify or Apple Music profile, it’s just a mess. We constantly get messages saying Volition is down in Mexico, and we’re left wondering who owns it there and whose responsibility it is. We just want to have a central hub where we own and control everything, so if there’s a problem, it’s our problem.”

After touring through Europe and a few shows in Japan, the band is ready to head out and share the live tracks with their local fans. The Canadian tour kicks off November 12 in Moncton, New Brunswick, and runs through December 4, when Protest the Hero wraps up in Victoria, British Columbia. The coast-to-coast run includes stops in Québec City and Montréal before heading through Ontario, the Prairies and Western Canada. Philadelphia progressive metalcore band Kaonashi will open every show, with Edmonton melodic hardcore veterans Choke joining the eastern dates and Calgary alternative rockers Royal Tusk appearing on the western leg.

Within tour dates:November 12, Moncton, NB, Tide & Boar (Sold out)

November 13, Halifax, NS, Marquee (Sold out)

November 14, Fredericton, NB, Fredericton Farmers’ Market (Sold out)

November 17, Québec City, QC, Salle Montaigne

November 18, Montréal, QC, Théâtre Fairmount

November 20, Ottawa, ON, The Bronson

November 21, Toronto, ON, The Opera House (Sold out)

November 22, London, ON, London Music Hall

November 25, Thunder Bay, ON, Events Centre

November 26, Winnipeg, MB, The Park Theatre (Sold out)

November 27, Saskatoon, SK, Louis’

November 29, Edmonton, AB, Pawn Shop Live (Low ticket availability)

November 30, Calgary, AB, The Arrowhead (Low ticket availability)

December 3, Vancouver, BC, The Pearl (Low ticket availability)

December 4, Victoria, BC, Wicket (Low ticket availability)

Guided by Voices ready another release.

While working on Guided by Voices‘ 44th studio album, Speculation and Gossip, frontman Robert Pollard developed an obsession with Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. “[I watched it] over and over,” he says. “I’ve almost learned the dialog like Rocky Horror Picture Show.” The record drops January 22 via the band’s Rockathon Records.

Pollard has also been immersed in surrealism and dada, fitting genres for a musician and visual artist who has a knack for bending words and images to his will — either via hallucinatory lyrics or collages that mesh realms both physical and meta.

The first single off of the new album, “Designed for Use,” is a barreling, muscled track that turns a piece of mundane packaging copy into a motto: Pollard was designed to be a musician, to play “in most stereophonic atmospheres.”

While the band’s last album, Crawlspace of the Pantheon, was recorded in the studio with the full band, GBV went back to the old ways for number 44. “We went back to doing things remotely with each individual coming up with his own approach to sound, fidelity and instrumentation instead of playing all together,” Pollard says. “I wanted more audible separation of the instruments and overall I was after more diversity in song structures, musical styles and lyrical content. I also wanted it to be much brighter, less heavy in overall tone than Crawlspace. On this one I just gave them genre references. Post punk, pop, prog, psych or combinations.”

Heading into 2027, Pollard caps off a year of artistic success — including his largest-ever show of his collages — and, in addition to Speculation, has a few other surprises on the horizon. “I work on collages everyday. It’s an addiction,” he says. “[There’s] special releases in the works for 2027 but I can’t divulge them yet.

Bryan Adams is voicing his opinion in the turmoil surrounding one of Canada’s Great Lakes. The Canadian singer-songwriter shared “Lake Ontario”, a new single from his upcoming album How’s It Goin’, due November 6 through BAD Records.

Without ever naming Trump, the singer accuses powers that be of political distraction, taking aim at attempts to rename the body of water and questioning the motives behind the controversy. Adams also invokes the Epstein files, suggesting that the debate is diverting attention from other matters.

“Empires and regimes, dictators and kings, they all come and go. Lake Ontario is forever,” Adams said in a statement. “This is a song for all the sane people on both shores who know that the current madness will pass, and that Lake Ontario will always be Lake Ontario.”

The lyrics trace the lake’s history, from glacial formation and Indigenous stewardship to European exploration and industrial development. Adams references the Iroquois name for the lake, “lake of shining waters,” before turning to contemporary American politics and what he portrays as a manufactured controversy.

“Lake Ontario” is the latest addition to How’s It Goin’, an album built around Canadian history, geography and culture. The 13-track digital edition includes previously released songs such as “51st State” and “The Ballad of Terry Fox,” alongside “The Battle of Lundy’s Lane,” “Diesel and Dirt” and the title track.

Adams has described the project as a musical love letter to his home country, with songs inspired by ''the people, places and historical events that have shaped'' Canada. The physical edition contains 12 songs, while the digital release adds “Lake Ontario” as a bonus track. CD, vinyl and a special hardcover book edition are also planned.

How’s It Goin’ arrives November 6 via BAD Records.