The short answer is: it's complicated.
The long answer is: there are several classes of interested parties involved.
First, you have the rights holding entity, which is likely to be a business dedicated solely to handling all publishing-related matters on behalf of the actual songwriters - owned by the songwriters themselves. There are several reasons to introduce this additional layer of separation between the songwriter and publisher - from limiting liability, to providing a single point of contact for joint songwriting efforts (as with a group). There may also be tax issues involved.
Next, you have the publisher - a business that secures licenses or purchases copyright assignments from the rights holding entities and subsequently licenses the copyrights.
Songwriters who wish to retain a greater degree of control over their copyrights may retain a publisher to merely administer their copyrights. That is: undertake all the clerical tasks with regards to registering the works and collecting royalties on behalf of the rights holder, in return for a share of revenue. This allows the rights holders to delegate the more mundane tasks of collecting mechanical and public performance royalties, whilst retaining all control over other licensing aspects - such as synchronisation licenses.
On occassion, a publisher based in one territory will delegate administrative tasks in another territory to an affiliated publisher that will act as agent on behalf of the publisher with whom the copyrights are vested (in whatever fashion).
Lastly, in the United States there are several performing rights organisations (PROs), that conduct collective licensing on behalf of the songwriters. ASCAP and BMI are the best known, with SESAC and GMR commanding a vastly smaller market share of works. An American rights holder will be associated with one (and only one) of those. A foreign rights holder will designate one of them to represent their work in the United States.
There is no set format for displaying publishing information, but based on the above we can proceed to decipher the above examples. I won't go over them all.
Please Gimme My Publishing Inc. is a Kanye West company and I am assuming it is acting as his rights holding vehicle; with EMI Blackwood Music Inc. (now a Sony/ATV company) acting as administrating publisher (or co-owner; absent contractual details, we have no way to check). The designated PRO is BMI.
Papa George Music appears to be another rights holding vehicle, with its rights administered by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. (designated PRO: BMI)
For the Write Price Inc. is Kelly Price's rights holding company, and the rights are administered by Kobalt Songs Music Publishing (designated PRO: BMI)
And so on...
(The format in this case is that associated entities - rights holder/administrator are separated by single slashes, whilst the various rights holding interests are separated by double slashes)
In the latter case, Britney Spears Music is Britney's rights holding vehicle, with Zomba Songs Music Inc. as administrator (and possibly, co-owner). EMI Music Publishing Ltd. is a UK company, with Colgems-EMI Inc. acting as its agent in the U.S. etc.
