Features

Do you miss your job at The Fader?

For me, I never set out to be a writer; it was just something that kinda happened. When I first started to work with them, I was DJing. I did a lot of graphic design stuff, you know, for myself, my friends, for different record labels... and that was kind of how I was involved with music and the industry. So I had friends who worked at Fader, and they knew that I would do writing here and there, blurbs for turntable ads, music reviews, and their kind of editorial attitude was like, ‘let’s get people who are actually involved with the culture to do it’, as opposed to just another writer or another critic. They tried me out on an interview with Jim Jones from Dipset, and really liked how it came out, and there just happened to be an opening at the time, so they asked me to come on board as the editor, and it was great. I quit my graphic design day job, and had a magazine day job. So it was cool, it was never what I was setting out to do. After a while as the DJ stuff was taking off, certainly once I started the label with A-trak, I couldn’t devote the time and the resources that I needed to be 100% with the magazine. So rather than do a half-ass job, I left to do DJing and the label full time, and so...I miss it. I miss being able to expose stuff that I like and kind of showcase this stuff that I think needs to have a bigger platform. But it balances out. That’s kind of what I do with the label and DJing... but it sucks to read magazines and think ahh man...this guy should’ve been in there. It’s hard not to be like a backseat editor.

Do you feel like your work at Fader was a stepping stone to what you are doing now...do you think it opened up doors that may not have been open to you otherwise?

Certainly. I got to meet a lot of people and make a lot of connections, but in terms of a stepping stone, it was just another way to be involved. While I was at the magazine, I actually had to turn down DJ opportunities, or music opportunities whether it was tours or various projects...just because I had to devote so much energy to the magazine. So when I left, things started happening. As opposed to taking magazine stuff and using it to my own devices.

You also mentioned the graphic design stuff you were doing...

That, I definitely miss more. When I was in college I was doing like show posters for university concerts and stuff, and that was really like my first job being involved with music at a professional level. I’d always made music and played in bands...but this was like a job. It was really satisfying. I’d always thought about doing like a record label...like man if I had a label I could do all the sleeves and that would be awesome... but now with Fool’s Gold, if I had more free time, I would want to design stuff, rather than write articles. I do miss the interview aspect of it. When you get to talk to an artist one on one, especially when you know the way music is made, and all the things that are involved, it’s fun to kind of pick people’s brains and get a perspective on it and ask them questions that aren’t like... “Who are you sleeping with” and the typical gossip shit that people get asked, so I miss doing that. That was fun...but like writing the articles and deadlines...that was work. But I could talk to people all day, so I definitely miss doing that. It’s cool. I like what I’m doing now.

Was there any artist that you always wanted to speak to, and that gave you the opportunity to do that?

I like so much music, so I did get to speak to a lot of people who’s music I really enjoyed...Swizz Beats, Project Pat... but what was cooler to me was talking to new artists, you know, people I would discover, and think, this is someone for the magazine who’s gonna blow up, and needs the showcase, and needs to be put into context. A perfect example of that is someone like Wale [wah-lay]. I started working with him musically, and it’s cool to see how he went from being an unsigned artist in DC to getting a production deal, and I was there for his first couple of shows, and then to be doing national and international tours...you know, he’s about to drop his first proper album. It’s dope to have been involved in all these different levels of the process.

The record label I’m assuming takes up a big chunk of your time...

Yeah I’m going to go upstairs and answer emails now [laughs]

Well do you consider yourself a savvy business man?

Well, yeah...I mean we definitely are...smart guys if I do say so...and we go about stuff in a strategic way. And the whole point of doing the label, was to go at it from a creative perspective. We try to make wise decisions and do things that are prudent, business wise. But the driving force is more...at an artistic level and how we can impact the musical culture at large. As long as you have good ideas, and you’re focussed...all the business stuff will come together. You can learn how to keep an accounting ledger. You can learn how to set up payments. You can teach yourself how to set up on an excel spreadsheet...but having good ideas is unique to us as musicians, and just as creative people. The sort of number crunching...we just...we learnt it. A-Trak and his brother had been in Canada doing like backpack hip-hop stuff as research...so some of the basic stuff they already new...so once you dive into it completely...you figure it out.

Do have clearly defined roles within the label?

No not at all... it’s really split down the middle, kinda based on how people’s schedules are like...you know if he’s on tour I’ll be in Brooklyn making sure that the light bills are paid, and vice versa and if I’m out he makes sure the files that need to be mastered are uploaded on the server...

You have a feel for the label that you put out there...beyond the music. Is that important to you, to have a kind of “look” for the records?

It’s everything...the stuff that I always love are the people that created a whole world for themselves. Like from the artwork to the skits...the best labels have this human personality. Like you don’t even know what music is meant to be on the record, but you see the sleeves, and it looks dope and it fits in with the other records... then you see the gold bar on the back and it’s like a mark of quality. That’s the way I wanted us to be modelled. We knew from day one that we wanted to have our own look and our own aesthetic, and we also knew that we wanted Dusk to do it...you know, he’s extremely talented, very innovative and he was our friend to begin with, so the friends and family aspect of the label is probably the biggest driving force. We try and look from within before randomly listening to demos. And we do listen to a lot of demos.

Do you have a preference for the record label work, or the DJing work that you do?

I really enjoy both of them. If I could split myself in two, and have one person that did label stuff all day, and have one person that did DJ stuff all day, that would be perfect. But I love both of them, and I want to be able to succeed at progressively higher levels with both of them. So it’s a trade off. Most things in life, you find that balance. It’s hard sometimes if your job is something you really love to do. Cos if you hate your job, you can leave that shit at the office, like ‘fuck it, I’m done, I’m on my time’. But when your job is everything, and you really love what you do, it’s like an extension of what you do. Like, if a bad day at the office is a bad show at a club, it’s like ‘fuck man’. The highs are higher, and the lows are lower. But it evens out.

Are you able to delegate?

I’m trying to delegate more. The only full time people are like me, and Duster and A-Trak...it’s still like a two year-old company. I mean, we have interns, and I’m trying to set up more interns, but that’s one of the things that you notice. Successful people don’t just delegate, they delegate properly. Like bring someone who really brings something unique to the table, as opposed to just, someone whom you have to spell everything out to. We’re definitely branching out this year with more interns, teams, like just trying to get more involvement. So I can think about stuff like artist development and stuff that isn’t...licking envelopes.

It seems like “genre loyalty” is fading away, where people listen to all kinds of different music, and it’s more difficult to make obvious labels for types of music. Will it continue to be necessary for people to have a favourite “type” of music?

I’ve always liked a hybrid of different types of things. Whether it be music or movies or television or comic books, the stuff that I enjoy the most...you could tell that they were drawing from all these different styles. What we do with the label is...we just want to put out good music. Period. We don’t want to have to be pigeon-holed. You know, our first couple of releases, whether it was Kid Sister or Cool Kids you know it was like ‘ohh, this is sneaker rap’ or like ‘the black dudes with tight jeans’ and then we released stuff that was straight-up electronic. And I think with each release we brought in the scope of what the label means. And I think we should just stand for good music, as opposed to one particular style. And as far as what the new generation of kids are getting into...I think they just take stuff for granted. And I don’t mean that in a negative way, I just mean these are the children who’ve lived through the Kanyes and the Pharrells of the world. Who never had the internet at their fingertips, who never knew anything other than ‘you play this on this station, and this on that one’...they didn’t have all types of music at all times at their fingertips...but I think there’s just going to be more of that. And to me what’s gonna be important is not the styles or any trends, but who’s having good ideas. Who’s saying something new, who’s doing something that has like a real connection. Who’s doing something more than ‘wow this song sounds pretty cool’, you know someone doing something with more depth in the music- that’s we bring to Fool’s Gold.

At the end of the day there is a financial reality behind all of this, you gotta make your business profitable. These days kids can find anything for free if they really look. How do you deal with all of that?

We formed as the record label was really starting to crumble. You know, the traditional major labels... It didn’t work. And we never set out to change any of that. We set out to just be Fool’s Gold, this brand. You know whether that brand is putting out music, or doing something else, we just wanted to have a distinct identity and stand for something. So we based our business model on selling records and making a profit from that, we based it on...let’s make this cool brand and see that it can survive if we don’t sell records anymore. So we look to do tours and get corporate sponsorship from that, and raise the profile of the artists working with the label so that they can go out and get better show money, and with our releases, we keep expenses low. We look at vinyl almost like it’s a promotional expense. Like we break even on it. We make a little bit of profit. The digital stuff we make pure profit, but it’s not like every record is a wild million copy seller. So we have pretty realistic goals as far as that goes. But then you get a record like Kid Cudi’s Day and Night, and it becomes like this massive international hit...and it’s like oh wow...this is crazy, this is beyond just being a bonus, but you’re not going to have a record like that every month.

Is that the pinnacle so far?

Yeah, I mean at this point it’s far and away the biggest selling record. It’s gold in the U.S just off downloads alone. It was number three in America. Number two in the U.K and you’re dealing on a scale that’s like absurd when you consider how humble we are just generally. The cool thing about that is- this was an underground record that we heard something in and we decided to put it out and not shove it down people’s throats. Let it out there and let it grow naturally. Give it to DJs and the real tastemakers. You know, ‘Do you like this? Great! Take it, play it’. People ask us constantly ‘what did you do? How much money did you spend?’ …Well we didn’t spend anything [laughing] we just let it do what it did. You can’t just take an equation and plug in different variables, it’s gotta be a thing that people have a true connection to.

When did you first realise how big it was gonna be?

It was just hearing other DJs play it. I don’t think any of us predicted how far it would go. But when we saw that it was a record that all our friends played. You could go to a club and not know anyone there, and hear it and go ‘oh yeah...well this is making the rounds’.

In your work as a producer, are you executive producing the music that comes out of the label, or are you leaving that to the artists?

We try and shape not necessarily the way the music is made, but kinda picking what songs will go on a release, helping the producers to get guest artists, you know giving suggestions on the final mix... it’s different for every artist in every project. We try and encourage everyone to be themselves but at the same time we’re not yes-men. It’s not like ‘oh yeah, this is great, we’ll put it out immediately’. If something needs a little bit more hands on attention, we provide it.

Any new signees to the label?

We’re constantly working on new releases, I mean right now, we just put out a record by DJ Gant Man out of Chicago. Kind of like a duke/house kinda hybrid. Trackademics, the Bay area, we put his record out a month or two ago, and that’s picking up steam. We’re gonna put out videos. Conga Rock is this young Italian producer...there’s literally releases lined up all year. But as far as the big projects that are going to make a splash, we’re working on a full label compilation. Everyone that’s already on the scene from Kid Sister to Treasure Fingers to Jokers of the Scene and Not Your Lovers, Sandy Bananas. They all have new stuff that I’m so excited to put out. It’s hard if you’re a prolific producer to not bombard people with stuff, but like each release is special. So rather than just put stuff out digitally, we wait, and do like proper artwork and press up vinyl for everything. It’s something that we feel can stand the test of time, that we feel is something more than just ‘here’s that mp3 that I sent you’.

Do you have any album projects coming up where you’ve produced all of or the majority of the beats?

I'm still just starting out on the production side of things - trying to make the transition between just DJ edits and tools to more full-fledged tracks. But I do plan to have a finished single ready to go on FG before the year is out, hopefully in time for our label compilation!

Worst DJing experience of your career?

A holiday party for an unnamed major label - they hired me to "be myself" which almost always means the exact opposite. Various bosses tried to micromanage everything and the vibe was real tense. Even then I got it to pop off with everyone getting down to Chubb Rock and old rap - but at the peak of the dancing they cut the music to bring everyone upstairs for a raffle and it was a lost cause. I couldn't see anything on the top floor, but kept getting messages like ‘Rick Ross is here, only play his music!’ With everyone on my floor all puzzled. Not all corporate parties are bad though. I did a News Corp event a week later that was off the hook - at one point I looked out and this big girl in a turtleneck was waving her hands in the air, pit sweat soaking thru both arms. That lets me know I'm doing my job.

What is the best gig that you have attended in the capacity of a fan, where you have not performed?

Recently I've enjoyed: Chromeo at Coachella, Daft Punk's encore at Coney Island, R Kelly at Nassau Colliseum right before his trial, Vampire Weekend in Central Park... I know I'm forgetting a bunch, I usually have a good time whenever I go out. It's hard to single ‘em out!

Best gig that you have ever DJd?

Some standouts in the last year or two are the Fool's Gold WMC showcase this spring, Mezzanine in SF with Wale, going on after DJ AM at LAX, the Halloween edition of my Flashing Lights party with DJ Ayres and Jubilee, and just a few days ago the Warehouse Festival in Canberra was a lot of fun, it was one of the first real festival shows I've done.

While your sets are extremely eclectic and your musical tastes are clearly broad, what genre would you pick if you had to stick to one in particular?

I love the diversity and tempos of new and old dance music, but I'm a hip-hop fan at heart and have been a huge fan of rock song writing and guitar power from a very young age. I don't think there'd be a way for me to do anything that wasn't a hybrid of all my influences.


 Who is on the dream collaboration list for you?

There's a slew of great new female singers with interesting voices that it would be fun to craft tracks for - Bat For Lashes, La Roux, and the like. There's also a ton of more straightforward rappers like Jadakiss and the LOX who could use an update of their classic NYC sound.


If you could work with a deceased artist or group from a previous decade who would it be?

Biggie! Do it for Brooklyn!


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