Elemental Magazine Throwback: Read the Labels Intro

Posted on September 10, 2009 by Chris Faraone

Like I said yesterday, I’ll be sharing some of my favorite old Elemental magazine columns with JTTS readers over the next few weeks. In addition to my presumption that you’ll enjoy them, I want to get these joints in cyberspace since they don’t yet (and never did) exist here.

This first one is the introduction to my old column, Read the Labels, in which I profiled a different indie imprint every month. If you’re at all involved in the industry yourself – I suggest you check these carefully. Not because they’re by any means extraordinarily written, but because everyone I interviewed shared much wisdom.

The sling crack rocks, shoot jump shots or rock spots conundrum used to be a lot simpler. In the shell-toe era, if rhyme was your golden ticket, then you beeped homeboy with the beat machine, cut a demo tape and mailed it to big league talent scouts at labels such as Universal, MCA and Atlantic. The notion of selling hip-hop without help from industry machines was almost unfeasible; even if you moved records out of your trunk, you most likely did it with hopes that your skills would ultimately penetrate big wigs. And if you reached out to hip-hop friendly entrepreneurs like Russell Simmons, there was still an evil empire behind the independent curtain, which in the case of Def Jam was Sony.

Then, in the mid-to-early-90’s hip-hop’s landscape shifted. In response to corner office label execs notoriously raping rappers, as well as the genre producing thousands more artists than major label rosters could support, throngs of independent imprints emerged from the concrete. MCs became salesmen, DJs became company presidents, and in a similar fashion to what happened in punk rock a decade earlier courtesy of labels such as Epitaph, the business side of hip-hop was turned outside-in.

Perhaps most famously, Master P built his New Orleans record shop into an international gangsta rap powerhouse. Without assistance from Harvard educated marketing squads and white-collar shot callers, P’s No Limit sold more than 75 million units, lining only the pockets of those in his own camp. From there the virus spread, with established artists as well as rookies realizing that time spent harassing A&R people could be spent writing, recording and pressing up tangible products. And as quickly as new labels began self-incorporating, existing imprints shed their ties to majors.

On the East Coast, Boot Camp Clik lieutenant Buckshot helped pioneer the independent movement. After releasing Black Moon’s seminal Enter da Stage through Priority Records (a subsidiary of EMI), Buck and his partner Dru Ha fully emancipated themselves by establishing Duck Down. And while hip-hoppers these days apply the term “independent” to a wide spectrum of artists, from those who rip beats on Garage Band and lay vocals in bathtubs to dudes like Eminem, who has “Shady” listed next to “Universal” on his CD jacket, Dru, as a decade-long indie game veteran, has a working definition for independent hip-hop labels: “Just ‘cause you have a logo on your record doesn’t mean that you are a true indie,” he says. “True indies produce, market and promote their records while the distributors can manufacture, but most importantly distribute to the stores.”

The intricacies of hip-hop’s independent universe are infinitely complex. First there’s the recording process, which is essentially the sweat, blood and years put in by MCs and producers. Then there’s marketing and promotion, which as of recent includes blitzing the Internet, but to a larger degree refers to placing ads and branding your product in near and far demographics. In the marketing department, early hip-hop businesses such as Def Jam genuinely benefited by working with majors, regardless of how badly they got shorted in other aspects. In his autobiography, Life and Def, Simmons admits, “If Rick [Rubin] and I had stayed independent back in 1984, I could have made a lot more money per record sold. But without the power of CBS’s distribution and marketing clout [all through Sony], L.L. Cool J, The Beastie Boys and Public Enemy never would have gotten as big as they did.” For the indies, it’s on them to find exposure; and according to Dru, marketing isn’t always a cake walk.

“We just don’t have the money or the resources to get the word out,” he says. “The diehards go to DuckDown.com, but the average kid who just shops at Tower Records and listens to Hot 97 – that’s all he thinks is out. The new strategy is to do so many small things that add up to where they’re having an impact.”

What Dru, Buck and their varsity indie label peers do have is distribution, which is the final leg of getting albums to mass audiences. Simply put, distribution is the actual placement of products in record stores. It’s this facet of the independent game that separates dudes like Dru and a number of other indie players from the googolplex basement artists who own labels on paper. In addition to marinating in hip-hop’s consciousness for long enough to leave an aftertaste, labels such as Duck Down, ABB, Def Jux, Rhymesayers, Eastern Conference and Brick have outlets to effectively land their albums on shelves from Queens to Compton.

2006 marks the tenth anniversary of ABB, Brick and Duck Down, leading indies that have each given hip-hop heads a decade of bangers. To commemorate owners and artists from these labels, as well as the legions of do-it-yourself players such as Nature Sounds that are making serious noise as of late, Elemental presents this series of label profiles that will play out in issues throughout 2006. Our plan is to provide an inside look into the days and lives of working-class rappers, owners and producers who respect their chosen art, and who have risen to hip-hop’s highest ranks on their own terms. But most importantly, we hope to illustrate the painstaking process that takes place between the vocal booth and your iPod. Bottom line…these guys have a lot to say about the unspoken hustle that drives their companies.

“We’re focused on trying to expose people that we think are dope,” says Papa D, co-owner and part founder of Boston-based Brick Records. “But in the end of the day, sometimes we lose a lot of money.” Dru Ha paddles the same boat: “As an independent entity Duck Down knows its limits. No one understands. It’s not the average fan’s job to understand, but the frustration builds up because dudes are like, ‘Where are you guys’ [even though] we haven’t stopped putting shit out.”

Not to suggest that indies never make bank. Since breaking from Priority, Duck Down has sold upwards of 1.4 million collective units including releases from Smif-n-Wessun, Black Moon, Heltah Skeltah and O.G.C. Similarly, Slug and Brother Ali’s Minneapolis-based Rhymesayers Entertainment is a beacon of indie triumph; last year Atmosphere’s You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having sold more than 60,000 units in the U.S. alone, while other Rhymesayers releases such as those from Boom Bap Project, Grayskul and Felt (Slug+Murs) all comfortably crossed the 5,000 mark.

“I never wanted to sign with a major,” Slug says. “Not because I’m like, ‘Fuck major labels,” but because some of the shit I’ve had to deal with on this pseudo-quasi-fame bullshit has already got me on the brink of a nervous breakdown; so I’ll accept whatever comes naturally from me just busting my ass. [At Rhymesayers] the rapper always wins, which is my favorite part about having a label that’s artist driven.”

Even impressive indie sales figures might seem pint-sized next to multi-platinum numbers that are boasted by MTV rappers, but without greedy middlemen dipping into profits, homegrown labels can stay afloat and earn some buck. Papa D says that Brick keeps as much as possible in-house, including graphic design and radio-promotion, in order to maximize the bottom line. Whereas major label artists sometimes take home less than 10 percent of album profits, independent rappers generally earn more than 50 percent depending on their agreement. Do the long division: if an indie artist makes half the purse on 100,000 album sales at $15 apiece, and a Universal artist makes 5 percent on 1 million sales, they both pocket $750,000.

The opportunity to make livings without whoring to commercial audiences allows indie artists to stay creative and cater to fan bases. For most longstanding independents, those audiences are biggest at home: Brick in Boston, Def Jux in New York and Rhymesayers in Minnesota; but with on line resources and word of mouth they’ve expanded, and because they don’t have any suited execs manipulating their music, they’re able to evolve naturally and keep their flavor. And beyond their producing substantial hip-hop, indies exploit other niches that majors seem to have abandoned; most importantly vinyl, which for Brick still accounts for 45 percent of sales.

But as important as it is for indie artists and owners to feed their families through music, more than anything else these guys do it out of passion for a genre that in many ways is being preserved by them and few others. “Everybody says they’re a record label, but it’s all about what you do at the end of the day,” Papa D says. “For us, our whole thing is about our love for hip-hop”