Toronto Urban Music Festival 2009

Friday, January 29
Urban Music Industry Conference: The Business of Urban Music
Fairmont Royal York Hotel, 100 Front St. W.
(Upper Canada Room, 18th Floor, 12:00 noon - 8:00 p.m.)

The aim of the Urban Music Industry Conference is to foster and develop, support and champion a vibrant, dynamic urban industry in Ontario. The first day of the music conference targets urban businesses, artist-entrepreneurs, managers, indie labels, publishers, booking agents, graphic designers, event and concert promoters, and web masters. The conference will assist urban businesses and artist-entrepreneurs network and develop professional and successful business practices in this rapidly changing music industry and new digital age through panel discussions and networking opportunities. Panels include: Music Publishing, Managing for Success and Indie Labels. Keynote address by Al Branch, GM for the management firm Hip Hop Since 1978, whose roster includes Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Drake, Young Jeezy and the producers Noah “40″ Shebib and Just Blaze.

Admission: $25 (includes keynote address, conference & Networking Reception), two-day Conference Pass: $40 (includes all) available at the door.

Saturday, January 30
Urban Music Industry Conference: Urban Artist Boot Camp
Fairmont Royal York Hotel, 100 Front St. W.
(Upper Canada Room, 18th Floor, 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.)

The second day of the music conference will target independent urban artists. Panels include: Funding & Juries, Social Networks & Music, Festivals & Tours and Finding the Next Hot Producers.

Admission: $25 (includes conference & Networking Reception), two-day Conference Pass: $40 (includes all) available at the door.

[close]

And with Demetrius ‘Kinky B’ Ellerbee, HHS78 co-manages Young Jeezy, a core artist after five albums at Def Jam Recordings, also via Universal Music Group.

Kanye West, of course, is one of the cornerstore artists at Def Jam, which is celebrating its 25th year anniversary in 2009. It is purely coincidence, or serendipity, that all of HHS78’s artists are signed to UMG. That is a situation which could turn around on a dime, given HHS78’s inroads with every single major record company headquartered in New York City. That proximity is just one of many factors which have contributed to the extraordinary track record compiled by Hip-Hop Since 1978.

* * *

The roots of Hip-Hop Since 1978 trace back to a nearly-forgotten little label, Payday Records, which issued the very first single by 25-year old Brooklyn rapper Jay-Z in 1995, “In My Lifetime.” In old school New York R&B style that harkened back to the 1950s and ’60s, Jay-Z and Damon Dash famously sold the single out of Dash’s car trunk. Without an album deal on the table, Jay-Z, Dash, and a third partner, Kareem “Biggs” Burke decided to form a record label of their own in 1996, Roc-A-Fella Records, as an outlet for Jay-Z’s music. His debut album, Reasonable Doubt was the first Roc-A-Fella project, distributed by Priority at the time.

In the first year of Roc-A-Fella’s operation, Bronx-born Gee Roberson joined the new company (from Payday) to work on Jay-Z’s album. Around the same time, Al Branch came over from Pendulum Records, an Elektra custom label (run by Ruben Rodriguez) whose roster then included Digable Planets and Lords Of the Underground. Al learned the record business from the ground up as one of only about 10 employees at Pendulum, a summer college intern doing retail marketing, staying in touch with about 500 independent stores all over the country, checking stock, getting account feedback. He learned how every department works, unlike being at a huge major label where you rarely venture outside the box where you were hired.

They were quickly joined by Burke’s younger brother, high school senior Kyambo ‘Hip-Hop’ Joshua. What the three future principals of HHS78 (Gee, Hip-Hop, and Al) learned from the entrepreneurial spirit of the three principals of Roc-A-Fella (Jay-Z, Dame, and Biggs) – would take volumes to chronicle. Suffice to say that 1998, their third year together at Roc-A-Fella (which was under the Def Jam banner by then), when Jay-Z’s third album Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life blew up to 4-times platinum less than five months after its release – left an indelible impression on Gee, Hip-Hop, and Al.

The seeds of HHS78 were being sown. As early as 1997, Hip-Hop had matured into a seasoned A&R man, a ‘talent scout’ as old school A&R men were known. He met a 20-year old Chicago producer and fledgling rapper named Kanye West, who asked Hip-Hop to manage him. Around the same time, Gee met New York-based producer Just Blaze. Gee and Hip-Hop jumped into their new management company together, and called it Roc The World.

Over the next four or five years, their clients amassed a show-stopping array of production credits, both for Roc-A-Fella artists and outside work, especially as R&B and hip-hop albums made the transition across the industry to multiple-producer affairs. Through 2003, Just Blaze collected credits for his work with Big Pun, Busta Rhymes, Beanie Sigel, Cam’ron, Memphis Bleek, Snoop Dogg, Mariah Carey, the Diplomats, Fabolous, Freeway, and many others.

Kanye West worked with many of those same artists through 2003, as well as Dead Prez, Talib Kweli, Trina, Monica, DMX, Ludacris, Nappy Roots, and many others. Most importantly, Kanye and Blaze were both on-board as producers for Jay-Z’s string of multi-platinum best sellers, The Dynasty: Roc La Familia (2000), The Blueprint (2001), and The Blueprint²: The Gift & the Curse (2002). Kanye worked on Jay-Z’s The Black Album (2003); both Kanye and Blaze worked on Kingdom Come (2006); and Kanye returned in 2009 to work on the brand new The Blueprint 3.

But back in 2000, it was time for Gee, Hip-Hop, and Al to spread their wings. Al, who had risen to general manager at Roc-A-Fella, felt he’d gone as far as he could go there. He left for a marketing position at Elektra, where he worked on some of the label’s biggest album projects over the next two years with Missy Elliott, Tweet, Fabolous, and Nate Dogg.

Gee and Hip-Hop had become A&R gurus at Roc-A-Fella, building a Motown-style operation where in-house producers had a certain control of the musical output. In the spring 2003, they accepted an offer from Craig Kalman at Atlantic Records to bring Roc The World – and when it turned out that they couldn’t register the name because it was already in use, they came up with the moniker Hip-Hop Since 1978. In a prescient move, however, Kanye West remained signed to Roc-A-Fella.

In the late-summer 2003, it was a relatively simple matter for Al to shift over from Atlantic’s sister label, Elektra, to join Gee and Hip-Hop at HHS78. It was around that time (September) when Kanye’s debut single was finally released by Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam, “Through The Wire.”

One of the high points of HHS78’s Atlantic tenure – and one of the first (if not the first) examples of getting involved in the wide world of branding and artist placement – was when their New York rapper Saigon was cast as a recurring character in the 2005 and 2006 seasons of HBO’s hit series Entourage.

Continue

See Al Branch at Urban Music Week 2010