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.

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Much more significantly at Atlantic, HHS78 hooked up Kanye West in 2003 with fellow Chicago rapper Twista. One of the three tracks they came up with, “Slow Jamz” by Twista featuring Kanye West & Jamie Foxx, was released as a single in December 2003, and became a global smash, hitting #1 R&B in the U.S. and UK in early 2004, and #1 on the Hot 100.

In February 2004, Kanye’s career was detonated with the release of his debut album, The College Dropout. The album included his extended version of “Slow Jamz,” plus “Through The Wire,” and follow-up singles “All Falls Down” and “Jesus Walks.” The College Dropout sold over 2 million copies, became an instant classic, and went on to win Grammy Awards as the Best Rap Album, with “Jesus Walks” voted Best Rap Song. (Kanye shared a third Grammy, for Best R&B Song, as co-writer of Alicia Keys’ “You Don’t Know My Name,” which he also produced.)

Kanye’s next album, Late Registration (released August 2005) entered Soundscan at #1 with the biggest first-week sales debut in Def Jam history – over 860,000 copies. Rolling Stone gave it a rare, coveted 5-star review and ranked it the #1 Album Of the Year. Late Registration went on to generate Grammy awards in 2006 for Best Rap Album, Best Rap Solo Performance for “Gold Digger,” and Best Rap Song for “Diamonds From Sierra Leone.”

Kanye bested his own first-week sales record – and set an all-time Def Jam benchmark – when his third album, Graduation (released 9/11/2007) entered at #1 with over 956,000 sales. In 2008, he swept four of the five Grammy categories in the Rap field – winning Best Rap Album for Graduation, Best Rap Song for “Good Life,” Best Rap Solo Performance for “Stronger,” and Best Rap Performance By A Duo/Group for “Southside” (shared with fellow Chicagoan Common, from his Finding Forever). Kanye tore up the Grammy Awards with an electrifying live performance of “Stronger” (backed by Daft Punk) and a (mostly) acappella version of “Hey Mama” in honor of his late mother.

The mutual decision to part company with Atlantic in 2007, and launch HHS78 as an independent stand-alone management and production company, was at least partly empowered by the trajectory of Kanye West’s success. Gee stayed on with Atlantic to run their Rap Music department, while his partners accepted senior management offers from Columbia’s Urban Music division, Al as Senior VP of Marketing, and Hip-Hop as Senior VP of A&R. Hip-Hop stayed on at Columbia as the new president of his division, after Al took up an offer to join Def Jam in January 2009. The three partners are in place with high level posts at Universal, Sony, and Warner Music Group – while continuing to devote themselves to Hip-Hop Since 1978.

* * *

Pop sociologist Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent book, 2008’s Outliers: The Story Of Success is a fascinating study of those certain people who have achieved levels of success that lie far outside the norm, and our general inability to understand why some people succeed in life beyond all possibility, and others not at all. Among those whose fate Gladwell considers in his book are the Beatles, Bill Gates of Microsoft, and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, ‘the Father of the Atomic Bomb.’ Over and over again, Gladwell cites what he calls “the 10,000-hour rule,” arguing that in order to attain those outsized levels of success, it is necessary to invest 10,000 hours – or as many years as it takes to amass 10,000 hours – in that task.

It is a theory that may come up in conversations about Hip-Hop Since 1978, how and why it has attracted such a uniformly high level of artists, producers – and executives, including the numerous staffers who keep the company humming. HHS78 has made a practice of integrally involving itself in every campaign it undertakes, not just handing it over to the outside public relations firm or advertising agency to expedite. HHS78 retains that measure of control because they are not only protecting their client’s best interest, but they are putting their own creative juices on the line as well.

Consider the fact that not one, but all three of the principals of HHS78, Kyambo ‘Hip-Hop’ Joshua, Gee Roberson and Al Branch each invested at least 10,000 hours into the practice of their task – learning how their business works – in the virtual decade between the establishment of Roc-A-Fella in 1996, and the launch of HHS78 as an independent entity in 2007.

And there is much more to learn. The evolution of record companies into ‘360’ entertainment companies raises the ante on the kind of partnerships that HHS78 seeks to negotiate for its artists. At the same time, many of the Fortune 500 companies now appreciate that the appeal of hip-hop artists is much broader than just the African-American market. This is a realization that would have been utterly unthinkable a decade ago and HH78 recognizes that for themselves and also those coming after. They’ve even focused their attention on how entertainment can serve as a stronger mold in education & philanthropy. “ The Hip hop culture has always gotten a bad rap in terms of lending a hand to up & comers, whether that be a new artist or budding A&R/Marketing executive” comments Al Branch, “ the intellectual property we all gain in experience is so valuable, if we use it to teach others we could all be stronger executives, artists and beyond..you’re only as strong as you’re weakest link”. Currently, HHS78 are developing a company website as a conduit for education & philanthropy. As Hip-Hop Since 1978 expands its scope from management, production, and marketing into video, film, television, philanthropy, publishing and more, there is no field that will not be within their grasp.

– Arthur Levy (October 2009)

See Al Branch at Urban Music Week 2010