Culture

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In an exclusive interview with Amazon Music’s Phylicia Fant, HipHopWired got to talk about her love of music, her career journey and her motivation.

As Black Music Month is underway, we have an appreciation of the artists who bring us the music that we remember as well as those who’ve worked to support those artists in their careers through their own visionary efforts. Phylicia Fant, who is currently serving as the head of music industry partnerships at Amazon Music, is definitely one of those figures.

Before taking that role the Marietta, Georgia, native forged a sterling career as the former head of urban music at Columbia Records and the vice president of publicity and lifestyle at Warner Records after rising as a public relations genius working with numerous artists including Erykah Badu and Amy Winehouse with her firm, The Purple Agency, in 2008. HipHopWired got the opportunity to speak to Phylicia Fant about the significance of music, the connections, and how it helped her understand and utilize “the pivot” on her career journey.

HipHopWired: What was your first moment of true connection with music? And how did that love direct you to work in the music industry through public relations?

Phylicia Fant: I think true connection always comes from—I won’t say always, but I think if you grew up in the church, then you’re connected to music in the church. That is something that I think when parents are trying to find activities for you to do. My dad is a deacon, and my mom is a deaconess. My great-grandmother on my dad’s side was a pastor, which was rare for females in the South. So music was always kind of in your life. Now, I can’t sing at all. [Laughs] Okay, I will make sure I say that. But you know, they’re always nice to kids.

But what you recognize in those moments is a certain emotion. Even if you’re not the best singer, there’s nothing like that energy where you get up, you sing in front of the church, and they support you, right? It’s that kind of conversation. And then when the soloist comes out, and they bring people to tears, you understand the effects of music in that way. That’s the immersive experience.

My dad played piano as well, so he would have vinyl in my room growing up. And then my first concert was seeing Michael Jackson with my parents. So I’ve always had parents who kind of kept me in different spaces of music and culture, and I think between church, between the vinyl that was placed in my room strategically, which was Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, and the first Sugar Hill Gang record, those are the kinds of ways you will discover music though you may not understand it [then].

What I’ve learned over time is the importance of the pivot and how many times I have pivoted, but at the same time, within those pivots, how I still am true to what I love at my core.

How’s it been so far in your role at Amazon Music in terms of expanding all that the platform has to offer? What challenges and successes have you faced?

I always get nervous with the word challenges, because I think they are more or less about challenges than pushing yourself into a different thought process, right? If you grew up in the label system like I did, then it’s always been very much art as sport, right? So how do I relate to an artist who has to deal with criticism, has to deal with their own personal schedules, their own personal lives? How do I build trust with that artist? So the trust factor kind of leads me into the Amazon conversation in that, while we are a tech company, the principle is to make sure we are making sure the consumer is happy. 

So, the consumer being the person that’s listening to the music, but also the consumer, as I think we expand that definition to the artists and to the people that we collaborate with, to have a symbiotic relationship of how data and music can come together for the greater good of how we expand music for people. So the benefit of me being on this side is, while I am always “artist first” and have been, it’s great for me to know what products are being made to make that experience that much better. And that’s not something I’ve really thought about until I got here, right? You look at it as, “Oh, it’s just streaming.” But then you realize it’s much more than streaming.

How you share music, or how you use music, what technology is, is created for you to be able to have that maximum experience to even think about what it means to actually collect music and create a playlist. I wasn’t thinking about that type of conversation inside a tech company. You just think these things are there. And because they’re there, when you recognize what it takes to get these things off the ground, there becomes a respect for the type of collaboration behind the scenes that makes your music experience seamless.

Source: Paras Griffin / Getty

So that takes me to this next question in terms of your path and being a Black woman who’s carved out such a brilliant path in the industry. For those that are coming up, what’s the most important thing to you that you share with those who inquire about making their own way?

It’s funny because I just got off the phone with one of my mentees, and she was talking about how she loves sports and how she doesn’t know how to get into sports. I said that what I’ve learned over time is the importance of the pivot and how many times I have pivoted, but at the same time, within those pivots, how I still am true to what I love at my core. At the core, I love music. And what you recognize in loving music is that the music extends to different places.

So my career evolved, because I recognize where music could take me. It wasn’t just within the walls of a concert, it was now in the walls of an arena, it was Fashion Week, first row. Taking people like JoJo and Lindsay Lohan to fashion week, when the city was at its peak and living in New York, you recognize different ways to use it to carry you in different spaces. 

And so once you realize that your core passion can also expand those doors, and you don’t see it as a linear situation, then the pivot becomes more fascinating. It doesn’t become easier. But it becomes fascinating in the sense of, “Oh, I can take this thing that I love, I can open up different doors.” I can understand music from a seat perspective and see what it’s like to have a song placed on television.

Because now I understand how music works in film. I understand music works with intelligence. “Oh, I can get this artist’s song played in the stadium, like Lil Nas X, and see how people react. And see this song becomes a chance for Texas Tech before they get ready to play the game because it pumps them up. I can look at who was curating music for fashion shows when I was in New York. So it still stems from music. But music opened doors for me to go into all these different spaces because I recognize music is universal for a reason.

It is Black Music Month, and I couldn’t end this interview without asking you for your favorite artists that we should be checking for if we aren’t already – like what would be on your select playlist?

It’s such a unique thing because I think about – like, I love Andra Day because I think she has a richness. I worked with Amy Winehouse and I think the ability to blend jazz and R&B and all those conversations is great. But I also love Tommy Richmond’s new song “Million Dollar Baby” because I love what the HBCUs and the Divine Nine’s step teams have done with that song and how you can take one song and it becomes a movement and become also a self-esteem booster at the same time. So there’s different artists I think for different reasons, different moods that I really like. I gotta think about that. 

I think that people don’t know this artist named Q live on Columbia Records, who’s R&B. I think Durand [Bernarr], you might know him as a backup vocalist like I do, but his voice is just rich. It’s absolutely phenomenal. I’m really proud of the R&B space, like Muni Long – even though the song became viral on TikTok I like her ability to be bold and kind of say what’s on people’s minds, which is why I think I’m excited about music right now where I think a couple of years ago, I was frustrated because I do think we are looking for our next superstars. 

But, you know, I’m also an old-school girl. Never gonna not want to hear Marvin Gaye and Prince. They inspire me all the time. Those are staples on my playlist as well as Stevie Wonder. It’s just a place to take me to. I love Mariah Carey, you know, I’ll never not love her. So I think it’s that constant lens of past, present, and future, which I think is ironic because of our campaign which is called “Forever The Influence.” And if you think about people like Uncle Charlie [Wilson], who will pop up on a Don Tolliver record, who I also love. So I think it will always be a combination of past, present, and future, and I’m excited about the future, but these are the artists that have stuck out to me.