State Champ Radio EMPIRE Africa
It’s shortly after 5:00 p.m., and nearly two dozen recording engineers, producers and A&Rs are crowded into Studio A at EMPIRE’s recording studios in San Francisco, where Grammy-winning mix engineer Jaycen Joshua is in command of the center console. Joshua — who has been in the studio with everyone from Snoop Dogg to Future, Ariana Grande to Luis Fonsi, Justin Bieber to BTS, and won Grammys for his work with Beyoncé and Mary J. Blige, among others — is holding a masterclass for EMPIRE’s studio staff. Currently, he’s walking them through the ProTools plugin he’s created, called the God Particle, that will allow them to tap into some of the secrets he’s developed over the past 20 years honing his craft.
“People fail to realize that we’re artists,” he says, to fervent nods around the room, while explaining why the nuance of being an engineer is so important. “We paint like a producer paints. You want to make the colors of a painting as vibrant as possible.”
His audience is rapt, peppering him with questions and interruptions — none more eager than EMPIRE’s founder/CEO Ghazi, himself a longtime former recording engineer, who made sure to rearrange the day’s schedule so he could sit in with his staff. Ghazi flew Joshua up specially for this African writing camp EMPIRE is hosting for its top Nigerian talents Fireboy DML, Asake and Olamide, and had Joshua himself tune Studio A to his specifications, resulting in what Joshua calls “the second greatest sounding room in the world — next to mine.” (“I’ll take that,” Ghazi laughs. “It’s like being Kobe to Jordan.”)
The masterclass, frankly, seems like it’s being conducted in a different language, given the shorthand in which engineers communicate about compressors, limiters, microphones, ambient noise and the shape and quality of a particular snare drum sound wave compared to another. It’s like a PhD-level class, and each of the engineers will get access to the God Particle plugin in order to enhance their own mixes, as well — a plugin that is so successful (Joshua refers to it as his “cheat code”) that he’s sold over 100,000 copies of it in less than a year, with another coming out soon that caters specifically to drums. And it lines up with a mantra that Ghazi uses often: one about finding the sweet spot “where science meets creativity” — essentially, finding the place where technology can meet up with the inherent creativity of an artist and enhance the work of everyone.
Daniel Aziz and Matthew Fong
The masterclass wraps after about an hour, and it’s time for individual sessions to get back on track. When we got to the studio at 4:00 p.m., Olamide was eating in the dining room, though he soon would go back to his hotel, and the energy of the place is much brighter than the subdued day before — with a big crew of songwriters, engineers and EMPIRE staffers in and out of the rooms. Terrace Martin is in Studio A, adding keys to an Olamide record; Fireboy is in vocal training for an upcoming tour, a process that involves trampolines and yoga; and the kitchen, after a day of Tupac, is back to blasting Kevin Gates again. Just before the masterclass, Kenny Hamilton, who manages EMPIRE artist Rotimi, is playing new music for EMPIRE vp of A&R Tina Davis and regional head of West Africa Mobolaji Kareem, discussing plans for possible features for a forthcoming album.
Later, around 6:45, Asake comes through the studio with Olamide’s brother and DJ Enimoney, headphones around his neck, talking about plans for the next few days. His engineer and producer Magicsticks is coming in from Nigeria tomorrow — “he really gets me,” Asake explains — and the plan is to finish a bunch of records that are in various stages of mixing before he starts to work on anything new. He wants to bring in a chorus, between four and six singers, to help get an anthemic feel, and EMPIRE artist and songwriter Rexx Life Raj is employed to reach out to his network of contacts to help get the right people in the building. Then Asake heads outside — after living all his life in Nigeria, he says, he enjoys the cold of San Francisco in the late winter.
Daniel Aziz and Matthew Fong
It’s outside, sitting around the electric fire pit, that I find Asake again about an hour later, in a meeting with Bolaji, Ghazi, EMPIRE COO Nima Etminan and a slew of others about a music video he plans to shoot. (Dinner was again a mix of Nigerian food, and while it was delicious, I finally came face to face with the rumored pepper sauce from the night before — just as spicy as dreaded.) There are several video shoots planned for the coming days, and the conversation around the dinner table ranges from studio etiquette — specifically, what to do about the “couch producers,” a term for the random person laying down on the couch in the studio while a record is made who nonetheless demands five percent of the record — to the brilliance of a melody like “Baby Shark.”
But in each studio there’s more work underway — Joshua mixing in Studio A, Fireboy locked away in a closed session in Studio B, interviews happening in Studio C and more plotting out in the back yard around the fire pit. By 10:45, Asake had left, Olamide had long been back at his hotel and much of the EMPIRE staff had filtered out towards home. But Fireboy remained, locked in the studio, cooking up his next big record. The crew has less than a week now in the States, and there’s still plenty to do — and a lot for which to prepare.
This is the third installment of Billboard‘s series on EMPIRE’s Africa writing camp. Find the first installment here and the second here.
The conference room on the 22nd floor of EMPIRE’s San Francisco office is brightly lit, with plaques covering the walls: a gold single for King Von’s “Crazy Story,” a gold album for Kendrick Lamar’s Section.80, a seven-times platinum certification for D.R.A.M. and Lil Yachty’s “Broccoli.” Every chair around the big central table is full of EMPIRE staff members, each charged with different aspects of bringing to life the next project from Dinner Party, the collective comprised of Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, Kamasi Washington and 9th Wonder, among others; their first EP was released by EMPIRE in 2020 and subsequently nominated for a Grammy for best progressive R&B album.
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Standing by the table near the door is Martin — the multi-talented producer, saxophonist and vocalist — who introduces the project to the staff and lays out his vision for how he wants to see it rolled out.
“I look at Dinner Party as like the hip-hop version of Steely Dan,” Martin says, referencing the classic rock group’s famous aversion to touring. “Let’s keep this one thing as like an expensive art piece.”
It’s late afternoon, and the EMPIRE crew is hosting another day of its Africa writing camp at its San Francisco studio for Nigerian stars Fireboy DML, Asake and Olamide. But first, there’s other business to attend to, and the Dinner Party project is high on the agenda. Martin holds court for nearly two hours, discussing plans for the physical release, for spot-date performances and for possible brand tie-ins and content plans when the project is rolled out. But he’s also playing near-final mixes of the album, which he hopes to complete within the week, and telling stories about how it came together (“We’re all in our 40s now,” he jokes about he and his Dinner Party cohorts. “You get us all together and it’s just story time, story after story.”)
One song, for instance, originally sampled Mtume’s “Juicy Fruit,” more famous these days as the basis for The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy.” When Martin heard it, he called Mtume’s son to ask about clearing the sample, who replied not with permission but with the stems to his father’s original track; that allowed Martin to bypass clearing the master recording and left him needing only to clear the publishing side. For another song, Martin eschewed drums altogether — something he picked up from his 19-year-old daughter, who is now a producer herself. “I come from the era where a beat with no drums was an interlude,” he says. “I’m following her now.”
YBNL & EMPIRE teams meet in Studio A to listen over Olamide, Asake and Fireboy DML’s newly recorded records
Daniel Aziz
The meeting wraps before 6 p.m., and now it’s time to head over to the studio. The vibe is a little different tonight. Asake and Olamide have stayed at their hotel — where Olamide has been recording vocals in his room — the kitchen is playing Tupac instead of Kevin Gates, and Nigerian vegetable soup, fried catfish, smothered turkey wings and mac and cheese are the main events at dinner. (Though all anyone is talking about is how hot the pepper sauce is.)
Fireboy and Asake stayed in the studio until after midnight the night before cooking up another collaboration, and while Asake isn’t there now, Fireboy is, meeting Martin and adding in vocals and guitar to another song he’s working on. (The guitarist, Tone, sports a black triple-humbucker Fender Telecaster Deluxe, for those curious.) The vocals constitute an anthemic plea that Fireboy pores over with his engineer in Studio C, looping the vocals on the hook again and again to get them right then hopping back into the vocal booth to add harmonies and ad-libs while reading lyrics off his phone. Steadily, over the course of 45 minutes, the two add layer after layer to the track, reinforcing melodies and bringing forth different textures until Fireboy sits back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling and taking it all in.
It’s been more than a week since the camp began, and the conversations around the studio are diverse. Topics include the benefits of vocal coaching for an artist going on tour; the Nigerian presidential election; who is leaving from and coming to camp (songwriter Ivory Scott left this morning, Rexx Life Raj is set to arrive tomorrow, and Nigerian producer Magicsticks is on the way); and the studio’s many renovations. EMPIRE is planning to open a space in Los Angeles, too, and recently did the same in New York, though San Francisco will always be home.
Daniel Aziz
Shortly after 8 p.m., EMPIRE regional head of West Africa, Mobolaji Kareem, pulls us into Studio A to listen to a final mix of a new Kizz Daniel track that engineer Jaycen Joshua completed that morning. Right on cue, Daniel calls on FaceTime, dictating the custom lighting to tell us which color the room needs to be to listen to the track and promising to get out to the new studio when he can. But it’s an early night for just about everyone involved. The exception is Fireboy, who stays in the studio after many have left even though his voice is tired from the constant grind of recording. Tomorrow is another day, and more work is expected before things wrap in another week.
It was just over 18 months ago that Fireboy DML released the record that would change his life.
But the song — “Peru,” which, aided by a remix with Ed Sheeran, would ultimately reach No. 53 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 2 on the UK Official Singles Chart and No. 1 on U.S. Afrobeats Songs — was almost never released at all. Standing in the lounge of EMPIRE’s studio space in San Francisco, where he originally cut the record in 2021 (memorialized by the line “I’m in San Francisco jamming”), he’s explaining how, if it wasn’t for the enthusiasm of EMPIRE founder/CEO Ghazi pushing him to release the record, he might never have put it out due to his own perfectionism. (Which, as an EMPIRE staffer standing nearby points out, is due to him being an Aquarius.)
But four hours later, that alternate timeline where Fireboy’s single didn’t break through into the U.S. and help Afrobeats’ global takeover seems implausible, even absurd. Shortly after 10:00 p.m., Ghazi leads Fireboy into the studio’s white marble lobby, where two dozen EMPIRE employees, songwriters, producers and managers, as well as fellow Nigerian Afrobeats artists Asake and Olamide, the latter of whom also runs their YBNL record label, are waiting to surprise Fireboy with an RIAA plaque of platinum certification for “Peru.” After a short bow and a swig from a bottle of champagne, Fireboy gives in to the calls for a speech, thanking everyone in the room and calling the plaque the “perfect definition of success,” to a round of applause.
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The impromptu ceremony is the highlight of another day at EMPIRE’s afrobeats writing camp, which the Bay Area-based independent music company initiated last month to bring together some of its leading African artists to record together at the ever-evolving studio space near San Francisco’s Mission District. It’s a space that currently boasts three studios and a live room, but one that is still being developed. When it’s finished, some time this summer, it will include two more recording studios, a pair of podcast studios, a gaming room with a massive, 30-foot LED screen along one wall and a swimming pool in the back yard, in addition to the lounge (which will eventually become a theater space with Dolby Atmos sound), kitchen and dining room, all of which is outfitted with EMPIRE logos, custom lighting and specially designed sound systems, which Ghazi has overseen.
“We’ll literally be able to create pieces of content around all these verticals, and then this becomes a hub of where you gotta visit,” he says, giving a tour of the space earlier in the afternoon. “There’s gonna be no way around it. It’s going to create too much energy, it’s going to be impossible to overlook.”
The studio serves as the center of the writing camp, with Fireboy, Asake and Olamide the resident stars of the show. It hasn’t all been work since the three Nigerian artists got to the Bay — over the previous few days, they sat courtside at a Golden State Warriors game, went to wine country in the Napa Valley and took in the sights on a tour around the city. But each day, starting around 3:00 p.m., it’s back to the studio to get back to business, building on the momentum of recordings from previous days and channeling the creativity that comes from working in an environment designed to let them simply exist as artists, with few distractions.
For us, however, this particular Tuesday started out with oysters and clam chowder at Hog Island Oyster Bar on the water (Shrimpy is the hookup; if you know you know) before braving the spitting rain to head to a photo shoot for Fireboy and the shoe company Clarks, where he’ll be part of a campaign that will result in a concert in the metaverse down the line. (In addition to the regular photo shoot, Fireboy was tasked with filming things like catching a rolled up magazine, which will be transformed into a microphone in the digital realm.) The shoot had been in progress since 10am, but the afternoon started to wear on, so soon it was into a sprinter van and off to the studio, where Asake and Olamide are holed up in Studio B, looping a section of a track that Asake is workshopping, with Olamide over Asake’s shoulder reading lyrics off his phone.
Forty-five minutes later, Olamide was holding court outside around an electric fire pit, while two engineers — one of them multi-Grammy winning mix engineer Jaycen Joshua, who EMPIRE flew up from L.A. for the occasion — worked on the mix to Olamide’s next single in Studio A, tweaking drums to get the punch just right. The room was still under construction just days before, and was finished just as the artists started to arrive in the city, having been rebuilt in just three weeks. In the lounge, Fireboy was talking about his new grill and his plans to dye his hair blue — while in the kitchen, a local chef, brought in to make okra soup, smoked mackerel, shrimp and garlic crabs and cornbread for the Nigerian contingent each night, was mid-cook, blasting Kevin Gates in the newly-remodeled space. But then it was back to work, with Asake and Fireboy disappearing into different studios, then swapping spaces a half hour later.
Shortly after 7:00, it was time to eat, with staff and crew at the long banquet tables and the artists sitting in the backyard, before EMPIRE’s regional head of West Africa, Mobolaji Kareem, brought a half-dozen of us into the live room to hear new Asake and Olamide records that the two have been working on over the past week. The songs are unmixed and only half done, he said, and I was the first non-EMPIRE person to hear them, and he danced through them and broke them down after each. We moved to Studio A — for the bigger speakers — to hear them again, as well as forthcoming records from Kizz Daniel, who is also working on his next release, albeit not in San Francisco at the moment. Eventually, EMPIRE’s senior vp of A&R Tina Davis kicked us out of Studio A — there was mixing to do, after all, and while listening to the records is exhilarating, there’s still work ahead.
Indeed, even as everyone gathers in the lobby for Fireboy’s plaque presentation, the celebration is short-lived; before long, Fireboy is back in Studio B, listening back to a song he had initially cut last night. It was after 10:00, but time hardly matters; the night before, they were in the studio until around 3 a.m., and the likelihood is that the evening will be trending in that direction again. But what comes of those late night hours will be the subject of another day, and another round of listening, tinkering and building, creating the next generation of records that will continue spreading the Afrobeats movement across the globe.
EMPIRE announced its first-ever African compilation album, Where We Come From (Vol. 1), on Friday (Oct. 14). It will feature Fireboy DML, BNXN fka Buju, Olamide, Wande Coal, L.A.X. and more.
Kizz Daniel dropped the first single “Cough (Odo)” from the LP, which aims to celebrate and amplify Africa’s rising stars and their music. “For this song, I wanted to highlight the feeling of new love,” he said in a statement. “The song itself is energetic, celebratory and really captures what it’s like to impress someone new.”
Artists from the continent have grown more prominent in the global music scene over the last few years and gained more notoriety in the West with crossover hits such as Wizkid and Tems’ “Essence,” Fireboy’s “Peru” and Burna Boy’s “Last Last,” the latter of which recently earned the Nigerian Afro-fusion superstar his first No. 1 hit on Billboard‘s Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart.
“I feel blessed to have been around so much talent, drive, and creativity all in the same room. This album is about showcasing the best that Africa has to offer, and we’ve done that,” added BNXN.
Leading independent label, publisher and distributor EMPIRE added a new division, EMPIRE Africa, in February 2022 and, just one month later, took part of its blossoming roster of Afrobeats acts — including BNXN, Fireboy DML, L.A.X., Cheque and Wande Coal — from Nigeria to Austin, Texas to perform during “The New Africa” showcase at SXSW, which EMPIRE hosted with Pandora. Shortly after, those artists banded together during a writing camp at EMPIRE’s San Francisco headquarters, where EMPIRE CEO/founder Ghazi says they were “fortunate enough” to record Where We Come From (Vol. 1).
“The artists from Africa really transcend where music is today. This is a legendary moment for EMPIRE to be able to share incredible African music with the world,” he continued.
Added Ezegozie Eze, vp, strategy and market development for EMPIRE Africa: “This album is a collective of multi-talented, independent artists, who we’ve partnered with to help create a legacy. Building this brick by brick has allowed us to develop a chemistry between this diverse catalog of African artists and we’re extremely appreciative of the time and dedication it took to put this together.”
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