Empire
Page: 3
Better Noise Music has announced several new leadership changes. Founder Allen Kovac (New York) is now chairman of the label, Dan Waite (London) has been named CEO and Steve Kline (New York) has added the title of president to his existing COO title. Better Noise’s roster includes mainstream rock acts such as Five Finger Death Punch, Dirty Heads, The Hu and Asking Alexandria.
In a statement, Kovac, who was included on Billboard‘s 2022 Indie Power Players list, said the label “is continuing to grow our international cumulative sales through our global offices.” Billboard named Better Noise the No. 1 mainstream rock airplay label and No. 1 mainstream rock airplay imprint of 2022.
“In this new role,” said Waite, “I’ll aim to maximize the careers and album consumption of our signed acts on our label as we grow the label, expanding through new signings, opening up new markets and working closely with the amazing specialists that we have in each department at BNM which has kept us #1 Rock Label for the last five years.”
Kline, who has been Better Noise’s COO since 2016, has worked for 18 years under the Kovac Media umbrella, first at artist management firm 10th Street Entertainment. “I want to thank Allen for putting his faith in me, as he has over the past 19 years, in this enhanced role at Better Noise,” said Kline. “I am incredibly excited to work with Allen and Dan in leading our amazing global team to future success.”
Nicole Kim was named vp of A&R at Columbia Records. Kim arrives at the label from Big Hit Music/HYBE, where she served as head of A&R and head of creative for BTS. During her more than five-year tenure at the Korean company, she worked on BTS’ collaborations with Coldplay, Halsey, Nicki Minaj, Megan Thee Stallion and more. Prior to Big Hit/HYBE, she held creative roles at Starship Entertainment and Sony Music Publishing Korea. Kim will be based out of Columbia’s Los Angeles office and can be reached at nicole.kim@sonymusic.com.
Shahendra Ohneswere was named to the newly-created role of head of creative strategy at Island Records, where he will lead overall creative strategy and digital marketing initiatives for the label. He is based in New York and will report to co-CEOs Imran Majid and Justin Eshak. Ohneswere joins Island from Columbia, where he has served as senior vp of content development/co-head of digital marketing since 2018. He was named to Billboard‘s R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players lists in 2021 and 2022.
Jennifer Cabalquinto was named CFO at EMPIRE, where she will oversee all day-to-day and long-term financial planning and accounting operations while strategizing the company’s expansion into sports, video games, TV/film and live entertainment. She has held CFO positions at 2K Games, Universal Studios Hollywood, Telemundo and the Golden State Warriors.
Garrett Levin is stepping down from his role as president/CEO of The Digital Media Association (DiMA) as he plots a move to Geneva, Switzerland, where he will relocate this summer due to his wife’s job. Levin will continue leading the organization through his departure as the DiMA board searches for a successor. “I have been honored to lead this organization over the past four-plus years and am deeply proud of our many successes during that time,” said Levin on LinkedIn. “We reached a landmark settlement with music publishers and songwriters, continued the important work of turning the Music Modernization Act into operational reality, forged stronger relationships between streaming services and other music stakeholders, and continuously told the story of the vital role that streaming plays in today’s music industry.”
Virgin Music Group announced the promotion of three executives: Leslie Cooper to senior vp of artist development and special projects, Marisa Di Frisco to vp of national promotion and Lauren Holman to vp of streaming marketing. In her new role, the Los Angeles-based Cooper will oversee K-pop releases while also identifying new artist development opportunities within the company and leading collaborative efforts in that area. The New York-based Di Frisco will continue overseeing promotion campaigns at Alternative, Rock, AAA and Non-commercial/College radio. The Los Angeles-based Holman, finally, will lead the streaming and playlisting strategy team. Cooper can be reached at Leslie.Cooper@virginmusic.com, Di Frisco can be reached at marisa.difrisco@virginmusic.com and Holman can be reached at lauren.holman@virginmusic.com.
Warner Chappell Production Music (WCPM) launched SCOREMONGERS, a new music resource that includes a premium underscore label and custom music-to-picture services. Led by WCPM head of production Pat Weaver, the SCOREMONGERS team includes WCPM producers and composers such as newcomer Sean Gould and existing WCPM staffer Scott Reinwand, who assists in overseeing all SCOREMONGERS music services, including custom music-to-picture, music customization and music editing to picture. The company launches with more than 60 albums and over 10 genres inspired by trending films and TV series, including “companion albums with wide tonal range, complimentary palettes, transitions, and recurring themes, along with extensive stem and submix options,” according to a press release. The music was created by film and TV composers including Michael Brook, Lisbeth Scott, Greg Tripi, Tony Morales and John Kaefer. Weaver can be reached at pat@scoremongers.io, Gould can be reached at sean@scoremongers.io and Reinwand can be reached at scott@scoremongers.io.
Elizabeth “Beth” Heidt was promoted to chief marketing officer at Gibson Brands, where she will join the leadership team; she was previously vp of cultural influence. In her new role, Heidt will oversee Gibson Brands’ global brand and marketing teams, entertainment and artist relations, social media, partnerships, public relations, multi-media divisions and the Gibson Gives Foundation.
Rostrum Records founder/CEO Benjy Grinberg launched Rostrum Pacific, a parent company that will incorporate an expanding portfolio of entertainment properties, including a soon-to-be-announced catalog marketing agency. Longtime Rostrum Records GM Jonathan Partch will lead Rostrum Pacific as COO; he can be reached at jonathan@rostrum.com.
ONErpm launched a digital strategy department and tapped longtime staffer Casey Childers to lead it. The Nashville-based Childers was most recently senior project manager at the company. “Our goal is to be able to provide the help artists need to grow their social footprint in a way that is true and organic to them,” said ONErpm head of U.S. marketing Jenna LoMonaco in a statement. “With Casey and the Digital Strategy team’s work, we can now provide hands-on help with social growth, engagement, and new forms of revenue.” Childers can be reached at casey@onerpm.com.
Donald Robins was named director of promotion at Warner Music Canada, where he will lead the company’s promotion team. Robins has worked in radio promotion his entire career; he joined Warner Music Canada in 2006 as a promotion representative for Quebec.
Electronic dance music festival Tomorrowland launched CORE Records, a boutique record label that will focus on “crossing and fusing genres, cultures and boundaries,” according to a press release. CORE, which will work closely with partners Virgin Music/Universal Music Group, will be led by Michel Van Buyten, who oversees Tomorrowland’s music division, including the Tomorrowland Music label. He will be joined by the newly-appointed Pieter-Jan Nuytten, who will serve as CORE’s dedicated A&R manager; Nuytten arrives at the label from PIAS/Strictly Confidential Music Publishing. The label’s first signings including Berlin-based solo dandy producer Afriqua and Belgian electronic duo Mosley Jr; both will perform at CORE Festival in Brussels on May 28. Van Buyten can be reached at michel.vanbuyten@tomorrowland.com and Nuytten can be reached at jan.nuytten@tomorrowland.com.
Steve Tadlock was named senior vp of venue relations at LiveCo, where he will manage facility relationships, content-backed booking deals and continue driving the company’s growth. Mark Dinerstein was also promoted from executive vp to president of LiveCo’s newly-formed corporate development group, where he will oversee the development and execution of company-wide initiatives and new acquisitions, venue deals, strategic partnerships and more. Tadlock joins LiveCo from ASM Global, where he most recently served as GM of Pechanga Arena in San Diego.
Amber Davis was promoted to senior vp at Warner Chappell Music UK, where she will take on a broader role in shaping the publisher’s overall U.K. strategy while continuing to oversee the A&R department as head of A&R. David will report to Warner Chappell Music UK managing director Shani Gonzales.
Donna Vergies was appointed vp of international marketing at Chrysalis Records/Blue Raincoat Music, where she joins the staff full-time following her previous position as a freelance international consultant for the company. Based in London, Vergies will work with artists on the Chrysalis/Blue Raincot roster, overseeing international campaigns and managing relationships with the company’s global partners and distributors. She can be reached at Donna@blueraincoatmusic.com.
Shannan Hatch was promoted from vp of creative serivces to senior vp/head of Nashville creative at SESAC, where she has worked for more than 20 years. In the role, Hatch will continue leading the Nashville-based creative services team while working closely with SESAC senior management to support creator-focused initiatives. She can be reached at shatch@sesac.com.
Rodrigo Dominguez was promoted to managing director of peermusic Spain and Portugal; he previously served as managing director of Portugal alone. He continues to hold the title of Latin American creative coordinator, managing activities for peermusic’s network of operations in those territories. Dominguez is based in Lisbon and Madrid and can be reached at rfernandes@peermusic.com.
Danny Berkeley-Scott was named vp at music management company Hallwood Media, where he will look to grow the firm with signings and in-house brand partnerships. In addition to launching Hallwood’s engineer management division, Berkeley-Scott oversees partnerships with Headspace, Bandlab and Soundwide.
FaZe Clan head of communications Chelsey Northern departed the youth gaming and lifestyle company to lead her recently-established public relations company The Untold, which will represent FaZe Clan along with clients including Deadfellaz, Proof Holding, Futureverse and the innovation teams at Warner Music Group and Atlantic Records.
Hillary Smoot joined the Schneider Rondan Organization as Las Vegas director/senior account executive. She brings her clients from the entertainment and hospitality worlds, including Feld Entertainment. Smoot was most recently recruited to create Red Moon PR, overseeing public relations campaigns for Los Angeles’ Viper Room, El Dorado Cantina and Red Mercury Entertainment shows including Purple Reign and MJ Live.
Joe Davis joined entertainment, business and financial management firm KBFM to lead its newly-established in-house tax department. Davis will merge his CPA firm, BootstrapTax, with KBFM. He will support the firm’s clients with all tax matters while overseeing accounting and tax planning for several small businesses and entrepreneurs both within and outside the music industry. He can be reached at joe@kbfmgmt.com.
Asake leans back in his chair, phone glowing in the darkened studio, as Olamide hunches over his right shoulder. Suddenly, the engineer signals, and the backbone of a song swirls through the speakers while Asake begins teasing out melodies and lyrics in Yoruba, a language of his native Nigeria. The engineer cuts, rewinds and plays, and the loop once again floods the vacuum-like silence that envelops a recording studio.
Outside the room, the building is bubbling with activity and energy as artists, songwriters and engineers mill about, playing unreleased records and eating from a buffet of Nigerian food — smoked mackerel, okra soup, goat, garlic shrimp and crab — prepared by local chefs. But this is not West Africa; it’s San Francisco, at the new studio headquarters of Bay Area-based music company EMPIRE. In early March, EMPIRE was in the midst of a two-week writing camp for three of its biggest Nigerian talents: budding Afrobeats superstar Asake, his YBNL Nation label boss and Nigerian music legend/mogul Olamide and Fireboy DML, another emerging YBNL/EMPIRE artist, whose 2021 single, “Peru,” was remixed with Ed Sheeran and exploded into a global hit. “Peru” was the first song Fireboy created at EMPIRE’s studios near San Francisco’s Mission District, which the company just expanded and overhauled into a first-class, multipurpose creative hub.
The studio is now the epicenter for all that EMPIRE intends to be: a fully operational label group that can sit at the top table alongside the majors and compete at the highest levels of the global music business and beyond — TV, film, podcasts, gaming, social media, nightlife and more. And it’s currently the platform for one of EMPIRE’s biggest achievements: The company is among the foremost global distributors of Afrobeats, the umbrella term for a variety of musical genres emerging from sub-Saharan Africa, where recorded-music revenue has ballooned 34.7% year over year, according to IFPI, the fastest pace in the world.
“The music that they’re making here is, honestly, the most culturally important thing I’ve done in my entire career, and I’ve been in the music business since I was 14,” says EMPIRE founder/CEO Ghazi while walking through the space. “These guys are the kings of where they come from, and they’re about to be the kings of everywhere if we keep doing what we’re doing. It’s phenomenal to see what’s happening.”
From left: Ghazi, Asake and Fireboy DML on February 27, 2023 during EMPIRE’s Africa writing camp in San Francisco.
Matthew Fong/Courtesy of Empire
EMPIRE’s dominance in Nigeria, in particular, is immense. On the country’s TurnTable Charts, EMPIRE ended 2022 with the top three artists (Asake, Burna Boy and BNXN), the top two songs (Kizz Daniel’s “Buga,” and Asake and Fireboy’s “Bandana”) and the top album (Asake’s Mr. Money With the Vibe), while also earning the distinctions of top label and top distributor for the year. At one point, EMPIRE artists held the top slot on the Nigeria 100 for 26 consecutive weeks, and an EMPIRE song was No. 1 for 35 weeks over the course of the year. (The song Asake recorded in San Francisco was released in April as “2:30” and became his ninth No. 1 on the Nigeria 100.) EMPIRE’s relationship with Olamide and YBNL, which began in 2016 before being formalized as a partnership in early 2020, has given it both credibility and a draw to attract artists, and has become a significant success story in the region.
“They are a major organization in Nigerian music,” says Ayomide Oriowo, co-founder/head of operations of TurnTable Charts. “After 2019, when they did the deal with Olamide, they capitalized on that and became a bigger deal. It was also at the moment when the ‘Afrobeats to the world’ [movement] was really taking off. So the timing worked for them, and it was just perfect. Word travels fast when you’re an artist — this idea of, ‘They have the power to get us here.’ ”
Now the challenge is to replicate that success elsewhere — in the Middle East/North Africa region, in the Asia-Pacific, in South America and beyond — without losing the drive and identity that Ghazi and his company have cultivated over the past 13 years.
The evening runs late — it’s past 10 p.m. — but suddenly, the room is buzzing with energy, and everyone moves into the building’s marble-floored lobby. After a beat, Ghazi brings Fireboy in to surprise him with an RIAA platinum plaque for “Peru” as the staff gather around, taking photos and popping champagne. “This is the first platinum plaque we hang on the wall here for a song that was created here — the first of many,” Ghazi says amid the jubilation.
Later, he takes a more reflective tone. “It’s like a zenith point in my life,” he says. “It brought me all the way back to my beginning: in a studio, making a record, and then taking that record and putting it into a company that was a culmination of many years; to be able to put out that record and market it, promote it, distribute it, manufacture it and create accolades and international nominations. And then that record became the record that made a bunch of other African artists say, ‘I want to go to the studio where this was made. I want to have that same experience and that same magic.’ ”
Two days later, Ghazi is sitting at a Mediterranean restaurant in downtown San Francisco near the EMPIRE offices, explaining how he built a company that credibly grew into its name.
EMPIRE’s realm is not limited to West Africa — over the past decade-plus, it has also become one of the Bay Area’s biggest and most successful homegrown music companies. Half of its nearly 200 employees are based in the city (a distinction Ghazi is particularly proud of), and it’s a significant player in the independent hip-hop scene across the United States, which provided the fertile ground from which the company was born. Having its headquarters in Ghazi’s hometown has given EMPIRE a domain of its own, along with access to the best minds in technology and media that flock to Silicon Valley.
Ghazi launched EMPIRE in 2010 as a tech-first digital distributor amid the fervor of Digital Music Industry 2.0 zeal then sweeping through the Bay. He had started working at Ingrooves in 2006, which had an office down the street; IODA, which eventually merged with The Orchard, was in the same building; farther down the hallway, two guys were building Twitter. Additionally, SoundCloud, Pandora, Rdio and Mog (which, after several iterations, morphed into what became Apple Music) all had offices in San Francisco.
Ghazi had essentially come up within the cultures of two of his home city’s best exports: first as a recording engineer turned studio owner, working with some of the legends of Bay Area hip-hop, and then building servers for computer companies in Silicon Valley.
“I’d be at my Silicon Valley job from 9 to 6, and then I would jump in the car and drive an hour through traffic straight to the studio, order pizza to the studio, then work there until three, four in the morning,” he says. “Then I would go home, take a shower, sleep like four hours and go right back to my Silicon Valley job. I would sleep in my car on lunch breaks and put my pager on vibrate so it would wake me up. Then I’d go right back to work.”
Ghazi photographed on April 12, 2023 at EMPIRE in San Francisco.
Katie Lovecraft
That background — a base in tech, plus deep connections to the Bay’s hip-hop scene — led him to Ingrooves, which was trying to break into the rap market. But after three years navigating the company’s bureaucracy while continuing to run a studio, Universal Music Group (UMG) bought half of Ingrooves (it now owns the company outright), and Ghazi left to form EMPIRE. Early on, he relied on his connections to make not just new releases available, but also offer rappers’ catalogs digitally, sometimes for the first time — and to get them paid monthly, rather than quarterly or not at all. The ability to move quickly, with one-off nonexclusive deals and a client-friendly front end, helped the company expand rapidly through word-of-mouth, first through the Bay, then down to Los Angeles — where EMPIRE put out indie albums by the likes of Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q and Anderson .Paak — then to Houston and beyond.
EMPIRE truly began making its mark in 2016, when it distributed D.R.A.M.’s hit “Broccoli,” which was picked up by Atlantic Records, and the Fat Joe and Remy Ma record “All the Way Up”; both songs earned Grammy nominations. The following year, it released XXXTentacion’s debut album, 17, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and has racked up 3.5 million equivalent album units in the United States, according to Luminate. Without much fanfare, the company had become a hip-hop heavyweight, filling in the gaps that the traditional industry couldn’t, or wouldn’t, serve: the up-and-coming artists who hadn’t yet caught the majors’ eyes and veteran acts who had phased out of the hit-driven system.
At the same time, the industry was shifting. Apple Music had debuted in 2015, streaming had finally begun to return the music business to growth, and EMPIRE’s flexible offering forced rival music companies, including the major-label groups, to offer deals with similar terms and services as they competed for talent. Suddenly, the label pipeline burst into a fire hose, and everyone wanted in on the nimble, flexible and global distribution model that EMPIRE had made its bread and butter. New companies like UnitedMasters, Stem and Create popped up with seed money to buy into the distribution market; labels launched distribution-first imprints (Capitol’s Priority, Republic’s Imperial); and streaming services and social media companies like SoundCloud and, briefly, Spotify began offering independent artists the ability to distribute their music through them. Before long, it seemed that almost every label had a distribution-first option, while the label groups beefed up their own offerings, flooding the zone that EMPIRE helped establish.
“Now every major has an EMPIRE quote-unquote system, where they try to implement that,” says CSH Management’s Kenny Hamilton, who has had several clients work with EMPIRE over the years. “But it’s not the same relationships; it kind of sounds like they’re just trying to find the next quick thing that they can upstream to a major system, but you’re really not doing artist development. At EMPIRE, that’s what they do. They’re patient with the artists, and if they see promise and they believe in it, then they put their all into it as well. It’s often imitated but never duplicated.”
From left: Edgar Esteves of Blank Square Productions, Tina Davis, Ezegozie Eze of EMPIRE and Dayo Ademola Ayoyemi of Salpha Energy at the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit Africa on April 24, 2023 in Gaborone, Botswana.
Tuhenye Dan Muatjitjeja
As the industry started to shift toward the EMPIRE model, EMPIRE itself was moving toward the one used by major-label groups, incorporating A&R, marketing, PR, promotions and social media into its offerings on top of pure distribution and starting to provide label deals and joint ventures. In 2018, EMPIRE struck a nonexclusive deal with UMG to distribute select UMG artist projects; in 2019, it added a vertical to handle original content, which now includes several high-traffic Instagram accounts and a music video department, and expanded into Nashville, the United Kingdom and Europe. By 2020, EMPIRE had started a merch operation by acquiring a majority stake in Top Drawer Merch/Electric Family, then officially announced a publishing division, which had already been informally part of the company for several years. The studio technically opened in 2019, but because of the pandemic and continued expansion and renovations, it is only now becoming the one-stop content shop that Ghazi had envisioned.
“I’m a practice-makes-perfect type of person,” he says. “I always knew the intention was to be a label, but I knew I couldn’t be a label without taking a lot of shots. If you want to be a great free-throw shooter, you’ve got to take a lot of shots, find your technique and the right approach.”
The right approach, at this point, is there; the goal — a full suite of music and cultural offerings — within sight. All of which has brought the kind of attention Ghazi has instinctively shied away from over the years. The offers to sell, to divest, to assume the final form of what it means to be a Major Label in the Traditional Sense is not something he’s interested in. He owns the company outright, has it rooted in his home city and has no investors or board of directors to answer to — only his staff of 200 around the world and, most importantly, his artists. Still, the questions and offers persist.
“I would call it a tug of war,” he says. “I’ve always been a firm believer that attracting too much attention sometimes gets you off your A-game. But, I also understand the balance of, every once in a while, you’ve got to shine a spotlight on something for people to see the magic.
“It was always about autonomy; if you go to my office right now, behind my desk there’s a sign on my floor, written in Arabic. It says, ‘Freedom.’ I just always wanted the freedom to just be my own man.”
The summer of 2016 was dominated by Drake’s single “One Dance,” featuring Wizkid and Kyla, which held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for the entirety of June and July, making Wizkid the first Nigerian artist to chart on, let alone top, the tally. At the same time, EMPIRE made another subtle move, one that would pay off years later: getting into business with one of Nigeria’s biggest talents, Olamide.
Today, the 34-year-old rapper, singer, songwriter, producer and YBNL Nation founder has cemented his legacy on his native continent. For nearly 15 years, he has been a prolific artist and executive, helping shape the sounds of hip-hop and Afrobeats, and growing into one of the pillars of modern West African music while championing and boosting a number of young artists along the way, through features or label deals.
“Olamide is almost like a street hero,” says Phiona Okumu, Spotify’s head of music, sub-Saharan Africa. “It’s him understanding the best of American, Western hip-hop culture, but also understanding the grace and vibrancy of where he is from and bringing it together and making it so palatable that’s been his main influence. He’s able to spark a star, he’s able to hear a sound, and he’s able to make it go.”
Olamide in the San Francisco studio on February 20, 2023 during EMPIRE’s Africa writing camp.
Matthew Fong/Courtesy of Empire
By 2016, streaming services began to slowly open on the continent. IFPI didn’t even begin tracking revenue in Africa until the last few years. In 2019, South Africa ranked No. 31 among countries tracked by IFPI in recorded-music revenue, at $59.9 million; the entirety of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, lumped together, came in at No. 59, at $4.3 million. (IFPI has not released hard figures since.)
“While we were growing up in Africa, all an artist depended on was shows,” says Mobolaji Kareem, EMPIRE’s regional head of West Africa, as he stands in Studio C with YBNL Nation head of brand and talent management Alex Okeke and DJ Enimoney, Olamide’s DJ and brother. “From 2010, 2011, until 2016, all of it was free music on SoundCloud, Audiomack. We dropped things on Twitter. Streaming money started coming around maybe 2016; if Apple Music was around in 2010, we’d be doing like a billion streams right now.”
Olamide broke onto the scene in 2010, primarily as a rapper, mixing English and Yoruba, and signed to a label called Coded Tunes, through which he distributed music and made songs available as ringtones. In 2012, he left that label and launched YBNL Nation, distributing his own music through telcos, as was standard in Africa at the time, and YBNL artists through Bolaji’s Ingle Mind distribution company, which also handled music by the likes of Wizkid, Burna Boy and Tiwa Savage. Olamide signed rising artists such as Lil Kesh, Adekunle Gold and Viktoh while steadily putting out his own music and being a hands-on label executive. By 2016, Olamide was out of his telco deal and began working with Bolaji, who had started using EMPIRE’s distribution framework to expand his artists’ reach beyond Africa.
At the time, the two sides didn’t know each other. EMPIRE was distributing around 500 projects a month, and Ghazi was more focused on building its label structure than dealing with distribution; Bolaji was working through an intermediary to release his artists’ projects through the EMPIRE system. That was the state of affairs for several years until 2018 or 2019, when the numbers began to change. “The money kept getting so much every year. At some point, Ghazi just said, ‘F–k it, who is this boy from Africa? This artist that is making up to like $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a month out of Africa with no marketing, no pitch, nothing?’ ” Bolaji says. “They had to fly down.”
Ghazi remembers it a little differently. “One day, Tina [Davis, EMPIRE’s vp of A&R] runs in my office and is like, ‘Yo, there’s this dude from Africa on the phone right now, and I don’t know what he wants because he’s screaming at me. You need to help me deal with this,’ ” he recalls. “So I get on the phone, and if I remember correctly, it was like a payment issue — something went wrong with their account, we didn’t respond fast enough or whatever. We fixed it. And then right around that same time, Nima [Etminan, EMPIRE’s COO] came into my office and was like, ‘Man, I think we should go meet these people.’ ”
Nima Etminan photographed on April 12, 2023 at EMPIRE in San Francisco.
Katie Lovecraft
It was a fortuitous meeting — and a well-timed one. Ghazi and Etminan flew to Lagos, Nigeria, and met with Olamide, Bolaji and Okeke, who introduced them to the Nigerian music scene and some of its leading figures, including then-Universal Music Nigeria GM Ezegozie Eze. “Us being personally there was a big deal,” Ghazi says. “Because most people were just sending out reps or just hiring somebody locally to deal with it. We were running around all week, concert to concert, festival to festival, visiting other people’s houses; we went to Fela [Kuti]’s shrine; we were all over the place. We were learning about the country and the music infrastructure. And it was very gratifying that we were received the way we were received, like we’re family. That made me go 10 times harder.”
“Olamide didn’t come to meet EMPIRE. EMPIRE came to meet Olamide,” Bolaji stresses. “And that was how we started EMPIRE Africa, through YBNL. So one of the things I tell people is, ‘The catalog for EMPIRE Africa sits on YBNL.’ Because if YBNL wasn’t making that much money, [EMPIRE] wasn’t going to see Africa that early.”
Within months, EMPIRE had hired Bolaji and Eze to run EMPIRE Africa, an informal entity that was officially incorporated and announced in 2022, with YBNL as its centerpiece. The timing, once again, was fortuitous: After the first seeds of a breakthrough with “One Dance,” momentum had gradually built for a global Afrobeats movement, with artists like Burna Boy, Davido, Mr Eazi, Savage and Nasty C making gains on the Billboard charts year by year. But it was during the pandemic, just as EMPIRE was putting down roots in Lagos, that Afrobeats truly crossed over into the United States, with Wizkid’s “Essence,” featuring Tems, which ultimately peaked at No. 9 on the Hot 100 and ruled the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart for 27 weeks.
“When things like this happen, it’s almost like a domino effect — that sets off the labels, and they get interested and curious about who can be next in terms of what the sound is like,” says Spotify’s Okumu. “All of the major labels were in the space before EMPIRE, and all of them had the same interests, the same pursuits — they all wanted the next big African star. But EMPIRE focused on A&R, and that is incredibly important when you have an emerging genre. I feel like that was the win in the joint venture between EMPIRE and YBNL.”
California State Assembl ymember Matt Haney presents Fireboy DML, Asake, Olamide and EMPIRE with a Certificate of Recognition from the State of California for their contributions to Afrobeats worldwide and their work in San Francisco
Daniel Aziz
It has also been reflected in the numbers. In 2021, recorded-music revenue in sub-Saharan Africa grew 9.6%, according to IFPI, with ad-supported streaming revenue up 56.4%. That number exploded in 2022, with overall revenue up 34.7% — the only region globally with growth north of 30% — taking over as the fastest-growing region for recorded-music revenue in the world. IFPI opened its first African office in mid-2020, reflecting the continent’s growing importance and potential, and all three major labels now have presences in West Africa and South Africa. In the United States, seven of the top 10 on-demand streaming songs Luminate classified under “world music” — which encompasses several African genres, as well as genres like K-pop — were by West African artists in 2022.
IFPI regional director of sub-Saharan Africa Angela Ndambuki says she expects that massive growth to continue at the same rate this year. “With the digital growth and the advances in technology and new platforms coming in, we’re able to see the labels investing even more, and their presence in the region helps drive the development of those scenes,” she says. “And that then creates a healthy music market.”
In the summer of 2021, Fireboy came to San Francisco for the first time to record in the EMPIRE studio. The young Nigerian singer had signed to YBNL in late 2018 and released his debut album, Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps, in November 2019 through YBNL/EMPIRE, then a second, Apollo, the following year. “He came to just record for a few days or a week, and we brought in three or four different producers and writers, and he wasn’t very used to having writers. He’s used to doing all his own stuff,” Davis recalls, sitting in the expansive Studio A. “So it was new for us because he hadn’t recorded here, and it was new for him because he had never been to San Francisco.”
“Peru” emerged from that session the following summer, with its lyric “I’m in San Francisco jammin’,” and almost immediately took off in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. The remix with Sheeran was released on Christmas Eve 2021, which propelled it even further. “That record was a way for us to show people that we could break a record outside of Africa and make it larger than just a record for the club and for the diaspora,” Davis says. “But what it taught the African team is that you don’t give up on a hit. I think it just opened it up for people to recognize how much we care about it, and it also gave us a bar to reach.”
Tina Davis photographed on April 12, 2023 at EMPIRE in San Francisco.
Katie Lovecraft
EMPIRE has grown beyond its YBNL foundations in West Africa. Acts like Daniel, Wande Coal, BNXN, L.A.X., Navy Kenzo and Black Sherif on its roster are expanding the limits of the Afrobeats, amapiano, highlife, fuji and Afropop genres, among others, while the company also distributes Burna Boy in Africa. (Atlantic is Burna’s label stateside, and Warner distributes his music outside of Africa.) And Asake, who officially signed to YBNL/EMPIRE in mid-2022, lit the Afrobeats world on fire with his debut album, Mr. Money With the Vibe. Released last October, it immediately topped the Spotify and Apple Music charts, and has accrued 197.5 million streams in the United States, according to Luminate. Meanwhile, streams for Asake, Fireboy and Olamide have grown more than 500% outside of Africa on Apple Music, according to the company, which greatly over-indexes in African music streams compared with competitors.
That doesn’t mean EMPIRE has cornered the market. Wizkid, Davido, Tems and rising star Libianca are all signed to RCA in the United States; CKay is distributed by Warner in partnership with local indie label Chocolate City, while Omah Lay goes through Sire; UMG’s Virgin distributes Rema’s “Calm Down,” while Larry Jackson’s new venture, gamma, has its African distribution rights, and Def Jam just signed Gold. As the industry’s attention has shifted to opportunities on the continent, the competition has gotten fierce — but EMPIRE’s reputation has allowed it to keep building organically in the region. “EMPIRE’s a family, and all the other labels are labels,” says Okeke. “That’s the difference.”
Now EMPIRE’s task is to build upon that success and keep expanding its dominion — not an easy task in a globalized climate sagging under the weight of an increasing amount of new music every day. The company has already established an operation covering the Middle East/North Africa, bringing on Spotify’s Suhel Nafar to oversee it. It is also making inroads in South Africa and recently hired people in Tokyo to oversee efforts in the Asia-Pacific region and Brazil to begin developing a foothold in South America. In each new region, EMPIRE is looking to build on the model that worked so well in West Africa, making strategic hires based on partnerships with well-connected industry players in local markets rather than signing artists to fit a sound. And even as that old Digital Music Industry 2.0 has long since drifted away from the Bay, relocating to the likes of L.A. and New York, EMPIRE has remained in San Francisco. “We’ve plotted a lot of dots on the map, and I want to plot more dots and create more connectivity, more brainpower,” says Ghazi.
YBNL Founder and CEO/Artist, Olamide, and EMPIRE Founder and CEO, Ghazi, present Fireboy DML with RIAA Platinum Plaque for his hit single “Peru”.
Daniel Aziz
On a Thursday afternoon in mid-April, Ghazi pulls over to the side of the road to explain, over the phone, the next iteration of the vision. He’s about to fly to Johannesburg, then drive to Botswana, then return to the Bay for a few days with his family before another trip down to Rio de Janeiro — around the world and back again. “When you watch those movies from 15, 20 years ago and they put a globe up on the screen and then they push a button, and all the lines fly around the globe and connect to all the different epicenters? It’s kind of like that,” he says.
Which is to say, the journey may have hit one zenith, but that has only established a new jumping-off point, a new foundation on which to build. “You’re always trying to go to greater heights, right? Man makes it to the moon, now you want to make it to Mars,” he says. “As long as we live limitless and we continue to chase ourselves rather than other people, I think that we’ll be OK. We’re already successful; this already looks like success. It’s just, how do you breed more success?”
The answer? In the studio. After the plaque presentation in March, a half-dozen A&Rs and engineers piled back into Studio C to gush over the record that Fireboy made the night before, which has a first verse; an epic, soaring hook; and a second verse left open — maybe for a stateside collaborator, or a fellow Afrobeats star, or maybe for Fireboy himself to finish off. Pop star names are tossed around, and a particular alt-R&B singer is mentioned. But one A&R stands up indignantly, voice rising above the others: “Hang on, hang on, hang on,” he says to quiet the crew before adding nearly incredulously: “Did Bob Marley get someone else to put a second verse on ‘I Shot the Sheriff’? This is all you!” The feeling is euphoric, the room is filled with laughter, the possibilities endless. The beat comes back in: rewind, cut, play, forget about the time. The vibe is here; the night is far from over.
This story will appear in the May 13, 2023, issue of Billboard.
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.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
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.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
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 is pushing further into clubland, with big ambitions for helping DJs and producers get paid.
Today (Feb. 1), the San Francisco-based label announced that Moody Jones will step into the newly created general manager of dance role. Jones was previously EMPIRE’s svp of digital & creative, a position from which he worked across genres including dance projects by artists like The Martinez Brothers and Santino Le Saint.
Jones tells Billboard that this position will allow EMPIRE to “prioritize our expansion in this scene.” Jones’ new role follows EMPIRE’S acquisition of Claude VonStroke‘s storied Dirtybird label last October, with Jones adding that EMPIRE Dance is currently in talks with other labels and properties and “are open to other opportunities including catalog acquisitions.” Jones — a 2022 Billboard Indie Power Player honoree — will lead a dance team made up of the Dirtybird team, along with a team of new hires.
In this new role, his day-to-day involves signing artists, working on reintroducing songs from the EMPIRE catalog, and developing ways to incorporate dance strategies into the company’s daily priorities. Most crucially though, is time spent “getting obsessed with artists that deserve more exposure and figuring out where EMPIRE Dance can add value to them,” Jones says.
“The music industry has been evolving over the last five years and the dance labels haven’t caught up yet,” Jones says. “Our goal is to improve dance artist and label deals and reintroduce strong communities. DJs and dance artists have gotten used to making pennies on their music and making majority of their income on touring, which unfortunately means less quality time in production and more negative impact on their mental and physical health. I’m trying to help artists turn the pennies they are making on music into profits to better their livelihood.”
While EMPIRE has previously worked largely in genres like hip-hop and Latin, it’s bringing a significant competitive edge to the dance space. The company has its own publishing division and boasts “our own distributor so we have better data insights and audience analytics that empower us and our artists to make more proactive decisions,” he says.
EMPIRE also has its own studios, synch and partnership team and international staff in more than a dozen cities to help with regional rollouts.
“Moody has been an integral part of EMPIRE’s growth over the years,” EMPIRE CEO Ghazi adds in a statement. “As we expand into Dance, I’m confident in Moody at the helm with his ability to identify and develop artists that are impacting culture.”
EMPIRE Publishing, the publishing arm of independent distribution and service company EMPIRE, has announced its new joint venture with Surf Club, a collective of young artists, producers and writers founded by superstar producer Hit-Boy. Along with the news of the partnership itself, EMPIRE and Surf Club have also announced their first three signees: Gary “G Dav” Davis, Jesse “Dr. Blum” Blum, and Randy “Bandz” Holmes.
G Dav is a contributor to a number of major rap records, including Nas‘s King Disease, which earned him a Grammy for best rap album; Dr. Blum is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, best known for his touring work with Twenty One Pilots and cuts with Big Sean and Rage Against the Machine; Bandz is a writing and production talent, bringing his West Coast-infused sound to YG, OhGheesy, Kamaiyah and more.
Though Hit-Boy himself is not working with EMPIRE for publishing administration and remains in his previous deal, the new partnership involves the EMPIRE Publishing team — run by industry vets Al McLean, Vinny Kumar and Brett Sweeney — providing publishing administrative services to the three new signees and helping Hit-Boy Surf Club identify and sign new talent in the future.
The Surf Club collective is led by Hit-Boy along with managing partner Nima Nasseri, president Jameel “Double” James, and head of a&r James Bentley.
EMPIRE’s directors of business affairs Benedict Paz and Sarah Beth Gerlecz negotiated and finalized the partnership.
“We want to build Surf Club up to be great, create outstanding pieces of work and music. I’ve been looking for a publishing situation for years, and Empire really made it happen,” says Hit-Boy, whose credits include “Sicko Mode” by Travis Scott, “Clique” by Ye, “Trophies” by Drake, and many more.
“Hit-Boy is a prolific record producer,” says Sweeney. “His resume precedes him and his team is composed of innovative entrepreneurs. We are excited to be in business with Hit and the Surf Club team and empower their writers.”
“EMPIRE has long been in the business of pushing the culture forward on a global scale, enabling recording artists to excel independently with its distribution and label services,” adds Paz. “This partnership with a talent like Hit-Boy and the passionate individuals of the Surf Club team mirror that same ethos at EMPIRE Publishing and we are excited for what this is set to accomplish in the music publishing space.”
Ghazi believes some stories are “better told in rewind than forward.” How EMPIRE — the independent label, distributor and publisher that he established in 2010 — acquired Dirtybird is one of them.
On October 20, EMPIRE announced its acquisition of Claude VonStroke’s stalwart dance imprint, which has nurtured an inimitable, off-kilter brand of house and techno since its 2005 launch.
Under the agreement, EMPIRE obtains ownership of Dirtybird’s back catalog and all future releases, for which EMPIRE will now handle distribution and publishing. The deal — representing EMPIRE’s first stride into the dance/electronic space — includes Dirtybird’s clothing and Web3 assets, excluding only Dirtybird’s live events and festival brands. These rights are retained by Dirtybird CEO VonStroke, known by his given name Barclay Crenshaw, who will also continue to A&R Dirtybird and direct creative for its apparel line. (The rights to Dirtybird’s live events and festival brands were not a part of the negotiations. “I told Barclay early on, ‘We’re not an events company at this time — I think [the events are] better served to stay under your umbrella than under ours,’” Ghazi tells Billboard.)
Though negotiations between Ghazi and Crenshaw’s respective San Francisco-based multihyphenates started in October of 2021, Dirtybird’s appeal was apparent much earlier, according to Moody Jones, EMPIRE’s Senior Vice President of Digital & Creative, who will lead its dance/electronic department.
As the story goes, well before he accepted a role as EMPIRE’s Digital Marketing Director in 2018 — a move that propelled him from Canada to California’s Bay Area — Jones began producing his own music. In 2007, he went to a Toronto event where Crenshaw played an opening set as Barclay Crenshaw, his hip-hop-centric artist project that predated his launch of the Claude VonStroke moniker in 2006. There, Jones first met Crenshaw. Five years later in Montreal, Jones played the first-ever Dirtybird BBQ.
Over the years, one slot at a Dirtybird event begat another for Jones, who along the way formed a professional relationship with Crenshaw, his wife Aundy Caldwell Crenshaw (who serves as Dirtybird’s Chief Operating Officer) and the sprawling Dirtybird collective at large. A friend of the brand with an ear for Dirtybird’s idiosyncratic sound and an eye for business solutions, Jones assisted the Crenshaws with advising, consulting, marketing and artist promotion. Their early collaboration — coupled with Jones’ newfound proximity to Dirtybird HQ and his continued closeness with the Dirtybird crew — organically created the circumstances that would underscore the now-17-year-old brand as a complementary fit for EMPIRE and later aid its acquisition.
“I was very interested in their business model,” says Jones. “When we were out, I’d always ask questions and they’d always ask me for advice on how things are done on our end. The conversation started shifting from being about marketing to being about operating and scaling. I’d learned so much from being around Ghazi that a lot of the things I started saying [about EMPIRE] seemed like competitive advantages to Dirtybird. We [the Crenshaws] began talking about Dirtybird and what it would take to scale it.”
Thus, when Ghazi expressed interest in expanding EMPIRE’s hip-hop-concentrated scope to include dance/electronic, Dirtybird emerged as a natural fit.
Jones highlighted the similarities of the cultures within Dirtybird and EMPIRE, Ghazi’s own homegrown business — which has been responsible for several Billboard Hot 100 hits and key releases that have raised the profiles of hip-hop mainstays like Kendrick Lamar and Anderson .Paak. Armed with proprietary software that enables EMPIRE to distribute its music to digital streaming platforms, the hip-hop stronghold has increasingly expanded its sonic purview, venturing into Afropop and Afrobeats, country, Latin, R&B, and now, dance/electronic.
“He [Jones] jumped into my office and he said, ‘Hey, what do you think about buying Dirtybird?’ And I basically responded, ‘Why not? That would be a great acquisition for us, a San Francisco company,’” says Ghazi. “And he proceeded to tell me that there might be a synergy and a possibility for us to make the acquisition.”
“Aundy and I spoke to several companies in this process,” Crenshaw tells Billboard of the deal. “EMPIRE was always the best fit, simply because Ghazi understands the value of our brand name. We kept every single employee from top to bottom, and I still run the label with Deron Delgado and our killer team. I have also been friends with Moody Jones for years and years, so it was very reassuring that he was spearheading the dance division.”
“Tons of buyers just wanted to analyze the catalog and look at pure math,” Crenshaw continues. “I’ve never been a math guy; I’m a vibes guy. Dirtybird means something special to its fans, and that is why it’s one of maybe one or two U.S.A. house brands that everyone recognizes by name. Ghazi and Moody understand that, and I think we are going to have even more fun in our new home.”
Ghazi and Jones declined to disclose financial details of the acquisition to Billboard, but expounded on their motivations for bringing Dirtybird to roost at EMPIRE.
There are a number of independent dance labels that EMPIRE might have considered acquiring. Beyond the personal association, why Dirtybird?
Jones: I don’t know if Ghazi would’ve even considered Dirtybird [if not for my suggestion]. I was at Dirtybird Campout West Coast 2021 with Nima [Etminan, also of EMPIRE], and we saw the culture, the fanbase, the loyalty, the energy, and we knew it had a synergy. I saw them being hands-on with everything.
Our company is very culture-driven. Having an impact on culture is one of the pillars for us, and being a Bay Area company meant so much to us. We wanted to move into dancefloors a little bit stronger, and I can’t think of another company that would’ve complemented us the way Dirtybird does. There’s no other company that crossed every one of those boxes for us.
And when Ghazi sat down with Barclay and Aundy and got to meet her, knowing the people behind the company and how hard they work, it [was clear that it] really was their blood, sweat, and tears that put Dirtybird together. That meant a lot to us. Family is a big thing for us, and Dirtybird is literally their family business. Luckily, we [Barclay and Aundy] had built a relationship a long time ago — and honestly, life just came full circle.
Ghazi: It was a perfect fit. Our core DNA has always been hip-hop, and Barclay had a really strong affinity for hip-hop, so there were a lot of synergies between what Dirtybird was doing primarily as a dance company, and what we have historically done as a hip-hop company that’s moved into all these other verticals — like Afrobeat, Latin, R&B, and things of that nature.
I saw that there would be this holistic approach to music. You could just see it all blend together, merge into one, and be really impactful, because it makes all the sense in the world to have a dance department or a dance arm in a company like ours. We have tons of hit records that deserve to have dance remixes and dance mixes in general, and that goes beyond even just the core of what Dirtybird has already accomplished on their own.
So, for me, the initial thought process in the very beginning was like, “Oh cool, we could have a remix arm.” And then I got to spend time with Barclay and see the festivals, the culture, and everything else, and I was like, “Yo, this is a no-brainer. These guys, through and through, mean to the dance world what I think EMPIRE means to the hip-hop space.”
Naturally, it sounds like there will be an increase in the amount of hip-hop sound on Dirtybird given EMPIRE’s strength in this domain.
Jones: If you look at the sound that Dirtybird has embodied over the last three years, you’ll notice that it’s changed so much compared to the Dirtybird sound that we had early on. They’re moving into drum ‘n’ bass, they’re doing a lot more garage, and they’re doing a lot more experimental. And Barclay Crenshaw [the artist project] is more hip-hop-leaning than electronic, so I think Dirtybird will continue to be experimental. We’re going to continue to push the boundaries of electronic music, but I think now, we’re going to be able to equip Dirtybird with the ability to work with more hip-hop artists and work in different territories to push the sound to even more regions.
Outside of hip-hop, are there any other genres that you’d like to see Dirtybird work with to a greater degree?
Ghazi: Definitely a lot of the African music [Afropop/Afrobeats] that we’re doing at EMPIRE, 100%.
Given that Barclay will continue to A&R Dirtybird, you’ll be working together to advance these sounds. What do you hope this relationship will look like?
Ghazi: We’re hoping to continue letting Dirtybird do what they do best, but on top of that, increasing the volume and variety of releases that they’re doing, and giving them the tools and resources that they need to go even further. In the past, they did a few albums per year. We want to increase that number significantly, and we want to be able to give them more music videos — whatever types of tools and resources other genres have been accustomed to. We want to bring those to dance to give dance the same spotlight other genres have.
Looking ahead, what is the value of the Dirtybird catalog going forward?
Ghazi: Definitely in syncs, stems, derivative works, physical like vinyls and merch, and emerging territories where the music might not have even touched yet. I don’t know the whereabouts of the previous distributor’s reach, but we have a very far reach, so we’ll make sure that the music is in every nook and cranny in every part of the world.
Jones: It’s also in the re-releasing of a lot of products. I think a lot of the Dirtybird sound was ahead of its time, and I think a lot of these albums and singles can resurface again and be repackaged and delivered to an audience that is ready for it today that might not necessarily have been ready for it back then. Plus, there are a lot of [digital-only] releases that might have [worked well on] vinyl.
EMPIRE is a strong proponent of artist empowerment. What are some of the resources at EMPIRE that will help empower Dirtybird artists in ways that might not have been previously possible?
Ghazi: We have a huge facility in San Francisco where we do a lot of creative work. We just did a writing camp there a few months back for an African album we’re about to release. I would love to be able to do writing camps in the dance space, and I would love to increase the output of music videos with both our in-house video staff and the resources and the relationships that we have across the video sphere in the marketplace.
Additionally, more strategic marketing, more digital marketing, and greater transparency on analytics — because we are a supply chain distribution company by design, so I think empowering the artists with analytics and information is going to give them greater insight into how to market their music. We’re a very powerful marketing company, and there could be a momentous shift onward and upward for the Dirtybird side of the company and for dance as a whole for EMPIRE.
Jones: One of the last things we’re working on — and I don’t want to give away too much too soon — [is changing the nature of label deals in dance music]. One of the things I’ve noticed is that a lot of genres [have changed] in terms of the deals that labels have with artists, and I feel dance is one of the very last ones to make that change and have more transparency in deals and give better splits.
With the aid of EMPIRE, I think we can help revolutionize the whole dance scene — not just Dirtybird — by bringing this sound onto all the digital streaming platforms, and giving artists more favorable deals. I think [the deals] are a reason why, in the past, a lot of artists haven’t been loyal to their labels. You know, when every release is with a different label. But I think we can help revolutionize that and build a proper dance culture with the artists as well.
Indie label, distributor and publisher EMPIRE has acquired tastemaking electronic label Dirtybird, the imprint founded by producer Claude VonStroke in 2005.
Per the terms of the deal, EMPIRE now owns the entirety of the Dirtybird brand, outside of Dirtybird’s live events including its annual Dirtybird campout. The deal includes Dirtybird’s back catalog and all future releases, with EMPIRE also now handling distribution and publishing for the San Francisco based imprint. A representative for EMPIRE declined to disclose financial details of the deal.
VonStroke, born Barclay Crenshaw, will continue to A&R the San Francisco-based Dirtybird label and also direct creative for Dirtybird apparel.
The sale marks the first foray into the electronic music space for EMPIRE, a San Francisco-based multi-hyphenate music company founded by Ghazi in 2010. The company has offices in New York, Nashville, the UK and the Middle East and has worked extensively in the hip-hop, Latin, country, R&B and Afrobeats, helping build the careers of artists including Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, XXXTentacion and Fireboy DML.
“Growing up in San Francisco and the Bay Area at large, dance music has always been a huge part of our music scene,” says EMPIRE CEO and Founder Ghazi. “EMPIRE at its core is a company that is for the culture. Dirtybird embodies the independent ethos and understands the cultural nuance of everything San Francisco and dance music.”
“I’m so excited to join another incredible independent Bay Area music company,” says Crenshaw, also the CEO of Dirtybird. “I will continue to A&R the Dirtybird label and direct the creative for the music and clothing, while EMPIRE has the capacity and resources to grow the brand globally. This is a dream come true.”
Since it’s 2005 launch, Dirtybird has become one of the United States’ leading independent electronic labels, helping develop and popularize the underground house and tech-house genres via releases by VonStroke and the cadre of Dirtybird artists including Justin and Christian Martin, J Phlip, Justin Jay, Walker & Royce and Nikki Nair. Crenshaw has run Dirtybird alongside his wife, Dirtybird COO Aundy Crenshaw, since launching the imprint.
EMPIRE and Dirtybird are formally announcing the partnership today (October 20) at ADE, the annual electronic industry conference happening this week in Amsterdam.
“Our deals are full-on partnerships,” Ghazi told Billboard in March of this year, “so the way the rights are written, recoupment is likely; master reversion, if there is a reversion, is likely; and artists tend to have a lot more creative input, not control.”