The Tanning of America

by Steve Stoute

  With most basketball players influenced by hip-hop culture, all to varying degrees, as the nineties wore on you could usually look at the court and see the latest reflection of fashion trends happening on the street—from piercings and tattoos to the ever-changing rules for male hair grooming and the dramatically expanding cut and size of uniforms. However the players were translating hip-hop’s new rules for their look, fans in turn would reinterpret the style for street wear; then sports apparel manufacturers would pay unprecedented amounts to license team logos and colors and then go on to have a sales bonanza by mass-marketing apparel to consumers anywhere and everywhere. Besides the apparel companies that would come to life as the result of hip-hop’s huge embrace of professional and college team attire, sportswear by existing companies such as Champion and Starter would become wardrobe staples. If you didn’t have a Starter jacket, there was practically something wrong with you!

  Like everything else about hip-hop, the potential for an economic impact as the result of the proximity between rap and sports wasn’t taken seriously at first. Because it was not premeditated or mercenary to start, the intertwining of the two cultures really wasn’t so earth shattering—until it was. Such was the case when NWA in South Central L.A. decided to adopt the warrior mentality, colors, and style of its favorite local team, the Raiders. NWA—which stood unapologetically for “Niggaz with Attitude” and included at various stages Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, DJ Yella, and MC Ren—came onto the scene in the late eighties when hip-hop fashion was starting to explore the bright color palette. But wanting to avoid colors altogether, as L.A.’s most lethal gangs had commandeered them (especially red and blue, which belonged to the Bloods and the Crips, respectively), NWA opted to stick with all black. Actually, they opted to don the black and silver, with the logo of the pirate with a patch over one eye backed by a shield—the uniform elements that reflected their devotion to the L.A. Raiders.

  It wasn’t just the fact that the guys from Compton were loyal to their hometown Raiders; there was also the opportunity to identify with an unapologetic team that had a storied past. The team, in its own way, was from a hard-knock life, as a whole coming from nothing and then becoming crazy, badass champions. That was even before leaving Oakland in 1982, when they brought their black and silver to L.A. and won the Super Bowl the very next year. As Ice Cube would later say in Straight Outta L.A., his documentary about the Raiders’ twelve-year stay in Los Angeles before they picked up and went back to Oakland, his first impression of the team was that “they were violent and a little rough around the edges . . . and I think that’s what I liked about them.”

  The Lakers, he would explain, were too glitzy and the Dodgers “out of reach,” but the Raiders felt like family. As Ice Cube recalled, “It seemed like my uncles played for L.A.”

  Once NWA started wearing Raiders jerseys and other team-associated gear on their album covers and in publicity shots, the local boom for football-related apparel and merchandise was a done deal. The gear wasn’t just for showing up at the L.A. Coliseum to cheer for the Raiders. For youth in Los Angeles, black, Latino, Asian, and white, it was like putting on clothing that gave you superpowers of attitude and protection—both the hard-edged, outlaw mentality of the rappers and the brash “Just Win, Baby” mind-set of the Raiders. The assumption at the sports organization’s front office and in the press was that gang members had co-opted the Raiders attire—even though it was so much more beyond that. And not only in L.A. All of a sudden, there was a new entry point for consumers across many demographics and across the United States to identify with the take-no-prisoners playing style of both the football team and the rappers. Before the Raiders decided to pull up stakes and return to Oakland in 1994, the NFL’s annual licensing and merchandise revenues went from $300 million to $3 billion—thanks mainly to what NWA had unwittingly caused!

  All of that was accomplished without endorsement fees or any marketing deals ever being struck. Unbelievable! No matter how you personally felt about the bad-boy groove and the more violent lyrical content that was ushering in the era of gangsta rap, you had to admit that it reflected something completely authentic that was tied to real experience in consumers’ lives. And somehow, when combined with the culture of football, the commercial translation became larger than the sum of the parts.

  Ice Cube talked about his understanding of how this happened : “Sports without music is just a game. The music adds the same thing it does for a movie soundtrack. It tells your emotions where to be.” And as for what the image and persona of the Raiders did for the music, he also asserted, “It changed the trajectory of hip-hop.”

  Because of the association firmly emblazoned in the mind of the public, across the demographics, all of a sudden if you liked football, really the quintessential American sport, it was okay to like rap music. Poetry. The tanning effect was swift and forceful, causing a quantum shift in how language from “the street” made its way to main street.

  As early as 1991, executives from media to Madison Avenue to the music industry were starting to try to figure out how to handle the baby Godzilla of rap that was rattling its cage, trying to set itself free. The bad news was that nobody really had any clue just how powerful the market force was going to be. The good news was that the opportunities were plentiful for people who could serve as translators—people like me.

  CHAPTER 3

  FOR US BY US

  On a Southern California morning at some point in early to mid-1992, or thereabouts, a future mentor of mine, Jimmy Iovine, held a history-making meeting in his offices at Interscope Records. A rock producer who had come up through the ranks of the music industry starting in the early 1970s, working closely with superstars like John Lennon, Stevie Nicks, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Petty, and shepherding the fortunes of entities that ranged from U2 to Nine Inch Nails, Jimmy famously kept a pair of beloved old speakers hooked up to his office sound system that he believed were the only trusted means for listening to new artists. That day, those speakers would come in handy as he met with fellow Interscope executive John McLain and two guys named Marion and Andre—otherwise known as Suge Knight and Dr. Dre—who were then looking for distribution for their label, Death Row Records. The album they hoped Jimmy would decide to hear on his speakers was called The Chronic, featuring Dre with a new rapper by the name of Cordozar Calvin Broadus—better known as Snoop Doggy Dogg.

  On that same morning, or in this general time period, across the country in the offices of RCA’s record division, where I was then employed, a few back-to-back meetings were wrapping up that were definitely historical for me. Even though my path and the paths of everyone meeting on the West Coast would eventually intersect, the only common bond we had at the time was the confusing state of affairs in which the music business found itself.

  By now, at last, in my early twenties, I’d finally given in to the pull that hip-hop had been exerting over me for years. After I let go of the idea that the mortgage business (or any of the other professions I tried) was going to be my calling, it seemed as if doors into the music industry kept opening and I kept getting the go-ahead. Well, at least initially. My entry point had been at the lowest rung of the ladder, not long after I’d befriended DJ Wiz, who DJ’d for the young, versatile rap duo Kid ’n Play. Besides their ability to rock a party, they were fresh, with killer comedic banter and funky dance moves—and, in the case of Kid, a distinctive hi-top fade—that made them instantly memorable.

  What Wiz saw in me, I’m not sure, but he probably appreciated that I was an energetic fan who loved hip-hop and who maybe was curious to learn more about its inner workings. At any rate, he began inviting me to hang out backstage at performances and in the studio. Before much time transpired, I started pitching in and helping move equipment and run errands, and next thing I knew, they offered me an official spot as a roadie. A short while later, Wiz (a.k.a. Mark Eastmond from Queens), Kid (Chris Reid, from the Bronx), and Play (Chris Martin, from Queens too) decided t
o make me their road manager. In that capacity, they began turning to me for advice on all aspects of their broadening portfolio of work. However it happened, my insights and instincts were valued enough that I eventually stepped in as Kid ’n Play’s manager. Wow. While being excited by the opportunity, I clearly had lots to learn. First came the crash course I was given in the intricacies of the record business. Next, because of Kid ’n Play’s film franchise with House Party and its sequels, plus their various TV projects, I was fortunate to learn the behind-the-scenes basics of film and TV production.

  With the entrepreneurial atmosphere that surrounded hip-hop, everything about it seemed to move at meteoric speed. And as I learned from watching the mainstream success of Kid’n Play, it became apparent that as quickly as you can gain a foothold in commercial popularity, you can veer just as fast into the territory of being considered soft art. Big alert. The experience would provide a cautionary tale for me down the road—both in entertainment and in advertising—that fortunes in the mainstream can turn on a dime and the change can come on as swiftly as a shift in the weather. Credibility in the pop culture marketplace is everything. It’s a lesson worth underlining—credibility is everything.

  And also, whether in niche markets or on a mass level, you can go from flowing as credible to ebbing into not being credible so fast you don’t know what hit you. Once you’ve lost your credibility, it’s really tough to get it back. Catching that first wave onto the public stage can be relatively easy. Not the second one. I would see this time and again with artists and with brands.

  Before my stint managing Kid ’n Play was over, our production company endeavors expanded my network. So, in a case of good timing, I was able to segue out of management and into an executive position in the A & R department of the black music division at RCA. With the mandate to bring in new talent to their urban music lineup and also to oversee production, I could barely believe my good luck. Looking back, I realize that it was not just the nature of the music business that had allowed me to move up so quickly; it also had something to do with what I brought to the table.

  For starters, I was and am enthralled with the creative process and have enormous respect for artists. That allowed me to advocate, first and foremost, for the creative forces and to be inspired by their daring to be different. At the same time, I understand how business works and have a “doer” mentality. Daring, dreaming, and doing became my threefold mantra early on, and it would serve me well at every stage of my career. The ace up my sleeve, however, was a knack for translation between the creative and business teams. With that, whenever there were murmurings that hip-hop couldn’t survive much longer, I reminded myself that I would have job security nonetheless.

  In some ways, I was very naïve. In the early nineties, major labels like Capitol Records and others were dropping or paring back their urban music divisions. The main issue was that along with the R&B sound changing there was a lack of understanding of the audience and how to develop and promote hip-hop artists. Another concern was corporate consolidation. During the eighties, most of the great indie rock and R&B labels became a dying breed. Recording outposts in Philadelphia and Memphis were on the way out. Smaller maverick operations like Sugar Hill Records were no more. In 1988 Motown Records was sold to MCA, and a short time after that, Geffen Records was also sold to MCA (later to be taken over by Universal and merged with Interscope). A&M had been bought by Polygram—which would later be part of Universal and also absorbed by Interscope-Geffen.

  Independents could no longer compete with the bigger coffers of the five or six remaining major record corporations, especially when it came to signing top artists. Not only that, but with the corporatization/consolidation of media, the marketing divisions at the bigger labels had more leverage and much tighter control of what got played on the radio; corporations were also more tied in to advertisers and more beholden to their media buys. Of course, a huge stumbling block for the smaller, independent companies was the rising cost of music videos. Mini-movies that jumped off the TV and made you run, not walk, to your nearest record store, music videos were marketing necessities. And finally there was the issue that blinded the industry with its fool’s-gold properties: the transfer from vinyl and cassette tape technology—analog—into the digital age. Compact discs. By 2001, cassettes would account for only 4 percent of music product sold across the board. CDs became the cash cow. The major labels that had spent their millions buying record catalogs reissued CDs in every genre and had a marketing field day. That is, at first. In the meantime, certainty and passion in developing and marketing new product for all audiences, especially for younger generations, suffered.

  The result was what I would call the cynical pop imitation of rap that made household names out of MC Hammer (“Can’t Touch This”) and Vanilla Ice (“Ice, Ice Baby”). Nothing wrong, by the way, with being commercial and fulfilling the turn-of-the-decade market’s need for dance music. But the tanning effect was nil. Musically at that time, pop rap was more of a regression in my view because a) in trying to appeal to everybody the sound was formulaic and homogenized, and b) it was bubble gum without the authenticity of culture and code that reflected honesty in people’s lives.

  In stark contrast, the hip-hop artistry that was evolving in more underground, countercultural ways in self-started, homegrown urban studios—with a range of credible alternatives to pop rap, including hardcore or reality rap—was anything but bubble gum. Most of the powers running the music industry had no clue how to market any of these latest evolutions of an art form they never expected to last as long as it had. Even with MTV’s series Yo! MTV Raps—instituted in the late 1980s with none other than Fab Five Freddy as one of the hosts—most everyone assumed the drug-, sex-, and violence-laden lyrics and images of reality rap would never make it onto the airwaves. Why would it? Some of it really was too violent, obscene, jarring, insulting, shocking, and disturbing. True, but a lot of it was also incredible, original, brilliant, hilarious, prophetic, and musically and rhythmically addictive, and if you were culturally attuned, it was absolutely important.

  At a time when I had an opportunity to sign voices of importance to the RCA roster, I was also eager to bring in up-and-coming production talent that included the likes of the Trackmasters, also known as Tone and Poke—Samuel Barnes and Jean Claude Olivier—and had set up a meeting with them at RCA to discuss the possibilities.

  Tone—later to become one of my best friends—arrived first, even though he was running late for our nine thirty meeting. As he was coming in, I asked him to wait in my office as I’d been called into another meeting with my immediate boss, the late Skip Miller (blessings to his family), head of the black music division, and a group of guys from among the top brass. By the time I returned to my office, Tone could obviously tell by the horror-stricken look on my face that there was bad news. First, I had to tell him that, unfortunately, I didn’t have a job anymore. Second, I couldn’t steer him to anyone else because RCA was shutting down its urban music sector completely. As a first step to getting out of the record business altogether, they were cleaning house—quitting on the artists. Why? “They do not see the sustainability,” I told Tone, repeating what had been said to me.

  Now I had to make a list of everyone to contact whose destiny and dreams had just been shattered. As for what I was going to do next, I had no idea. For a few minutes Tone and I both sort of shook our heads in disbelief that all of our rides to fame and fortune could be coming to such an abrupt halt. Then a crazy idea dawned on me and I turned to him and said, “Tone, let me manage you.”

  Not missing a beat, he nodded and agreed to talk to Poke, even though we both knew it was already a done deal. Out of the frying pan and into the fire! As a manager and producer, as well as basically becoming the third Trackmaster, I was also able to seek out emerging artists and undiscovered talent for management. This was during the period when I first met a young artist by the name of Nas who rapped about real experience with a ca
ndor that was emotionally devastating. We moved forward with his second album, It Was Written, which also yielded the big international hit “Rule the World.”

  Even though being independent was nerve-wracking, what was liberating was that instead of having to temper my tastes to those of higher-ups or conform to the standards of music that was selling already, working with the Trackmasters meant we could make the music we loved—and then dare to bring consumers in on the party. Why work so hard at having to cross over when we could invite buyers to cross over in reverse? We could also be subcontractors and shop our services to major record companies with distribution capabilities. While we were prepared for our approach to take a while to catch on and even for a bumpy ride in the beginning, much to our amazement, we flew out of the gate without a hitch and were soon unstoppable. We landed on the charts hard and fast, following one breakout hit record after the other at a rate of about every two weeks. The work was incredibly satisfying and rewarding.

  The kind of music I was signing as a manager and producer represented a spectrum that ran from hip-hop with R&B roots to old-school, from pop to novelty to hardcore rap, from world-music-infused hip-hop to plain spoken-word poetry and even some rock/electronic-funk-laced rap. The list of artists whose work came out of the Trackmasters years included Nas, Mary J. Blige, Big Daddy Kane, Heavy D, LL Cool J, Faith Evans, the Notorious B.I.G., Foxy Brown, Will Smith, Mariah Carey, and Jay-Z, to name a few.

  RCA’s decision to drop its urban divison was one of the best things that happened to my career. Now, as for the meeting in the West Coast offices of Interscope with Jimmy Iovine, that also turned out to be a great thing for a lot of careers. By his own account, Jimmy had no context for what he was hearing on his prized speakers when Dre and Suge played the first cut of The Chronic—“Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang.”