June 22, 2023 • 48 mins
In 1991, Steve Rifkind founded LOUD RECORDS. In the decade that followed, LOUD would cultivate one of the most iconic rosters in hip-hop history, including Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep, Big Pun, 3 6 Mafia, Dead Prez, and Tha Alkaholiks.
But the label’s success was a product of more than just one man’s effort. LOUD was the confluence of Rifkind’s vision and network, childhood friend and partner Rich Issacson’s iron fisted governance, and the impeccable taste, tone, and tireless efforts of an ensemble cast of hip-hop obsessed young staffers. Not to mention the timeless art of some of the most talented rappers and producers to ever pick up a mic or tap on a beat machine.
On this week’s episode of Idea Generation's All Angles, we talked to founders Rifkind and Issacson, A&Rs Matty C, Schott Free, and Sean C, Radio VP MoeJoe, as well as Havoc from Mobb Deep, to hear the full story of how LOUD RECORDS grew from a one room office on Melrose Ave to one of the most successful record labels of the ‘90s. And how the inspired chaos that fueled their rise ultimately also contributed to the legendary label’s undoing.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Rich One and more recognition from me. I really didn't
give a fuck anymore. I thought that was on an
island by myself. So I named rich president and I'm
like you running, go ahead, do what you gotta do.
I was just like, I truly hit it.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome to Idea Generations All Angles, a podcast about culture's
most influential brands and the teams that build them. If
you're an entrepreneur, creative, or anyone interested in harnessing the
power of collaboration, join me Noah Callahan Bever each week
as we dissect the most dynamic companies in culture. Because
the only way to truly understand success is to look
(00:44):
at it from all angles. Idea Generations All Angles is
a Will Packer Media podcast. Welcome back for part two
of our two part Lab Record Story. After starting with
(01:09):
a novelty act in Tongue Twister and having been through
the industry, Ringer Lad Records founder Steve Rifkin and Rich
Isaacson had finally gained some footing with their breakthrough release
Wu Tang Clan's debut Long Player, entered the thirty six Chambers.
With that success under their belt, Lab were officially players
in the game, But neither the staff nor the artist
(01:30):
had any idea just how big the label was about
to become or how quickly it would all unravel. But
before life would come at them fast, the Loud Gang
were still reveling in Wu Tang Clan's sudden stardom. This
is Rich Isaacson, co founder of Laud Records.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I think we did thirty thousand the first week, which
was a massive number in those days over the counter.
Then it just kept every week, another twenty five, another thirty.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
We hit fifty thousand. I think in ten days.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
It wasn't like now when a hip hop record would
come out, do a huge first week and then the
second week would decline sixty percent or seventy percent.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Wu Tang just was solid for like a year, just.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Kept going and going, and it became this underground massive
phenomenon and brought New York hip hop back. The pendulum
had swung from New York to La and Doctor Dre
and Snoop Dogg, and there was a whole West Coast
movement dominating hip hop. So Wu Tang was really completely raw,
(02:42):
completely New York and resonated not just in New York,
surprisingly resonated in the South, but in the West Coast.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
As the Wu Tang phenomenon broke nationally, Maddy C, still
the writer in New York City at The Source Magazine,
remained close with his college buddy Scott Free DNR and
Wu Tang's inside man at the label. Together, the two
started plotting on signing Loud's next act, a teenage duo
from Queensbridge known as Mob Deep. Just like Wu Tang,
(03:11):
the duo debuted on another label, missed the mark creatively
and flopped commercially, but Matt and Scott had been tracking
them for years and knew where things had gone wrong.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
There was a lot of excitement about the Source, almost
more so than record labels.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
This is Matti C, writer at The Source magazine and
eventual director of A and R at Loud.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
And I think there were a lot of artists up
and coming perspective Unsigned who felt like the Source had
people up there who understood hip hop more than a
lot of the record labels did. Demos were just getting
mailed in because of the fact that the audience understood
that we got it and that we might be able
to provide some sort of access.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
Matt did an Unsigned hype column that was just dedicated
to like talking about MC's that were coming up.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
This is Scott Free, director of an R Loud.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
Records Poetical Profits, who later became Mob Deep more part
of that common Sense, who was later walked to Relativity.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
And then there was a guy named.
Speaker 6 (04:09):
Bickie Small's who was walked to bad Boy, amongst a
few others. But all of these coming from Maddie's column essentially,
So in my mind, Matt had already been been doing
a and R.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
Scott like just had that passion like me to kind
of listen and go through a lot of different music.
Speaker 6 (04:28):
Matt was just blaming the Mob Deep stuff, which was
phenomenal at the time. Me Matt stretched rebugging at how
they had grown. Mob was about sixteen seventeen and so
when they made you know, the initial stuff, so now
we saw them as kind of sounded like they were
coming into their prime and finding themselves. I wanted to
bring that to Loud. I remember Steve being like, yo,
(04:48):
they sold twenty thousand records on their first album, like
this is this is how you want to start off?
And I was like, yeah, yeah, we're gonna make a
classic record with these kids. Steve was definitely about the
artist first. Steve knew when something had momentum to move,
you know what I.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Mean that we may have been hesitant at first, Steve
trusted his team, followed their instincts, and signed Mob Deep.
After an underwhelming debut on Fourth and Broadway Records, Prodigy
and Havoc were looking for a situation where they could
have complete creative control of their music. Luckily for the duo,
Steve didn't believe in saying no.
Speaker 7 (05:28):
What made us want to go to Loud was the
things that they was offering to us. You know, they said, look,
we feeling y'all. They appreciated our music.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
This is Havoc, producer, rapper, and one half of Mob Deep.
Speaker 7 (05:39):
And they said, if we was the sign to that
label that creatively we would have the reins to do
whatever we wanted to do. They wouldn't bother us. They
would just let us do us. And that was attractive
to us, you know what I mean. A label saying, Yo,
we're gonna let y'all do what y'all do. We're not
gonna bother y'all. We give y'all all the creative control.
That was very attractive to being Prodigy.
Speaker 5 (05:59):
At that time, creative control was the big issue, and
especially in hip hop, the idea that these bigger rap records,
in order to have a budget, we're going to have
executives coming in. Puppeteering aspects of how these records are
made not just not happening.
Speaker 8 (06:15):
You know.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
There was a whole kind of counter movement against that,
right and against making records that even smelled like that, right,
and to keep it real movement happened, right, keep the
tims in the army fatigues, movement like this kind of
dichotomy that's always been there in rap, right between the
rimey side and the shiny side.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Scott Free and Maddie c.
Speaker 7 (06:41):
It was like Big Brothers to us, guiding us through
this second album without doing the infamous album wouldn't have
been the infamous album because they had the constructive criticism
and followed their league, you know what I mean. They
guided us.
Speaker 5 (06:54):
The process became emulating what I saw the greats doing,
you know, and I know that already have had learned
from watching Large Professor and Premiere and Pitt of Me,
you know, doing the first Juvenile Hell album. You know,
and you know, my goal was really to give him
the confidence.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
That was the most important record in Loud history. Even
though we got Wu Tang, we needed a follow up.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
This is Steve Rifkint, founder of Loud.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Records, and when Havoc and Prodigy and Maddie came to
the fucking office to play that album, I cried, and
I knew that we had another platinum record. We're not
a one trick pony.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
The Infamous proved that Loud was more than just a
one act wonder, and Steve was hyper aware that the
album's success was the direct result of Scott and Maddie's chemistry.
In order to continue this momentum, Steve needed Maddie to
join Lab full time and lead the A and R department.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
Scott put in his ear, Yo, Matt, that's mat shit,
Like you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
You got to get mad over here. And then both
of them, you know, took me out a couple of times.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
They tried to get me do A and R, and
I was like, yeah, I want to do A and R,
but I'm mostly like I want to fuck with these
producers all these and help, you know. I felt like
I had kind of helped Big on his first album
with a few producers, and I was excited to bring
producers to artists type of thing and then possibly help
with publishing deals. So Steve hooks me up with BMV
Publishing Clyde Lieberman, and I started doing that too, and
(08:17):
I was like, Okay, I'll lay in our mob deep two.
It goes well, I'll keep doing that. And obviously as
mob Beat started to do real but it was just
to shoe in and that's what I was doing, and
I stopped kind of showing up at the source as much,
and by ninety four I was just Loud A and R.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Matty c set the tone for the A and R
department with his attention to detail and steadfast commitment to
honoring the artist vision. Scott Free would take Matt's Q
and push Riza and Ray Kwan as they crafted Louds
next release only built for Cuban Links.
Speaker 6 (08:47):
Maddy was really ill like about production, so he'd go
back in, do another recall, add a little kick to
stand whatever. It was like. We were really aintal about
the quality of the sound of the music itself.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
I think my huge advantage was being at the source
and being able to see into every label and every
project before and after it came out and understand what
was working and what was it.
Speaker 6 (09:16):
We ab we compared everything like Doctor Dre's Chronic album
that was always the test, like you know, yo, my
shit got us come behind Dre's and the club and
you know, not miss a step. And I'm telling Ray,
I'm like, yo, man, make sure all our shit got
drums in it.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Fuck that.
Speaker 6 (09:33):
Don't let Rod hit you with the just the loop
like whatever whatever, because Yo, man, we're trying to bang
in the club. All that's cool if you just listening
on your walk man and all, but like, Yo, make
sure this whole album got drums in it.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
You know.
Speaker 6 (09:45):
It kind of got back to Rob, and you know
Rob kind of felt like me and mad with this
and his drum game. Okay, well, you know it is
what it is.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Like.
Speaker 6 (09:56):
You know, I wasn't crazy about the drums on Meth album.
Some of them, like you know, and the Ruckus was ill.
But then you had a couple that was like, uh.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
You know, you know, like listen to to cal Man,
you can't really listen to album cuts and if you DJ,
you definitely can't play them, you know what I mean,
It just sound muddy.
Speaker 9 (10:15):
So when you go to the Cuban LNS album. I
remember walking into here incarcerated scarfaces and I come in
and Rob puts it up, and the whole time he's
playing it, he's just looking at me in my face
like he's doing that the Raquines thing or whatever, and
he's looking at me in my face like like, say
something about my drums right now, I dare you.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
You know, I feel like he was looking dead at
me too, and he said that. I think Rizzard made
his point.
Speaker 6 (10:41):
I was in stun shock mode, you know, He's like, yeah, yeah,
I'm like, Yo, that's that's the bar Rod, that's the bar.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
I still feel like, you know, proud to have kind
of lit a fire under his ass about that, because again,
it speaks for itself now.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The following year, Matt and Scott would add an up
and coming producer to their A and R roster. Shawn C,
who had just got in a placement on Jay Z's
Reasonable Doubt, was looking for any entree into the music
industry and jumped at the opportunity to help with Mob
Deep's Hell on Earth sessions.
Speaker 10 (11:20):
What I learned from Maddy C the way that he
ran the A and R department was never.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Tell the artists what to do.
Speaker 10 (11:27):
If you want large professor to produce something for mob Deep,
just create the situation where lard happens to be in
the same room with them and let it be organic.
LUD was run where the artist had the creative control,
and we were lucky enough to get artists that really
were super dope. You know that we didn't have to
(11:48):
guide as much. We just kind of created that environment
for them in order to make the records that they
did and get their vision out.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
There was a great morale in the beginning of Loud
New York, like everybody was kind of on board, on
the same page, unified.
Speaker 10 (12:10):
The culture of.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
LAD was coming into focus. They were hip, brash and
ahead of the curve. And as the roster grew, so
too did the staff. Stephen Rich hired Steve's brother, Jonathan,
an accomplished promotion executive, to run radio. Olukuru joined his
creative director and Charlene Thomas's project manager, amongst so many
other talented additions to the team.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
So I moved back to New York, start working the building,
develop relationships with all the people at RCAA, learn how
a real record company is run. Everything from A and
R administration, to production, to creative services, to royalties, all
the unsexy, uncool things. That's what I knew I had
(12:50):
to learn for us to be able to build a
real business and take it to the next level. So
I'm spending more time there. Steve's coming back and forth
and he realizes, Okay, York or is where hip hop is.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
He has to have a present there too.
Speaker 7 (13:03):
When it came to Steve, Rikin and Rich, they was
like the coolest CEOs that you can ever have of
a record company. You know what I mean. Because we
was on Fourth and Broadway. We never even seen the
CEO of the label or the president or anybody like that.
We only dealt with the A and r's. So to
be able to hang out with the CEOs of the
(13:24):
label and play basketball with them and hang out until
that was important because it created a family environment.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
In no time, louds officers in LA and New York
were the place to be. You never knew what you
might hear or who you might see.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
It just became like the hangout.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
We were outside of Union Square where NYU is right
by the subway. All young people who love hip hop
and in those days. As I said, it was a
real community. So at any given time, one of the
artists would you pop into the office. Then some mixtape
guy would show up, some pot dealer would show up,
and all of a sudden, it was just a cool
hang in our office.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
It was complete chaos.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
We had strippers in the office for Ray Kwanin's birthday.
It was the least professional place he could possibly imagine.
Speaker 10 (14:16):
If you were in the office at night, there'd be
a lot of things going on in there. That's a
lot of crazy shit going on on those couches, a
lot of weeds, smoke, which seemed like it was normal.
Like at a record label. You walk in and you
know Ray is back there, Old Dirty is back there.
I remember being in a listener room and Dirty came
(14:36):
in and he was like, oh, I got new speakers.
Those speakers are dope. He's like, I need I need
some speakers like this from my from my studio. And
then LV who ended up being my production partner the later,
was coming up to check me and he was like, yo,
I was just in the elevator with Old Dirty and
he had two speakers on his shoulders.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
He said he was coming out.
Speaker 9 (14:59):
I was going there.
Speaker 10 (15:00):
He said he was singing Rick James walking with these
speakers and security stopped him and he was like, what
you're talking about these.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Moss because the.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
Like he's told his bakers out.
Speaker 6 (15:12):
Of the office.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Another artist that became larger than life at LOUD was
Big Punisher aka Big Pun. The Bronx born rapper was
buzzing in the streets of New York, but Loud would
turn him into a global superstar. But before that could happen,
Steve would have to sign him first.
Speaker 10 (15:33):
Steve would just go into business with people that he
believed in their vision more than the music. He kind
of prided himself and signing shit that nobody else would sign,
you know what I mean. And that was kind of
like what his vibe was like, you know, with Pun,
he wanted to do business with Fat Joe because nobody
wanted to go in business with Joe, so he wanted
to do that because of that vib.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
I must have gotten ten calls saying, don't do business
with Joe. He's a killer and extortionist, this that, so
and so and so on. Right, so I meet Joe
over the phone. I said, I'm going to La on
a Thursday to see my kids.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
I'll be back Monday. Let's meet Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Joe comes to the media, and I fell in love
with Joe. The second you're welcome, I said, let me
talk to you. Everybody said not to do business with you, this, that,
so and so on. He said, I'm a real fucking gangster.
I go, I want to show everybody wrong. All we
did was laugh. Pun wasn't even at the fucking meeting.
I go, bring Pun Thursday. But Joe, please be on time. Listen,
(16:32):
I'm flying home to be with my wife and kids.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
But Joe wasn't the only person Steve was concerned about
being on time for the meeting.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Meeting Saya at eleven thirty. I have a three hundred
thousand dollars check waiting for Maddie that he hasn't picked
up in six fucking weeks. He'd never be in the office.
Speaker 5 (16:48):
He tells this story a lot about my lateness. I
don't I don't appreciate that too much as a grown man.
But yeah, probably back then. Uh, not not quite as
diseased as the artist with the late in this effect.
But yet, I too was not that enthusiastic to make.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
It to morning pep talk staff.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Meetings, right.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
I would try to explain, like we worked into the
wee hours of night, we go to the studio, we
go to the club. Yet I'm not gonna make it
to the nine o'clock ten o'clock meeting on time.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
So I walk in see Maddie in the office, like,
what are you doing here? He goes, don't we have
a meeting with pun? I'm like, you're here for this?
They walk in. I said, you got a deal? Who's
your attorney? They all looked at me like I'm fucking
on crack. Joe goes, don't bullsheit me. I said, I'm
not bullshit. I said, who's your attorney? Maddie says, we
haven't heard music? I said, Mattie, you're here. He must
(17:40):
be a fucking star. He said, who's your attorney? Tim?
Manda Bell I call up Ten? I said, here's two
point fifty. We closed it right there to that Tim
came to the office.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
In all honesty, it's not one with my you know,
detailed stories of memory the way it is to Steve.
But what I do remember is Steve like inventing this
joke at that moment and never letting it go like
Maddie's here on time. He feels like he can make
that point in a short sentence. I signed a Pun
(18:11):
because Maddie showed up on time, You know what I mean?
And so yeah, it's cool. You know that's I like it.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Punctuality aside, Steve's signing Pun just because Maddy made the
meeting is also a testament to how much trust he
had in Mattie's ear In that moment, Steve's instinct for
reading people in talent were unmatched by anything other than
his confidence in his own process. With Pun on the roster,
Lad was about to be the hottest label in hip hop,
but the once controlled chaos that fueled their rise was
(18:44):
rapidly becoming entirely uncontrolled.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
We went from putting out one or two records a year,
selling a couple hundred thousand a year, which was substantial,
Wu Tang selling a million copies, Rayquon selling a million copies,
The Alcoholics a couple hundred thousand, mob deep going goal.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
So I don't think I caught up.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I don't think my learning curd was steep enough because
I'm spending my time doing crazy things like I'm actually
dealing with the production people and making sure that the
record got delivered on time, and making sure that the
publicist has photos of the photo shoot or whatever.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
So I was doing such.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Dumb minute things and learning that I wasn't paying enough
attention to really realizing how big our business was becoming.
Speaker 10 (19:37):
It was my first A and R job, so I
had nothing to compare it to, you know, just every
night eating somewhere.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
I never spent my own money.
Speaker 10 (19:44):
I like lived on my expense account and studio sessions,
like just booking it, booking and booking it until later
and not really realizing like this isn't really what you're
supposed to be doing, like you should be paying attention
to the money, like, oh, we book it and I
went through two block at the same time, and we'll
have a room where you can go in here, and
then you can come in here. And back then it
(20:06):
wasn't you know, there were no home studios, so everything
was expensive. Wu Tang's first video, they were the first
million dollar video too, that I feel like was warranted though,
because it was it was Wu Tang.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Clin the second Wu Tang album, you know, that was
when we truly went to the next level.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
The second Wu Tang album was a game changer.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
That was the beginning of the end. Actually for us.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
We were young guys who had this cool company of
all young hungry kids who never had a job anywhere,
let alone in music, and we're just renegades and making
it up as we go along, and we're like pinching
ourselves on a weekly basis, going can you believe this
is happening kind of thing. But after a certain period
(20:50):
of time, you're like, Okay, I want to make some money.
You know, we wanted to make money. Bands wanted to
make money. The staff wanted to make money. At the beginning,
they're like, yeah, it's cool if you pay me three
hundred dollars a week, but we're selling millions of records.
You guys are probably making millions. We want to get paid.
Of course we weren't, but that was the impression. It
never lost the culture and the community of the company,
(21:11):
but it started becoming Okay, everybody wants to make money.
When Wu Tang came out with the second album, we
became a joint venture.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
We got kind of cocky.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Wu Tang Forever sold over six hundred thousand units in
its first week and catapulted loud into another stratosphere. Naturally,
Steve decided it was time for him and his partners
to get paid, so we started renegotiating their deal directly
with straus Selnick, the chairman of rcia's parent company BMG.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Now where we're negotiating every ten minutes. So Strauss calls me,
who is the chairman of BMG, and says, meet me
at the Regency Hotel Thursday at nine o'clock. I drive
the day before on that Wednesday to see who's there,
and Summer Redstones there. Rupert Murdoch's there.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yes, that Rupert Murdoch, media mogul and chairman and CEO
of Fox.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
This motherfucker is gonna try and embarrass me. I come
in a pair of blue cargo shorts, Michael Jordan, North
Carolina tank top with a T shirt underneath, and Strass
is in a suit. At that time, we're doing the
Thursday night lineup on Fox Marketing wise, which was Martin
Latifa Show New York Undercover. Stress. As I can't go
(22:23):
any further and we're sitting across from each other, I
said Strass, the deals up in four months. I've been
broke this long. I could wait another four months and
if you know the deal, everything comes with me anyway,
and I slammed the table. Group at Murdoch comes to
the table. This is why I got rid of you.
Strass was president of Fox. He goes, when you see
somebody with this type of passion, you're arguing over money.
(22:47):
I have no idea who this guy is. I introduced myself.
I said, I'm very close with your son, James. As
a matter of fact, I do a lot of work
for you. I do all the marketing for your Thursday
night lineup. And I leave and I'm actually I'm at
peace with myself, like, if he comes, great, If not,
we'll get a huge fucking deal in November. But I
know Rich and my brother they want the money. I
(23:08):
wanted the money too, but I was truly at peace
with myself. So instead of going to the office, I
walked to my house. So Grooman calls and I'm not
picking up the phone, and he goes, whenever you get this,
I got great news and betan news. So I call
him and he goes. Murdoch called me, you really slammed
the table. So I tell him the story. I'm like, so,
(23:29):
what's the great news. You're getting what you want from Strass.
I go, what's the Betan news? He goes. Rubert Murdach
called me and they're gonna give you fifteen thousand a
month from the fifteen thousand a month they were giving you.
And I was like wow.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
And just like that, in a basketball jersey and cargo shorts,
Steve had manifested another new deal, transcending from music industry
Maverick into Flah powerbroker.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Our marketing business was exploding because every time we had
a hit, everybody wanted to be in business with us
on the marketing.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Side because they're like, wow, how do these guys do it?
How do they have hit after hit.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
And then not on the radio and they're doing all
this underground marketing. We want the secret sauce, and they
hire us, and we started doing marketing for corporations. We
started doing marketing for Nike, for Mirrimax Films, for Tommy Hillfigure.
Then we got a first look deal with Mirrimax Films
and we had a film company.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
So we're just exploding.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
So it's becoming this big business and then what happens Egos,
Steve's becoming this celebrity, you know, he's becoming this big name.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
In hip hop.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
I'm kind of trying to keep the fort together. Jonathan,
our other partner, Steve's brother, is trying to keep the
radio situation together and the marketing company together. We're hiring
new people because we realize we have to do all
the things that we're trying to do. We need to
professionalize it. Yet we can't lose what got us here.
So there became this tension. Me and Steve started fighting
(25:09):
all the time because I was kind of like being
the grown up and trying to be responsible. And now
we're getting real money from our partners. We have a
real overhead, we have a big roster, and I'm trying
to honor that and run it like a business. And
Steve's kind of like going, you know, you're making this
like an accounting firm. This is a record company, and
I'm like, yeah, it's not exactly an accounting firm, but
(25:31):
you know, we have to keep it together. And you
could tell there were factions within the company. There were
rich people and then there were Steve people, and everybody
kind of respected each other, but tensions started to evolve,
tension between us and attention within the staff.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Although Rich and Steve tried to keep their rift discrete. Eventually,
even the rank and file employees like Sean C noticed
the vibe shift.
Speaker 10 (26:00):
During that period of time, I didn't see Steve a lot.
I saw Rich more. I realized there was something there,
and it was something going on with Steve. I didn't
know to the extent until later, to my detriment and
also to my credit, I was just the music guy,
you know what I'm saying. I was more focused on life.
All right, I'm gonna get to death press record.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
So I was aware of it.
Speaker 10 (26:22):
I remember Steve coming in the office and saying, alcoholics
better sell four million records or else everyone's.
Speaker 5 (26:28):
Fired, and we're like what.
Speaker 10 (26:31):
I had stopped seeing him for a while, and when
I saw him he would say shit like that, and
then lead we were like, he's fucking just on one.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
He's wilding.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
We started getting so big and so successful and a
little full of ourselves in a little bit too ambitious.
We were hitting our numbers and they kept saying yes
to anything we asked for. At that point, then we
started doing crazy stuff like let's start a rock label,
Let's do a joint venture with Violator, let's do a
joint venture with PMP, and all of a sudden, we
(26:59):
have overhead deals with this guy and overhead deals with
that guy and signing artists for seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars when we started out signing artists for ten
thousand dollars. And you know, at this time, hip hop
is just exploding. All the major labels have their own
hip hop departments. Like when we started, it was a novelty.
Now everybody's in it. Death Row Records is his own
(27:21):
phenomenon on the West Coast, Puffies label just set the
standard for you know, unprecedented hits one after another. Deaf
Jam starts getting hot basically off of the back of
Method Man. Then Atlantic Records is going on a role
like everybody's getting in the game. It's becoming super competitive.
So everything that we started doing was underground, and now
(27:43):
it's the hip hop industry.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
The music industry was catching up to Loud. Hip Hop
was no longer a niche market, and every major label
had started their own department. The competition was tougher, and
Loud was spending like crazy to keep up. To make
matters worse, they were missing out on signing some major
artists as well.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
When we opened that eight forty one Broadway, it was
Dame and Jay coming to see me. We had Jay
d signed for a twelve inch record was called Reach
the Top, and we recorded it Marvin Gay sample though,
so when we tried to clear the sample, we ran
into some issues. And then Dame came up a couple
times and got in the room with Rich and that didn't.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
Go so well.
Speaker 5 (28:23):
Rich wasn't feeling James so much, and I'm like, oh man,
the biggest fish that got away is Eminem. Shane Mooney,
who was our West Coast agnir, came in in the
listening room in loud and played me the Eminem song
about locking his girl in the Trump and I was like.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Nah, no bro out here, Let's play something else. I
wasn't feeling it.
Speaker 10 (28:49):
I wanted to try to sign Kanye. Hip Hop had
brought Kanye to me and he gave his demo like
he did everyone else, and I was like, he's super dope.
This this label was probably going to be here. I
knew that was happening.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
With these missed opportunities, and the labels continue to overspending
lab reach a breaking point and they're deal with RCA
and BMG. Pretty soon both parties started looking for a
way out.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
We started spending a million dollars every time we rolled
out a record. You know, we wanted to compete with
Bad Boy and def Jam, and you know you had
to because the artists now are demanding. You know, we
spend a million dollars on a mob deep video. How
stupid is that?
Speaker 7 (29:27):
Looking back on it, if I had a chance to
do it again, maybe I wouldn't spend that much on
a video and I would pull the.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Resources somewhere else.
Speaker 7 (29:36):
At the time, you know how Competitives was signing Brighton,
you know.
Speaker 5 (29:41):
What I mean.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
We didn't want Havic and Prodigy to come in our
office and say, hey, bad boys doing this. How come
you guys are trying to do one hundred thousand dollars video.
Speaker 7 (29:49):
You wanted to be on that level so it could
level the play and field, you know, for you against
your competition. So, you know, sad but true. The spending
definitely got out of control.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
It was very difficult to say no, and then we
started doing crazy things. And then at a certain point
BMG came in and said, hey, guys, you got to
rein it in and Steve more than mate. To be fair,
was kind of like, fuck them. We're building this amazing brand.
They don't believe in us.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Straus sends Pete Jones. Does a guy who we had
a report to now say we need more profits out
of it, And I'm like, mah, fuck that. Like I'm
just building them. I don't give a shit about the
bottom line. And I said that I think rich started
choking out a sushi. He goes, well, if that's the case,
you know that maybe we should probab waves. I said, okay,
(30:39):
So we literally become a free agent.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
And then finally we had to buy Cell come up
in our contract. Buy Cell is basically a mechanism to
get them to a place where they're buying us out
of our share of ownership, and of course we're up
for that because we know if we're successful, we're going
to get rich. We had what was called a shotgun
by I sell, which means the party that initiated said okay,
(31:04):
I want to buy. The seller then says okay, if
you want to buy, this is the price, and if
the buyer thinks the price is too high, the seller
then has to buy the buyer out for the price
that they state, So it's really like a game of chicken.
BMD said, okay, we're out. We want to exercise the
buy sell. Now it's us to say, okay, the price
(31:26):
is fifty million. So if we say fifty million and
they think it's too high, we're obligated to buy them
out for fifty million, and if we can't come up
with it, they get the company. So basically they came
up and said we went out. We were in debt
to them at the time, we were losing money. We
had all these unrecouped balances for our artists. You know,
(31:49):
our overhead was too high. So our lawyer, Alan Grumman
just came up with a number. So he threw out
a number and Strauslnik said, fine, you get me that
and you can have the company. Alan was completely surprised
that they were willing to sell. He was so disenchanted
with how we were doing things. Now we have to
(32:10):
come up with that money to buy him out.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Well, Rich looked for ways to fund the buy out.
Word got out overnight that Loud and BMG were parting ways,
and the next morning it was front page news.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
The only person I thought that knew was groomman. But
I guess you told everybody that night was Clive Davis's
su pre dinner photogrammys. I felt like I was puff
Like all of a sudden, every fucking photographer like, I
don't know who set what up or whatever, but it's
like everybody knew we were free agents. Like the next
day in the New York Post said Loud is free.
(32:44):
We meet with grooman in the morning, Rich flies back.
I stay out here and we start taking meetings.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
I'm freaking the fuck out. Steven was like great, and
I'm like, you're out of your fucking mind. Who's gonna
buy us for that amount of money? Then what are
we going to get? So the clock's ticking. We meet
with everybody, because you know, everybody wanted to be in
business with us. We met with Jimmy Ivy, and we
met with Tom Wallly at Warner Brothers. We met with
every label head. Then they'd say, great, this is amazing,
(33:11):
and then they'd say, you know, get our CFO the numbers.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
Send him the numbers. No one's calling us back.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
All of a sudden, there's like a couple of weeks
left before this moment we're supposed to come up with
the money. Our Rabbi, Ron Urban from RCA is now
at Sony. He's like a coo at Sony Corporate. And
Sony had just made the biggest blunder of all time.
They sold deaf Jam to PolyGram. They let def Jam go.
(33:42):
Right after they let deaf Jem go, Warren g pops
def Jam blows up. They went on a run and
now Sony looks like idiots. They lost their hip hop label.
And Sony owned Relativity Records and Red Distribution at the time,
and Relativity wasn't doing so well.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
They wanted to make a change.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
So Ron Urban oversaw Relativity and read on behalf of Sony.
Steve meet to them and Ron said, I got a plan,
brings it to Tommy Mottola and Mel Oberman at Sony
and our lawyer had a great relationship with Tommy and
magically with you know, we literally like you know, it
(34:22):
was like a James Bond movie with double O seven
left on the clock. Sony comes to the table and says,
we're going to buy.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
The Sony deal saved Loud, but it also changed the
identity of the company. Instead of being a boutique label
run by a bunch of friends. They were now a
corporate entity with an office full of new employees, new policies,
and new processes. As a result, Steve made himself unavailable
and the rift between him and Rich grew deeper.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
On one level, I'm ecstatic because now we're with Sony.
They were like the New York Yankees of the music business,
the most successful, best run, sexiest company. We got raises,
we got the biggest check we ever got in our
lives as in advance, and now we have relativity. But
I'm also like, oh my god, I'm fucked because Steve
(35:15):
is never going to learn his lesson. He's actually getting
rewarded for his bad behavior because now the lesson for
us over playing our hand with BMG was we got
a bigger company, raises in a big check. I'm in
awe that Steve and we pulled off this coup at
the last minute. We had created such a name for
(35:36):
ourselves that we were still able to get you a
great deal. But at the same time, I was worried
that now we're not going to ever get on the
same page because I know in my heart this this
should never have happened this way, and Steve's going, yeah,
fuck it, this is how it works. Like we got
to get people who really believe in us and let
us do our thing so that tension didn't go away.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
I was now the president.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
You know, he wanted to empower me, and he wanted
to appease me, and he wanted to reward me.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Rich wanted more recognition from me. I really didn't give
a fuck anymore. I thought that was on an island
by myself. So I named Rich president and I'm like,
you running, go ahead, do what you gotta do. I
was just like, I truly hated it.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
I remember walking into the Relativity office and they had
their own creative department, their own finance department, their own
royalty department, their own business affairs department, their own sales team,
national promotions. You know, I'm still a kid in my head.
And then we had our staff, so they were you know,
probably over one hundred people plus the joint ventures and whatever.
(36:43):
And now I'm the president and I'm like a holy.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Shit, I think we went from a staff of like
thirty people to like two hundred people. They weren't now
with people, they were like real workers, like they had
like you know, they took it as a real job.
We took it as a real job, but it was
like we would stay in the office eleven o'clock a night,
shoot dice, we smoke weed, we drink, eat, you know,
go to this, go to that, you know. Like when
the bell rang, they were out and I was like, well, fuck,
(37:09):
does you look great? But it doesn't fit right. I
started having panic attacks, anxiety attacks, and it was was
just the worst experience of my life.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Steve was basically in la at the time and he
never wanted to deal with any of that kind of stuff.
I remember him coming into the office and he's like,
who are all these fucking people? Like what do they all? Did?
Speaker 4 (37:29):
You know?
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Like this is crazy, And I'm trying to explain to him, like,
now we're a full service label. This is what we
signed up for. We have all these different departments. That
was not the fun, sexy part of the music business,
but that became my you know, responsibility. We became this
big business doing. My job was focused on how do
(37:51):
we deliver our P and L and how do we
make our business plan? And Steve hated the idea of that,
and I hated that he hated the idea of that,
and I understood why he hated it, but it's like,
you can't have your cake and eat it too. You
can't get the big check, have the big staff, have
this big roster, and then just be like, well, fuck
you guys. That's the bullshit part of the business that
(38:12):
I hate. So that was ultimately the demise, because you
can't be this boutique, cool label and then have one
hundred artists. I think we were both aware that we
were losing the sauce, and we weren't emotionally evolved enough
to figure out how to get on the same page
and fix it.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I was resenting that.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
I felt like I was abandoned trying to keep this
thing going on my own in a way, and Steve
resented that it was, you know, monolith, even though he
was clearly a big part of creating the monolith. We
always loved each other and we were always friends, but
I think we both kind of resented each other.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
I decide during that time, I'm moving to Hawaii and
I have enough money, and I'm gonna send Timmy back
my portion of the money, and ill right, Tommy is
a letter. I didn't do emails and I was quitting.
I didn't tell Rich, I didn't tell anybody, and I
feel like forty pounds later, like this is just off
my head, Like I'm good, We're gonna move here.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
While Steve was in Hawaii, one of lad's most successful
young artists, Big Pun, was on the verge of dropping
his highly anticipated sophomore album, Yeah Baby, and Shaun c
was working diligently with Pun to get that record across
the goal line.
Speaker 10 (39:31):
We're basically finished the album and we were going to
do like three more street songs. It's had more thing
songy records, and so I was like, we should make
a little bit more, you know, a couple more street records,
and we were working on getting those done. And I
remember being in an A and R meeting and them
asking when do you think you will turn the album in.
(39:53):
I had just left Pun, actually, and I saw how
bad his health was.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
He could barely breathe, and it.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Was just bad.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
It was the worst that I had seen him.
Speaker 10 (40:02):
I literally said in an an R meeting like I
can't with a clear conscious like asked this man to
record new songs. Not like there was pressure from the
label to do it. They just were asking me. When
it was the album going to be done, and when.
Speaker 5 (40:15):
Was I turn it in?
Speaker 10 (40:17):
And I said, we have these new songs that we're
working on, but I can't with like, like, honestly, ask
this guy, like, when are you going to record the song?
Speaker 4 (40:26):
Like he's dying. He can barely breathe.
Speaker 10 (40:28):
And I was on my way to the airport and
he called me. It was sometimes hard to understand what
he was saying because of his breathing.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
He asked me where I was going.
Speaker 10 (40:37):
I said, I'm going to LA. I couldn't understand him,
and then the phone hung up, and I was like, oh,
I'll hit him when I get to LA.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Nobody knows I'm in Hawaii. Rich doesn't know where I am.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
Nobody does.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Only my mother and I see two big samoans come
running up to the court, mister Rik and mister Rifkin.
You have an emergency in the mainland and a trich
on the phone. I'm thinking somebody died. Well, somebody did die.
Speaker 10 (41:02):
When I left in New York, he was alive. When
I got off the plane, he was dead.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Pun's death sent shockwaves throughout Loud. In an instant, one
of the label's most promising young stars was no more
on top of that, the label spending had gotten out
of control. Ladd had sold tens of millions of records
but had no profit to show for it, and now
Sony was putting the screws to Rich to find out
what happened.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
We started losing money, We started getting out of control
with the marketing and the signings. And I remember that
the guy who really was like the CEO of Sony
that really ran the day to day of the global companies,
this guy Mel Ilberman. I had a really good relationship
with mel and he take me out for launch and
be like, I don't understand. I never saw anything like this.
You guys, No matter what you put out sells one
(41:49):
hundred thousand units. That's amazing your brand and how you
do it. But you got to control this spending. Me
and Steve were never on the same page on that.
I think they just lost faith in us running a business,
and our business started to suffer. They exercised their controls
and said you can't do certain things now without us
signing off, and then that led to another confrontation, and
(42:13):
then they finally said we got to make a change here, guys,
and then they bought us out.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
But it wasn't under the terms that were what we
were hoping for, and we really didn't have much choice.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
We had a lunch with them and they basically told
us this was what's happening.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
I think Steve he was really depressed after that.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
He realized, like, Wow, we fucked this up, both of us,
not just Steve.
Speaker 4 (42:34):
So we made some.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
Arrangement where I would kind of gradually reduce the staff,
and I felt I needed to do it myself. So
I was literally firing people that were like family to
me on a monthly weekly basis till we got to
a certain point and then that was it.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
We weren't moving as a union anymore. Rich was getting
beat up by quarterly numbers. D these numbers, that numbers.
I didn't want to hear it, and I didn't want
to deal with it. I already had a wall around me,
like I had no emotion. I was almost relieved. I
think it was the first day I didn't have a
panic attack in two years. I didn't have a fight
with rich that day. Like I mean, me and Richard
brothers literally we've known each other since was seven years old.
(43:16):
So I was relieved.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
It took a while for me to realize the method
to the madness that Steve had, you know, the collection
of people, and then going Okay, Steve's collected all these people,
but he hasn't thought about how it's going to work.
Speaker 4 (43:30):
He just knows.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
I got to have be in business with Fat Joe.
I got to have Combe Chantrelle, you know on the
Loud payroll. I gotta have Maddie c. I gotta be
in business with Scooter Braun. He was amazing at identifying talent,
finding the right people, and by then I learned that
that was his greatest skill, greatest attribute as an executive,
(43:51):
as a talent finder. It wasn't so much his musical ear,
although he loves music and he has a good year.
It was his ear and instinct for people.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
We used to call rain Man.
Speaker 8 (44:01):
He picked those artists Steve did in that way. Man,
he had a run, in my humble opinion, is as
great as anybody anyone in the business.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
His run is incredible.
Speaker 6 (44:13):
We had so many creatives in the building that we
needed a person like rich and at the same time
like he's two damn near best friends that grew up
together in Merricka, Long Island and since childhood it's like,
you know, me starting a company and you know, going
to get one of my day ones and being like, yo, bro,
just come aboard and let's just have fun with this.
Speaker 8 (44:32):
Rich was the glue. He's incredible how he kept it
together the way he did when you look back, he
was extremely responsible and he was Devil's advocate.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
You know, Steve was clever.
Speaker 8 (44:47):
To know to bring Rich there and to have him there.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
We couldn't have done it without him.
Speaker 8 (44:53):
Could not have done it without Rich.
Speaker 7 (44:55):
The special thing about Loud Records I would have to
say is that they took chances or artists that other
labels would. You know, Mom Deep wasn't a safe bet,
you know what I'm saying. I'm sure Wu Tang wasn't
a safe bet, but they took chances for that They'll
forever be remembered. I don't even know what hip hop
would be without a Loud Records.
Speaker 4 (45:19):
I learned a lot. I learned how you have to empower.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
People, you have to teach people, you have to be
honest with people. I enjoyed that part of my job
the most, and I really learned a lot at LOUD.
I think we had a lot of young people that
never had jobs before that never worked, and nobody ever
worked in an environment like Loud, myself included.
Speaker 4 (45:39):
But I think it was a.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Super unique thing, and I think most people will look
back and say that was the best time in my life.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
That was the best job I ever had.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Nobody had experience, including me and Rich. Rich might have
had mower experience. I might have grew up in the
music business, but we never had a company. Yeah, I
had a marketing company, we didn't have a record company,
and we made our own rules. Rich I couldn't have
asked for a better partner. He understood me like when
I had because of my dyslexio or whatever, and just
(46:11):
when words that I couldn't get out or couldn't pronounce,
like he read my mind, even if he didn't understand
it or disagreed with it, he would still get the
ball over the finish line, Maddie Free and so on. Shauncey.
They kept it as authentic and as real as possible.
Mojo and my brother Jonathan, they were the best promotion
(46:34):
due to me, in the history of the music business.
We just focused on everybody's strength and we really became
a family. We would be there for everybody, not just
me and Rich, but the whole unit, from the receptionist
to a security guy, to Maddie to Free to Mojo
to John. You know, is like it really was a family,
and I think that's what made us so special.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
From the Wu Tang Revolution to Mob Deep's unrelentingly rugged
anthems to Big Pun's brutal lyricism and pop appeal, Loud
shaped the sound of hip hop in the nineties, and
all that art only exists in the world as it
does due to the confluence of voices and personalities that
made Loud. Each and every member of the staff bought
a unique perspective and talent that contributed to gifting us
(47:22):
the public with those magical moments. Ultimately, the inspired chaos
that generated Loud success may also have led to their undoing,
but it's clear that each team member enjoys a pride
in their contribution to the culture and maybe more so,
a gratitude for the many lessons learned along the way,
and we the audience share in that gratitude for music
(47:42):
that I say, without hyperbole, changed lives and changed the world.
Hip Hop would not be where it is today if
Steve Rich and the rest of the team had not
turned up the volume and made it loud. If you've
enjoyed this episode, please don't hesitate to like, comment DM,
(48:06):
or tell a friend to tell a friend about Idea
Generation and the All Angles Podcast. This episode was brought
to you by Will Packer Executive produced by John Volachick
and Helena Ox, original music by Valentine Fritz, edit and
sound mixed by Nonsensible Production, and hosted by me Idea
(48:26):
Generation founder Noah Callahan bever Idea Generations. All Angles is
a Will Packer Media podcast
Rich One and more recognition from me. I really didn't
give a fuck anymore. I thought that was on an
island by myself. So I named rich president and I'm
like you running, go ahead, do what you gotta do.
I was just like, I truly hit it.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome to Idea Generations All Angles, a podcast about culture's
most influential brands and the teams that build them. If
you're an entrepreneur, creative, or anyone interested in harnessing the
power of collaboration, join me Noah Callahan Bever each week
as we dissect the most dynamic companies in culture. Because
the only way to truly understand success is to look
(00:44):
at it from all angles. Idea Generations All Angles is
a Will Packer Media podcast. Welcome back for part two
of our two part Lab Record Story. After starting with
(01:09):
a novelty act in Tongue Twister and having been through
the industry, Ringer Lad Records founder Steve Rifkin and Rich
Isaacson had finally gained some footing with their breakthrough release
Wu Tang Clan's debut Long Player, entered the thirty six Chambers.
With that success under their belt, Lab were officially players
in the game, But neither the staff nor the artist
(01:30):
had any idea just how big the label was about
to become or how quickly it would all unravel. But
before life would come at them fast, the Loud Gang
were still reveling in Wu Tang Clan's sudden stardom. This
is Rich Isaacson, co founder of Laud Records.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I think we did thirty thousand the first week, which
was a massive number in those days over the counter.
Then it just kept every week, another twenty five, another thirty.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
We hit fifty thousand. I think in ten days.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
It wasn't like now when a hip hop record would
come out, do a huge first week and then the
second week would decline sixty percent or seventy percent.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Wu Tang just was solid for like a year, just.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Kept going and going, and it became this underground massive
phenomenon and brought New York hip hop back. The pendulum
had swung from New York to La and Doctor Dre
and Snoop Dogg, and there was a whole West Coast
movement dominating hip hop. So Wu Tang was really completely raw,
(02:42):
completely New York and resonated not just in New York,
surprisingly resonated in the South, but in the West Coast.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
As the Wu Tang phenomenon broke nationally, Maddy C, still
the writer in New York City at The Source Magazine,
remained close with his college buddy Scott Free DNR and
Wu Tang's inside man at the label. Together, the two
started plotting on signing Loud's next act, a teenage duo
from Queensbridge known as Mob Deep. Just like Wu Tang,
(03:11):
the duo debuted on another label, missed the mark creatively
and flopped commercially, but Matt and Scott had been tracking
them for years and knew where things had gone wrong.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
There was a lot of excitement about the Source, almost
more so than record labels.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
This is Matti C, writer at The Source magazine and
eventual director of A and R at Loud.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
And I think there were a lot of artists up
and coming perspective Unsigned who felt like the Source had
people up there who understood hip hop more than a
lot of the record labels did. Demos were just getting
mailed in because of the fact that the audience understood
that we got it and that we might be able
to provide some sort of access.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
Matt did an Unsigned hype column that was just dedicated
to like talking about MC's that were coming up.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
This is Scott Free, director of an R Loud.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
Records Poetical Profits, who later became Mob Deep more part
of that common Sense, who was later walked to Relativity.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
And then there was a guy named.
Speaker 6 (04:09):
Bickie Small's who was walked to bad Boy, amongst a
few others. But all of these coming from Maddie's column essentially,
So in my mind, Matt had already been been doing
a and R.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
Scott like just had that passion like me to kind
of listen and go through a lot of different music.
Speaker 6 (04:28):
Matt was just blaming the Mob Deep stuff, which was
phenomenal at the time. Me Matt stretched rebugging at how
they had grown. Mob was about sixteen seventeen and so
when they made you know, the initial stuff, so now
we saw them as kind of sounded like they were
coming into their prime and finding themselves. I wanted to
bring that to Loud. I remember Steve being like, yo,
(04:48):
they sold twenty thousand records on their first album, like
this is this is how you want to start off?
And I was like, yeah, yeah, we're gonna make a
classic record with these kids. Steve was definitely about the
artist first. Steve knew when something had momentum to move,
you know what I.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Mean that we may have been hesitant at first, Steve
trusted his team, followed their instincts, and signed Mob Deep.
After an underwhelming debut on Fourth and Broadway Records, Prodigy
and Havoc were looking for a situation where they could
have complete creative control of their music. Luckily for the duo,
Steve didn't believe in saying no.
Speaker 7 (05:28):
What made us want to go to Loud was the
things that they was offering to us. You know, they said, look,
we feeling y'all. They appreciated our music.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
This is Havoc, producer, rapper, and one half of Mob Deep.
Speaker 7 (05:39):
And they said, if we was the sign to that
label that creatively we would have the reins to do
whatever we wanted to do. They wouldn't bother us. They
would just let us do us. And that was attractive
to us, you know what I mean. A label saying, Yo,
we're gonna let y'all do what y'all do. We're not
gonna bother y'all. We give y'all all the creative control.
That was very attractive to being Prodigy.
Speaker 5 (05:59):
At that time, creative control was the big issue, and
especially in hip hop, the idea that these bigger rap records,
in order to have a budget, we're going to have
executives coming in. Puppeteering aspects of how these records are
made not just not happening.
Speaker 8 (06:15):
You know.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
There was a whole kind of counter movement against that,
right and against making records that even smelled like that, right,
and to keep it real movement happened, right, keep the
tims in the army fatigues, movement like this kind of
dichotomy that's always been there in rap, right between the
rimey side and the shiny side.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Scott Free and Maddie c.
Speaker 7 (06:41):
It was like Big Brothers to us, guiding us through
this second album without doing the infamous album wouldn't have
been the infamous album because they had the constructive criticism
and followed their league, you know what I mean. They
guided us.
Speaker 5 (06:54):
The process became emulating what I saw the greats doing,
you know, and I know that already have had learned
from watching Large Professor and Premiere and Pitt of Me,
you know, doing the first Juvenile Hell album. You know,
and you know, my goal was really to give him
the confidence.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
That was the most important record in Loud history. Even
though we got Wu Tang, we needed a follow up.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
This is Steve Rifkint, founder of Loud.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Records, and when Havoc and Prodigy and Maddie came to
the fucking office to play that album, I cried, and
I knew that we had another platinum record. We're not
a one trick pony.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
The Infamous proved that Loud was more than just a
one act wonder, and Steve was hyper aware that the
album's success was the direct result of Scott and Maddie's chemistry.
In order to continue this momentum, Steve needed Maddie to
join Lab full time and lead the A and R department.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
Scott put in his ear, Yo, Matt, that's mat shit,
Like you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
You got to get mad over here. And then both
of them, you know, took me out a couple of times.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
They tried to get me do A and R, and
I was like, yeah, I want to do A and R,
but I'm mostly like I want to fuck with these
producers all these and help, you know. I felt like
I had kind of helped Big on his first album
with a few producers, and I was excited to bring
producers to artists type of thing and then possibly help
with publishing deals. So Steve hooks me up with BMV
Publishing Clyde Lieberman, and I started doing that too, and
(08:17):
I was like, Okay, I'll lay in our mob deep two.
It goes well, I'll keep doing that. And obviously as
mob Beat started to do real but it was just
to shoe in and that's what I was doing, and
I stopped kind of showing up at the source as much,
and by ninety four I was just Loud A and R.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Matty c set the tone for the A and R
department with his attention to detail and steadfast commitment to
honoring the artist vision. Scott Free would take Matt's Q
and push Riza and Ray Kwan as they crafted Louds
next release only built for Cuban Links.
Speaker 6 (08:47):
Maddy was really ill like about production, so he'd go
back in, do another recall, add a little kick to
stand whatever. It was like. We were really aintal about
the quality of the sound of the music itself.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
I think my huge advantage was being at the source
and being able to see into every label and every
project before and after it came out and understand what
was working and what was it.
Speaker 6 (09:16):
We ab we compared everything like Doctor Dre's Chronic album
that was always the test, like you know, yo, my
shit got us come behind Dre's and the club and
you know, not miss a step. And I'm telling Ray,
I'm like, yo, man, make sure all our shit got
drums in it.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Fuck that.
Speaker 6 (09:33):
Don't let Rod hit you with the just the loop
like whatever whatever, because Yo, man, we're trying to bang
in the club. All that's cool if you just listening
on your walk man and all, but like, Yo, make
sure this whole album got drums in it.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
You know.
Speaker 6 (09:45):
It kind of got back to Rob, and you know
Rob kind of felt like me and mad with this
and his drum game. Okay, well, you know it is
what it is.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Like.
Speaker 6 (09:56):
You know, I wasn't crazy about the drums on Meth album.
Some of them, like you know, and the Ruckus was ill.
But then you had a couple that was like, uh.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
You know, you know, like listen to to cal Man,
you can't really listen to album cuts and if you DJ,
you definitely can't play them, you know what I mean,
It just sound muddy.
Speaker 9 (10:15):
So when you go to the Cuban LNS album. I
remember walking into here incarcerated scarfaces and I come in
and Rob puts it up, and the whole time he's
playing it, he's just looking at me in my face
like he's doing that the Raquines thing or whatever, and
he's looking at me in my face like like, say
something about my drums right now, I dare you.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
You know, I feel like he was looking dead at
me too, and he said that. I think Rizzard made
his point.
Speaker 6 (10:41):
I was in stun shock mode, you know, He's like, yeah, yeah,
I'm like, Yo, that's that's the bar Rod, that's the bar.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
I still feel like, you know, proud to have kind
of lit a fire under his ass about that, because again,
it speaks for itself now.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The following year, Matt and Scott would add an up
and coming producer to their A and R roster. Shawn C,
who had just got in a placement on Jay Z's
Reasonable Doubt, was looking for any entree into the music
industry and jumped at the opportunity to help with Mob
Deep's Hell on Earth sessions.
Speaker 10 (11:20):
What I learned from Maddy C the way that he
ran the A and R department was never.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Tell the artists what to do.
Speaker 10 (11:27):
If you want large professor to produce something for mob Deep,
just create the situation where lard happens to be in
the same room with them and let it be organic.
LUD was run where the artist had the creative control,
and we were lucky enough to get artists that really
were super dope. You know that we didn't have to
(11:48):
guide as much. We just kind of created that environment
for them in order to make the records that they
did and get their vision out.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
There was a great morale in the beginning of Loud
New York, like everybody was kind of on board, on
the same page, unified.
Speaker 10 (12:10):
The culture of.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
LAD was coming into focus. They were hip, brash and
ahead of the curve. And as the roster grew, so
too did the staff. Stephen Rich hired Steve's brother, Jonathan,
an accomplished promotion executive, to run radio. Olukuru joined his
creative director and Charlene Thomas's project manager, amongst so many
other talented additions to the team.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
So I moved back to New York, start working the building,
develop relationships with all the people at RCAA, learn how
a real record company is run. Everything from A and
R administration, to production, to creative services, to royalties, all
the unsexy, uncool things. That's what I knew I had
(12:50):
to learn for us to be able to build a
real business and take it to the next level. So
I'm spending more time there. Steve's coming back and forth
and he realizes, Okay, York or is where hip hop is.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
He has to have a present there too.
Speaker 7 (13:03):
When it came to Steve, Rikin and Rich, they was
like the coolest CEOs that you can ever have of
a record company. You know what I mean. Because we
was on Fourth and Broadway. We never even seen the
CEO of the label or the president or anybody like that.
We only dealt with the A and r's. So to
be able to hang out with the CEOs of the
(13:24):
label and play basketball with them and hang out until
that was important because it created a family environment.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
In no time, louds officers in LA and New York
were the place to be. You never knew what you
might hear or who you might see.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
It just became like the hangout.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
We were outside of Union Square where NYU is right
by the subway. All young people who love hip hop
and in those days. As I said, it was a
real community. So at any given time, one of the
artists would you pop into the office. Then some mixtape
guy would show up, some pot dealer would show up,
and all of a sudden, it was just a cool
hang in our office.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
It was complete chaos.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
We had strippers in the office for Ray Kwanin's birthday.
It was the least professional place he could possibly imagine.
Speaker 10 (14:16):
If you were in the office at night, there'd be
a lot of things going on in there. That's a
lot of crazy shit going on on those couches, a
lot of weeds, smoke, which seemed like it was normal.
Like at a record label. You walk in and you
know Ray is back there, Old Dirty is back there.
I remember being in a listener room and Dirty came
(14:36):
in and he was like, oh, I got new speakers.
Those speakers are dope. He's like, I need I need
some speakers like this from my from my studio. And
then LV who ended up being my production partner the later,
was coming up to check me and he was like, yo,
I was just in the elevator with Old Dirty and
he had two speakers on his shoulders.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
He said he was coming out.
Speaker 9 (14:59):
I was going there.
Speaker 10 (15:00):
He said he was singing Rick James walking with these
speakers and security stopped him and he was like, what
you're talking about these.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Moss because the.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
Like he's told his bakers out.
Speaker 6 (15:12):
Of the office.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Another artist that became larger than life at LOUD was
Big Punisher aka Big Pun. The Bronx born rapper was
buzzing in the streets of New York, but Loud would
turn him into a global superstar. But before that could happen,
Steve would have to sign him first.
Speaker 10 (15:33):
Steve would just go into business with people that he
believed in their vision more than the music. He kind
of prided himself and signing shit that nobody else would sign,
you know what I mean. And that was kind of
like what his vibe was like, you know, with Pun,
he wanted to do business with Fat Joe because nobody
wanted to go in business with Joe, so he wanted
to do that because of that vib.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
I must have gotten ten calls saying, don't do business
with Joe. He's a killer and extortionist, this that, so
and so and so on. Right, so I meet Joe
over the phone. I said, I'm going to La on
a Thursday to see my kids.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
I'll be back Monday. Let's meet Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Joe comes to the media, and I fell in love
with Joe. The second you're welcome, I said, let me
talk to you. Everybody said not to do business with you, this, that,
so and so on. He said, I'm a real fucking gangster.
I go, I want to show everybody wrong. All we
did was laugh. Pun wasn't even at the fucking meeting.
I go, bring Pun Thursday. But Joe, please be on time. Listen,
(16:32):
I'm flying home to be with my wife and kids.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
But Joe wasn't the only person Steve was concerned about
being on time for the meeting.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Meeting Saya at eleven thirty. I have a three hundred
thousand dollars check waiting for Maddie that he hasn't picked
up in six fucking weeks. He'd never be in the office.
Speaker 5 (16:48):
He tells this story a lot about my lateness. I
don't I don't appreciate that too much as a grown man.
But yeah, probably back then. Uh, not not quite as
diseased as the artist with the late in this effect.
But yet, I too was not that enthusiastic to make.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
It to morning pep talk staff.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Meetings, right.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
I would try to explain, like we worked into the
wee hours of night, we go to the studio, we
go to the club. Yet I'm not gonna make it
to the nine o'clock ten o'clock meeting on time.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
So I walk in see Maddie in the office, like,
what are you doing here? He goes, don't we have
a meeting with pun? I'm like, you're here for this?
They walk in. I said, you got a deal? Who's
your attorney? They all looked at me like I'm fucking
on crack. Joe goes, don't bullsheit me. I said, I'm
not bullshit. I said, who's your attorney? Maddie says, we
haven't heard music? I said, Mattie, you're here. He must
(17:40):
be a fucking star. He said, who's your attorney? Tim?
Manda Bell I call up Ten? I said, here's two
point fifty. We closed it right there to that Tim
came to the office.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
In all honesty, it's not one with my you know,
detailed stories of memory the way it is to Steve.
But what I do remember is Steve like inventing this
joke at that moment and never letting it go like
Maddie's here on time. He feels like he can make
that point in a short sentence. I signed a Pun
(18:11):
because Maddie showed up on time, You know what I mean?
And so yeah, it's cool. You know that's I like it.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Punctuality aside, Steve's signing Pun just because Maddy made the
meeting is also a testament to how much trust he
had in Mattie's ear In that moment, Steve's instinct for
reading people in talent were unmatched by anything other than
his confidence in his own process. With Pun on the roster,
Lad was about to be the hottest label in hip hop,
but the once controlled chaos that fueled their rise was
(18:44):
rapidly becoming entirely uncontrolled.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
We went from putting out one or two records a year,
selling a couple hundred thousand a year, which was substantial,
Wu Tang selling a million copies, Rayquon selling a million copies,
The Alcoholics a couple hundred thousand, mob deep going goal.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
So I don't think I caught up.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I don't think my learning curd was steep enough because
I'm spending my time doing crazy things like I'm actually
dealing with the production people and making sure that the
record got delivered on time, and making sure that the
publicist has photos of the photo shoot or whatever.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
So I was doing such.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Dumb minute things and learning that I wasn't paying enough
attention to really realizing how big our business was becoming.
Speaker 10 (19:37):
It was my first A and R job, so I
had nothing to compare it to, you know, just every
night eating somewhere.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
I never spent my own money.
Speaker 10 (19:44):
I like lived on my expense account and studio sessions,
like just booking it, booking and booking it until later
and not really realizing like this isn't really what you're
supposed to be doing, like you should be paying attention
to the money, like, oh, we book it and I
went through two block at the same time, and we'll
have a room where you can go in here, and
then you can come in here. And back then it
(20:06):
wasn't you know, there were no home studios, so everything
was expensive. Wu Tang's first video, they were the first
million dollar video too, that I feel like was warranted though,
because it was it was Wu Tang.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Clin the second Wu Tang album, you know, that was
when we truly went to the next level.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
The second Wu Tang album was a game changer.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
That was the beginning of the end. Actually for us.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
We were young guys who had this cool company of
all young hungry kids who never had a job anywhere,
let alone in music, and we're just renegades and making
it up as we go along, and we're like pinching
ourselves on a weekly basis, going can you believe this
is happening kind of thing. But after a certain period
(20:50):
of time, you're like, Okay, I want to make some money.
You know, we wanted to make money. Bands wanted to
make money. The staff wanted to make money. At the beginning,
they're like, yeah, it's cool if you pay me three
hundred dollars a week, but we're selling millions of records.
You guys are probably making millions. We want to get paid.
Of course we weren't, but that was the impression. It
never lost the culture and the community of the company,
(21:11):
but it started becoming Okay, everybody wants to make money.
When Wu Tang came out with the second album, we
became a joint venture.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
We got kind of cocky.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Wu Tang Forever sold over six hundred thousand units in
its first week and catapulted loud into another stratosphere. Naturally,
Steve decided it was time for him and his partners
to get paid, so we started renegotiating their deal directly
with straus Selnick, the chairman of rcia's parent company BMG.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Now where we're negotiating every ten minutes. So Strauss calls me,
who is the chairman of BMG, and says, meet me
at the Regency Hotel Thursday at nine o'clock. I drive
the day before on that Wednesday to see who's there,
and Summer Redstones there. Rupert Murdoch's there.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yes, that Rupert Murdoch, media mogul and chairman and CEO
of Fox.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
This motherfucker is gonna try and embarrass me. I come
in a pair of blue cargo shorts, Michael Jordan, North
Carolina tank top with a T shirt underneath, and Strass
is in a suit. At that time, we're doing the
Thursday night lineup on Fox Marketing wise, which was Martin
Latifa Show New York Undercover. Stress. As I can't go
(22:23):
any further and we're sitting across from each other, I
said Strass, the deals up in four months. I've been
broke this long. I could wait another four months and
if you know the deal, everything comes with me anyway,
and I slammed the table. Group at Murdoch comes to
the table. This is why I got rid of you.
Strass was president of Fox. He goes, when you see
somebody with this type of passion, you're arguing over money.
(22:47):
I have no idea who this guy is. I introduced myself.
I said, I'm very close with your son, James. As
a matter of fact, I do a lot of work
for you. I do all the marketing for your Thursday
night lineup. And I leave and I'm actually I'm at
peace with myself, like, if he comes, great, If not,
we'll get a huge fucking deal in November. But I
know Rich and my brother they want the money. I
(23:08):
wanted the money too, but I was truly at peace
with myself. So instead of going to the office, I
walked to my house. So Grooman calls and I'm not
picking up the phone, and he goes, whenever you get this,
I got great news and betan news. So I call
him and he goes. Murdoch called me, you really slammed
the table. So I tell him the story. I'm like, so,
(23:29):
what's the great news. You're getting what you want from Strass.
I go, what's the Betan news? He goes. Rubert Murdach
called me and they're gonna give you fifteen thousand a
month from the fifteen thousand a month they were giving you.
And I was like wow.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
And just like that, in a basketball jersey and cargo shorts,
Steve had manifested another new deal, transcending from music industry
Maverick into Flah powerbroker.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Our marketing business was exploding because every time we had
a hit, everybody wanted to be in business with us
on the marketing.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Side because they're like, wow, how do these guys do it?
How do they have hit after hit.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
And then not on the radio and they're doing all
this underground marketing. We want the secret sauce, and they
hire us, and we started doing marketing for corporations. We
started doing marketing for Nike, for Mirrimax Films, for Tommy Hillfigure.
Then we got a first look deal with Mirrimax Films
and we had a film company.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
So we're just exploding.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
So it's becoming this big business and then what happens Egos,
Steve's becoming this celebrity, you know, he's becoming this big name.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
In hip hop.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
I'm kind of trying to keep the fort together. Jonathan,
our other partner, Steve's brother, is trying to keep the
radio situation together and the marketing company together. We're hiring
new people because we realize we have to do all
the things that we're trying to do. We need to
professionalize it. Yet we can't lose what got us here.
So there became this tension. Me and Steve started fighting
(25:09):
all the time because I was kind of like being
the grown up and trying to be responsible. And now
we're getting real money from our partners. We have a
real overhead, we have a big roster, and I'm trying
to honor that and run it like a business. And
Steve's kind of like going, you know, you're making this
like an accounting firm. This is a record company, and
I'm like, yeah, it's not exactly an accounting firm, but
(25:31):
you know, we have to keep it together. And you
could tell there were factions within the company. There were
rich people and then there were Steve people, and everybody
kind of respected each other, but tensions started to evolve,
tension between us and attention within the staff.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Although Rich and Steve tried to keep their rift discrete. Eventually,
even the rank and file employees like Sean C noticed
the vibe shift.
Speaker 10 (26:00):
During that period of time, I didn't see Steve a lot.
I saw Rich more. I realized there was something there,
and it was something going on with Steve. I didn't
know to the extent until later, to my detriment and
also to my credit, I was just the music guy,
you know what I'm saying. I was more focused on life.
All right, I'm gonna get to death press record.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
So I was aware of it.
Speaker 10 (26:22):
I remember Steve coming in the office and saying, alcoholics
better sell four million records or else everyone's.
Speaker 5 (26:28):
Fired, and we're like what.
Speaker 10 (26:31):
I had stopped seeing him for a while, and when
I saw him he would say shit like that, and
then lead we were like, he's fucking just on one.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
He's wilding.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
We started getting so big and so successful and a
little full of ourselves in a little bit too ambitious.
We were hitting our numbers and they kept saying yes
to anything we asked for. At that point, then we
started doing crazy stuff like let's start a rock label,
Let's do a joint venture with Violator, let's do a
joint venture with PMP, and all of a sudden, we
(26:59):
have overhead deals with this guy and overhead deals with
that guy and signing artists for seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars when we started out signing artists for ten
thousand dollars. And you know, at this time, hip hop
is just exploding. All the major labels have their own
hip hop departments. Like when we started, it was a novelty.
Now everybody's in it. Death Row Records is his own
(27:21):
phenomenon on the West Coast, Puffies label just set the
standard for you know, unprecedented hits one after another. Deaf
Jam starts getting hot basically off of the back of
Method Man. Then Atlantic Records is going on a role
like everybody's getting in the game. It's becoming super competitive.
So everything that we started doing was underground, and now
(27:43):
it's the hip hop industry.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
The music industry was catching up to Loud. Hip Hop
was no longer a niche market, and every major label
had started their own department. The competition was tougher, and
Loud was spending like crazy to keep up. To make
matters worse, they were missing out on signing some major
artists as well.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
When we opened that eight forty one Broadway, it was
Dame and Jay coming to see me. We had Jay
d signed for a twelve inch record was called Reach
the Top, and we recorded it Marvin Gay sample though,
so when we tried to clear the sample, we ran
into some issues. And then Dame came up a couple
times and got in the room with Rich and that didn't.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
Go so well.
Speaker 5 (28:23):
Rich wasn't feeling James so much, and I'm like, oh man,
the biggest fish that got away is Eminem. Shane Mooney,
who was our West Coast agnir, came in in the
listening room in loud and played me the Eminem song
about locking his girl in the Trump and I was like.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Nah, no bro out here, Let's play something else. I
wasn't feeling it.
Speaker 10 (28:49):
I wanted to try to sign Kanye. Hip Hop had
brought Kanye to me and he gave his demo like
he did everyone else, and I was like, he's super dope.
This this label was probably going to be here. I
knew that was happening.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
With these missed opportunities, and the labels continue to overspending
lab reach a breaking point and they're deal with RCA
and BMG. Pretty soon both parties started looking for a
way out.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
We started spending a million dollars every time we rolled
out a record. You know, we wanted to compete with
Bad Boy and def Jam, and you know you had
to because the artists now are demanding. You know, we
spend a million dollars on a mob deep video. How
stupid is that?
Speaker 7 (29:27):
Looking back on it, if I had a chance to
do it again, maybe I wouldn't spend that much on
a video and I would pull the.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Resources somewhere else.
Speaker 7 (29:36):
At the time, you know how Competitives was signing Brighton,
you know.
Speaker 5 (29:41):
What I mean.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
We didn't want Havic and Prodigy to come in our
office and say, hey, bad boys doing this. How come
you guys are trying to do one hundred thousand dollars video.
Speaker 7 (29:49):
You wanted to be on that level so it could
level the play and field, you know, for you against
your competition. So, you know, sad but true. The spending
definitely got out of control.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
It was very difficult to say no, and then we
started doing crazy things. And then at a certain point
BMG came in and said, hey, guys, you got to
rein it in and Steve more than mate. To be fair,
was kind of like, fuck them. We're building this amazing brand.
They don't believe in us.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Straus sends Pete Jones. Does a guy who we had
a report to now say we need more profits out
of it, And I'm like, mah, fuck that. Like I'm
just building them. I don't give a shit about the
bottom line. And I said that I think rich started
choking out a sushi. He goes, well, if that's the case,
you know that maybe we should probab waves. I said, okay,
(30:39):
So we literally become a free agent.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
And then finally we had to buy Cell come up
in our contract. Buy Cell is basically a mechanism to
get them to a place where they're buying us out
of our share of ownership, and of course we're up
for that because we know if we're successful, we're going
to get rich. We had what was called a shotgun
by I sell, which means the party that initiated said okay,
(31:04):
I want to buy. The seller then says okay, if
you want to buy, this is the price, and if
the buyer thinks the price is too high, the seller
then has to buy the buyer out for the price
that they state, So it's really like a game of chicken.
BMD said, okay, we're out. We want to exercise the
buy sell. Now it's us to say, okay, the price
(31:26):
is fifty million. So if we say fifty million and
they think it's too high, we're obligated to buy them
out for fifty million, and if we can't come up
with it, they get the company. So basically they came
up and said we went out. We were in debt
to them at the time, we were losing money. We
had all these unrecouped balances for our artists. You know,
(31:49):
our overhead was too high. So our lawyer, Alan Grumman
just came up with a number. So he threw out
a number and Strauslnik said, fine, you get me that
and you can have the company. Alan was completely surprised
that they were willing to sell. He was so disenchanted
with how we were doing things. Now we have to
(32:10):
come up with that money to buy him out.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Well, Rich looked for ways to fund the buy out.
Word got out overnight that Loud and BMG were parting ways,
and the next morning it was front page news.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
The only person I thought that knew was groomman. But
I guess you told everybody that night was Clive Davis's
su pre dinner photogrammys. I felt like I was puff
Like all of a sudden, every fucking photographer like, I
don't know who set what up or whatever, but it's
like everybody knew we were free agents. Like the next
day in the New York Post said Loud is free.
(32:44):
We meet with grooman in the morning, Rich flies back.
I stay out here and we start taking meetings.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
I'm freaking the fuck out. Steven was like great, and
I'm like, you're out of your fucking mind. Who's gonna
buy us for that amount of money? Then what are
we going to get? So the clock's ticking. We meet
with everybody, because you know, everybody wanted to be in
business with us. We met with Jimmy Ivy, and we
met with Tom Wallly at Warner Brothers. We met with
every label head. Then they'd say, great, this is amazing,
(33:11):
and then they'd say, you know, get our CFO the numbers.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
Send him the numbers. No one's calling us back.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
All of a sudden, there's like a couple of weeks
left before this moment we're supposed to come up with
the money. Our Rabbi, Ron Urban from RCA is now
at Sony. He's like a coo at Sony Corporate. And
Sony had just made the biggest blunder of all time.
They sold deaf Jam to PolyGram. They let def Jam go.
(33:42):
Right after they let deaf Jem go, Warren g pops
def Jam blows up. They went on a run and
now Sony looks like idiots. They lost their hip hop label.
And Sony owned Relativity Records and Red Distribution at the time,
and Relativity wasn't doing so well.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
They wanted to make a change.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
So Ron Urban oversaw Relativity and read on behalf of Sony.
Steve meet to them and Ron said, I got a plan,
brings it to Tommy Mottola and Mel Oberman at Sony
and our lawyer had a great relationship with Tommy and
magically with you know, we literally like you know, it
(34:22):
was like a James Bond movie with double O seven
left on the clock. Sony comes to the table and says,
we're going to buy.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
The Sony deal saved Loud, but it also changed the
identity of the company. Instead of being a boutique label
run by a bunch of friends. They were now a
corporate entity with an office full of new employees, new policies,
and new processes. As a result, Steve made himself unavailable
and the rift between him and Rich grew deeper.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
On one level, I'm ecstatic because now we're with Sony.
They were like the New York Yankees of the music business,
the most successful, best run, sexiest company. We got raises,
we got the biggest check we ever got in our
lives as in advance, and now we have relativity. But
I'm also like, oh my god, I'm fucked because Steve
(35:15):
is never going to learn his lesson. He's actually getting
rewarded for his bad behavior because now the lesson for
us over playing our hand with BMG was we got
a bigger company, raises in a big check. I'm in
awe that Steve and we pulled off this coup at
the last minute. We had created such a name for
(35:36):
ourselves that we were still able to get you a
great deal. But at the same time, I was worried
that now we're not going to ever get on the
same page because I know in my heart this this
should never have happened this way, and Steve's going, yeah,
fuck it, this is how it works. Like we got
to get people who really believe in us and let
us do our thing so that tension didn't go away.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
I was now the president.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
You know, he wanted to empower me, and he wanted
to appease me, and he wanted to reward me.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Rich wanted more recognition from me. I really didn't give
a fuck anymore. I thought that was on an island
by myself. So I named Rich president and I'm like,
you running, go ahead, do what you gotta do. I
was just like, I truly hated it.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
I remember walking into the Relativity office and they had
their own creative department, their own finance department, their own
royalty department, their own business affairs department, their own sales team,
national promotions. You know, I'm still a kid in my head.
And then we had our staff, so they were you know,
probably over one hundred people plus the joint ventures and whatever.
(36:43):
And now I'm the president and I'm like a holy.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Shit, I think we went from a staff of like
thirty people to like two hundred people. They weren't now
with people, they were like real workers, like they had
like you know, they took it as a real job.
We took it as a real job, but it was
like we would stay in the office eleven o'clock a night,
shoot dice, we smoke weed, we drink, eat, you know,
go to this, go to that, you know. Like when
the bell rang, they were out and I was like, well, fuck,
(37:09):
does you look great? But it doesn't fit right. I
started having panic attacks, anxiety attacks, and it was was
just the worst experience of my life.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Steve was basically in la at the time and he
never wanted to deal with any of that kind of stuff.
I remember him coming into the office and he's like,
who are all these fucking people? Like what do they all? Did?
Speaker 4 (37:29):
You know?
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Like this is crazy, And I'm trying to explain to him, like,
now we're a full service label. This is what we
signed up for. We have all these different departments. That
was not the fun, sexy part of the music business,
but that became my you know, responsibility. We became this
big business doing. My job was focused on how do
(37:51):
we deliver our P and L and how do we
make our business plan? And Steve hated the idea of that,
and I hated that he hated the idea of that,
and I understood why he hated it, but it's like,
you can't have your cake and eat it too. You
can't get the big check, have the big staff, have
this big roster, and then just be like, well, fuck
you guys. That's the bullshit part of the business that
(38:12):
I hate. So that was ultimately the demise, because you
can't be this boutique, cool label and then have one
hundred artists. I think we were both aware that we
were losing the sauce, and we weren't emotionally evolved enough
to figure out how to get on the same page
and fix it.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I was resenting that.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
I felt like I was abandoned trying to keep this
thing going on my own in a way, and Steve
resented that it was, you know, monolith, even though he
was clearly a big part of creating the monolith. We
always loved each other and we were always friends, but
I think we both kind of resented each other.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
I decide during that time, I'm moving to Hawaii and
I have enough money, and I'm gonna send Timmy back
my portion of the money, and ill right, Tommy is
a letter. I didn't do emails and I was quitting.
I didn't tell Rich, I didn't tell anybody, and I
feel like forty pounds later, like this is just off
my head, Like I'm good, We're gonna move here.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
While Steve was in Hawaii, one of lad's most successful
young artists, Big Pun, was on the verge of dropping
his highly anticipated sophomore album, Yeah Baby, and Shaun c
was working diligently with Pun to get that record across
the goal line.
Speaker 10 (39:31):
We're basically finished the album and we were going to
do like three more street songs. It's had more thing
songy records, and so I was like, we should make
a little bit more, you know, a couple more street records,
and we were working on getting those done. And I
remember being in an A and R meeting and them
asking when do you think you will turn the album in.
(39:53):
I had just left Pun, actually, and I saw how
bad his health was.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
He could barely breathe, and it.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Was just bad.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
It was the worst that I had seen him.
Speaker 10 (40:02):
I literally said in an an R meeting like I
can't with a clear conscious like asked this man to
record new songs. Not like there was pressure from the
label to do it. They just were asking me. When
it was the album going to be done, and when.
Speaker 5 (40:15):
Was I turn it in?
Speaker 10 (40:17):
And I said, we have these new songs that we're
working on, but I can't with like, like, honestly, ask
this guy, like, when are you going to record the song?
Speaker 4 (40:26):
Like he's dying. He can barely breathe.
Speaker 10 (40:28):
And I was on my way to the airport and
he called me. It was sometimes hard to understand what
he was saying because of his breathing.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
He asked me where I was going.
Speaker 10 (40:37):
I said, I'm going to LA. I couldn't understand him,
and then the phone hung up, and I was like, oh,
I'll hit him when I get to LA.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Nobody knows I'm in Hawaii. Rich doesn't know where I am.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
Nobody does.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Only my mother and I see two big samoans come
running up to the court, mister Rik and mister Rifkin.
You have an emergency in the mainland and a trich
on the phone. I'm thinking somebody died. Well, somebody did die.
Speaker 10 (41:02):
When I left in New York, he was alive. When
I got off the plane, he was dead.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Pun's death sent shockwaves throughout Loud. In an instant, one
of the label's most promising young stars was no more
on top of that, the label spending had gotten out
of control. Ladd had sold tens of millions of records
but had no profit to show for it, and now
Sony was putting the screws to Rich to find out
what happened.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
We started losing money, We started getting out of control
with the marketing and the signings. And I remember that
the guy who really was like the CEO of Sony
that really ran the day to day of the global companies,
this guy Mel Ilberman. I had a really good relationship
with mel and he take me out for launch and
be like, I don't understand. I never saw anything like this.
You guys, No matter what you put out sells one
(41:49):
hundred thousand units. That's amazing your brand and how you
do it. But you got to control this spending. Me
and Steve were never on the same page on that.
I think they just lost faith in us running a business,
and our business started to suffer. They exercised their controls
and said you can't do certain things now without us
signing off, and then that led to another confrontation, and
(42:13):
then they finally said we got to make a change here, guys,
and then they bought us out.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
But it wasn't under the terms that were what we
were hoping for, and we really didn't have much choice.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
We had a lunch with them and they basically told
us this was what's happening.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
I think Steve he was really depressed after that.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
He realized, like, Wow, we fucked this up, both of us,
not just Steve.
Speaker 4 (42:34):
So we made some.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
Arrangement where I would kind of gradually reduce the staff,
and I felt I needed to do it myself. So
I was literally firing people that were like family to
me on a monthly weekly basis till we got to
a certain point and then that was it.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
We weren't moving as a union anymore. Rich was getting
beat up by quarterly numbers. D these numbers, that numbers.
I didn't want to hear it, and I didn't want
to deal with it. I already had a wall around me,
like I had no emotion. I was almost relieved. I
think it was the first day I didn't have a
panic attack in two years. I didn't have a fight
with rich that day. Like I mean, me and Richard
brothers literally we've known each other since was seven years old.
(43:16):
So I was relieved.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
It took a while for me to realize the method
to the madness that Steve had, you know, the collection
of people, and then going Okay, Steve's collected all these people,
but he hasn't thought about how it's going to work.
Speaker 4 (43:30):
He just knows.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
I got to have be in business with Fat Joe.
I got to have Combe Chantrelle, you know on the
Loud payroll. I gotta have Maddie c. I gotta be
in business with Scooter Braun. He was amazing at identifying talent,
finding the right people, and by then I learned that
that was his greatest skill, greatest attribute as an executive,
(43:51):
as a talent finder. It wasn't so much his musical ear,
although he loves music and he has a good year.
It was his ear and instinct for people.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
We used to call rain Man.
Speaker 8 (44:01):
He picked those artists Steve did in that way. Man,
he had a run, in my humble opinion, is as
great as anybody anyone in the business.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
His run is incredible.
Speaker 6 (44:13):
We had so many creatives in the building that we
needed a person like rich and at the same time
like he's two damn near best friends that grew up
together in Merricka, Long Island and since childhood it's like,
you know, me starting a company and you know, going
to get one of my day ones and being like, yo, bro,
just come aboard and let's just have fun with this.
Speaker 8 (44:32):
Rich was the glue. He's incredible how he kept it
together the way he did when you look back, he
was extremely responsible and he was Devil's advocate.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
You know, Steve was clever.
Speaker 8 (44:47):
To know to bring Rich there and to have him there.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
We couldn't have done it without him.
Speaker 8 (44:53):
Could not have done it without Rich.
Speaker 7 (44:55):
The special thing about Loud Records I would have to
say is that they took chances or artists that other
labels would. You know, Mom Deep wasn't a safe bet,
you know what I'm saying. I'm sure Wu Tang wasn't
a safe bet, but they took chances for that They'll
forever be remembered. I don't even know what hip hop
would be without a Loud Records.
Speaker 4 (45:19):
I learned a lot. I learned how you have to empower.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
People, you have to teach people, you have to be
honest with people. I enjoyed that part of my job
the most, and I really learned a lot at LOUD.
I think we had a lot of young people that
never had jobs before that never worked, and nobody ever
worked in an environment like Loud, myself included.
Speaker 4 (45:39):
But I think it was a.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Super unique thing, and I think most people will look
back and say that was the best time in my life.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
That was the best job I ever had.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Nobody had experience, including me and Rich. Rich might have
had mower experience. I might have grew up in the
music business, but we never had a company. Yeah, I
had a marketing company, we didn't have a record company,
and we made our own rules. Rich I couldn't have
asked for a better partner. He understood me like when
I had because of my dyslexio or whatever, and just
(46:11):
when words that I couldn't get out or couldn't pronounce,
like he read my mind, even if he didn't understand
it or disagreed with it, he would still get the
ball over the finish line, Maddie Free and so on. Shauncey.
They kept it as authentic and as real as possible.
Mojo and my brother Jonathan, they were the best promotion
(46:34):
due to me, in the history of the music business.
We just focused on everybody's strength and we really became
a family. We would be there for everybody, not just
me and Rich, but the whole unit, from the receptionist
to a security guy, to Maddie to Free to Mojo
to John. You know, is like it really was a family,
and I think that's what made us so special.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
From the Wu Tang Revolution to Mob Deep's unrelentingly rugged
anthems to Big Pun's brutal lyricism and pop appeal, Loud
shaped the sound of hip hop in the nineties, and
all that art only exists in the world as it
does due to the confluence of voices and personalities that
made Loud. Each and every member of the staff bought
a unique perspective and talent that contributed to gifting us
(47:22):
the public with those magical moments. Ultimately, the inspired chaos
that generated Loud success may also have led to their undoing,
but it's clear that each team member enjoys a pride
in their contribution to the culture and maybe more so,
a gratitude for the many lessons learned along the way,
and we the audience share in that gratitude for music
(47:42):
that I say, without hyperbole, changed lives and changed the world.
Hip Hop would not be where it is today if
Steve Rich and the rest of the team had not
turned up the volume and made it loud. If you've
enjoyed this episode, please don't hesitate to like, comment DM,
(48:06):
or tell a friend to tell a friend about Idea
Generation and the All Angles Podcast. This episode was brought
to you by Will Packer Executive produced by John Volachick
and Helena Ox, original music by Valentine Fritz, edit and
sound mixed by Nonsensible Production, and hosted by me Idea
(48:26):
Generation founder Noah Callahan bever Idea Generations. All Angles is
a Will Packer Media podcast
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