Can you give a brief background? Where are you from? What’s your current role?
I’m from Brooklyn, NY. I currently live in Los Angeles. I am the Senior Vice President of A&R at RCA Records.
What drew you to the music industry?
When I was younger, I always loved writing. I was big in poetry and all that type of jazz. I wanted to rap. At one point, I was kind of like I needed to figure out a way to get in the business, so a family friend of mine basically said, “why don’t you do an internship?” That’s how Diddy started, so I was like, “Oh shoot! That’s a great idea.” I looked at his [Diddy] journey. He went from being an intern to A&R to having his own label to putting out his own music, so I wanted to do the same thing. Ironically, my first internship was with Bad Boy [Records]. I went through that pathway, and I wasn’t as excited about rap anymore. I fell in love with A&R, and I wanted to pursue it.
Describe your day-to-day life. How much do you sleep? What time do you end?
A&R is pretty unique compared to a lot of jobs in the music business– [and] in entertainment– because you’re kind of on-call at all times. Because the work is fluid, when it is not as much, you can dictate your own hours. You could be at the studio until four in the morning every day. Other times, there is a lot to do and a lot expected. To me, it is all about what you get done as opposed to how you get it done. There’s a lot of people who are studio rats- you see it in their work. Then there are guys who are not as aggressive in the studio, and you can see it, and there are guys who aren’t as aggressive in the studio who have massive success. It’s fluid.
I try to get at least 7 hours of sleep. I think there’s a weird hype/nature of not sleeping- that it means hard work/hustle. I remember someone told me that all you need is 5 hours of sleep, and for a while, I was going off of that. It is such a horrendous way to live, so I try to get at least 7 hours of sleep, if not 8. Again though, there are times it doesn’t call for that. You know, being at a studio until 3 and a flight at 7. It is what it is. There’s no way around it.
What does music mean to you, and how has your love for music shifted after working in the music industry?
Music is everything. If it wasn’t for music, I don’t know if I would have a purpose. I think when I decided that I wanted to go onto this path of working in music, it was a crucial time in my life when I didn’t know myself that well. It [music] helped create parameters for me to learn, discover, and find the identities of not just me as an executive, but for me as a man, and what would help to define me. Music actually means the world to me. When you get deep into the business, you have to accept this kind of thing. I love music, and I find many ways to keep my fandom up, whether by buying vinyl or merch or whatever the case may be, or listening to shit I like. I try to keep things that make it feel like a fandom. I also know it’s a business, and I have to have the mentality of that, so I can’t have a skewed perspective of them [fandoms].
You love music, and music is super important in coping. What songs/artists make you feel better?
Oh man, that’s tough. In terms of songs, there are so many at this point, so I don’t really have. It’s funny because a lot of the artists I don’t think off the top because I’ve burnt them out from listening so much to them, but Kendrick Lamar, early Jay Z, early to mid-Kanye, Biggie. I love Haim. Days Are Gone is one of my favorite albums of all time. Enter the Wu-Tang. There’s a lot. Crazy, Sexy, Cool by TLC.
What is something you wish you knew before getting into the music industry?
I wish I knew not to compare myself to people as much as I did coming up. I still do to a degree, but I’m a lot better at it now. It was like that in my early career, I was comparing myself to other people’s movements. You realize that that doesn’t mean anything. Your timeline and someone else’s timeline are not the same at all.
What specific mental health issues pop up in your line of work?
I think anxiety, in general, is massive because the thing about the business is you learn that you go through a rollercoaster of emotions on any given day. You know, yesterday I had a particularly awesome day with a lot of really good stuff that came together, but by the end of the day, I was so exhausted off of just the highs. Even though highs are good, highs are adrenaline, which takes away energy. On the adverse, there are lows. I always say that there was one time in my career- one of the best moments of my career, I found out that a record went #1, and then 40 minutes later, I found out another artist that I had signed and was super hype and proud about, got involved in a big controversy. Also, you have to manage so many people’s personalities and so many people’s frame of thought. So many people come from different places and have different ways of handling things and actualizing things, so you have to know how to deal with those things, and you’re taking on their personalities and their energies with your bandwidth. It’s a lot. That’s just isolated to that in general broad strokes. That’s not even talking about the specifics of whatever you’re dealing with on a personal basis. Anxiety can get really, really bad in a lot of different ways.
What is something you wish you could change about your job and what is something you wish you could change about the music industry as a whole?
It’s funny. I don’t think there’s anything I would want to change about my job. I always say you know what it is when there’s something we should accept as what they are because it is what it is. Some of the cons I don’t like one day can become a pro, and a pro can become a con one day. It just is what it is for me. In regards to what I would change about the music business, I wish that, like a lot of corporate America, it wasn’t as dog eat dog world and nasty. I have had an element of security, but like I said, there are a lot of anxieties and a lot of stress that you get just so you can survive. There are a lot of people who do things in a nasty way just so they can survive. Not even just to be successful, but to keep a job. I can’t think of any way to change it because I think with any business in corporate America, it is what it is. You just kind of have to deal with it.
How has the industry’s response changed on mental health?
When I first got into the business- I started officially working in the record business in 2011. I was an assistant and was an intern beforehand. I think over the last 10-11 years, there has been a shift because of social media and the pandemic that really took it to the next level. I think there has been a more focused effort in respecting people’s mental health, at least in terms of the idea of people seeming like they care, if you will. I still think there’s a lot of really good stuff and people that allow people to take days or mental breaks, but I still think that a lot of times, I don’t know if it really takes into account mental health. Even if you take a day off or whatever it may be, there’s always somebody or something that takes something that you need to address, and that mental day gets disrupted because you need to take care of something. Even if your employer is very, very on it, a manager who isn’t necessarily poised on mental health or hasn’t been through it before/has dealt with it, but doesn’t really have empathy towards people; they may not care. It goes back to the whole, dog eat dog eat perspective like there’s a lot of stuff that has changed from awareness of it, but there’s a lot of stuff that hasn’t changed because this business is you know, you eat what you kill. Everybody’s trying to eat.
What are the best practices for destigmatizing and providing work-life balance?
I think hyping up the element of working on a no-sleep attitude and stuff like that needs to be attacked. At the end of the day, you will choose whatever you want to do. It becomes something that even if you start doing it as a young person, it’s hard to change those habits. I think the pandemic, in a lot of ways, helped allow people and me out to where you spent a whole year where you couldn’t leave your house, and the workflow continued, so you had to get shit done. It made you realize what’s important and what’s not important. The thing about the business is that there are a lot of things that seem important- important for face time, important for artificial shit. Still, the importance doesn’t necessarily tie into if the artist is going to be successful or not, or if you are going to be successful or not. Going back to the studio, there are people I know that hang at the studio all day and all night to the wee hours of the morning and wake up shitty and do that again, and you don’t have much to show for it. I know people who don’t do that, and they’re the biggest executives in the game. The guys and women that are at the top, their lifestyle is not like that. Their lifestyle wouldn’t be like that- they’d be too burnt out. At the end of the day, no matter what you want to say, even machines break down. At a certain point, you can say, “Hmm. I’m not taking that trip.” Yeah, it may be important, but is it necessary? I’ll do another one another day. It would be cool if we took [the trip], it would be cool if I pulled up this day, or had this dinner meeting, but it’s not necessary. It’s just the whole throwing yourself at the brick wall mentality I think needs to be destigmatized because it’s not a healthy way of living. There’s a way of going hard and being aggressive and being on everything without necessarily acting like you’re a crash dummy.
If there could be things that would make your life or your client’s life more peaceful, what would they be?
Not realistic, but if social media didn’t matter as much. I think that’s definitely more for the artists than the executives because there are executives who aren’t on social media. It is for executives too because you wouldn’t have to follow everything to see what’s poppin’ or what’s not poppin’. If you’re really, really focused on “I didn’t get these likes” or “I didn’t get a photo with this artist,” it hurts the insecurities. I think social media matters, but it would be more peaceful. Also, I don’t know because the way I look at it, there are so many things where something that could be super peaceful and super on point for somebody, for somebody else, it’s their outlet, like going to the studio. It’s hard to answer that question, but I definitely think social media in the grand scheme of things is the one thing through and through where if social media weren’t as important, a lot of people’s mental health across the board, executives alike, would be in a far better place.
How does your company deal with mental health? Do they provide any resources?
Yeah, Sony has a therapist. Especially over the last couple of years, they have been a little more aggressive in doing that. I applaud them because they have been super aggressive with taking mental days. Say I needed a mental day, like last year, I had a couple of days where I got burnt out. When I first heard the term “burnt out,” I thought it was something like “Oh, it’s like a Gen-Z term,” but then I actually looked it up and realized it’s an actual medical condition. I never felt it until the pandemic. I think the pandemic added everything tenfold because you’re dealing with something every day for at least a year, so it was easier to get burnt out or to feel not appreciated or not inspired. To feel uninspired by something that makes your heartbeat is one of the most depressing things ever. That happened to me multiple times in my career, particularly last year. The two times it was dramatic, I said I needed a mental break or week - not even just for myself, but so I could do the job in the way I was supposed to. If I don’t feel like getting out of bed or putting down my PlayStation because I’m just so numb or exhausted, it has been a lot of effort in terms of taking mental days and also giving days off. Like, taking Fridays off or making it a mandate to take off, so they’ve been pretty aggressive with it.
Is there anything else you want to share about your journey?
You know what, yeah. The thing about mental health in the music business is that everybody talks about it, which is a great thing. Still, I think the mental health journey- not just the journey of dealing with mental health, but also dealing with recovery is still so stigmatized. A lot of times, it can be looked at as a sign of weakness or, like, “being crazy.” I think that’s incredibly unfortunate. I know for me since going into the pandemic, I was dealing with a family issue, which led to getting resolved right into the pandemic. During the pandemic, a family member passed away from Covid, so all of this stuff manifested in a really, really severe case of real deep mental issues for me. It was something that at first you don’t realize it’s happening, and then you realize what you’re dealing with - it takes a second to realize how to get help, and then you figure out how to get help, it takes a second to figure out how to even apply what you’re learning. That’s a process that, over the last two years, I can talk to people about it, but it’s been hard to feel like I can because there are things that people don’t understand, and people stigmatize things. I just wish people could be more open or be careful when people say things, not to say things, but just to listen. I don’t need your advice. I don’t need you to say shit, just listen because one thing I realized is that we’re all dealing with something whether we know it or not. Some folks may not even know it. Some of the ways that people act- the little weird ticks, are not ticks, but they’re probably issues that have been unresolved and are lucky that they don’t go into more destructive patterns, or they might. Whatever the case may be, we’re all dealing with something, and I think part of any destigmatism is listening, talking less, and empathizing from a personal and professional perspective.
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