It's very important that an artist's job is to be a great artist.
At Translation, we pride ourselves on being one of the most diverse agencies in the industry - and with that diversity comes a wealth of different talents and perspectives. The onus is on us to empower our employees to use those considerable talents to create real systemic change.
You don't want to have any disagreements with a friend, you know? Not disagreements that become public record and that you still have to answer questions about 10 years later.
I always felt like the Academy was very late in acknowledging things. I've seen them do it with hip hop when it should have been acknowledged. It was already penetrating mass levels of culture and radio, and yet they wouldn't give it a proper category.
I've heard it said that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. To that end, I think it's worth noting that the very first police force in America was created as a 'patrol' to keep slave populations under control.
When you grow up in life and you're poor, and because you're an athlete or you got rich overnight in music, unless you have access to financial advice or for the transition or matriculation of that process, then of course, you're going to go broke.
I used to run record companies, and I went to the advertising business at 29 years old.
Does the Grammys intentionally use artists for their celebrity, popularity, and cultural appeal when they already know the winners and then program a show against this expectation? Meanwhile, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences hides behind the 'peer' voting system to escape culpability for not even rethinking its approach.
I felt like I could take the responsibility and make the Nas movement bigger and not keep it confined to the Tri-State area, so to speak. He allowed me to do that. When we were together, we made a lot of noise, and I made him an international star.
The advertising industry needs to keep evolving.
What's successful is when you are good at what you aim to do. And I don't think that Nas has aimed to do anything that he hasn't done. So he is a good businessman.
'Rapper's Delight' came from the TV entertainment show 'Good Times,' but when the times called for a shift in the narrative, artists answered, covering brutal truths in their rhymes that were uncomfortable for society to confront.
Hip-hop started as this niche moment, and the values of it, the cultures that it carried on its back; language, clothes, the way you wear your clothes, the items that you consume, all came with the music as an art form. And those things helped transform how people buy, shop, speak, engage.
I've started to believe that the agency business is a great ingredient of a much bigger business - more than just what typical advertising agencies have done.
I tell young entrepreneurs to use the leader in their industry and as a benchmark as they work to create their own brand. Don't look at what your competition is doing - if you emulate the leader in your industry, you will achieve a higher level of engagement with consumers and make their buying experience richer.
I realized how far-reaching the effect of hip hop was when I walked by a jewelry store named Bling in a small, rural town in France. Hip hop has made a huge impact on urban culture. Yet many brands still don't speak to young people in a tone and manner that's representative of them.
The diversity of America is a strength of the country, and I don't think that we use that. We don't talk about our strengths. I mean, having so many diverse people in this country from all aspects of all over the world, and we don't use that. I think we should talk about who we are - that melting pot that we've become.
When I was working with Reebok, Paul Fineman sent me to see David Stern to try to explain to him, basically, the tanning of America: That all rappers wanted to be basketball players and basketball players wanted to be rappers.
Look at music like gaming. You monetize the game to all the people who are most engaged. I wanted to bring that theory and thinking to music.
The ad business has some of the great artists, but because there are so many, its hard to determine the true gems.
