This past week, my partner, Jblaze, and I had the opportunity to sit down with Reach Records' in-house producer, Gawvi (Twitter: @Gawvi). The meeting and interview was very spontaneous - literally planned and executed in a 2 week time frame. He was just as excited to sit and talk with Jblaze (Twitter: @Jblaze305) on camera and also for #TheJblazeShow, as we were. Perhaps this is what made the interview and time spent with not only a formidable producer, but a long time friend, that much more rewarding.
Off camera and off record, we talked about current artists and the state of the urban Christian music industry. While many of the artists we talked about I can't and won't discuss here for obvious reasons, one of the things that we agreed upon is that there are a lot of new records coming out with some great music. The tide of the urban Christian music industry is changing and there are a host of hot new artists coming out practically weekly.
But there is a major piece that is missing: Proper A&R direction for many of these artists and their projects.
For those that don't know, A&R stands for "artist and repertoire". A&R is a function of every major and independent record label. In their basic function, an A&R person was responsible for providing direction for artists' projects - overall sound, look, and feel. An A&R was responsible for helping artist create a sound, look, and feel that was in sync with each other to form a seamless musical brand. A&R took their positions seriously because they knew that the success (or failure) of an artist they were working with depended largely in part to their own ability to give artistic and brand development direction. Examples of great A&R people: Legend Clive Davis, Andre Harrell, Sean Combs, Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter, Sylvia Rhone, and Antonio "L.A." Reid. These people forged the careers of iconic artists like Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Kanye West, Rihanna, Mariah Carey, Missy Elliott and a host of others.
We are in an age where independent artists are in vast abundance and putting together sonically good records. However, albums released now are steeped more in rigid musical structure than in the art of having a cohesive theme and story. The reason for this is because there is no one "outside of the mix" to ask the simple questions like, "What does this song have to do with the first song we recorded?" or "How does this song fit with the overall theme of the album?" or "Does this song have us going off on a tangent?" Instead, they are more focused on the amount of features (usually from other artists the artist has no relationship with whatsoever) and flooding Twitter timelines rallying supporters to help them to be #1 on the iTunes chart on release day.
Right here deserves an honorable mention. I recently listened to Sean C. Johnson's new album, Circa 1993 (you can see our review here). I like the album for simple reasons: great production, solid lyrics, and great vocal production. What REALLY has me liking the album is its solid and interesting back story and theme that every song on it is powered from. It is not just a myriad of songs thrown together. It is 3 years of thought and preparation (Sean's last album was released in 2012, but he has released some singles between albums) and it is evident in the music. It's like watching a movie and just like a movie I really like, I would watch - or in this case, listen to - it over and over again.
While this may be the age of the independent artist and great music being released, let's not forget that even a high priced car is just wasting gas if it has no destination and directions on how to get there.
0 comments :
Post a Comment