Marketing Music: Andre Harrell

7/27/2019 Marketing Music: Andre Harrell

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PROFILE

MarkelingMusicAndre Hat rell bringsUptoum to your toun.

T{"- yatiuin'?,,AndreIIHarrell booms into the telephone, the verbalequivalent of a slam-dunk. "Yeah? Yeah? I'm livin'lnrge!" he announces to the person on the otherend. He then launches into a businesslike, rapid-fire discussion about an upcoming project, havingmade clear, in the parallel-culture parlance ofyoung urban blacks, that the king of New JackSwing is doing well.More than well, actually. Harrell, at 29, cancredibly claim his first million as founder/CEo ofthe music management and production companyUptown Enterprises. With a roster of such plati-num-record performers as Heavy D. & the Boyz,Guy, and Al B. Sure!, and a financing-and-distri-bution deal with MCA Records, Harrell has taken

New Jack-a danceable but romantic amalgam ofhip-hop, funk, and rhythm-and-blues-from up-town to your town.o'The concept ofUptown is a kind ofurban, free-spirited, high-energy kind of music and life-style,"Harrell fastballs at you, his own best advertise-ment. o'Uptown is in the business of black pop life.We bring up black urban images, and we try tomarket 'em in a way that's appealing to themasses." And he does mean the masses. "Once youget past a million" records (contirurcd onpage 73)By Frank Louece

30 CONTINENTALPROFILES APR I99O


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HarreII (continuedfrom page 30)and tapes sold, he observes, ooyou'regettin'white fans."And so he is, judging from theframed-and-mounted platinum rec-

ords awarded Harrell by the Record-ing Industry Association of Amer-ica, commemorating various Uptownalbums that have sold a million cop-ies or more. Hanging on his office


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records out of the back of his car infront of schools and stuff. He'd gofrom one to another, in this beat-upold Tempo he drove with racinggloves. It was so sad-looking, weused to call it the Black Zero. ButAndre was always out there-Dealson Wheels. . . . It didn't work out,"Brown recalls wistfully, oobut thatwas the start of his being a record


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oobut the key to Andre is that his mar-keting is right. He has artists.whorelate directly to the young adultcrowd, and he understands as muchabout image and marketing as hedoes the music."ooHe's always there, trying to cre-ate something larger," says multi-platinum Uptown client Al B. Sure!.

Llptown Enterprhes


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or less independently, in Jamaica inthe early 1960s and in New YorkCity's black neighborhoods around1974, when block-party and discodeejays began using rappers to en-tertain the crowd during recordchanges. Soon the rappers becamestars in their own right, and hip-hop-the musical idiom that framesthe rap-grew to be a culture.

'oRap was just big in my commu-nity," Harrell recalls. "So it wasn'thard for me to be motivated by it or tobe good at it. You would stay home,getting your rap together, so whenthe block party came, you'd go outthere and bust a rhyme, have the ce-lebrity, and get the girls. Whenyou're 16, 17 years old, that's the ba-

sic vibe, you want to just set yourselfup so you can win on the ladies'tip.And then you realize you can getmoney too? That you don't have to geta Youth Corps job in the summer?Man, that was so hype!"/--\ o was the fact that Harrell kept\ "O this promising rap career\--f while still attending college-he first went to Baruch, then Leh-man, before leaving school his senioryear. He was still at it, at night andon weekends, even while out in theprofessional world as an ad-sales in-tern at New York independent TVstation WOR (now MCAs WWOR).

'oThis one account executive tookme under his wing," Harrell recalls

gratefully. "A white guy named EdSamson. A really nice guy, and hewas real well-dressed, and every-body liked him and he was makin'aton, making six figures. And I sawthe key to him makinghis money: notthat he knew everything there was toknow about ratings, but he had agreat personality. People liked him,so they bought him. And I realized,this is my game. People gotta likeyou. And I thought, 'Well, I knowhow to do that.' "ooAndre

always seemed to knowexactly what he wanted to do," saysSamson today. ooHe would go out withme to meet these huge, importantbuyers, these tough, almost infa-mous guys, and he would ask what


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seemed like naive questions-'Howdid you get started in the busi-ness?'-and get these guys to startexpounding at length. Getting thedialogue going, of course, is one ofthe most important things to do inselling. And Andre was a natural."In 1983, that naturalness nettedHarrell a job at the tiny gospel radiostation V/WRL. The following year,he progressed to the much larger-and, for Harrell, dismayingly corpo-rate-2{-hour news station, WINS."I felt like a project over there," Har-rell remembers. "Like, ol-et's whupthis black guy into shape, make himour token executive.' And I had aproblem," he admits, "with the af-firmative-action kind of vibe. I had a

problem because it wasn't fun!"What was fun was Dr. Jekyll &Mr. Hyde, which was still activethough they hadn't released but theone album three years earlier. Theystill had a man.ager-Harrell'sroommate, Russell Simmons, whoran a shoestring operation calledRush Management. Simmons keptafter Harrell to join his company,but the 2{-yeavold Harrell saw it asa step down from his $30,000 posi-tion at WINS: Though Rush and itssister company, Def Jam Records,would later become a house of hitsfor LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys,Run-DMC and others, back then itwas just Simmons and a secretary. Ittook two dogged years at WINS be-

fore Harrell finally rushed out.As Rush's vice president of artistdevelopment (a position known inthe industry as o'A&R," short forthe never-used ooartists and reper-toire"), Harrell was responsible forbringing in new talent. But whenSimmons and then-partner Rick Ru-bin formed Def Jam Records, per-sonality problems arose./-\ o Harrell formed the privately\owned Andre Harrell, Inc.,\-f a.U.a. Uptown Enterprises-oJust me and my phone in my studioapartment," in Queens' LeFrakCity. His first client had been thelast straw-rapper Heavy D., whoserejection by Def Jam prompted Har-


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rell to take the plunge.Using Heavy D. as the hub, Har-

rell began putting together Uptown'sfirst project: a hip-hop compilationalbum called Uptownls Kicltin' It. Hestruck a one-shot, $75,000 produc-tion deal with Jheryl Busby, theblack-music executive at MCA Rec-ords, which would distribute the al-

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confirms. Harrell alsothere are no outside investors in

roughly l8-person concern."At this point," says Harrell,has an executive production

with me. I get executivecredit on all Uptown/MCAreleases, and MCA gets aof those records." Who

"My primarystrengtb istbat I'm Auisionnry,"says Harrell.

the larger percentage? ooTheyI do," Harrell says, laughing,I think they do! I guess," he'oit's about even."The prospects for Uptown andJack Swing alike are bullish. AlSure!'s album, for example, has

peaked on the black-radioand crossed over to Bill-mainstream pop chart. Har-

is already in pre-production on avehicle for Sure!, currently ti-

Priaate Times and to be distrib-by Island/Alive Pictures. He'sscouting the Europeananticipates opening aCoast office this year."My primary strength is that I'm a

says Harrell. But so are aof people. What makes Uptownhe supposes, is that he himself"a great salesman and a good con-

man. The sell is half the job-somebody to believe I'rnthat rock move, that Ia thousand dollars to make it

move, that I can put together thiscrane for a thousand dollars to makethat rock move. I make people be-lieve that whatever it is, I can make it

happen." nEntertainment writer Frank Louece isthe co-author o/Hailing Taxi.

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Marketing Music: Andre Harrell