An article from the Pittsburg Post-Gazette about how Rostrum Records (Wiz Khalifa, Mac Miller) harnessed the power of the internet to create a buzz, and then a label, when mainstream labels thought Wiz couldn't make it as a rapper because, essentially, he wasn't from the right city.
Excerpt:
"Before Rostrum cut that first deal with Warner Bros. in 2007, Mr. Grinberg says, "labels that were sort of interested in Wiz would say things like, 'We really like him. Maybe we would put him under one of our other labels,' like Def Jam has DTP, which is Ludacris' label. Or 'Pittsburgh isn't really known for anything, so we need to give him some kind of co-sign, so people have some way to relate him to the rest of the hip-hip world.'
"We were always fully against that, because Wiz is a new artist from a new city, and we're not afraid of that and we'll take the longer road to make sure we fully represent that, instead of going under someone else's wing, like Atlanta. I felt like that whole era of needing gatekeepers and needing co-signs was coming to an end anyway. We didn't care about the gatekeepers. What was important to us was the fans. We never paid attention to 'Oh, this important DJ, you should give him money, so he'll do this.' We were like, 'We're not really interested.' We're going to go right to the fans through the Internet and have the fans tell the DJ this is what we wanna hear. It was not an easy road."
It's refreshing to hear that Rostrum Records - a newly-minted record label - basically said "fuck a label" in marketing Wiz and, later, Mac. The jmajor labels thought they knew what the fans wanted to hear - more Soulja Boy and Waka Flocka, no doubt. Rostrum went straight to the fans, and now Wiz is number one on iTunes and Mac's Knock, Knock is this week's iTunes Single of the Week.
Fuck a label.
Read the entire article:
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