[Michael Blue Williams Background]

I got started carrying luggage as a roadie. That was my in into the music industry with a group called Jodeci. I was in college and met the band. We clicked, started a relationship, talked on the phone a lot. They were on a promo tour. I was in college, met them on their promo tour. They went back home. An opportunity came up for them to go on the tour with M.C. Hammer, his Too Legit to Quit tour. And talking to the guys, they were like, “You want to come?” I was like, “No. I’m in school.”

And somehow I went from me being in school to me ending up on the tour with them and carrying luggage, making the late night runs to Waffle House, and getting everything done and just doing all the little jobs. But I just kept listening and learning. And I went from being a roadie, which is the bottom of the barrel, to being security. I went from being security to being the road manager, which is the manager’s eyes and ears on the road. He’s like the floor captain when you’re out on the road. And with those growth and as I kept growing and learning, I started to realize, hey, I really think I wanted to be a manager. I felt I could do it.

And an opportunity came along about three or four years later to go work for Queen Latifah and Shakim Compere, who had Flavor Unit management. And they hired me to come work for them. And I became a manager officially. Flavor Unit actually hired me to be a manager and they were going to give me artists they already had. Flavor Unit was growing. They had a number of artists already.

My reputation on the road as being a good road manager and somewhat responsible had grown to the point, and Shakim had seen me working in enough environments, that he felt comfortable offering me a job to help him handle some of his clients. So he hired me. He gave me a group. The first group he actually gave me was a group called the Fushnikens. And so I helped with the Fushnikens. And then we started acquiring other groups and that’s how I ended up – I didn’t bring anyone technically with them.

I think the road experiences that I have are one of the number one things I feed onto, or pull from in doing my job. I think that it primed me for being a manager because I had seen all types of situations. I had seen artists in all types of moods and trying to get them on stage, or trying to get them up, trying to motivate them, seeing them depressed, seeing them happy, seeing them when the accept awards, seeing them when they lose awards. I’d seen all types of experiences and I’d been with – I toured with Mary J. Blige, with SWV, with Shy, Naughty by Nature. I’d been on the road with so many different types of artists that I learned different personalities.

I learned a lot of different management skills from different types of managers that were managing those artists. So I took what I felt was valuable from a lot of different managers and left the things I didn’t – what I thought they may have been doing wrong. So it definitely primed me to be a manager when the opportunity came up.

Around 1997-98, I left Queen Latifah and Flavor Unit and Shakim just on I felt like I’d outgrown that opportunity and it was time for me to stand out and step on my own. When I left, I had been managing OutKast already for two, two and a half years. So when I left, OutKast left with me in a very fair – there wasn’t any problems. Shakim supported me leaving. He felt like it was the next step to my growth.

Shakim, Latifah, and all of us are still friends, allies. And that was really important to me because as a manager, relationships are so important in this game. You have to be able to have relationships. You can’t burn bridges. So when I left, it was important that my relationship with Flavor Unit and Shakim and Latifah was still intact and that it wasn’t perceived like I took a group or I had done anything shady.

So I left and I started Family Tree Entertainment and started with OutKast. And because OutKast, we were having success and people knew me from Flavor Unit and things like that, when I left Flavor Unit, I was president of Flavor Unit Management. So I had grown from being the director of management to being the president of Flavor Unit Management. And so when I left, I had already started to establish my own reputation as a formidable manager on my own. So other clients would come. We managed Donell Jones, Macy Gray, Jagged Edge, Case. I’ve had a lot of clients over the years that have come, gone, we’ve worked with.

So I’m to the point where I am now where I’ve been managing now it’s going on 12, 13 years as a manager. I still manage OutKast. We’ve had a great run. We stood a pinnacle of the music world in 2004 winning the Grammy. We were the first rap group to ever win the Album of the Year as a rap group. We reached diamond status on our album, which is the only other rap album that had done it was Biggie Smalls.

So we’ve had a great deal of success and it’s opened up a lot of doors for them, for myself, Family Tree. We now have a record label division. We have a film and TV division that we’ve spun off. We have an OutKast movie coming out that I’m a producer on. So it’s allowed the growth from step-by-step by just being a manager has allowed me now the opportunities to do a lot of other things.

I went from being a – the same way I did it on the road. I’ve always believed that wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, make yourself invaluable to that machine you’re a part of. So when I was at Flavor Unit, I was willing to work harder, stay later, do anything that needed to be done to make sure that my artist would generate an income. At the end of the day, we were about making money. So whatever artist that Shakim or Latifah gave me to manage, my artists were making money. My artists were the least headaches. My artists were always on point at doing what they needed to do.

And you notice that if you got three people managing groups and my three artists are always on time, and they’re generating money, and things are going smoothly, and the other six artists are problems and Shakim has to stop what he’s doing with Latifah or LL Cool J to fix little problems, it starts to stand out. And for me, it’s just I work the same way I’ve always played sports and everything. I work and I want to go harder and do it better.

And I’m very competitive. And my competitiveness and my desire to want to be the best at it just allowed me to always rise above people that sort of either felt like they were owed something or felt like if they had been there longer, they were gonna get theirs before me. I just never let any of those things become a factor. I always cut it to I’m better. I think I’m better and I’m gonna work harder. I’m gonna show them that I’m better. I’m gonna make more money. I’m gonna work harder. I’m gonna do everything that it takes.

When I was at Flavor Unit, there were nights that I didn’t go home. I’d sleep at the office so I’d be there and finishing up itineraries. I lived in the Bronx and Flavor Unit is in Jersey City, New Jersey. I’d take the train from the Bronx to Jersey City. If I’m working and I’m not finished ‘till 1:00 in the morning, I’d stay there, work. I might fall asleep there. There was a mall by the office. I’d get up in the morning, go to the mall, by something to wear, go back to the office, change, get to work and get back at it. It was just a desire to be what needed to be done.
And I think that that’s why I tell people is that somewhere in there if you’re gonna be the best at what you gonna do, you’re gonna push it. You’re gonna push your body. You’re gonna push the envelope and people are gonna see that. People recognize excellence if you’re gonna commit excellence to it even in anything you do in life.

Interviewer: Did you choose music ‘cause you love music?

I chose music ‘cause I felt like I was in college and college was teaching me how to sort of fit in and conform and just become a piece in the cog. And music was sort of fresh and new energy for me. And just it was like something different. And as I got into it, it just kept seeming new and there were new things to do.

Okay, I’m a roadie. I don’t want to be a roadie. I don’t like being at the bottom of the totem pole. So how do I grow? So a security opportunity came up. And all right, I’m a security guard. And I just don’t want to be a big security guard forever, so how do I become a road manager? Well, let me hang with the road manager and help and become an assistant road manager.

So all right, how do I go from being assistant road manager to a road manager opportunity? Well, do your job really well so people will talk about you. And when a group comes out, a new group like SWV needs a road manager and they met you while you were recording with Jodeci and they noticed you on point, they’ll offer you a job, like, “Yeah, we need a road manager,” or something like that.

Take those opportunities and then when you’re a road manager, you critique or you study what the managers are doing. And you go okay, maybe I would have done this differently or maybe I would have done that differently. And you start to see, yeah, this is how I would have done this. You start to build some confidence. And I’ve just always used those opportunities to allow myself to grow.

My company now, it’s funny. I started probably as Family Tree Management and over the years it’s become Family Tree Entertainment. And in Family Tree Entertainment, I have an independent record label. I have my management company. I have my film and TV division. I also help GM or help co-own at some point a number of other labels for my artists that are through major distribution.

So I have the ability that if I see a star tomorrow walking down the street or I meet somebody and I think they’re hot, I can take that artist and figure out do I want to put them through my independent label or do I want to put them through one of the major labels that I have a relationship with? Do I think this guy could be a multimedia star so I want to develop a TV show for him, put him in a movie, and put him through independent? I’ve created enough avenues that I can take some money, take them through the whole gamut.

Yeah, I think that what comes into play there is you take a lot of the hip-hop hustle, you take some of the business acumen that you’ve learned from the people you’ve come across on the business side, lawyers and business affairs people and things like that, and then you take just some common sense or a lot of common sense. And you sort of put that all together and that sort of creates what you’re gonna – how you’re gonna run your business.

Some people are real abrasive and everything’s a yell. I tell people that every day that there are people in this industry and in the world that are problem solvers. There are people that create problems. There’s dealmakers and there’s deal breakers. I prefer to think of myself as a dealmaker. I’m trying to find a way to get it done, as opposed to always just taking it to the point where it’s not gonna get done. So that skill set and that mentality allows me to manage all the different opportunities that I have or that have been presented because of what my company does and what we’ve done.

I think I also have learned that I have to do what I do well, which is I see the big picture. I market. I have to get a team around me and I have a team around me – I have people around me that are really detail oriented and they follow up on the stuff that I’m doing. And I’ve got people that really are good with ANRN and coordination. I’ve got people that are good with art and creative. You’ve got to get a team around you. No one man can do it himself. Everybody has to have a team around them that augments and help him do what he does.