[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.

[Michael Blue Williams Becoming a Manager]

To become a manager, there’s a number of different ways. Some people start by being interns at a management company or an entertainment company. Some people may meet an artist and the artist will bond with them and they’ll like, “I really believe in you and I want to try and get you a deal.” So sometimes that’s how the relationship forms. Sometimes it’s an artist, they might be the most intelligent friend that an artist knows. So the artist will approach them like, “Yeo, you’ve always been good with business,” or, “You’re good with stuff that I’m not good at,” and that’s how it will start.

If you’re just somebody at home and you’re like, “Hey, I want to be in the music industry and I want to be a manager,” first think I would tell you is to get educated about the music industry. Because as a manager, you’re responsible for the business side of it. So pick up some books, read, educate yourself so that you can educate your artist when he comes to you with questions. Go to seminars. If you’re trying to find talent, you can go to showcases. You can go to open mic nights. You can search the web and see people’s websites. Just search until you find an artist that maybe excites you and then approach them. Find out if they have a manager. Tell them, “I really believe in you and I want to get out there and shop a deal for you.” So there’s a number of different ways to slide in as a manager.

A manager’s main qualities are being intelligent, people skills, communication skills. A good manager, to me, needs to be able to sometimes see around the curve of what’s coming. Managers need to be able to translate lingo. They need to take it from artist speak, as I like to say, to label speak, so the label understands it. And then from label speak to artist speak. So they need to be able to do that. They need to have planning skills, time management. A good manager needs to be able to do budgets and be able to really coordinate logistics of where you are it’s gonna be, how they’re gonna get their timing, things of that nature. And communication is very big because you have to communicate with a lot of people. And as a manager, you’re not just representing yourself. You’re representing your client. So you have to be able to sound intelligent and get your ideas across and be articulate.

A manager’s job is to deal with all of the political issues and power struggles that come up, whether it’s within the group, or whether it’s within the label, or within the label, communicating with the artist. When it’s within the group, it’s the manager’s job to keep everyone on the same page, which is the band and what’s best for the band. Sometimes with a label, you get into political issues where you may lose a president that signed or an ANR has signed the artist, and now you have a new president or a new person who may not be sure about the group. And the manager has to get that new president or new ANR excited about his band and keep the focus on them and keep them as the focal point. So a manager has to navigate the politics and power, egos, of the record label and within his own band.

An artist represent himself as a manager sort of like that thing they say about lawyers, you’re your own worst lawyer. It’s the exact same thing. There’s no separation. I usually tell people to try not to hire either the family or themselves as their own managers. It’s just usually those things don’t work out.

[Michael Blue Williams Artist Speak and Label Speak]

I tell people sometimes that artists wake up every day and worry about, “What in the world can I do for me today? What can the world do for me?” Because that’s what an artist is. An artist is just trying to get out and do what they want and their main priority is themself.

So when they talk to a manager, it’s like, “Yeo, the label’s not doing this,” or there’s complaints, there’s problems, there’s concerns, however an artist may articulate it. A manager has to hear what his artist is saying, either calm him down, or make him feel better, or let him know that everything’s gonna be all right. Or take what he’s saying, tell him, “Okay, I’m gonna work on fixing those problems,” make the artist feel okay.

But then go to the record label and talk to the label in what I call label speak, which is business. Labels operate on money, numbers, real hard facts, what is, what isn’t. They’re in the business of selling music. And so you have to communicate what your artist may be feeling artistically or creatively and get the label to understand that, and make it cost effective. Your artist may want to do a $2 million video because he has this grand idea. And the label may want to spend $200,000 for the video.

So as a manger, you have to translate that from artist speak into label speak, and then make everyone happy. So you have to be the medium and get your label to say maybe spend a million dollars and your artist to come down off a million dollars and get to a common ground and get it done.

[Michael Blue Williams Advice for Being a Manager]

Yeah, I definitely think to be a good manager, you got to at least if you don’t love their music, you’ve got to like the person or the client. I think being a manager takes so much out of you. It’s like a family member. As a manager, you’re the therapist, you’re the big brother, you’re the sister, you’re the best friend, all those things. It takes a lot of your life out. Artists call you 11:00 in the morning. They call you at 2:00 in the morning. They call you on your vacations, on your honeymoons. So you got to at least sort of like the artist to, I think, really give it your all. Now there are managers out there that it’s strictly a business relationship and they don’t care about them. That’s their lane. For me to do it, I need to at least like them or like their music to even really give it my all.

Yeah, I’m happy that I’ve had the opportunity growing up in the Bronx, New York to – you grow up in New York, you think New York is the center of the world. And the music industry has given me a chance to see the world three or four times over, to meet hundreds of thousands of people, and see things that I never would have thought I’ve seen. I planned to make an impact or be a part of it and sometimes you don’t really recognize until you take a minute and take a deep breath one day. And I think that even being with OutKast and what we’ve done, I don’t know if I still get it all the time what we are, what happened. But just to have had the opportunity to – I’ve had a chance to be an ambassador for hip hop music and take it up a level and to open up the world to our music and see places.

Yeah, I think it’s been a great ride. I’ve totally enjoyed it. I’m 36 years old now. I’ve been doing it forever. I’ve been doing it 15 years now. So I’m curious always to see where the next 15 years of hip hop go, where the next 15 years take me, the next 15 years take my OutKast and the brand. So yeah, I think it’s great and it’s exciting.

[Michael Blue Williams Location]

You need to be in the city to be successful in the music industry. I think it’s an interesting twist. I have a friend, Ted Lucas, who manages Slip-N-Slide Records. He’s had a lot of success with Trick Daddy and Trina and things of that nature. He’s in Miami. He’s not in New York. He’s had success being signed with Atlantic which is based in New York. Him and I recently talked about it. Had he been in New York more on top of the label, would he have had even more success? Probably.

I think that the thing is that if you’re not gonna be in New York, you don’t have to break out in New York and L.A. anymore. That’s gone. You can break from wherever you are. But if you’re signed to a major record label and you’re distribution of something is in New York or L.A. or something like that, then you better be up in this city and in these labels and in their faces or have somebody in your company in their faces staying on them. That’s relevant. To be successful, I think you got to be where the action is, that part. But you can break and you can be a star and get into the music industry and never leave Dallas or be wherever and never leave out of Houston and get started. You get a buzz in your city, get some hype, get people talking about you. The major record labels will get excited and they’ll come to your city and sign you and do the whole thing. And you’ll sign your paperwork and have a record deal and may have never left Saint Louis or someplace.

Is your success gonna reach Nelly’s if you don’t get out and get to New York and get in front of the head of the promotions and all those people that work out of New York? No. You’re not gonna achieve it. You got to get to New York and L.A. to get the big dollars and get the most out of this entertainment industry.

[Michael Blue Williams Priorities]

I think in terms of priorities, if I was gonna prioritize, it all starts with the music. First and foremost, you got to have good music. So your recordings and the music that you make have to be at the top. I think after you make good music, touring has to go high up there. Because if you have good music and even if the label messes it up but you’re able to tour and get out on the road and you build a fan base, you’re always gonna be able to eat. You can get out music that the label may not be supporting. You can just get out there and promote it yourself and do what you need to do. So touring really comes really well.

In the media age of images and people’s short attention spans and trying to be everywhere, I think that videos are important. But they’re probably, before videos, I’d have to say publicity. Your publicity and how you get out there and how people get at you are very important.

So those would be the top four things to me, I think. You’ve got to have the music is key and first. Touring is your source of income. It’s a great way to promote yourself. It keeps you working and in touch with your fans. Your publicity, to take advantage of all the touring and if you have a great record out there. Videos, because it’s an additional marketing tool to get you on TV and to get you in front of people.

[Michael Blue Williams The Music Industry Today]

I think that the major change in the music industry has come from just the way the labels are approaching the game today. I think in the ‘90s, the ‘90s were – especially in the mid to late ‘90s were a great year for the music industry. We were selling a lot of records. Big sales. Music was driving everything. We were all making a lot of money. It was great. And then the millennium changed and people started downloading and stuff like that. And I think the industry was slow to adapt and we ended up behind the curve. And I think that’s what everyone’s been trying to recover from since then.

I also think that in the ‘90s, seeing rappers with big cars and doing everything was new and it was exciting. We had shows like Cribs and all those type of shows. And I think there may have been too much TV and too much MTV and too much access, that now in 2006, it seems easy to kids. Kids see you on TV and they think, “I can be an instant success or I can be if I win American Idol, I could be a star quickly.” And they don’t see the hard work. Even if you watch American Idol, they don’t show what these kids have to do every day of the week up until that Wednesday and Thursday. They don’t see the press. They don’t see the hard work. They don’t see the recording. People don’t see that. TV cuts it so they can keep your attention and people don’t see the hard work that it takes to make things happen.

And I think that what it’s done is it’s made today’s society, especially the younger society, think that things come easily. And I find that when I meet interns or when I meet young people out there that they want to do it, they want to jump in and be me, me where I am now, as opposed to me where I was at their age where I had to get in. And I think that’s the major change that I see in the industry is that people don’t really understand that it’s still a lot of work that goes into making an artist a success or to having a successful management company or running a successful label, that it takes elbow grease. You got to get in there and grind. And people don’t appreciate the grind anymore.

I think there’s a difference between generations. I come from a generation of Puffy and all of those that came up in the early ‘90s where that’s what we did. Hustle was what we did. If you weren’t hustling on the streets, you got into this music industry. But you kept the same hustle mentality and you become successful. You’re a Mark Pitt, who is a VPA and all who came up who is Biggie’s manager, or you’re Puff, or you’re Damon _____, or you’re me, or you’re all these people. You’re Chris Lighty. We come from a generation where you do it, and you hustle, and you grind, and you make it happen yourself. You don’t rely on anybody to do it for you. So I think it was just inbred. All of us came out of the streets of New York. And that’s how it was growing up in the streets. You just got in there.

These kids, they hear Tony Yayo gets caught and he goes to jail. And Yayo gets out of jail and then he has a million dollar record deal. And that’s what it is. “I’m gonna be fly like that. I ain’t got to grind.” And so they think it’s easy. They don’t know what Yayo’s whole story is. They don’t know what Yayo had to go through and stuff like that. So I think it’s a difference in the generations, I think. I think it’s a real difference. I find that peers and friends that I have in different industries, they find the exact same thing. So I really think it’s how kids were raised after my generation that came up.

I think it’s less of an argument between going the major route or the indy route. The majors have a model. They’re gonna do it a certain way. It’s pretty much they throw it up against the wall and see what sticks. They got a cookie cutter formula on how they’re gonna break an artist. It’s very, “We’re throwing it up to see if it works.”

Independent labels are more personal. They can float. If you’re on an independent label and your artist is hot in Milwaukee, then you get that artist to Milwaukee and you grind them out in Milwaukee for six weeks. And you get a buzz in Saint Louis, you shoot to Saint Louis. Independent labels are more fluid.

Majors are definitely a big machine that you got to turn. Now when the machine gets hot and gets a hit, the major’s gonna move a lot more units than an independent will because they’re gonna be able to jump on and move the whole machine behind that. But you’ll make more money on an independent label, but you’re not gonna get as much marketing. It’s harder to create a brand independently. I tell people that for marketing dollars and what labels will spend on building a brand that major may be a better choice.

It really depends on your threshold of paying with your money. If you’re doing independent and you got money that you can put into it, yeo, run that route. Take a shot. Swing at it. If you create enough of a buzz, a major may come buy you. If you’re not sure, you don’t have the money to do it yourself, and you’re, “I just need a deal. I got music I want to get out there. I know I’m good.” Well, you may go to a label route. Go the major route and let them do it, and market you, and get it out there, and take advantage of that opportunity.

[Michael Blue Williams What Do You Look For in Artists]

I think as a manger when I look at artists, I think I look for – L.A. Reed has taught me something, the president of _____ – the chairman of _____ for so many years, to look for the star. Try and find that star. You can make an artist look good. You can clean them up. But a star is a star. A star is gonna look good whether they’re grimy looking and you got to clean them up or they’re gonna look good the day they walk in the artist. But you get that star quality.

And I think in my career, I’ve been blessed to be able to spot stars, whether I end up managing them or not or whether I just have worked with them and held them close. And that helps, because a star is always easy to market, sell, brand. I’ve been blessed. I’ve managed Monica on her first album. I’ve managed OutKast for their career. I had Donell Jones and Macy Gray. And I’ve had a lot of these artists that some had great albums or great projects, but may not have had the star quality to last it out over the long haul. And some had the ability, but just didn’t have the desire. And I think that that’s what you don’t find out until you get into the trenches with the artist. So sometimes when you pick them, you may see the star quality. But you may find out later they don’t have that desire to just do it. They think they want to be stars. I think that’s the part you got to try.

When I meet with an artist as a manager, I like to look in their eyes and see if they get it, if they understand what I’m talking about, the work, and trying to see if they’re being honest with themselves about really wanting it. If I think it’s gonna be short lived or I think it’s gonna be a headache, I personally would rather not manage an artist that’s gonna be a headache than manage somebody who’s gonna sell 500,000 but is gonna be great to work with. Passion, talent, some luck – I think to be successful, to get that successful formula, you got to have something, like I said, it’s that star quality. Sometimes it’s just that little piece that drives. I think desire outweighs intelligence. It can’t hurt. Having an intelligent artist is always better. Those are the things.

A lot of it starts from the inside and then people will feed off of what the artist sometimes gives. If an artist is a pain in the neck, I tell artists all the time that, “Let me be the bad guy at the label. You be the person that the label’s happy to see when you come through. Everybody wants to give you a hug. Because people want to like you in order to go that extra step for you. So if you’re a pain in the behind and you’re difficult, then when that girl’s finished working at 6:00 and she still needs to – she has to decide whether she wants to go home and go about her Friday night or stay another hour and a half and make your reservations so everything you have is right, if you’re not somebody that she likes or deals with, she’s gonna sign off her computer and go home. But if you’re an artist that she’s, ‘I want to make sure they’re right ‘cause I feel endeared to the project. And he’s always nice to me and he sent me flowers for my birthday,’ she’ll stay ‘till 11:00 at night to work.”

That’s what makes stars in the music industry in the world and every place. And people don’t know that, that that’s that little factor that makes the difference. That’s why an artist makes a show or why you see someone in the press clippings more than you see others. Because some artists get up and they make every interview. Some artists are never on time. And I think those little small things are the deciding factors in a lot of careers.

I think having some business sense is vital for an artist. I think you need to understand the business. At least have a general shift of it. I’m not saying know the difference between points royalties, and how much you’re getting on each record, and clog your brain up with it if you’re not really interested. But have a general sense of what how business works. Understand that if someone does something above and beyond for you, that you may want to say thank you or send them back a gift. That if somebody does something that they didn’t have to do and that helps your career, that you may want to at least acknowledge it or remember their name.

I think you should have a sense of business and how it works in general, just of course the world and what is good etiquette, how you should treat people, how you should act. Things like that. And I think that that goes a long way, anyway. If you have good manners, I find that artists that have good manners or have good home training make much more pleasant artists to work with. Artists that don’t have a lot of home training and start to believe that the world is about them or they have people that blow smoke up their behinds all the time, then they’re disconnected from reality. And I think that’s when it becomes dangerous.

[Michael Blue Williams Working With OutKast]

I think that when you talk about OutKast and the branding and how we grew and the group grew up, I think the first person we have to thank would be L.A. Reed. L.A. never put restraints on the guys. He always let them do what they knew how to do. I tell people that it was a blessing that we had a unique relationship. Because Big Boi and Dre, originally from Atlanta, from the south, they had a southern perspective and a southern appreciation of the music. And they had the unique way that they wanted it to sound and how it was.

Me coming from New York, I had a different perspective. I understood New York and the music industry, and the business side, and how the business industry looked at everything. And I think the combination of my New York way and my hustling New York style and their southern flavor and what they had created a type of perfect storm for us to win fights when it was like if I went in to see L.A. and creatively it seemed a little outside the box, the guys, L.A. had to respect them so he let them live. If I came in and it was business that needed to be handled, he had to respect my business acumen.

So we gained the success that we earned by being able to win a lot of fights and being able to take those risks. And when we won, it gave us a little more room the next time. And I think what really helped us when we got to Stankonia and The Love Below and Speakerboxxx, is that by then, OutKast fans had given us such a wide berth to take chances and to express and do things differently and live, that we just got into a groove where it was we just do what we do.

We don’t worry about what anybody else is doing. The guys aren’t copying radio or hearing what other people are doing musically. They just do what they do. I’m not sitting around trying to market and do the same thing with each project. I’m constantly looking at where the world is at that particular time right before we come out and how can we get in and make an impact or how do we market this record and do it a little differently. And I think that combination and Big, Dre, and myself, we stay in our lanes. We stay within our camp. I don’t make music. I let them make music. They let me do what I do on the marketing and dealmaking. And it’s proven a very successful formula for us.

I think if there was a moment that was more like a turning point than – I don’t think we ever sat around and said we was gonna do something totally new. I think it’s just always worked out that, “I got an idea. I don’t think I’ve seen anybody do it before, but I got an idea.” Later when you look back, everybody’s like, “Yeo, this is new and it’s groundbreaking.”

But I think the turning point for our career was we had an opportunity to go on tour with Lauryn Hill. And I always have to thank Lauryn and shout him out for taking us out on that tour and giving us the opportunity. But the truth of the matter is Lauryn and them didn’t want to pay us what we felt we were worth on that tour. And I saw the tour as a huge opportunity for us to go from being the southern rap band to getting in front of Lauryn’s fans. And this was The Miseducation of Lauryn and they had just come off of selling 12 million _____ albums. And she was on her roll for this. And she was going on tour. And I felt like if we could get in front of the Lauryn fans, I knew we could make those fans our fans.

So we went out on that tour for pennies. Lauryn and them got us. We got handled with the money. But it was worth it to me and I tell people all the time, Big Boi and Dre probably fired me ten times on that tour. ‘Cause we fought about the money. We fought about how much we were getting paid and whether we were shortchanging ourselves. But every night, I was just seeing the fans and their eyes were giddy and they were looking and they were sort of amazed by Dre and what he was wearing and amazed by Big Boi’s personality and the guys’ showmanship together. And every night, we went out there and we ripped that stage up. And we made it harder on Lauryn every night to come on that stage after us.

And from that tour, it changed the perception of us, I believe. Because the media and a lot of the media that decides whether you’re gonna be hot, sexy, and fly, was at those shows because they wanted to see Lauryn. And those that saw us were like, “Hey, this little group is doing their thing.” And I think that’s what opened us up to a lot of mainstream success and a lot of opportunities that weren’t there before. It also financially, when we finished that tour, our numbers almost doubled and tripled on what people were willing to pay for us to come through. And so the Lauryn Hill tour gave us the opportunity to step up from just being a normal group and take it up a level. I think after we did the Lauryn Hill tour, mainstream media, the cool media, everybody had their eyes on us. They were paying attention to what we were doing.

When we dropped the next album and we started out, we had Ms. Jackson and those types of hits, once we got a really big radio hit, now mainstream and everyone’s paying attention. We’re crossing over. So I had an opportunity for us to go on our own type of tour. So we went out on tour and I actually, me and the guys, I remember making sure we wanted to give somebody the opportunity that we had. So I remember us taking Ludacris out on that one with us. And we took Ludacris and he opened up for us. So Ludacris, when I look at Cris now and I look at where his sales are and where he is compared to some of his peers that came out with him, the reason that Ludacris sells two to four million records now is ‘cause he was in front of the same type of fans that we were in front of with Lauryn. People were like, “OutKast! OutKast!” And then they say Cris come out and kill the show every night.

I think that the crossover and the things that fed into it was that while we had songs like Ms. Jackson and we had the success that we were having, we were never – I was never afraid to book the guys to go do the winter X Games. I was never afraid to go and do skater events. The guys were like, “Yeo. The money’s right. We’ll go do it. Go ahead and do Credible and the Right Stuff.” So we would go and do those shows and rock them. And we’d go on tours in the summer. And we’d be on tour and going right before Moby on a tour or something like that. And we’d take Moby fans.

So whenever we would go on tour, we’d always take people’s fans. And that’s what always OutKast touring has always been about for us. It’s always been about getting out there and making new fans and making them ours. So if you put us before Lauryn Hill, we’re gonna make Lauryn Hill’s fans ours. If you put us on before Moby, we’re gonna make Moby’s fans ours. If you put us on tour with George Clinton, we’re gonna get the Parliament and all those fans. And that’s how we’ve always done it.

And so the touring aspect of who OutKast is was very vital, along with doing TV and always being able to translate the energy from our videos and what you saw on stage. A lot of groups, you see one thing in the video. It’s a different thing when you see them live, or it’s just a whole different – you’re not getting the same. With OutKast, the energy you see in the video is the same energy you see with them on stage. It’s the same energy that you see when they do David Letterman. So it’s no let down. You’re excited to see them perform Ms. Jackson on The Tonight Show. You’re excited to see them when you go see them in a concert. And that carried over with Bombs Over Baghdad into Ms. Jackson and then into Hey, Ya and The Way You Move.

So I really believe those and always maintaining that, and again, L.A. Reed and the label, and we’ve had fights and stuff like that, but when the guys feel like, “Yeah, we wore this outfit and we need whole new outfits for this to keep the energy and keep it fresh,” them letting us go ahead and giving us the money and wardrobe to go keep that fresh. And to do those things and keep the fans excited and guessing, or giving the guys the wardrobe money so that they can constantly come up with new looks on magazine covers and things like that. And I think that as management, it’s those fights that you do and the guys having the creative energy just to keep coming up with stuff. So it makes it easier for you to go fight. And each time you win, you get a bigger bat to go fight the label with.

And things just sometimes work out. I remember fighting with L.A. Reed about Dre performing at the half time of Super Bowl with the Justin and all that stuff. And we were like, “No, we don’t want to do it. We don’t want to do it.” In hindsight, it’s brilliant that we didn’t do it, ‘cause that was a crazy Super Bowl and everything. But I think there’s also been a lot of fate and a lot of things falling in the right place at the right time.

I always believed that OutKast could be as successful as we’ve been. I’ve actually felt like we could be even bigger than we are. When I first started managing OutKast, when I got to know the guys, I sort of had a chip on my shoulder ‘cause I felt like people were talking about the Moonies when we first came out. And then it was ’95 in the south, so people were never really giving the guys their props. And then when we came up to New York and it was the Source Awards and all this other stuff, I always felt like we were getting jerked. I think for the first two albums, we ran around with a chip on our shoulder like trying to make people pay attention.

And so my goal eventually went from when we started getting the critical acclaim and getting five mikes and stuff and things like that, I started going from wanting to be the biggest rap group in the world, to wanting to make the guys the biggest just group, band in the world. So to me, as much success as we’ve had, I’m still not done with what I think we can really be. I want to be what the Eagles and the Rolling Stones and those groups are for a generation of people. I want to be able to look up in 20 years and if the guys want to go on the road, that we can fill up stadiums like the Eagles and those people can and make $50-60 million a summer just touring out and just touring in the summer. ‘Cause I really think that we’ve created a brand that’s gonna last and we’re gonna have the options to do what we want to do.

I think creatively, I think I studied their managers. I studied some of their moves, Irving Azoff, who manages the Eagle’s, and Doc that’s managed Bon Jovi, all these types of managers. I find that one thing is that most of the time they’ve had the same manager so it’s been a formula that works well. So there’s some consistency. I find that every group goes through some time where they need some space apart to appreciate and really step back and really soak in everything that they have accomplished and done.

I think the similarities is that we just really we’ve had that type of run that great bands have at one point. When you look at a great band’s career _____ U2 or this, you can look at a string of albums in a row or you can look at what that groundbreaking landmark album that defined that group is. And then they turn around and follow it up or two albums later they follow up.

And that’s the difference, I think, between average artists and great artists. I think great artists have more than one defining album. I think when you’re a great group, when you’re a great band or a great artist, that your fans can sit around and argue about which album is better. I think when you are a good artist and you’re just an artist that had some good records, then everyone knows what your best album is. They go, “Oh, that was his first album.” I think with OutKast, we have people that argue that Aquemini was our best album. We have some that feel like Stankonia. We have some that feel The Love Below and Speakerboxxx. That means that we’ve laid out a good quality work and I think that that better work is always gonna last.

And I think I still manage the group with a chip on my shoulder. I don’t think that we get everything we should get out of it, all the press and everything that we should get sometimes. I don’t feel like we get mentioned high enough on greatest albums sometimes. I don’t feel we get mentioned in Most Relevant Artists sometimes. I feel like The Fujis sold 12 million records on the score. And I feel like that was a single album. We sold 13 million on our album, but it was a double album. So I feel like could we have sold 12 and could we really have made it 24 or something? It’s just my personal competitive edge is always trying to see what we can do better and how we can do it differently and push the envelope.

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