Despite Ellison's aversion to the business side of owning a label, there are certain responsibilities that come with it—A&R being a key one. While Stover provides a sounding board, it's Ellison who drives the evolution of Brainfeeder's repertoire, in a way he refers to as mostly organic. Saxophonist Kamasi Washington, the latest addition to the Brainfeeder roster, points to this personal approach as the reason why he joined. “I saw Lotus had a great vision in what he liked, what he was into,” he explains. “The audience he had cultivated shared his open-mindedness.” Both Washington and Mandowa also mentioned being given freedom to create as another important factor in feeling at home on Brainfeeder. For Bruner, it all began not by thinking about joining a label but rather with feeling like “my best friend was visioning things with me,” he says. “It was a very personal experience.”

I ask Ellison to define his A&R approach but he brushes off the question by saying that he tries not to sign artists anymore. “There’s always problems, people move on to other projects at other labels, naturally, so…” he trails off before almost contradicting himself by saying that he now simply signs acts that he feels make “sense,” an ever-evolving concept defined by Ellison’s frame of mind at the time. He recounts an early attempt at signing Tyler, The Creator, before Odd Future had become a thing: “[Tyler] was tripping, like ‘you'll make vinyl copies of my music?!’” Ellison’s plan was to team him up with Baker for an EP. Had that happened, the expansion of the L.A. beat scene could’ve gone in a very different direction. “I also wanted to sign Chance The Rapper back in the day,” continues Ellison. “A few artists who have gone on to do huge shit slipped right through my fingers.” He lets out another laugh before admitting that it's all for the best. There's a sense that Ellison simply can't reconcile the harsher realities of A&R—the money, the promises, the failures—with his own personal beliefs, and, I assume, his own fame. So he chooses not to. Instead he sticks to “trying to do right by everybody.”