The razor-blade claimed its debutante moment in 1997. A curved emblem stamped with the curious moniker of Rawkus along its southern edge, the logo began taking over the racks of independent record stores in earnest that year. Canny crate-diggers may have noted evidence of the Rawkus record label before that—sometimes sporting a different logo, often with a different (and not always hip-hop-based) sound—but when 12" vinyl records by artists with incongruous-seeming names like Mos Def, Shabaam Shadeeq and Sir Menelik started popping up, it heralded the beginning of a new underground sound. Crucially, the Rawkus-fronted movement cast itself as an alternative grassroots soundtrack to the glitzy, Puff-propagated shiny-suit facade of mainstream hip-hop at the time. "Independent as fuck," proclaimed the artwork of the debut album by Rawkus's first critically-acclaimed group, Company Flow. In 1997, it was less a mantra than a battle-cry.





Rawkus Records was founded by Brian Brater and Jarret Myer, two college kids attending Brown University who considered themselves avid record label scholars. Along with a financial helping hand from their friend James Murdoch, they facilitated a first flurry of successful Rawkus releases that championed a new way of thinking. Songs like Mos Def's "Universal Magnetic" nodded to hip-hop's old-school roots while embracing a fresh era of free-flowing expression. At the height of Rawkus's late-'90s reign, fans bought into the lifestyle and the everyman personas of the label's poster boys like Mos and Talib Kweli: It was about claiming the ideal of independence not chasing corporate checks; it was a socially-conscientious mind-state cut-through with a creative swagger. Rawkus' image allowed legions of fans to feel part of an inclusive movement, as they bandied together with like-minded artists and all marched along to the same Shawn J. Period drum beat, all sporting the same razor-blade-branded lanyard swinging from their pants.





Like all great industry stories though, with success comes change. Rawkus expanded at a prolific rate. The label clocked up mainstream hits like the Nate Dogg-featuring "Oh No" and Kweli's Kanye West-produced "Get By," and made moves to bring larger, already-established rappers into its ranks (often for reputed big money advances). Fans and artists picked up on a perceived shift in emphasis: Instead of reveling as the alternative—the antidote even for some—Rawkus became part of the industry norm. The label's success turned underground icons into mainstream stars, but as the Puffy-endorsed adage has it, with more money comes more problems. As the label fans learned to love, Rawkus effectively closed its doors in 2004, after selling its back catalogue to Geffen in the aftermath of an industry buy-out. (A brief resurgence occurred in 2006, which included the label rolling out the Rawkus 50 stable of artists, but the original excitement about the label seemed to have already passed.) It left behind a sterling legacy of what Brian Brater describes as "hundreds of dope records."





From a 2014 vantage point, the rise of a label like Rawkus is something we may never witness again. The record industry has changed; the way we consume and obsess over music has shifted; the idea of a record label has warped. It casts Rawkus as rap's last great record label—at least in the traditional brick and mortar sense. What follows is the story of that label, as told by 25 of Rawkus's key artists and industry staff who were there during its lifetime. All salute to the razor-blade.

THE PLAYERS





Ayatollah (Producer): A producer from Queens, New York City, Ayatollah saw his profile boom after contributing the Aretha Franklin-sampling beat for Mos Def's "Ms. Fat Booty" to the rapper's Black On Both Sides debut album. Since then, Ayatollah has gone on to work with Talib Kweli, Ghostface and Sean Price.





B-1 (Rapper): Having announced himself on Kool G Rap's 4, 5, 6 album, the Queens-based rapper B-1 dropped the 12" single "Verbal Affairs" as his Rawkus debut in 1997 (the song's b-side, "Empire Staters," went on to be included on the firstSoundbombing compilation). B-1 reunited with G Rap for his second Rawkus effort, "Cardinal Sins."





Ben Willis (Radio Promotions): Holding down a position on the industry side of the Rawkus story, Ben Willis started working at the label in 1997 and handled radio promotions. He stopped working with Rawkus in 2004 after the label merged with Geffen.





Brian Brater (Co-Owner): Along with Jarret Myer, Brian Brater founded Rawkus Records. The duo's dream of owning a record label was forged while at Brown University. These days, Brian's entrepreneurship includes co-founding the UpRoxx.com venture.





Chris Athens (Mastering): After striking up a relationship with Jarret Myer, Chris Athens went on to master most of the pivotal Rawkus catalogue; his name is stamped on Company Flow's Funcrusher Plus, Pharoahe Monch's Internal Affairs, and Mos Def and Talib Kweli's Black Star project among many others. He remembers the Rawkus artists ordering a lot of Caribbean food from Island Spice during those sessions.





DJ Eleven (Production Department): As one-third of The Rub, DJ Eleven is one of Brooklyn's most acclaimed party DJs. He interned at Rawkus before graduating to a position in the production department.





DJ Premier (Producer): Having come to acclaim as one half of the Gang Starr duo with Guru, DJ Premier helped bring through the rise of hip-hop's boom-bap sound during the '90s. He found himself in demand as a producer-for-hire on Rawkus projects from Mos Def and Kool G Rap, along with taking on the position of Associate Executive Producer for the posthumous Big L release, The Big Picture.





DJ Spinna (Producer): Brooklyn-based DJ Spinna produced for many of the early wave of Rawkus artists, including Shabaam Sahdeeq, L-Fudge and Sir Menelik. Spinna's own solo project, Heavy Beats Volume One, was released on the label in 1999.





EL-P (Rapper/Producer): Along with Bigg Jus and Mr. Len, EL-P made up the Company Flow trio which became Rawkus's first underground stars. The group's 1997 debut on the label, Funcrusher Plus, was an expanded version of an earlier self-released EP. Since Co Flow disbanded, El-Producto has released a series of critically-acclaimed solo albums and most recently teamed up with Killer Mike under the Run The Jewels moniker.





Evil Dee (Producer): Brooklyn-based Evil Dee holds down a position as one half of Da Beatminerz production unit which was behind the boards for Black Moon's classic Enta Da Stage debut album. He also found his mixtape skills in demand when he was asked to stitch together the first Soundbombing compilation, which he embellished with his signature holler of "Evil Dee is on the mix, come on kick it!"





Jim Drew (Label Manager): An industry figure, Jim Drew was label manager at Rawkus during the tail-end years of 2006-2007. His Soulspazm label was also distributed through Rawkus via their deal with Sony RED.





John Forte (Rapper/A&R): Taking on an impromptu A&R role, John Forte helped round-up the early wave of notable Rawkus artists which included bringing Talib Kweli into the label fold. Along with an association with The Fugees, John Forte has also released four solo music projects.





J-Zone (Rapper/Producer): An emcee and producer from Queens, New York City, J-Zone released the "Live From Pimp Palace East" single through Rawkus in 2001. He says it paid him handsomely. He also recently released the industry memoir Root For The Villain: Rap, Bullshit And A Celebration Of Failure.





Karen Cousino (Receptionist): As someone who was "fresh to New York City," a friend of a friend recommended that Karen Cousino meet some guys who had started a record label. The meeting went well and she ended up becoming Rawkus's beloved receptionist.





Kevin Shand (Distribution And Sales): Having first worked at Nervous Records, the label responsible for the formative Boot Camp Click releases, Kevin Shand moved over to Rawkus as they were gearing up to release the first Mos Def and Reflection Eternal singles. He worked principally in distribution and sales.





Kool G Rap (Rapper): An East Coast gangsta rap pioneer, Kool G Rap found himself being offered a deal with Rawkus towards the turn of the last millennium. Rumors suggest he received a $1.5 million advance, although the album he was recording,The Giancana Story, eventually came out via Koch Records.





Mighty Mi (Rapper): Alongside the rapper Mr. Eon, the producer Mighty Mi made up one-half of The High And Mighty. Their Eastern Conference indie label struck a deal with Rawkus and they released 1999's Homefield Advantage album, which included cameos from Pharoahe Monch, Mos Def and Eminem. These days Mighty Mi enjoys life as a DJ in demand on the Las Vegas party circuit.





Mike Heron (A&R): A side gig sourcing one-off 12" singles for Rawkus led to him being offered a formal A&R position at the label. He was heavily involved in the Kool G Rap album and Big L's The Big Picture, along with bringing Joell Ortiz to the label back when he was known as Jo-Ell Quickman.





Mr. Len (DJ/Producer): The DJ and producer Mr. Len made up one-third of Company Flow alongside EL-P and Bigg Jus. Once Jus flew the roost, he and EL released the last Co Flow project on Rawkus, the instrumental Little Johnny From The Hospitulalbum. Len's latest solo project, The Marvels Of Yestermorrow, dropped last year.





Pharoahe Monch (Rapper): After courting critical acclaim as one-half of Organized Konfusion with Prince Po, the Queens-based Pharoahe Monch struck a solo album deal with Rawkus for 1999's Internal Affairs. The project was spearheaded by the club banger "Simon Says," although sample issues saw the song being pulled from retail. Monch's latest solo album, P.T.S.D., is out now.





Q-Tip (Rapper/Producer): The former leader of A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip worked with Mos Def on both the "Body Rock" single and his Black On Both Sides album after coming across the young rapper's music during a De La Soul session. Tip also contributed to Soundbombing 2, as he teamed up with Wordsworth for "Makin' It Blend."





R.A. The Rugged Man (Rapper): In addition to contributing plenty of material for a crazy story or two with his wild extra-curricular activities, R.A.'s "Stanley Kubrick" remains a cult classic on the Rawkus label. His last solo album, Legends Never Die, dropped last year.





Sally Morita (A&R Assistant): Hired by Rawkus A&R Black Shawn, Sally Morita first interned at the label before being rewarded with a full time position as an A&R assistant. In a previous role as a journalist, she also interviewed Mos Def and Talib Kweli in their pre-fame days.





Shabaam Sahdeeq (Rapper): The Brooklyn-based Shabaam Sahdeeq was one of the early Rawkus indie stars, thanks in part to his posse cut "5 Star Generals," which featured a turn from a pre-superstardom Eminem. His intended Rawkus albumScandalous never came to fruition, although he maintains that it was a classic in the making. Shabaam also held down a position as DJ Spinna's barber back in the days.





Talib Kweli (Rapper): A Brooklyn-based emcee with a conscientious streak to his lyrics, Talib Kweli became one of Rawkus' early poster boys alongside his Black Star partner Mos Def. Kweli scored his biggest hit for the label with the Kanye West-produced "Get By," and as part of the group Reflection Eternal with DJ Hi-Tek, also dropped the Train Of Thought album for Rawkus. Reflection Eternal's "Fortified Live" 12" endures as one of the label's most iconic releases.

RAWKUS 1.0

(1992–1996)





Brian Brater: I was 18 years old and Jarret [Myer] and I were at Brown University [in the early ‘90s]. I was really into Native Tongues, Pharcyde, Digable Planets, a lot of classic hip-hop and the early moments of the DJ Premier and Gang Starr movement; Daily Operation was one of the albums I rocked the most. But we were real jazz heads too and heavily immersed in studying and playing jazz music, so like a lot of bebop records and the whole Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane thing, plus the whole funked-out Herbie Hancock stuff. It was the full gamut of, I guess, black music.





We were also just weird kids into Billboard—we were into charts. Back then labels pretty much meant everything. We were obsessed with what Blue Note was and how it was structured and how they made the records, and also what a lot of indie labels were like, how a lot of majors were indies before they became majors. We would look at A&M, Stax, all the SST stuff, all the Black Flag and Suicidal Tendencies stuff. We were always thinking about that in high school. So we became live music directors for a bunch of local artists and started producing shows—this is like '92. That lead to us setting up a management thing, almost like an agency, and we'd make their demos, their mixtapes and go to New York to shop them at major labels. We kinda learned a lot about the A&R culture at the majors then.





We were with a group called Prospectors On A Mission. They were a duo, brothers, from Pawtucket, Rhode Island. They were kinda rapping b-boys. There was a very fierce dancehall artist who could spit fire, Jah Youth. We were kinda like the house band—like the Booker T & The MGs for all these rappers!—and we were called Buddah Max. Then in like '94 we formalized this thing into something called Raw Records. It was kinda the blueprint, the beginnings. By then I was spending a lot of time with John Forte and I'd also start to see Talib [Kweli]. It was more friends back then, not just the label owner and artist dynamic—we'd all just hang out.





John Forte: We had a mutual friend in common and she went to Brown with Brian and Jarret and was a part of the downtown scene I knew back in the days. She told me she had some friends who had just started a record company and I should meet them. I thought it was under the premise of them being interested in me as an artist so I kinda showed up with this hubris, like, I don't know if I want to sign for an indie label 'cause I have my sights set on the majors. They told me they weren't interested in me as an artist but as an A&R man which was an eye-opening thing for me. I accepted the role and I really embraced it. I wanted to be the best A&R man out there. It wasn't lost on me that I was 19 years old being the director of A&R for what was a legit record label.





Brian Brater: I think I came up with the name Rawkus. I just liked the word and I was really into Wu-Tang and what Loud Records was starting to do around then. This was around '95 and then the razor blade [logo] was straight. I don't recall who came up with the razor blade, but we wanted to be different and also be obvious about it. There's quite a few revisions [of the logo] along the way, but once it bent it really stood out on turntables.





John Forte: It was pretty clear in the beginning they wanted to be underground. They wanted to be edgy and the focus was on hip-hop, although one of the first groups I ended up signing was Plastique which, at least in my opinion, was pretty ground-breaking at the time 'cause they were mixing downtown rock with hip-hop. This preceded the days of Limp Bizkit and similar groups. Plastique's rapper ended up killing himself and I have a great sadness about it. Plastique had their fingers on the pulse but we didn't necessarily know how to get the proper sound out of them. It was a tough sell 'cause people say you're confused, like are you rappers or skate-rock guys or punk? They were all of those things. So while the push was hip-hop, we were willing to play around with the downtown sub-culture and expand our horizon.





Brian Brater: I believe the first official release on Rawkus was by Poppa Bear Kool Breez ("Lighter"/"What's The Word") [in 1996]. We were also doing some pop rock-rap stuff back then with Plastique. Then we started just building up a catalogue and released a bunch of weird ambient electronic records.





DJ Spinna: The first time I heard of Rawkus they were very young in development and were putting out drum 'n' bass records.





J-Zone: I didn't associate the first Rawkus record I ever had with the label. I'm a producer and back then I used to go to the Roosevelt Hotel Record Convention to buy drums breaks. Some of the records, like Power of Zeus, were like $150—it was very expensive to get good drum breaks. Rawkus put out a black record with like a purple razor blade across it that was just drum breaks, called Fun With Drums. It was compiled by J-Swift—I don't know if it's the same J-Swift from The Pharcyde. It had 21 drum breaks on it and really good ones, not just like "Impeach The President," but really rare hard breaks on it. So I thought Rawkus was a breakbeat label at first. I used that record like a million times!





John Forte: I thought Brian and Jarret and James [Murdoch] were young and ambitious. The fact of the matter is these were three young white men coming into downtown New York and wanting to be credible on the scene. They were open to me about what their strengths were. They didn't have the credibility and the more humble thinking was they needed someone like me who was more ingratiated into the downtown scene. They weren't tough kids from tough neighborhoods but they loved the music and they respected the music. I'd like to think I was the bridge introducing them to that scene.





Brian Brater: I think, honestly, John Forte is somewhat rooted in all of it.





EL-P: These guys, if I'm not mistaken, before they started the record label they drove all around the country going to independent stores—like every single independent record store in the country—and meeting them and talking to them. That's something that's pretty impressive. When it came time to put out records that are ultimately not radio records, they had that relationship. There weren't many people busting their ass like that.





Talib Kweli: The first time I heard of Rawkus was in 1996. They were a start-up; one of my rap partners, John Forte, was an A&R. He took them to a house in Brooklyn to hear some artists rap. It was Population Clique, which was The Rose Family and 7 Universal together. The vibe was God body, East Coast, boom-bap rap, very Wu-Tang-influenced. Brian and Jarret were the only white guys in a room of 30 people. Their whiteness stood out. My conversation with them that day was a bit overwhelming 'cause there were too many people there trying to get a deal with them and I didn't see it as a situation for me at the time.





John Forte: 7 Universal were a number of guys and they were all character-driven like Wu-Tang. For all of its size and scope, Wu-Tang has so much substance and something to say and 7 Universal had a theology and a philosophy that left you learning something every time you listened to the music. I would say they were kindred spirits to Wu-Tang. We went to see them at a house in Crown Heights, I think on Eastern Parkway. We were in this room playing music and one by one the artists would step up and take their best shot to rap. It was in the acting manager's house, a young woman by the name of Pam if I remember.





Brian Brater: The Rose Family and 7 Universal were part of a very large rhyme crew, like 100 kids spitting fire in East New York, kinda like a Wu-Tang but set in Brownsville. We started to get behind that and around then also started to really get with Anthony and Danny who were doing the Lyricist Lounge. This was the end of '96 and that's really the genesis.





John Forte: At the time we were also pushing to sign Baybe, Guru's R&B artist. I remember being very impressed with her singing and Guru really believed in her. We just couldn't come to terms. I think the crux of the issue was we were an independent label and we just couldn't give them major label terms. We couldn't afford it.





I think Rawkus was respected by the artists but it wasn't necessarily the destination label for the artists ‘cause they still harbored dreams of being appreciated by the bigger labels like Sony, Warner Brothers and Universal. I think in the beginning the dream of a major label contract was a lot sexier than an independent label contract.





J-Zone: Listening to Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito on the radio, you'd hear about acts like The Rose Family and then after that it was Shabaam Sahdeeq.





Shabaam Sahdeeq: I got involved with Rawkus in 1996. A friend was doing radio promotions for them and was my acting manager and he got me a meeting at Rawkus. I knew they had a group called 7 Universal and The Rose Family. 7 Universal were from Brownsville and Rose Family was connected to them. It was hardcore underground music. Once my record "It Could Happen" started to get noticed—it was played by Red Alert—Rawkus got interested in me. They wanted to do my second 12” which was "Arabian Nights.”

HOME-FIELD ADVANTAGE

(1994–2004)





Brian Brater: Rawkus started at 65 Reade Street [in Manhattan]. It was kinda like a slightly fucked-up Tribeca loft before it was fancy down there. Initially there were five or six people working: John Forte, Tim Ronan was our lead designer and really just helping us deal with all the 12-inch packaging and art, a head of sales, Jarret and myself, and Blak Shawn who initially came on as our head of publicity and then kinda got into an A&R position. Part of the reason why Rawkus got the early exposure was 'cause there was a lot of press coverage about it. We’d all just sleep there [in the office]—it was dirty and we'd sleep on the couch and wake up and start working. It was your classic shenanigans.





John Forte: It was like a club house. It was a business office by day and a hang-out spot at night. I slept on that big office couch many times.





Brian Brater: We'd go to a deli around the corner and get like the fucked-up turkey sandwiches which would give me food poisoning once a month. There was a Blimpies around the corner that had a dope Street Fighter arcade machine—I'm pretty sure Kweli was good at the game. I was not very good; I think I was always Chun-Li 'cause I liked how she fought. And there was this really shitty triple-X seedy-ass store across the street that came in handy now and again, no pun intended.





Karen Cousino: I was the receptionist. A friend of a friend knew these guys who had started a label. I was kinda fresh to New York and she said I should meet them. I met Brian and Jarret and my interview was literally talking about what type of music I liked. I think the biggest thing that left an impression on me about the office was the door to the bathroom had no handle on it—there was just this big gaping circular hole! I think at one point someone put a sock in it. It was rough around the edges to start, you know?





Mr. Len: Karen was a really sweet girl. If I needed to get through to Brian or Jarret and sometimes people would avoid calls, she'd be real honest like, "They are trying to not take calls today but let me go and talk to them and I'll make it happen." She had a very sexy voice. Everybody flirted with Karen. You'd go in, smile at her, try and talk in your sexy voice too...





Sally Morita: The first job I was assigned was how to roll a blunt. As an intern, I was expected to have all the Phillies and Dutchs in my drawer. I was rolling blunts for artists, A&Rs, managers.





R.A. The Rugged Man: A lot of the broke rappers would go [to Rawkus] and chill there. We'd go on the computer and play. We had situations where we'd go up to Rawkus and hang out: There'd be a little Asian girl who worked there and you'd try and fuck her, a couple of cute girls would be there or like a little fat chick might be there doing some artwork, girls you'd try and bang. It was a good atmosphere, a lot of good people up there.





Karen Cousino: There would be food delivery guys and the weed delivery guy coming and going all day. Brian and Jarret at one point became vegan so Caravan of Dreams was a great spot for them. Peanut Butter & Company was fun 'cause you could order peanut butter sandwiches, like we'd get The Elvis with peanut butter and banana and bacon, like something crazy. I remember Mos Def was a very healthy eater. In general I remember everyone always having like designer sodas and designer root beers, like young gourmet drinks.





Mr. Len: The offices were real cool. The back room was where all the guys were shipping out records and shipping out shirts and the front room would be all the execs. You could go there and hang out in the conference room that split the front from the back—I always ran into Kweli and Mos a lot.





Talib Kweli: It was like a hotbed of talent at the Rawkus office. It was great that you could go up there and have that relationship with the CEO where you could go and complain and try to get more money out of them and then also have the other artists up there in a very free-flowing type of conversation.





John Forte: James [Murdoch] was often at the office at the time. I thought James was incredibly bright and bold. I think a lot of people looked at him sideways for leaving Harvard and wanting to start this record company. I'm the type of person that thinks life is all about calculated risk-taking and this was one of them. Was James Murdoch a fan of hip-hop? Yeah, absolutely. Not to the extent I was, but he was knowledgeable about what he knew and liked. He didn't necessarily wear the art on his sleeve—he was a businessman—but he appreciated it.





Talib Kweli: I never met James Murdoch, never.





Karen Cousino: Not long after we started we moved offices to 676 Broadway and it was a completely different situation. By the time I left Rawkus five years later we had two entire floors, an office on the West Coast and an office in the U.K. It was a fantastic transition. The Broadway bathroom had a handle too.

THE VITAL NERVE OF COMPANY FLOW

(1996–1999)





EL-P: [In ‘96] my manager, Amaechi, mentioned Rawkus to me. They had reached out about bringing Company Flow over to Rawkus. I hadn't heard of them before. They weren't really doing a lot of rap music. They had a group called The Rose Family and a lot of random rock and electronic stuff. So I wasn't really aware of them. But they reached out as fans of Company Flow. At the time we only had about eight songs out—all of them were on the Funcrusher EP we had pressed up. Stretch and Bob was a big part of how people were listening to music at the time.





Mr. Len: I'll tell you, initially, I wasn't a big fan of Rawkus—they hadn't done anything yet. This is the music business and when people are telling you they're gonna do this and they've got plans for that and everyone is going to be a millionaire, well, you know, not everyone makes it. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions—that's what it was to me.





EL-P: It was an interesting meeting. We went up there at their first office space on Reade Street. They were really cool. I actually met James Murdoch. I had no idea it was James Murdoch, and I didn't even really know who Rupert Murdoch was at the time, but I met James briefly. He just kinda came through, said, “What's up,” shook our hands and left. That was the first and last time I ever saw that guy.





Mr. Len: They were really smiley to me, you know? I'm from a predominantly black neighborhood so when you see people that want to exploit your music—I don't mean exploit in a bad way, but like they want to exploit your talent and they have an interest in you—and when you sit down with two people you've never seen before and it's two smiley white guys? Well, my initial reaction is, "I don't know, man, these guys want to be too friendly and personable." I was very hesitant. But for the most part meeting them I could tell they weren't malicious people.





EL-P: For us, I think the most important thing was we'd decided that in our arrogance we didn't need a record label. We were doing our own records independently and putting them through Fat Beats and selling a good amount of records, like we'd put out a 12” and sell 15,000 copies which for us was like going gold. We went from guys who were working day jobs to guys who were making money off a song so we thought we'd struck it big and didn't need a record label. Rawkus seemed to understand what we were involved in and the value of the scene, and they were down with giving us the type of deal we wanted to do. We'd come up with some deal points before talking to any labels—we had meetings with a handful of labels and Rawkus were the ones that understood and accepted our deal points. It felt like a win-win situation. They thought they could bring the music to more people and they thought that they could build something around the scene we had helped create. They also weren't asking for a commitment of like a thousand records and ownership. We did a masters-split and a 50/50 profit share—things that at the time it wasn't the culture to ask for those types of things and they were down for it.





It was a marketing and distribution deal essentially. Rawkus licensed a record from us and the deal was that we would take the Funcrusher EP we started with and blow it out into a full album. They gave us a little bit of money to make that happen. It was maybe a two record deal we had originally. [Pauses] Actually, I'm wrong, it was just a one-off deal, which made it so attractive, although we ultimately ended up signing another album deal.





DJ Spinna: Company Flow were one of the primary groups for giving Rawkus their identity. They already had a success story before signing to Rawkus and helped push them further into the underground foray. When Company Flow got down with them, they validated the label even more 'cause their following was so strong.





Mr. Len: They were fans of the music but also big fans of the appeal, you know? This is right off the shiny suit era. You had a Biggie Smalls album and on one side of his single is the DJ Premier joint and on the other side is the flossy "Juicy." You could tell people weren't sure which way they were going to lean to. It was on the cusp of something and [Rawkus] knew they could pick a side here and possibly ride a line. They knew we had an appeal—it wasn't super commercial but they knew it was something people would want.





Brian Brater: Back then, Company Flow really held the underground captive—they were the most independent as fuck thing pretty much in the business. They had a manic following.





Chris Athens: EL-P and those guys are very intense. The two things I remember about mastering the Funcrusher Plus record are the guys being extremely intelligent and kinda out there not in the crazy way but in the cutting-edge way. Everything from the beats to the lyrical style was like nothing I'd ever heard before. I was blown away by it.





EL-P was pretty all-business from what I remember. He obviously has a pretty crazy sense of humor, and we had lots of in-between song banter, but we were mostly focussed on getting the record done. I could see he was very serious about music and probably didn't like too much commercial stuff. It was challenging to master Funcrusher Plus. I wasn't trying to make it sound like other hip-hop records at the time—like making something bigger or more banging—and their production style was so off-the-wall that it was technically challenging but it was also challenging to go with the flow a bit more and not try to think about making it sound like something else. The record was like nothing else, you know?





EL-P: I think Rawkus did an amazing job marketing [the album] and they put a lot of money into the right things at the time. They put money into retail and they gave us a really ill video. Put it this way: I've never spent the amount of money they spent on our first video on any of my subsequent videos. They did a great job, man. Back then it was about advertising in magazines and detail placement. They busted their ass and really got the word out.





Early in the relationship we went over to Europe and it was one of our first European shows and we went to Brighton and London and the label all came and were hanging out at the shows. That was a great time—it felt exciting and it felt like we really had a team of people. I hung out with those dudes a lot; we went out a lot and got drunk and got food. It was exciting. It was cool 'cause we had been on our own the whole time until then and then when we agreed to do this shit it was exciting to have a group of people who were part of a team.





Talib Kweli: The video in the subway, "End To End Burners," that was my shit!









EL-P: Man, it was an amazing video. We shot that in Brooklyn in the Transit Museum. We had to light it and make it look like it was a moving train. I remember MF Doom came down. A lot of people don't know but if you look closely Doom is in the video. He was there at like 6 a.m. Originally Rawkus wanted to do a video for "Vital Nerve" but for me, at the time, I was like that's one of my oldest songs and the record has been out for a year and I wanted to do some new shit. I kinda had to fight with them for that—although I don't necessarily know if I was right. But they were cool about that.





After Funcrusher Plus we had Little Johnny From The Hospitul [in 1999]. It was a full album—I just had the idea to do an instrumental record. That was right around the time when Co Flow was about to break up, when Bigg Jus left the group. Me and Len had spoken about the instrumental record and we thought it was something we could do that wouldn't be too stressful and it was this weird idea. I went up to [Rawkus] and asked for a little bit of money to do the album and that's how it happened—it was always intended as an instrumental record.





Looking back, I think they were a little disappointed with that. At the time it was a really weird idea—it's like, "Hey, we're a rap group who just spent the last year having a big year as a rap group and here's our next record without any raps on it." Probably not the most brilliant strategy on my part. At the end of the day Rawkus didn't really know how to promote it. I understand that. There was no real precedent for it anyway—DJ Shadow was maybe the only precedent and that was different. I think they liked the record but I think they would have much rather had a vocal record.





I think the relationship really started to end around the Little Johnny time. Company Flow had essentially broken up, so it was me and Len and we were proud of Little Johnny and we planned a tour around it and we thought there were certain things that were going to be done promotion-wise and it went from there. That was what really started to sour me towards it and in general I was feeling a tug towards something else personally, to start my own shit. Rawkus were willing to do a Company Flow record that was just me and Len, which to their credit was cool of them, but we stepped to them and told them we wanted to get out. I was young and thought I could do things better, that's all. I ended up leaving and started Def Jux.





When we did the deal [with Rawkus] we really only expected to do the one record with them. We tried to do an independent record label, Official Records, before we hooked up with Rawkus. We had always intended to go and start a record label. So when it came time for that next deal to kick in, I was sort of frustrated in general and with the fact that the group wasn't the same any more and I had just gone through all that drama, I just wanted to do something else. But as I keep reiterating, the more time and distance I have, I'm less connected to whatever I was upset about. Ultimately my perspective has softened on it because Rawkus was a huge and positive important part of my career and I wouldn’t be doing what I'm doing now if it wasn't for Rawkus, I know that. They set off the whole next phase of my life.





[On "Deep Space 9mm," released in 2002], you know, I was pissed-off at the time for a few different things but it's business shit that I don't feel is necessary to explain to the public. That line ["Signed to Rawkus?/ I'd rather be mouth-fucked by Nazis unconscious"] was the result of just being pissed-off, but at the same time it was just a moment, just something that at the time I felt like I had to get off my chest just once. At the time I thought it was valid and it was just a funny fuckin' line that I couldn't resist putting it in there.





MOS DEF AND TALIB KWELI ARE...

(1996–2000)





Talib Kweli: I first met Mos Def through Mr. Man in Washington Square Park when I was like 14 years old.





John Forte: Kweli and I have known each other since we were kids. When I got the shot to be this A&R guy, I played his music in the [Rawkus] office but I never proactively sought to sign him at first. He was finding his voice and what he had to say. [In the early-‘90s] Mos and Kwe and I were part of that whole backpack hip-hop community that used to hang out in Washington Square Park all day long playing chess and freestyling—Supernatural and 8-Off The Assassin were there, too. It was just a matter of time before Kweli and Mos were recognized.





Q-Tip: The first time I heard Mos Def rhyme was in a De La Soul session. I thought he was dope, you know?





Mike Heron: You knew from day one with Mos.





Mighty Mi: You could tell Mos was a cut above your average underground emcee. I met Mos for the first time at the Village Gate in New York, which was a place where I DJed. Mos would come in during the middle of the night and be part of the emcees freestyling on the mic while I went back and forth on records. That would never happen now, but whoever was in the place would rhyme: Busta Rhymes would have the mic and do a little freestyle. You could tell Mos had something.





Talib Kweli: Mos Def was the key. He was in the movies and the girls liked him. He was doing this underground hip-hop thing that was considered nerdy and backpack-ish, but Mos Def brought a certain levity to it. It was like, "Okay, if this guy is doing it, let me take a closer look."





Ben Willis: Mos, from the beginning of his career, was never an underground rapper 'cause he was a star. If Mos walks in the room you know he's a star and even if he's like three hours late you can't be mad at him 'cause he has that thing about him, you know? He could be a chameleon in different worlds: He’ll pop up in Hollywood and he'll pop up in an underground cipher in Brooklyn somewhere.





Brian Brater: Mos had the Urban Thermo Dynamics stuff he'd done, and was guesting on some De La Soul stuff, and he was kinda like a burgeoning TV star on The Cosby Mysteries. That was a big deal back then—it's '95 New York, it was more 'hood with the culture, and you have this kid who dresses well, he's a TV star and, well, we just wanted to sign him. The contract was a one-off thing—that's just kinda how things got done in the beginning—there were no eight album deals.





DJ Spinna: Mos and I have a little history 'cause we went to the same high school. "Universal Magnetic" was pretty much his first comeback record after Urban Thermo Dynamics. The record is stellar: Shawn J Period's production on that track is for me the best record he's ever done. I still have like three sealed copies of it.





Talib Kweli: "Universal Magnetic" is a beautiful piece of music with a beautiful sentiment—it's still one of the best pop songs I've heard in my life.





Kevin Shand: I was working at another New York indie called Nervous which had all the formative Boot Camp Click stuff, and Blak Shawn was there and left to go to Rawkus. When I went over to meet Brian and Jarret, Brian played me "Universal Magnetic" and the first Reflection Eternal single ["Fortified Live"]. He told me they were gonna be dropping them in the next few months. I was like, "Okay, this is no joke, this is a good place to be."









Talib Kweli: I started working with Rawkus when they put out Company Flow and Shabaam Sahdeeq and had more of a buzz. "Fortified Live" was the first thing Reflection Eternal released. We recorded it before Rawkus was thinking about me, Mos and Mr. Man. It was the first song me and Hi-Tek did where we did good features. I was friends with Mos and Mr. Man so we wanted to get them on a record 'cause we knew at some point that was going to pay off.





Ben Willis: There are two defining records for us in New York City. There was the Mos Def record with Q-Tip, "Body Rock," which was the first record that Funkmaster Flex played via our label. I'd known Flex from pitching him on other records and he was always really cool with me. I took "Body Rock" on a dubplate—we went to Don 1 in Brooklyn—and Flex was like, "I got you tonight." Not only did he play "Body Rock," he also played Reflection Eternal's "Fortified Live." He played them back to back.





Q-Tip: I remember recording "Body Rock" [in 1998] with Mos and Tash. It was just fun, you know? It was a real great vibe. Everything that you hear on the record—the spontaneity, the ad-libs between me, Mos and Tash—they were real. We really encapsulated how we were feeling on that record.





Ben Willis: "Body Rock" and "Fortified Live" were important but what really broke Rawkus in New York City was Black Star's "Definition" [in 1998]. That was the first record Hot 97 placed in regular rotation. From a mainstream perspective, that's what started getting us the recognition.





John Forte: What happened to Mos and Kweli was that enough time had elapsed for Rawkus to find out what worked for them and what their lane was. They went through trials of fire with the initial artists and then Kweli and Mos were coming into their own as artists and thinkers and by that time they had come around to the idea of joining forces as Black Star. The timing was right.





Talib Kweli: Black Star was Mos Def's brainchild but the label definitely got behind it in a big way. We represented something that wasn't being spoken and wasn't being said.





Brian Brater: We thought it best to develop the artists—back then it wasn't like it is now, 'cause you had to sell a couple of hundred thousand albums to be taken seriously. We thought Black Star would be the ideal set-up.





Chris Athens: [In 1998] Black Star was attending a mastering session and the engineer was there, Mos was there, Talib was there and then there was this kid. We'd gotten into a groove—I'd never worked with any of them directly before—and I was into the record and it sounded super great. We got into a routine: I'd do my mastering on the song, play it for them, then they'd look at each other and nod and eventually somebody would say, "Yeah, that's great." But they'd always turn around to the kid in the back of the room who looked about 14 years old to ask what he thought. He was very soft-spoken and always agreeable. I was thinking to myself, "Why do they care what somebody's little brother thinks? Why do they keep asking the little brother what he thinks?" Then at one point I heard one of them yell, "Yo, Tek!" And I was like, "Holy shit, that's the producer!" He looked like a child! He couldn't have been more than 18. It's like they were all prodigies, super young guys doing very high-level stuff.





I remember it was definitely a very smooth session so I was either giving them what they wanted or they weren't super picky. When I listen to that record now, I still think it sounds great. Hi-Tek and [mixer] Ken "Duro" Ifill had done all of the heavy lifting and I was just tuning it up.





Pharoahe Monch: The arrangement of that record is genius. It made me pay more attention to song arrangements.





Chris Athens: I think from a sonic standpoint, Black Star might be the nicest sounding record I did for Rawkus. It was very consistent because of Hi-Tek and Duro's skill.





Brian Brater: Black Star was the first album release where we had our shit together. We had Rap City on lock and good distribution—I think we did like 27,000 units in the first week. That's the moment things really changed. That's when we were able to go and strike a significant distribution deal with Bryan Turner and Priority Records who at the time were just running the whole game. After the Black Star execution, we began communicating with the majors and companies like RED Distribution were all over us. But we met with Bryan Turner and his sales team execution was extraordinary: They could take a buzz and as long as we were promoting and doing our thing, they could ship the records. That's when the real successful era starts. I think we made the deal at the end of the Black Star record.





B-1: I was the one who brought Ayatollah to Rawkus. He did my track "The Life We Lead" [credited as DJ Kool G] which was on the b-side to "Cardinal Sins" with Kool G-Rap. Once he got introduced to the label and they started showing interest in the tracks he was doing, that ultimately led up to him doing "Ms. Fat Booty" [in 1999] that ended up selling like 500,000 copies.









Ayatollah: I wrote down the Rawkus address and telephone number from the records and I called up and told them I'm a producer and I really like your stuff and the label guys scheduled a meeting. Brian and Jarret and some of the A&Rs were there and we sat down in the conference room and played some music. People in the label were coming by the office, like I met Kweli and I think Pharoahe was there and they left the conference room door open so it was always, "Who is that? What's that music?"





I made beat tapes and the A&R would match the music with the artists at the label. Blak Shawn was an A&R, so was Mike Heron at the time. For "Ms. Fat Booty," I didn't submit it to anybody else. The label heard it and told me that Mos was working on Black On Both Sides and they wanted to put it on his album. It wasn't supposed to be released as a single—a lot of people don't know that—'cause the single was supposed to be "Mathematics," which DJ Premier produced. But they had a final sit-down in the conference room and heard the whole album and the A&Rs changed their mind and decided "Ms. Fat Booty" would be the lead single. The sample was cleared. We let her [Aretha Franklin] hear the song and she loved it and gave it the okay to clear the sample.





DJ Spinna: I did a remix of "Ms. Fat Booty" but it was only released in the U.K. which I thought was kinda odd. In the States they only released the remix with Ghostface on it. My mix may be a collector's item 'cause a lot of people don't know it exists. I remember Mos Def came in and re-cut the vocals for it—it was a brand new vocal take.





DJ Premier: I remember Busta Rhymes happened to be with us while recording "Mathematics." I sold drugs for a short period in my earlier years—not that it came to anything—but I knew my mathematics and I remember Mos Def was breaking down the ounces turning into a kilo and he was a little off with one of the numbers. Busta was like, "Hey, did you hear what he just said?" We rewound the tape and he was right. It was just one number but Busta caught it. And with that beat for "Mathematics," I remember Scarface saying, "Man, if he don't do a song to that I want that. I have never heard a beat like that in my life." I love that beat.





DJ Spinna: Rawkus went to a higher level once Mos got involved. That Black Star record supposedly went gold and he helped them grab a little spot in hip-hop history more so than any other artist on the label.





Talib Kweli: The label saw me and Mos as poster boys for the movement. That was deliberate. Rawkus was definitely marketing us as the face of the label. I was fine with it. I don't know if anybody else was, but I was down with it!

EXPANSION TEAM

(1997–2002)





Brian Brater: The Lyricist Lounge, Soundbombing, Company Flow, Mos, Kwe—all this kinda happened in '97. Then we started pumping out 12"s. It was on.





EL-P: It all sort of started happening after Company Flow signed. It was the first step in what they had planned, which was getting involved in the underground rap scene that was happening at the time. They thought it was the most exciting music happening and I'd agree—at the time it was.





Brian Brater: We wanted to keep building the brand and the brand was hip-hop and rappers as art, you know?





Mike Heron: Sacha Jenkins introduced me to Brian and Jarret and I started doing 12"s for them and I gave them a few records for Soundbombing just on the side and then they offered me an A&R position. I was putting the 12"s together. The Brick City Kids was a one-off 12" deal [in ‘97]. Because they were under contract to Atlantic we couldn't use the name The Artifacts. Today it would have been different 'cause it helped them get their buzz up. They were stuck on Atlantic on this corporate label and here come these dudes that are just like, "Do you want to put a record out? We'll pay you." The artists saw it as a fuckin' great thing. Those were the times of the big Puffy records, but we were doing something for a completely different audience that wasn't fuckin' with that world and Rawkus gave them an opportunity to have their voices heard.





Ben Willis: At that time there was the Harlem World movement, the Puff movement, this whole Cam'ron and Busta Rhymes movement with rap music going from being hip-hop to this commercialized thing. Those records were real polished and real clean and real dancey. Our records were just hip-hop records. New York City and Los Angeles, funnily enough, were the easiest markets for us to break into and get airplay, but you're [also] talking about Cleveland, D.C. and Houston, Texas, and they had no clue what was going on in this organic hip-hop movement. It was about getting people to understand what was going on but it was fun 'cause the music was good. I knew the music was amazing and it was just a matter of time before other people accepted that.





Kevin Shand: These were the days of Bad Boy and that kind of '80s pop recycled hip-hop sound was ruling the airwaves. Promotionally, it was hard to get our foot in the door. But working in our favor, there was a real groundswell of word of mouth and grassroots support because of the nature of the music.





DJ Eleven: [Rawkus] had really deep pockets so they were able to make things happen and they had a tremendous amount of good will and everybody loved the label and everybody loved what they put out. They had a great reputation in the industry. I guess you could call it street or underground credibility at the time and they had money to play with.





EL-P: [Company Flow] came first as the new wave of artists then I think they brought in Sir Menelik, who told me he came because they signed Company Flow. It started a little bit of an avalanche. [Rawkus] put out a ridiculous amount of good music. I fucking love the shit me and Menelik did, and they did a shit ton of 12"s with people that were really good. I remember feeling I was amped about the music coming out of Rawkus.





DJ Spinna: Sir Menelik is my man! He's a very eccentric guy. I met him in the '90s through a guy I went to college with. He pretty much reinvented himself for the Rawkus days. He's very street-smart and highly intelligent—his rhymes are a combination of scientific knowledge of self and just a barrage of different things.





EL-P: I did a couple of songs for Sir Menelik [in ‘97]. He was amazing and very fun to work with. He was one of the first people—if not the first—that I ever did outside production for who asked me to produce a record that was coming out. I used to hang out with him and Godfather Don. Menelik had the Kool Keith association and to this day he's one of my favorite rappers.





Evil Dee: The [first] Soundbombing [in '97] was supposed to be a mixtape Rawkus was making to give away at a convention. When I made it, the guys that owned Rawkus thought it was so dope they wanted to sell it. I was like, "Really guys? I'm talking like crazy on it, I didn't make it to sell." Yo, it blew up! I was surprised 'cause I didn't think that when it came to a mixtape I got anything that the regular consumer was ready for. But Rawkus had the real hip-hop heads so it sold.





I did the whole Soundbombing at D&D Studios—I just brought in my equipment I used to make mixtapes at my house and set-up at D&D. I remember Finsta fell asleep during the recording. I had a rule where you couldn't fall asleep in the studio—if you come to the studio you come to work, not just hang out—and Finsta fell asleep so I was like, "Yo, we should put the incense in his nose." I didn't go through with it though, but I left it on the mixtape [on "2000 Seasons"].





DJ Spinna: I was doing a project for Correct Records which went defunct so I had this whole project that needed a home. My management found out about Rawkus and so what ended up being Heavy Beats Volume 1 was originally for Correct Records. One of the great things about Rawkus was they brought Eminem to the table. At the time he was really just an underground artist and I hadn't heard of him—they came with ideas for who I should work with.





I did three records with Eminem during that year, two of them on Rawkus. He was sharp, that's what I remember most. He did his rhymes in one or two takes, was on point and quiet. He did "Watch Dees" with Thirstin Howl III and the track sampled a version of the theme song to Jaws. It was dark and sinister so I think they just wrote according to where the track was dictating them. The track actually had a verse from Wordsworth or Punchline that I wasn't content with so it didn't make the cut.









Shabaam Sahdeeq: [In '98] I did "5 Star Generals," which had Eminem on plus Kwest, Skam and A.L. Two of those guys, Skam and A.L., were at the Rap Olympics with Eminem so I threw them all on the track together. I recorded it in Spinna's basement studio in Brooklyn. Em was pretty quiet, he didn't have the blonde hair, but when he dropped that verse everyone in the studio was surprised. I kinda had an idea that he was going to go on to do more, you know?





DJ Spinna: Everything I did in those days was recorded in my home studio which I called the Thingamajig Lab. I was pretty self-sufficient in those days—I had the home studio so I could keep the recording budget for myself. It was pretty humble: A lot of records and a small room with keyboards and drum machines.





Ayatollah: I was DJing and I'd go buy records in Manhattan—I lived in Queens—and I'd go to Vinylmania and Fat Beats and I kept seeing Rawkus records on the shelves. The first one I bought was from B-1, "Cardinal Sins," with Kool G Rap. It was amazing—with the rhymes and the beats and that G Rap feature, it was a dope song.





B-1: A friend of mine used to work at Loud Records and became friendly with Brian or Jarret and introduced me to the situation. He told me it was Rupert Murdoch's son that was involved. I had a deal for the initial two singles I did, "Verbal Affairs" and "Cardinal Sins" [both in ‘98]. I had a lot that never came out on Rawkus though. I put out a single recently called "The Hands Of Time," produced by Large Professor that was supposed to come out on Rawkus but they passed on it. But I'm not mad: They gave me a shot and let me be affiliated with artists that 16 years later we're still talking about. I think I got $15,000 for a 12". I bought some crack cocaine with the money. It helped me out tremendously—I probably turned that $15,000 into $60,000.









Mighty Mi: Mr. Eon and me were putting out records as The High And Mighty through Eastern Conference during the same time as Rawkus and were involved with artists like EL-P and Mos Def—we did this record "B-Boy Document" that had both of them on. We put out “B-Boy Document” and it kinda caught Brian and Jarret’s attention. We had mutual college friends and just kind of recognized in each other that there was something bubbling. I was a club DJ at the time in New York, so I didn’t really see them in that side of New York, but I saw them in the live performance musical side of things. I was playing at a club called Life, which was down on Bleecker Street and a club called Cheetah, which was on 21st Street; I was DJing mostly with Jason Strauss who’d go on to be big in Vegas.





[High And Mighty] had songs that were being played by Stretch Armstrong. That was the barometer back then: The two main things was being in Fat Beats and on Stretch's show. So we signed the only label deal with Rawkus back then—everyone else just had artist deals. It meant we could facilitate artists through our label and could make use of Rawkus' marketing and promotions system.





We shot a video for "B-Boy Document '99," which was a last minute song we did for Soundbombing II [in ‘99]. We shot it out of this studio in Brooklyn. The budget was $400,000. That was the era where it was just crazy money being spent, like Puffy and them selling 1.2 million in the first week. Never again will there be this homely, small label that had major label financial backing. It was incredible. We'd deliver these 12" singles and in the contract they agreed to pay $7,000 a song, so we'd go out and find an artist that we liked like a J-Zone and agree to do a three song single and split it. It was a vinyl single and they'd write us a check for $21,000. It was the craziest thing.





J-Zone: I had three songs I had done with my crew and Mighty Mi was like, "Can you put together three songs?" I recorded in my crib and they paid for us to go to D&D and mix it down. I got a pretty good advance—I probably got more money in my advance for a non-exclusive single than I did for most of my albums. To get that kind of money for a 12" vinyl-only record at the time was kinda crazy. With the exception of the Super Bowl commercial I did in '06, that was the largest sum of money I ever got. I remember I also got a Rawkus record bag for free when I went to get my copies of the record, a black strap bag that had the little gold Rawkus logo on it. It was a nice bag, man. I was like, "Man, this is a really dope souvenir."





Mighty Mi: I remember Tommy Boy wanted to put out the High And Mighty album and at the time our manager was Paul Rosenberg, Eminem's manager. At the last second Rawkus came in—like it was really the night before—and Jarret had just signed a nice distribution deal with Priority and they were in a position to sign a label deal with us. I'm so happy we did that. If we'd have signed to Tommy Boy they wouldn't have cared about us. [At Rawkus] we would make songs and we'd go down and play it in Brian and Jarret's office and go out on the fire escape and smoke weed with them and listen to music.





R.A. The Rugged Man: There was a kid named Sacha Jenkins who worked at Ego Trip magazine and was like, "Yo, these guys got a little situation and want to record with you." I had no clue who they were when I went to go see them. I had the meeting, they said they'd love to put out my music. No problem. The deal they gave you was a payment and you let them use your song, like punk-rock style they said. I think we did it without paperwork if I remember correctly. I had recorded "Stanley Kubrick" [in '99] the night before in a couple of minutes, just me and my man fuckin' around. I put it on, I didn't even think it was a good song, just me being sloppy and having fun. But they were like, "Yo, we love that, that's hip-hop there, that's the song." I was broke out my mind and they said they'd give me a check right now. I think it was $5,300 for one song. I didn't have the best management so I'd get a little less money than other artists. They gave some kids like $20,000 per 12".





DJ Eleven: My sense was that the artists sensed they had a good thing going on and didn't really question it that much. The thinking was these guys have money and they're spending it on good music. People in the industry were like, "Well they've got News Corp. money so they can do what the fuck they want." When they got bigger that became more common knowledge but before people just accepted Rawkus as a label with money to play with and left it at that.





R.A. The Rugged Man: I was like their underground artist, but they made me look more underground than I was. Before that I was like the star hope of the industry people—I had nine deals and the whole industry wanted me. Then all of a sudden all the crazy shit happened with the labels and I got black-balled and nobody fucked with me. I was a little depressed. I felt like I was a superstar at the time—I'm just being honest, that's how my mind was working whether it was reality or not. It was like, "Okay, you got to do this 12" hustle but it ain't what it's supposed to be, R.A."





DJ Spinna: I remember an overseas tour with Company Flow, Shabaam Sahdeeq, L-Fudge and R.A. The Rugged Man. R.A. is a character, man! I remember at one of those shows he picked up a hero sandwich out of the garbage and slapped some dude in the audience with it. That was a fun tour, man.





R.A. The Rugged Man: I never fit in there, you know? I was always the maniac running through the label with bitches. They were terrified of me. I'd come up there with women and have them get naked right in front of the office and they'd be scared of lawsuits. I definitely didn't fit in there. I remember for Soundbombing 2 they had a big concert party at the Bowery Ballroom and I went crazy there, took all my clothes off. I was all heavy back then so there was a huge picture in the Village Voice of Rugged Man letting it all hang out. People thought, “This fuckin' jerk is at it again.” [Pauses] I got my clothes back.





Karen Cousino: R.A. is so funny, he's a hysterical guy. He's really odd and great and silly. I think he's very misunderstood: He's complex, difficult to explain, but ultimately he's amazingly creative. I remember he would always get lost coming to the office. [Impersonating RA] "Yo, Karen, so which street is it?" Whether he was driving or walking he would always need to call and ask for directions. It was cute.





R.A. The Rugged Man: I didn't know Rawkus had corporate funding and all this money from Rupert Murdoch and all this distribution! And you know what's funny? Akinyele had said to me, "Jarret and Brian, those guys, they're kinda gonna be like a mini-Loud, they're gonna make some noise." I thought he was buggin'. I thought it was just selling a couple of 12"s and making a quick buck. Akinyele saw it more than me.





I mean, I didn't know who John Forte was at the time, then afterwards everyone is like, “Oh, John at Rawkus!” Then I heard rumors The Rose Family went in there and beat up all of Rawkus and stuff, everyone in the building, and that's why they started adding security up there. Headqcourterz did street promo for them—he was family to the whole Gang Starr Foundation, Biggest Gord and Premo, that was their people—and he took a job up at Rawkus doing street promo and kinda watching their backs too.





Sally Morita: We lost one of our very important employees right after Jam Master Jay got shot; one of our colleagues named Headqcourterz was shot and killed. He was the head of our street team. He was a cool guy, he was a go-getter. We bumped heads from time to time but we kinda got along and I learned new things from him. The whole office was really sad. He had his own street team and he was really close to DJ Premier and I believe he was helping Gang Starr on the side.





R.A. The Rugged Man: He got murdered a couple of days after Jam Master Jay got murdered.





Ayatollah: Me and [Headqcourterz] were cool. He was always cracking jokes—we'd walk out for lunch now and then and talk about music.

UNDERGROUND LOOT WITHOUT THE GOLD: "SIMON SAYS"

(1999–2000)





Mr. Len: I remember Jarret came to a party I was DJing at and told me, "Hey, man, we're thinking of signing Pharoahe Monch from Organized Konfusion." I was like, "Why are you thinking about it? Fuckin' do it! This shit is what you started the label for."





Pharoahe Monch: I was transitioning into my solo career. I'd started to make some demos and I wanted to show what I could do as a solo artist. I went to check out Black Star and I was talking to Talib Kweli after the show and he said, "Hey, you might want to check out this label called Rawkus." I was like, "What?" But I went to the offices, spoke to them and they were super interested. We spoke a lot about where I thought hip-hop was at the time. They were independent and the way they were releasing music seemed like a cool opportunity on a grassroots level.





When I started recording my album [in ‘99], Internal Affairs, I remember the griminess of it. It was the hottest summer I had experienced in a long time. I had just bought a new mountain bike and I would ride my bike in the heat over to [producer] Lee Stone's house where I did most of the vocals for the album. He had a microphone set up in the closet and of course you had to turn the air-conditioner off so it was quiet enough to record the vocals. I remember it feeling like 150 degrees in there and having asthma and struggling through that whole process of recording the vocals.





The label gave me complete creative control although they wanted me to make the chorus to "Simon Says" to be not so aggressive and with not as much cursing, and they didn't want me to make the "Rape" song, which I was blown away with. The song isn't about raping anyone! I didn't change it; that was my creative expression so I didn't care.





Making "Simon Says" was one of the most interesting experiences ever. Everybody went bananas, it was surreal. I remember Headqcourterz was there in Premier's studio, D&D, which is now named after him, and he was the first one to really bug out to the song. Don't get me wrong, I was pleased with the reaction but I know how to make beats and I knew it made me feel powerful and I hadn't heard hip-hop like that in a long time. Lyrically, I was just being so direct and having a lot of moxie and flavor. So when I played it the reaction was what I expected it to be.









Chris Athens: Pharoahe Monch stopped by to deliver the tapes. He was a very soft-spoken guy and I was working on a song at the time and he just kinda stood there for a minute and seemed to be enjoying what I was doing. I assumed he was some random dude from the label but he shook my hand and quietly introduced himself when the song was over. I was like, "Holy shit, you're the guy from this song?" He was very zen-like and a quiet dude but the record is very aggressive and hyperactive and he's an incredibly intense rapper.





Mr. Len: I was in the conference room at Rawkus and Jarret and Brian asked if they could have my opinion on this song. It starts [mimics the opening fanfare] and I was like, "What the hell is this?" Then the beat dropped and for a brief second I thought I would never be able to make another record again.





Talib Kweli: I felt like the Earth was shaking under me when I heard it.





Pharoahe Monch: I was at the studio with Busta and that's how the record got broke.





Ben Willis: I remember being in the studio with Busta Rhymes and Pharoahe Monch and hearing it and seeing Busta jumping up and down saying it was going to be a hit and he was going to take it to Funkmaster Flex. It literally went from 0-60 in like two seconds.





Pharoahe Monch: Busta took it from the studio to the radio station and played it for Flex. Then Flex called me: "On the show tonight I'm about to go crazy with this song." Experiencing the bomb and Flex going crazy to the song was super overwhelming.





Brian Brater: "Simon Says" was enormous in New York. Funkmaster Flex played that record 50 times in a row one day—on a loop!





DJ Spinna: Pharoahe is an artist I've worked with over the years—he used to come around my studio a lot with Mr. Complex. "Simon Says" was a well deserved hit—unfortunately he had an issue with the sample.





Pharoahe Monch: Rawkus knew exactly what the sample was. I brought them the record, told them what I sampled from, and they totally fucked that up. They should have cleared it when I gave them the sample to clear it.





Brian Brater: I think it was just a question to what degree was the sample modified. Our argument was that it was not the original and Toho—they run Japan, they own Godzilla—was like, "No, that's it." We went to court and we lost.





Pharoahe Monch: I was cutting the grass in my front yard when I got served legal papers. I thought, "Holy shit!" But I finished cutting the grass—I'm cool like that. There was nothing I could do right now so I might as well make the grass look nice.





Brian Brater: Honestly, back then every rap label got hit at least once. That was just part of doing business. If you're involved in copyright and intellectual copyright and you're trying to be productive, occasionally out of the 2,000 things you do, you fuck up. That's kinda what happened there.





Pharoahe Monch: I think at that point they had an opportunity to just pay for the sample but they didn't so it just grew and got worse and worse and more fucked up. The relationship changed at that point: Beyond things on a business level, it's hard to work when you're under the pressure of litigation. But there was never any personal shit—we tried to go forward and do another record but even those business affairs were fucked up so it was our time to part ways. I love Internal Affairs though: I listen to it and I feel I moved on from those styles and cadences and stuff like that but some of the angles and the flows is miraculous, ground-breaking classic shit. I love it.





Looking back, I think the stepping stone part is what makes it some psychological and emotional shit to look back on and be proud of. It was me stepping out as a solo artist and the album being so acclaimed. If it wasn't for the lawsuit and the record being pulled off the shelves, that would have probably been my first gold record. We were at 300-something thousand before it was pulled off the shelves—it would definitely be gold by now.





Ben Willis: When we had "Simon Says" it was by far the biggest record that took off that we weren't ready for. We didn't understand the capacity of the record—it was so huge it overshadowed the artist. We had this massive record—and that album is absolutely amazing—but it didn't connect, for some reason we didn't connect the artist with the single. That happens today in modern pop music—you'll have this amazing single but it doesn't benefit the artist.





EL-P: "Simon Says" to this day is just a ridiculous classic. It was the hardest shit out, the most amazing shit out, and it was Pharoahe Monch making a street banger. It was an undeniable record.

THE BIG L PICTURE

(1999–2000)





DJ Premier: I knew Big L when he started with Lord Finesse and Showbiz. We used to hang out a lot; I knew his family. When he was working on his new album right before he passed away [in February 1999], we were involved in helping to put it together. When he died his mother approached Lord Finesse which was a good thing 'cause he was always in the forefront with Showbiz. She told him, "Take all this [music], whatever you need, just do it." She knew Big L wanted that album to see the light of day.





Brian Brater: It was Rich King who played a very big role around the "Ebonics" record. Rich and Jarret and I were huge Big L fans—I thought the first Columbia release [Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous] was fuckin' amazing—and when we found out it was possible we knew we had to do this.





Mike Heron: [Rawkus] were looking for someone to work with Kool G Rap and I grew up not too far from G Rap and we had a lot of mutual friends. While I was waiting for them to finish the G Rap deal the Big L project was sitting there so I offered to work on that.





DJ Premier: I took these reels Big L's mother gave us and started to see what we could salvage and save. Big L always took his stuff home with him so it wasn't everything—he was very into protecting his music and there's a lot more music that he hasn't put out yet 'cause of certain issues. After that we started calling people like Sadat X, Guru and Fat Joe to be a part of it. Who wouldn't want to be a part of it?





Kool G Rap: It was right after Big L passed. Rawkus brought it to my attention. I did the song "Fall Back." That's a record I will always cherish because of Big L, a legend in the lyrical game. I feel the tragedy of the loss of a young life and the loss to hip-hop but it wasn't even an emotional kinda track—it was like me doing a track with somebody that was still alive. I still could feel his presence. It was last minute and I was in the studio writing my verse and they told me I had to come up with a chorus that was like me and Big L in the studio. That's why I'm saying "we" and all that. It was like Big L was right there with me—it was more of an up than a down, trying to celebrate his life.





Mike Heron: I was working with a guy named Rich King for the Big L project and I knew Premier because of working with Screwball before for Tommy Boy. I did the beat for "Flamboyant." It was a lot of responsibility 'cause I didn't want it to be wack—I'd feel like a piece of shit if I made a wack record. I was in touch with Big L's mom but it was mainly a couple of friends that were involved in the project, approving things along the way. We also tried to keep Showbiz and Premier as involved as possible.





DJ Eleven: I started at Rawkus right as they were gearing up to put the Big L album out [in 2000]. When L was killed, people were still really excited about what he'd done with "Ebonics" and the D.I.T.C. single ["Internationally Known"/"Da Enemy"] had come out. I don't remember the exact chronology of how quickly the album came out, but there was a lot of goodwill in the hip-hop industry towards Big L and people were excited. I remember Rich King was at Fat Beats for a long time and also did a lot of bootlegs so he had a lot of unreleased stuff. I heard a lot of stuff in the office whether as white labels or they'd take the verse and put it on another song.





Kool G Rap: Right before Big L's death, Big Pun was hot and was performing at The Apollo and wanted me to come out during his show and do "Ill Street Blues." When I went there that night Big L was there so there was a rap session in the dressing room with me, Big Pun, Big L and my man Sunkiss from Terror Squad at the time. We had a little rap session with all four of us poppin' off. That's my last memory of Big L alive and being there in front of me.





Mike Heron: For the most part I was pleased with the Big L record. With hindsight I wish the song with Big Daddy Kane ["Platinum Plus"] was the single. But I love that fuckin' Big L album.





Ayatollah: I produced "Platinum Plus" at first but they had Premier do it too and they put his version out instead of mine. Premier's was a stronger production and well-deserved. It's funny 'cause when I see Preem he kinda teases me 'cause I beat him out for the single for the Mos Def album but he got me back for Big L.





Brian Brater: I think we did like 70,000 units the first week. It was a big deal.





DJ Premier: The beauty of the album is it went gold. Big L used to always say he just wanted to go gold—he didn't want to go platinum, just gold. I remember when Rawkus told us it was certified, it felt like his spirit was here for the whole ride.

THE G RAP STORY

(1999–2002)





B-1: I was pretty much responsible for bringing Kool G Rap to Rawkus [in 1999].





Kool G Rap: A good friend of mine, B-1, put out a single through Rawkus. I met B-1 in like '94 when I was working on my album 4, 5, 6 in upstate New York. My man [MF] Grimm vouched for him so I knew he had to be the real thing. So I met the owners and I felt like it was two cats kinda doing they thing. The talk was out there they was financially backed by Rupert Murdoch yadda yadda, so they was in a very good situation and I ended up signing to Rawkus for an album, The Giancana Story.





Brian Brater: He's Kool G Rap, he's a legend, it made sense to try and achieve what we would achieve posthumously with Big L with G Rap, too.





Kool G Rap: I had three offers on the table—Penalty, Loud and Rawkus. This is after me coming out of a four-year hiatus. I picked Rawkus 'cause it was the best deal situation in terms of money and in terms of what I thought would be put into my marketing and promotion. It was a $1.5 million deal. I wasn't being greedy—I thought for all the time I've been in the music industry I at least deserve one opportunity for a million dollar marketing campaign and Rawkus was gonna give me that.





Mike Heron: Rawkus suggested G to me and G and I just hit it off. He'd heard of Rawkus. You know, at the time if you were doing pure rap then Rawkus was the place to be.





Kool G Rap: Once I signed I was right to work. I was working with my man Buckwild who did "Whoa!" for Black Rob, I was working with Rockwilder, I was working with Younglord, my man Knobody who did stuff with Jay Z. Those producers pretty much made the album. But I didn't have any features from the other artists on Rawkus. To be honest, when I first signed I wasn't really that familiar with Mos Def and Talib Kweli.





I did finish recording the album but it didn't get released in the fashion it was intended. It was supposed to be on Rawkus and Priority was the distributor but in the process of me completing the album they lost their financial backing, they lost their distributor and pretty much had to get a whole new situation. They went over to MCA [in 2002] and my album got lost in the sauce. They were getting ready to distribute me through MCA but my contracts had stipulations in it that it had to be released through a major label, which they did but in the time it took them to lose situations and come up with a new situation I was feeling my album was stale. I pretty much wanted out of the situation and they were forced to sell my album to Koch. It came out on Koch in like 2002.





Sally Morita: Brian and Jarret were really big fans of Kool G Rap and I don't know if we were expecting too much commercial success. He had a lot of demands and I think all the people at the label were kinda like scared of him, like scared to say no to all his demands, so we just ended up spending too much money. I think we realized it was going to cost us more to put it out with the marketing money and everything so I think we sold it to Koch. It was the exact same album but it came out on Koch.





DJ Eleven: I think Rawkus were hoping that he would be more malleable and more interested in putting out a record that they had control over. He just didn't do shit that he didn't want to do.





Kool G Rap: I think it was a moment of relief for both sides when we went our separate ways. I think by that point we both felt we had come to the point where we needed an out. I don't feel like it was anything deliberate; I don't feel like nobody tried to sabotage my project or my career. I feel like those dudes had very good intentions and they had the belief to sign G Rap to a $1.5 million deal. I have no bad feelings about Brian and Jarret—those are two guys that believed in me.





EL-P: They were reaching, but, shit, man, at the time the idea of Kool G Rap getting like a real marketing campaign and a real promotional push was amazing to me. That was the brilliance about Rawkus—they were serious about trying to put good music out.





Mike Heron: Me and G are actually still very cool. I speak to him every once in a while. That's a friendship that's endured all the bullshit. [The Rawkus situation is] one of those things you can't point fingers. I've been in situations like that before and it's never 100% anyone's fault. Everyone shares responsibility in a situation like that, myself included. Shit happens, bro!

MATHEMATICS: THE NUMBERS GAME

(1997–2004)





Brian Brater: We were selling 30 or 40 or even 50,000 12"s on everything at one point. Then we had these songs like "Ms. Fat Booty" and "Definition" and "Oh No" that would sell even more. It was like a 12" bonanza.





Pharoahe Monch: Recording "Oh No" [in 2002] was dope, man. The label approached me about doing the song, we got a bunch of Rockwilder beats, me and Mos picked a beat, Mos kicked his verse to me over the phone, shit was phenomenal. Then he discussed having Nate Dogg on the chorus. I was like, "For real? I'm a big Nate Dogg fan but you think that shit will blend?" He was like, "Trust me, trust me." Once again Mos Def's genius was correct. I loved the chorus. Working with Nate was amazing, man. I spent a lot of time with him in the studio. He asked me to be on his album, so just [witnessing] the type of integrity in the studio and the nurturing and attention he gave to vocals, I learned a lot from working with him and Dr. Dre so much, man.









Kevin Shand: 20,000 copies was like the margin of success for a 12". We had a body of work that were in that neighborhood and also singles that outsold comparable releases on the major labels.





Sally Morita: "Get By" by Kweli [in 2003] had the most commercial success. We weren't surprised but Kanye [the producer] wasn't the person he is now back then. We knew he had a Nina Simone sample which we ended up paying $30,000 for. I was doing the sample clearance budget and I remember I told Kweli we couldn't afford this and he got really upset. He told me it was significant that they used the original vocals from Nina Simone. I was like, "Yeah, I kinda get it, but we can't really afford it and they're asking for too much money." I asked if he could get someone else to sing it and he got really mad. So we ended up paying the money. Turns out, Kweli was right.





Talib Kweli: I remember I had to wait a long time for "Get By." I was calling Kanye for like a month because he had promised that beat to a couple of other people—Mariah Carey and Pharoahe Monch.





Ben Willis: It felt super surreal. One minute there was this hip-hop label, the next minute it was this worldwide thing. I remember me and Kweli went to the BET Awards and before the ceremony we all went to Rodeo Drive and went shopping 'cause we were all so excited. We bought a bunch of Gucci stuff—it was so stupid!





DJ Eleven: The release parties they did around the Lyricist Lounge 2 were just crazy. They rented Roseland Ballroom which was a humongous venue and had Dave Chapelle host it and I think Ghostface performed and Cipher Sounds deejayed. It was just a huge event. The atmosphere was great, it was a super fun party, they did a really good job. Dave Chapelle was coming off of Half Baked. It was awesome, it was really fun.





Ayatollah: I remember we went to David Bowie's penthouse for a Rawkus party. Everyone was there: Mos, Kweli, Pharoahe, Hi-Tek, all the other artists.





Karen Cousino: At the height, it was fantastic. We had this house in the Hamptons and when we'd do press events Devin [Roberson] would set up a movie-bus that would pull up in front of the office and anyone we invited would meet to get on the movie-bus and watch movies as we traveled out to the Hamptons. Once you arrived it was all set up and you were treated beautifully. We even had a volcano that erupted every hour! There would be a full bar and catered food, a great pool. We'd also have events with a boat ride. We definitely took care of everyone. It was epic.





DJ Eleven: It was the summer of 2000, they rented a house in the Hamptons for like two months, which is incredibly expensive and they would bus people out there every weekend. They'd have a bunch of staff parties over the summer, they would take artists out there, they would take industry people out there. I was still interning so I never got the invite but they were meant to be insane parties and just a huge money pit.





Brian Brater: The music industry is regulated by numbers—there's SoundScan, there's BDS, there's indie store sales, there's college radio charts—so you know where you're at. We didn't put out a lot of albums that didn't end up selling. The High & Mighty ended up selling 200,000 and five or six of the albums went gold and I guess a couple are platinum by now. I think the first Soundbombing probably did 50,000, the first Lyricist Lounge did more and then it just went to the end. The week that we sold our catalogue [in 2004 after MCA was absorbed by Geffen] we still had two debuts in the top 20 in Billboard album charts.

GREATEST MISSES

(1999–2004)





Brian Brater: Kanye wanted to sign with Rawkus. But Kanye wanted a lot of money, too, and this was before "Through The Wire" and before his transformation so it was kinda like an incomplete first album we heard.









Talib Kweli: I didn't bring Kanye's demo to Rawkus, but I was very involved. I was friends with Kanye so I was around for the beginning of that—Kanye wanted to be signed to Rawkus. He wanted to be there because of me and Mos Def. I helped but I wasn't up there championing him like, "Oh, you have to sign Kanye." But I did take him on the road while he was trying to get signed.





Sally Morita: He was interested because at one point Kweli was a mentor to Kanye. I think it would have been a perfect fit at the time but I don't think he'd have had the success he has now. I think it would have made sense musically but if Jay Z offers you a deal you have to go for it.





Brian Brater: Kanye's demo was beyond potential—he was one of the biggest producers before his own demo tape. But was it the Kanye he ended up as? Kanye has a thing where he can hand you something, it's like a demo, it's not finished and then he'll go finish it but you don't get to hear that—you kinda have to like get him before that. And we just, you know...





Talib Kweli: Kanye came close to signing to Rawkus. I remember a conversation where they were trying to figure out how they could sign him and get beats from him without signing him for a rap album. You got to understand, back then Kanye was super famous for his beats—he was rapping as much as he could but no one was checking for him. I don't think I have a superior ear—maybe my ear is just fine-tuned—but Kanye was incredible back then to me, not just as a producer but as an emcee. The style was a lot more flashy and simplistic than my style, but I still recognized the greatness of it.





Brian Brater: Listen, we love Kanye, "Get By" was big for us and Kweli and him were very close at the time so it totally made sense. But he also wanted pretty big major label advance money and we passed on it.





Talib Kweli: They weren't checking for him. Kanye wanted to be on Rawkus. He didn't want to be on Capitol—there was a kid over at Capitol who was really trying to get Kanye [Ed: Joe “3H” Weinberger]. Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam wasn't Kanye's choice at all—it was just like a default because no one else would give him a deal so he might as well go with who he was making music with.





Brian Brater: We could have signed Eminem and we kinda decided not too. I think Mos Def wasn't in line with what Eminem was doing when we started working with both of them—he kinda made it very clear: "I don't like what he represents." Mos was very inflexible and he still is; he's absolutely 100% hardcore artist, no ifs, ands and buts about it, he doesn't do it for the money, he's an artist completely.





DJ Spinna: I remember there was a lot of hype around Eminem and obviously a few labels were trying to sign him. The biggest word was that he was always going with Aftermath.





Kevin Shand: We looked at a lot of rappers who left the majors, but the only thing I remember being like "Oh, shit!" was certainly Eminem. I don't know if that was on him or us. I think Jarret might have just passed on him, actually.





Brian Brater: We were inches away from signing Common. Jarret and Common had a conversation and Common is someone who pre-Rawkus, I'm into all his old Relativity stuff. He was featured on Soundbombing, he was featured on Black Star—we did a lot of reintroducing Common and artist development with Common. We were very close to striking a deal with Derek Dudley, who was Common's manager at the time, but MCA came in and I'm not really sure how they did it, but he ended up signing to MCA and we lost him.





Ben Willis: I don't know why Common didn't happen. We did that record "1999" and we just couldn't get him. Essentially when Common came to the label he was dead to rap. He's an amazing emcee but he just didn't, I don't know, he was over it. Then that "1999" record really popped him off again.





Sally Morita: I believe the Mad Skillz album was put on the shelf. We finished all the recordings and all the sample clearances and we had the finished product, but that was around the time we got merged by MCA and Geffen and they decided to put it on the shelf.





Ben Willis: I wished Mad Skillz would have popped more. He's amazing and because he was from Richmond he got the pass from Timbaland and he got the pass from Missy Elliott 'cause he was ghost-writing all these records. When it came time to put out his record we had all these amazing producers but it just never popped.





Sally Morita: It was a pretty commercial record—Skillz had songs with the Neptunes and Nottz and Timbaland and Missy Elliott. He had really good radio tunes—it could have done well with the right marketing and promotion.





Shabaam Sahdeeq: I had an album in the works at Rawkus. It was called Scandalous. All my 12"s were meant to be part of the album. I had tracks from Just Blaze when he was just an intern-engineer at Cutting Room; I had tracks from Alchemist when he was just coming up like a song called "Concrete" with Xzibit. I had another white label 12" with Kool G Rap that was also produced by Alchemist, and I had Ayatollah beats, plus features from Eminem and Lost Boyz. It was a nice powerful album. My manager at the time was Pharoahe Monch's manager and when they didn't clear the sample for "Simon Says" the manager was arguing with the label so pretty much that relationship went sour. My album ended up sitting on the shelf. If I had the masters now I'd put it out.









Mighty Mi: After the Smut Peddlers album there was a third album on the contract. We wanted to do the Cage album but [Rawkus] didn't want to do that so we brought them one of the Eastern Conference compilations and they didn’t want to do that. At that point we were making music and they wouldn't necessarily put it out so we did this kinda stand-offish meeting where we yelled at each other but it wasn't real—I didn't have any bad feelings for them and only have good things to say about them.





Ayatollah: I worked on music with Sir Menelik. I liked him as an emcee 'cause he reminded me of Kool Keith from Ultramagnetic MCs. It was a lot of talk about the songs going on the second Soundbombing album but they never made it. The songs were nice and his lyrics were very Ultramagnetic-influenced. I also did songs with G Rap that were never released.





Brian Brater: We had a management thing going for a minute and we managed Sa-Ra Creative Partners and Jack Splash. So Jack and Cee Lo did an album together called Heart Attack and this is before Gnarls Barkley. It was incredible, like Cee Lo doing that Stax '60s funk R&B shit. It was a beautiful album. But by then Cee Lo's whole career hit like a hockey stick projection and so the major, Atlantic I guess, were like, "You can't release that!" I was kinda off about that 'cause it was a beautiful record.





Jim Drew: I begged them to sign Santigold back then. They were like, "Nah," but they totally could have. I was friends with her before her record came out.





Brian Brater: I also remember we had a very young Pitbull walk into my office. Back then he was like this Cuban kid spitting fire—he could really rap. He did an album for us—at this point we had a deal with MCA—and MCA was like, "Fuck that, no way!" I looked at them like, "This kid's gonna be big."





We also put out all of Dr. Luke's first records. He's now like the biggest music producer in the world ever. We were making a bunch of instrumental records and remixes and we were going to do a publishing deal [with him] and then decided not to. That's something that I maybe regret. And I would have loved to have released the second Black Star album. That's one I wished would have happened.





Talib Kweli: Rawkus didn't ask us [to do a second Black Star album], MCA did. We never released anything on MCA though, the deal just fizzled out. We recorded a couple of songs—some have come out here and there.





Mike Heron: [As an A&R] If you’re not turning down artists you're not doing your job. It's a numbers game. Not all of them will get signed. Back then I would take a lot of that shit personally but I was an idiot back then. You don't like it? Start your own fuckin' label.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

(1999–2007)





Shabaam Sahdeeq: I was pretty young and I was kinda like a knucklehead and they had their priorities. Once Mos Def went gold with Black On Both Sides and Monch blew up with "Simon Says," their focus was on that. When they got a certain amount of success, they kinda let all the smaller artists fall to the side which was the reason they got to that place in the first place—groups like 7 Universal, R.A. The Rugged Man, Sir Menelik, B-1, countless artists. They lost sight of those artists trying to ride on Mos Def and Big L's wave.





DJ Spinna: There was a lot of people signed to Rawkus that unfortunately didn't get the same push as Pharoahe Monch and Mos Def and Company Flow. Even my record [Heavy Beats Volume One], when it came out it was more revered in Europe and Japan than the United States—it was hard to find and the price point was a little high. I think Rawkus knew by then who they wanted to focus on for the most part and they knew who worked for them.





B-1: I had Kool G Rap on a song but I still had to take promotions into my own hand: I still took money out my own pocket and got promotional t-shirts with the Rawkus logo on it and my logo on it and the name of the song. Instead of making those Rawkus t-shirts they should have put money behind making t-shirts of the artists to promote the artists better. The promotion was lackluster if none at all. I pretty much handled everything on my own from a grassroots level.





They needed someone in position that knew the music. Brian and Jarret didn't know it, Blak Shawn really didn't know it—they needed someone that really knew hip-hop. I'm not talking about backpack hip-hop but hip-hop period. If they would have knew that they would have picked better artists to work with and knew what to do to get those artists to pop and they just didn't know and that's why it didn't really pan out. It could have worked but they didn't know which direction they wanted to go. Ultimately, the music dictated where they wanted to go based on the artists they signed—they didn't sign street artists, they signed the backpack-type artists. They weren't going to get on mainstream radio; besides Mos Def and maybe Kweli, none of the other artists would have made it.





Ayatollah: I was there for the rise and fall of the label. I felt it was after the Kool G Rap album, The Giancana Story. After that, for me, I felt they didn't really have the love and the owners didn't really have the passion they used to have. I mean, I'm not blaming G Rap for the decline of Rawkus! But I sensed how that album was put together and after that it was kinda like a downwards spiral.





B-1: I never got any thanks for introducing Kool G Rap to them. They put out a whole album for him and just left me for dead, which was cool, I get it, but they basically used me to get to him. I wasn't happy at all.





Mighty Mi: I always look at the Kool G Rap album as the start of the downfall of Rawkus. Not criticizing G Rap—he's one of the greatest—but instead of making a G Rap album with Large Professor and all the people we knew him to be with, they kind of started to feel the pressure of the times. Funkmaster Flex was starting to break records and it was the start of this flossy time and they started to throw all this money into the Kool G Rap album and it wasn't natural. That's just my own little metaphor.





J-Zone: Alphabetically, when you're in a chain store your CD is sided by two guys who are on Def Jam. When I had major distribution Kanye West was on one side and Jay Z on the other; I had no video, my CD is $18 and Kanye and Jay Z are on sale for $9.99 so how the hell am I gonna stand out? Competing with Jay Z can be a futile thing. It was the same with Rawkus. When Rawkus was an underground thing it was dope, but then they had to compete and started making changes to the music. There's nothing wrong with expanding but the appeal of what made Rawkus popular in '98, by the time we got to 2001 they were rolling the dice and shooting for bigger stakes. You can't compete with Def Jam and these labels with endless supplies of money.





EL-P: I'll put it this way: Rawkus was a record label of good intentions. In those situations when there's quick growth, there are always bumps in the road in terms of figuring out exactly how to operate. One of the things I walked away from with Rawkus was a clarity of vision. If I had to give a criticism—and at the time I gave the same criticism—it’s when I went up to Rawkus there was a very clear vision but by the time I left I felt they were somewhat losing touch with what they were doing. In a way they had been tasting a modicum of mainstream success and then they were trying to chase it and I'm not sure they knew how to chase it. I saw that and I felt like I wasn’t trying to chase that—I'm gonna stick with the one thing of putting out records that I'm passionate about that are not mainstream records. Not that I have a criticism about the records they put out, but once you get rid of that ambition you're very clear.





DJ Eleven: I think it was the summer of 2001 when accounting folks from News Corp. came in to Rawkus to get their royalties under control 'cause their royalty system was super fucked up; they were years behind in paying some people and really didn't know where the money was. So they came in partly because of the royalty situation but also to get spending under control at the label. They were spending like the money was never going to stop. In the last six months of 2001 they came in, got to understand the business and just started tightening and tightening and tightening. The London office got scaled back and then shut down, the L.A. office got scaled back and then shut down; people started leaving and when people started leaving they wouldn't get replaced. They started cleaning things out. Then in December of 2001, two weeks before Christmas, they let go of about 75% of their remaining staff. I was one of those people.





Kevin Shand: I got laid off at a point where they cut the staff like 60%. It was right after September 11th and they were about to transition from Priority distribution to get picked up by UMG. At the same time they received a lot of funding in the early days from News Corp. and I think that was out of the picture now and they came to a crisis point where they had to radically alter the economics of the place. It was really close to Christmas 2001 and they laid a lot of us off.





DJ Eleven: I remember when I was 