Feature Articles

R&B Dialogues - Part Two

Jeanie Weems: If you could give advice to any of the songwriters in the room, what would it be?

Stan Sheppard: I have to share one instance with you that will really sum up basic ignorant A&R. There are some people who do a very good job at it, and I'm not talking about those people. The example is this: while I was at particular record company, the A&R director -- who had nothing to do with the project, and you must remember that everybody at a record company wants to be able to say that they're involved with [an important] project, and if they hear any buzz around the office, they will gravitate towards you. You follow what I'm saying? So by the time you music goes through the system, which usually take two or three months, they can start off at the bottom, and by the time the record comes out, their name can be right next to yours as a co-producer!

Anyway, this A& R director wanted to be involved so badly with this particular song because the promotion people told him it was going to be a hit. So, I happened to know this producer/songwriter, but the people I worked for didn't know that I knew him, and they wanted him to remix this and redo that to give this A&R person what they felt they needed to hear. Well, I called him up after he left there and I said, "You know there's a basic fool in that chair. Don't do anything to the music -- turn it in. Say you worked real hard on it." He did just that, and this fool took the record -- the same record -- all around the company and told everybody he changed it, and nothing ever changed.

So I'm saying that to say, do what you do to the best of your ability. Test it on some people who don't work in the record industry, because the people in the record industry are either a step away from losing their job, or they just got it [so they're going to have other interests involved]. Sometimes your chances of success don't depend on your ability to write or to play -- it depends on who you know. You can do any type of work you want to do, you can play whatever song you want to play, but if some people with power don't hear it, you're gonna be singing in the bathroom or for a select number of people, and that's as far as it will get.

Unfortunately, once you get into that system, and once you've got a hit record, you want it to be seen and heard, so now you've got to make friends with the promotion people and the video people and everybody that promotes your records -- it's a big silly chain.

A lot in this business is based upon who you know and how you can get to them, and how effectively you can get to them, and what they think about you once you do get to them. Sometimes you get lucky, but I don't know too many people who are breaking out without being in some type of camp, at least in the rap world. I haven't seen too many that are launched on their own -- they come from camps. So have a game plan, get your material together, get your finances together, get your crew together, and do what you've gotta do and don't be derailed by these fools at the record companies, 'cause they really don't know.

Big Jon Platt: That was deep. But he's telling the truth -- I tell my writers all the time, don't get discouraged by what people say. First of all every song that you write ain't gonna be good, just write the next one. There are songs I took to people and this person says, "This and that is wrong with it," and I'll take it to the next guy: boom, they take it and run it up the charts! A hit is really in the eye of the beholder, so I just go to the next person.

Stan Sheppard: As an artist, you can only sign one deal, so who gives a damn if 19 tell you no? And you can only do your debut record once, so do it well. And be careful!

Have you ever seen a recording contract? It's an indentured slavery contract. If you get a deal as an artist right now, you'll be glad to get fifteen percent, or fifteen points. But out of those fifteen points you've gotta pay the producer, whoever hooked you up with the deal -- somebody sitting back there saying, "Homey, you know I picked up that phone for you." So by the time you get through it's like, "Wow, everybody I worked with is platinum!"

Big Jon Platt: You've got to prepare yourself for this game. I always relate this game to a marathon, and you've got to be in condition. Some people are only in condition to run the hundred-yard dash, and they'll win that race, but I'm in it for the marathon. You've got to be mentally strong and ready to do that, and anyone who's ever come into contact with me on a business level knows that I'm real hands-on with my writers. I protect them because a lot of them are young. I've heard so many horror stories -- this guy gets jerked, and he thinks that's the way business is done, so in turn he jerks the next person, and that's how they get taught. Sooner or later the cycle has got to stop and people have to learn the right way.

I've squealed on people who tried to jerk my writers. They say, "Are you their manager?" No, but you're not gonna jerk them. There've been situations where Tamara has done a demo and the record came out and her background vocals were still on the track, and I'm like, "You know you gotta pay her for that!" That might not have anything to do with publishing, but you've gotta pay her, because she's gonna be an artist one day. Tamara came wanting to be an artist, but like Stan said, the way artists are broken in this business is like slavery. She had good songs, so I said, "Look, let's do it this way: if I shop you as an artist, you can get a deal, but you'll just be another singer getting a deal. You've got great songs, so let's create a story. Let me get these songs out there." So now she's an established writer - she's had hit records and she can be a superstar artist, but if by some chance she isn't, she will always be able to write for people.

Stan Sheppard: Learn how to read your statements. When I used to get statements I used to freeze, I didn't want to read them. Take whatever course you have to take to learn how to understand those statements and these contracts that you sign, because you can really, really get screwed up. Learn to do a lot for yourself, because these attorneys will what I call "$37.50 you to death." You say, "What $37.50?" Well, when they pick up the phone to call on your behalf, even if that phone is busy, they charge you $37.50. When you get a contract from your attorney and you see a lot of "$37.50"s, you'll know what that is.

But just learn your contracts, learn what you can and cannot do. I went through eighteen months of a buy-out with Profile Records and Arista Records and I thought I had learned everything, but eighteen months with a major record company buy-out will teach you how cut-throat this business is! But if you're on your way to being involved with some name producer or artist -- really, don't screw up at the beginning. I did [the theme for] a TV show called Dance Fever, remember that? I wrote it, I sang it and I produced it. Merv Griffin and 20th Century Fox own it, and it played for eight-and-a-half years on every major network in America. I got $4300.00 because I didn't know about publishing. Guess how much money I lost over that? Can you imagine?

Big Jon Platt: With Jay-Z, in between his "In My Lifetime" and "Hard Knock Life" albums, he learned what publishing really was about, because a lot of money wasn't made on his first albums. I gave Jay-Z a certain [advance], and when we went to collect his royalties, they weren't there because he had signed deals that he didn't really know a lot about -- it happens every day. So I felt the best way to teach someone was to show them with their own money. So I went and investigated why he hadn't been paid, and I showed him: this is what you're getting -- meaning what EMI was getting back, because we had advanced him a lot more than that -- but if you had done it right, this is what you would have gotten. Let's say "Hard Knock Life, Volume 1" sold a million records, Jay would have made maybe $300,000 in publishing. With "Volume 2," he's clocking close to $2,000,000 in publishing royalties alone. I helped him do that just by showing him the right way to do it, so I feel real good about that.

Jeanie Weems: I'd like to thank Stan and Big Jon for bringing up these very important points, and from a performance rights perspective, if any of you have not yet affiliated with ASCAP or a performing rights organization, we'd like to talk to you because you need to understand your stream of income -- you need to understand where the money is, how it's being paid to you, why it's being paid to you, and why in some instances you don't get paid, how to read your statements -- these are the things we do at ASCAP, and our R&B department has been very aggressive in getting into contact with writers. Typically with us, some of our writers have songs on the charts and they haven't even filed the necessary paperwork to get paid -- it's a very fundamental type of thing, but a lot of writers who haven't affiliated with major publishers can't seem to get it through their heads that that paperwork is a deposit slip: if you deposit it with us, we give you money, if you don't, we can't pay you. So it's really important that you pay attention to that -- it's all in a book called Music Money and Success

On a real personal tip, I would really like to thank everyone for joining me on this panel this evening. [applause] On that note, any questions?

Question: Stan, what are some things you can do to avoid a bad contract?

Stan Sheppard: I always tell everybody that I work with that a contract is not a binding instrument; it just guarantees you a day in court, and that's the only thing it does. There are no real safeguards to anything in this business. You have to go on two things: you have to research who you're going in with -- it's like if you go out with somebody you gonna try to find out if this person is a mass-murderer. And if it's reputable person in town, check around to see if they've ripped anybody off. After that, all you can really do is go in, do what you're doing and hope these people are honest enough to honor what they say. If you get burned once, don't go back. I know it sounds stupid, but that's just the way it is.

Question: Can't you take care of how the money is going to be split before you start to work with somebody?

Big Jon Platt: But there is nothing to take care of because nothing's been created yet. People kill me when they're like "Settle the splits before the songs." How can you settle the splits before the song is even written? Unless you've built a team, like it's three people and whatever they write is thirty-three and a third -- period. One day one guy may pull a little more weight, the next day not as much and somebody else pulls a little bit more. But that's a team effort that you grow into, you don't just walk right into it.

Stan Sheppard: Most of the major teams have relationships like that, because you know how taxing it would be if a really good writing team went through "Alright you did eight bars of that, that's six percent" on every song? Although there is a certain way we work it out in the business: if you do a hook that's twenty or twenty-five percent. With Quik or any other of the producers that I've worked with, they have the understanding -- if he does the track and the hook, then it's seventy to seventy-five percent, and so on.

Big Jon Platt: I think out of everything Stan said, "Don't make the same mistake twice" really says it. Don't go back if you got jerked. Believe it or not, it happens a lot -- people get jerked and they go right back into the same situation again.

Question: This is a question for Big Jon. How do you find your writers?

Big Jon Platt: Out of all the writers I've signed no story is the same. Whetheryou're a writer or a publisher or whatever, before you get into a business relationship with someone, you have to ask yourself about their drive: How far are they willing to go? I'm not really trying to work with people that are trying to get deals or get hits. You got to have the vision. I see so many people that are like, "I'm just trying to get this deal" or "I'm just trying to finish this demo" -- that's just so short-sighted to me. You gotta be trying to get your record out, trying to compete with Jay-Z, trying to compete with Tamara or with Jermaine. I love people with that kind of drive. When I had first met Tamara -- I know I keep bringing her up, not just 'cause she's sitting here -- but when I met her, she knew already. She had that look. I see talented people all day and certain people just have that look in their eye, the eye of the tiger. I don't know if she knew she had that, but she had it. And the songs that she played me could compete. They weren't the best songs, but they could compete with what was out there. I knew all we had to do was to get her in the trenches, and she's out of here. It's funny, because Tamara struck me as a person that all her friends told her she was good for a long time, which she was. But they told her she was good for so long that she didn't know what to do to get better. So I was like, do this, do that, and she was almost like, "Oh -- that'sit?" Boom -- and she was out of here.

Question: What does it take to promote a single to radio?

Stan Sheppard: What type of music? R&B? First of all, it's an average of $75-100,000 per single to effectively promote an R&B single.

There's only a limited number of people who will do that job effectively. So if you've started your company and have a viable product and it's youth oriented -- because if it's not youth oriented it's difficult to get on black radio right now. When was the last time you heard the Temptations on the radio out here? They're almost platinum. It has to be something that's in the mainstream that they can effectively market.

Question: Where should we go to network?

Jeanie Weems: In rooms just like this, and I was getting ready to say that earlier. There are so many songwriters in here, and what has been interesting to me since we've been sitting here is the lack of networking -- I hope it's only because this panel has been so enthralling to you! I would really hope that some of you would get in touch because there are probably potential hit songwriters sitting here amongst you, but if you don't know each other you don't know what your potential can be.

Question: You mentioned belonging to a "camp" for writers and musicians -- how about for engineers?

Marcus Miller: I don't know about a camp, but I do have a list of engineers because the great engineers that I use are usually busy so, if a project comes up last minute, you need to have a list of guys. To get on that list, every story is different, but some guys I met when I was on the road. "How'd you get my bass to sound so good?" Next thing I know I'm calling one up cause I got caught in a tight spot and needed somebody and he turns out to be good. So, every story is different. The best thing to do is to make a tape of the stuff you've done so people can see you've got a good ear and just hand it out.

Question: What can ASCAP do to help promote my records?

Stan Sheppard: They are not record promotion people. They're removed from that process. That has to come from various record companies or the various promotion people from the independent side. They are not in that business.

Jeanie Weems: We are in the licensing and distribution business -- our primary business is to license music users and to distribute the money that we collect from them to our those members whose music is being used.

Photos: Serrina Sims

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