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- Notes From The Week #15
Notes From The Week #15
Week 43: 24 October - 30 October
Yo. Hope everyone has had a good week. It was pretty cool walking around London this weekend and seeing people in their Halloween costumes. The creativity was nice to see. Special shout out to the brother at Shoreditch High Street station who completely nailed the Joker’s hospital fit from The Dark Knight. I should have asked bro for a picture to show you all.
For this week—it’s an interesting one: I was watching 50 Cent’s Hot 97 interview and thought to pen some thoughts on a business deal that helped pave a lot of the entrepreneurial pursuits we’re seeing across Hip-Hop today. Staying on the note of Hip-Hop we’re going to look at Hip-Hop’s favourite brotherhood and I’ll also run through some thoughts on a software principle that could help add value to our personal lives. Hope it’s helpful and interesting.
50 Cent: A Hustler’s Ambition
The first album I ever bought was The Massacre. I still remember the day. I was too young to buy it myself so I waited outside of the Woolworths while on a trip with my youth club. I eventually convinced someone walking into the store to buy me the album and still remember when he came out with the CD. I held on to that CD like my life depended on it the whole journey home. For the next few months my house would be overcome by the sounds of Curtis Jackson. God Gave Me Style is still my favourite song ever. I remember at the time 50 Cent was much more than an artist for me—he was an icon. It was impossible to escape his reach at that time.
I’m always excited to hear of the business forays that rappers are able to make as a result of their brand and audience. Finding partnerships that mutually mobilise an artist’s brand whilst also providing value to the company in question is an art. There are partnerships which may not resonate as authentic with an artist’s fanbase and could reduce credibility so it’s always important to tread carefully when it comes to this part of the business. As a result of learning about this delicate balance between looking for viable opportunities while not alienating your core fanbase I was interested in learning just how 50 Cent’s successful partnership with VitaminWater came into being. Let’s run through the back-story.
In 2004, 50 Cent was Hip-Hop’s biggest star. His debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was dominating the airwaves. Chris Lighty, 50 Cent’s manager, had helped him secure a lucrative sneaker deal with Reebok, an upcoming biopic on the big screen and his own video game. After noticing the price difference between Poland Spring and other bottled water 50 was interested to enter the beverage space. His reasoning to Chris Lighty seemed viable and on-brand. He had expressed his diligence for fitness for both its mental and physical benefits whilst also committing to a practice of not drinking alcohol. He also did not shy away from showing his physique in his music videos—all helping to provide a strong case for a partnership with a beverage brand focused on water.
Chris Lighty reached out to his former business partner Rohan Oza. The two had worked together on A Tribe Called Quest’s 1994 commercial with Sprite. Oza, a former Coca-Cola exec, had just joined Glaceau, Vitaminwater’s parent company, and helped 50 Cent and Chris Lighty to connect the dots. During their negotiations with VitaminWater 50 Cent noticed the line did not have a grape flavour and put up some of his own money to help develop the product. In October 2004, the two sides agreed to a deal where 50 Cent got a 10% stake in his Formula 50 brand.
50 pushed the brand heavily in commercials, songs, and more. He leveraged his popularity well helping Vitaminwater sales to grow from $100 million in 2004 to $700 million in 2007. In May 2007, Coca-Cola bought Glaceau for $4.1 billion, and 50 Cent was paid an estimated $100 million. The deal helped to serve as a blueprint for artists to recognise that the audience they gain as a result of their music can be leveraged viably for entrepreneurial pursuits. And it helped 50 on his journey to getting rich or to die trying.
Postel’s Law
Postel’s Law (also known as the Robustness Principle) was formulated by Jon Postel, an early pioneer of the Internet. The Law is a design guideline for software, specifically in regards to TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and networks. The law states: “be strict in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others”. Jon Postel sought to create a helpful framework for software engineers to manage their code and subsequently programmes. To frame it in software terms, programmes that send messages to other machines (or to other programmes on the same machine) should conform completely to the specifications, but programmes that receive messages should accept non-conformant input as long as the meaning is clear.
I think this is a helpful system for us in our personal endeavours. As we work to become more whole and integrated individuals—it’s important that we take a close look at ourselves internally and externally. Work on overcoming bad habits that we may have. Try our best to restore friendships and relationships that may have soured. In doing so, we work to become better versions of ourselves—not only benefitting ourselves but those around us. At the same time not expecting the world from others—understanding that they have their own contexts and circumstances to deal with. Affording them the grace to grow, learn and develop as we seek to do the same. This attitude and mindset will provide us with the opportunity to contribute in much greater and effective ways to the world around us.
Hip-Hop’s Favourite Brotherhood: The Isley Brothers
The Art of Hip-Hop is sampling. Hip-Hop is curation as much as it is creation. While writing this I’m listening to Dead Presidents II and you can never fully appreciate the bars from Jay-Z without understanding the hook of Nas’ “I’m out for Presidents to represent me” from his classic single The World Is Yours. There are no rules to sampling beats. You can be subtle. You can be obvious. You can pay homage to the greats. You can show love to a contemporary. The only rule is that you work to leave the sample better than you found it.
The soul music that came from the 70s and 80s provided the basis of the instrumentation for so many of the Hip-Hop classics we’ve come to love today. A particular nod is to Hip-Hop’s favourite brothers: The Isley Brothers. First formed in the early 1950s, the Isley Brothers have “enjoyed one of the longest, most influential, and most diverse careers in the pantheon of popular music.”1 No where is there influence more seen than in the catalogues of some Hip-Hop's greatest artists: Ice Cube, Jay-Z, The Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Common, Will Smith, Kendrick Lamar, just to name a few. I was watching an interview with them earlier today and it was inspiring to see how much they have influenced the sounds that have provided a compass for me to navigate certain parts of my life.
Ashort hop across the George Washington Bridge, Teaneck, New Jersey is a crowded suburban community, dominated by upwardly mobile black families. In the past decade the black population of Teaneck has escalated as blacks, like their white predecessors, have sought to escape the urban sprawl and tensions of Queens and Manhattan. The city is also home to a number of black entertainers, but by far the most prominent citizens are the Isley Brothers, who honoured the town by using its name for their record company logo.
Ernie Isley lives with his mother in a sleepy ranch house, tucked off a winding Teaneck back road. The white clapboard structure is also home to brother-in-law Chris Jasper and the youngest Isley, Marvin. The three, none of whom is over 24, make up the younger half of the Isley group. The trio joined their celebrated older brothers, Ronald, Rudolph and Kelly in 1969 and it’s not a coincidence that the transfusion of fresh, young talent paralleled the emergence of the Isley Brothers as a vital force in black music.
In the back of their house, only a few feet away from their expansive swimming pool, Ernie, Chris and Marvin sit around a table, fiddling with some phones they’ve been hooking up on the patio. A question about Shout, the Isleys’ first hit in 1958 and a record that heralded the coming of harsh, gospel-inflected soul music, brings a smirk from Chris and smiles from Marvin and Ernie.
“Our music is about so much more now,” Ernie offers. “We’ve got a lot more to say musically and lyrically. I-IV-V chord changes and three guys jumping up and down, screaming and shouting ‘wooo’ just isn’t where we’re at.”
“That’s right,” Chris solemnly intones. “We want our music to expand people’s consciousness and take them onto a different musical plane.”
While songs like Live It Up and That Lady may not be the sober, consciousness-raising vehicles Chris Jasper asserts, clearly the Isley Brothers are saying something that hits home with their audience. With the sales of their last three albums totalling almost seven million, the lsley Brothers rival Earth, Wind and Fire as black music’s most commercially successful self-contained unit.
In contrast to the inability of rock’n’rollers to age gracefully, longevity has always been a characteristic of popular black music. A look at the soul charts at any given time indicates the continuing commercial health of Esther Phillips, Bobby Bland, the Dells, Four Tops and others who have been successfully recording for 15 years or more. Among these venerable artists are the Isley Brothers, who have been a unit for almost 20 years, since their first doo-wop recording in 1957. But while those who maintain a continuing audience usually do so without altering their approach, the Isley Brothers have been engaged in a process of continual evolution, involving themselves in most of the major stylistic changes in popular black music. In the 70s, they have been at its forefront.
Despite their doo-wop dabblings, the Isley Brothers came of age with the gospel frenzy of Shout and Twist and Shout. The Brothers established a reputation as one of the wildest stage acts on the soul circuit, climaxing frenetic shows by crawling on the floor, climbing on pianos, disrobing and doing anything else to which the spirit of Shout moved them. It was also during this period that the Isley Brothers picked up a young guitar player from Seattle named Jimi Hendrix, who only added to the group’s unrestrained live and studio presence. Hendrix left in 1965, and the lsleys, after a period of commercial slack, capped their excessive energy and signed with Berry Gordy’s Motown label.
Motown was at its assembly line peak when the trio joined, but despite the regimentation, their enthusiasm and unfettered vocals gave them a raunchy fervour that stood out from the rest of Gordy’s stable. Though the group experienced success with This Old Heart of Mine and I Guess I’ll Always Love You, the Brothers never really fitted into the scheme of things. Stifled by Detroit formula, the lsley Brothers left Motown in 1968.
Previously, the group had experimented unsuccessfully with their own label and attempts at self-production. When they left Motown, the Isleys reformed T-Neck Records and signed a distribution deal with Buddah; with their initial release, It’s Your Thing, the Isleys had their first gold record. Unfortunately the stabbing, late 60s funk bass line of that hit straitjacketed the group’s music for almost two years as they churned out endless sound-alikes, including I Know Who You’ve Been Socking It To and Black Berries.
The release of Givin’ It Back in 1971 was a radical departure from the funk of the previous years. As Marvin explains, ‘”Everyone was looking for something new and wondering where it was going to come from. But nobody ever thought the Isley Brothers would be the ones to pull it off.” The title referred to the contents; pop/rock covers (i.e. Ohio and Love The One You’re With). The group and their band, which now included Chris, Marvin and Ernie, were presented as a self-contained unit. Though the album wasn’t a total artistic success, it was an ambitious move and one that planted the seeds for the group’s current sound.
The follow-up, Brother, Brother, Brother (and subsequently, a widely ignored live album), put more emphasis on establishing an identifiable repertoire of mostly original material. A reworking of the jagged It’s Your Thing bass figure, the addition of conga percussion, Ernie’s 12-string acoustic and stronger harmonies, created an attractive and accessible sound highlighted by Work to Do and Pop That Thing. The live album, and a version of Machine Gun/Ohio, also showcased the Hendrix-influenced guitar of Ernie, who has become a prominent figure in the Isley Brothers’ sound of the 70s. The constant comparison to Hendrix amuses him. “Everybody always mentions how much I try to sound like Hendrix or how I was influenced by him. But really I picked up the guitar for one reason, to play José Feliciano’s Light My Fire. In fact for a long time, that’s all I could play.”
In 1973, the Isleys transferred T-Neck’s distribution rights to Columbia, which has led to a marked increase in their record sales as well as to a continuing refinement of the Work To Do style and several tentative moves into new musical arenas. The 45 release of That Lady in 73 proved to be the ultimate distillation of the Brother, Brother, Brother sound. Smartly up-tempo, with a bouncy bass line, Ernie’s sinewy guitar soloing and an irresistible melody, the song was an adaption of their own, early 60s, rhumba-flavoured original. On the 3 + 3 album, the song is extended to six minutes, most of them a vehicle for Ernie’s guitar pyrotechnics, displayed over an attractive, chopping rhythm.
While the rest of 3 + 3 turned out to be a somewhat disappointing adjunct to the delicious That Lady, Live It Up was one of 1974’s most stimulating releases. An expanded lyric conception, wrapped in engaging melodies, set the disc off from its predecessors and the album remains a successful hybridisation of the group’s earlier styles and neo-Stevie Wonder black music.
Since Live It Up, the lsley Brothers have released two albums, last year’s The Heat Is On (their first Number One LP) and the current Harvest for the World. While neither has expanded on the promise of Live It Up, both albums are satisfying, if predictable, reworkings of their already well-defined sound. The question is where do they go from here.
Marvin, whose baby features and bulky frame most nearly resembles that of his older brother Kelly, attempts to answer. “A lot of artists are in the business to get out. But we’re about music, that’s what’s important to us. We’re building a studio near Westchester in New York and in two years or so we hope to begin working with other artists.” Ernie interjects: “Every album is different for us and we approach each without a thought to what we’ve done before. If, for example, we decided to use horns again, they wouldn’t be used in the way they were on, say, It’s Your Thing.”
He continues: “Just because we have a platinum album, that’s no reason to retire or become satisfied. Obviously money isn’t a motivating factor. We’re artists and we use music to express ourselves. With all of us putting in our two cents, whatever we do will be creative. The Isley Brothers will never stand still.”
© Joe McEwen, 1976
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“I heard some familiar music coming over the radio and I heard this guy say: I love it when you call me Big Poppa throw your hands in the air if you’s a true player. I was like that’s gon’ be a hit!” - Ernie Isley on hearing Big Poppa for the first time
I found the below playlist on Spotify which captures some of the original songs by The Isley Brothers and the songs that have sampled their sounds. Tap in if interested. You may be pleasantly surprised by some of the joints that have used their songs as samples.
Until next week. Peace.