Hip Hop and Law: Brandon Dozier (Starr Works Consulting)
Brandon Dozier
General Counsel
Starr Works Consulting, LLC.
3642 13th St. NW
Washington, DC 20010Email: starrworks2002@yahoo.com
This month we catch up with Brandon Dozier a strategic planner and legal counsel for entertainment artists. With an undergrad education at Cornell and legal training at Howard University Mr. Dozier has built up the necessary skills to work with various independent and signed artists. He is not one to name drop but some of the clients of his agency Starr Works Consulting have included Jill Scott, Pharaoh Monche, Unspoken Heard and KRS-ONE. We spoke with Brandon to get the lowdown on contracts and the legal aspect of the hiphop game. Artists can learn plenty in this interview but also aspiring lawyers who want to continue to contribute to the hiphop culture. I hope you enjoy the read.
Halftime: Before we get into the specifics of what artists should be aware of give us some information on your background, what you do and some of the clients you have worked with.
Brandon Dozier: What I do is strategically plan with artists. I help artists define their goals and get them into a tangible form and then we discuss tactics and different roads and avenues we can take to reach that goal. It’s very abstract in nature but I use concrete principles to help that artist bring about those dreams. Some of the artists are independent and some are signed artists. I have worked with artists with various labels and when I say labels, I am speaking primarily of distributors because the labels are products of that distributor. I’m not one to name drop and I do that for a reason. I don’t ever want someone to get confused that because I did something for someone else that the same results will happen for them. Usually if I throw a name out there like Jill Scott, Pharaoh Monche or KRS-1 immediately that conjures an image in the minds of the artist or whomever because of what that person has already put down. You may not have the intestinal fortitude to make it come out like they did so it’s not going to work. There is nothing that anybody can do, not a manager, a record company, promoter or marketing agent, for the artist. The artist has to be the person that takes advantage of what those people have to offer. That’s often the misconception. No matter my contacts, if the artist doesn’t have it in themselves to utilize the opportunities that I put before them then the result is not gonna be the same. But I have worked with hiphop artists, actors, comedians, playwrights, and authors. Just about any form of expression I have worked with them.
Halftime: What are the differences in what you do when you have a hiphop client versus say an actor or comedian?
BD: Even in the watered down form it is in now hiphop is still activism because artists are always pushing the envelope. In that sense the energy that hiphop brings is a lot different compared to someone who may be trained in the Queens English and is accustomed to that environment. A classical violinist who was raised in a different environment and was always around that posh austere and has to go to Germany to get money is a lot different than working with a hiphop artist who can blow right in there community. Most forms of expression need an environment for them to reach a certain audience that’s familiar with what they do. Hip hop is so pervasive in that sense because it has crossed that line. It’s not as pervasive as classical music but in certain environments it is. It depends on who that person is and their environment to determine the strategy and tactics that we use. It’s based on common sense principles.
Halftime: What are the major topics in law that hiphop artists should be concerned with when they are going to get a deal or try to clear a record?
BD: Copyright laws and laws of ownership, exchange and licensing. That’s the foundation of the music industry, television and any other media outlets. For hiphop it begins with knowing the worth of what you are offering. A lot of times artists in hiphop don’t recognize the value of their product.
Halftime: That seems pretty difficult. How do you go about finding out the value of a product or project if you are a new artist?
BD: It’s the same process that the record company takes. They just put it out there. They put it out there on a larger scale (i.e. radio, in-stores, videos, etc.) but a lot of those tactics can be done on an individual level too. Maybe not as widespread but you have to have something you can quantify. You are selling the product to them for something so how do you know how to value it. How do you know if a $100K advance is fair as opposed to $25K as opposed to $5K. If you don’t have it in your mind what the potential and market reach of your product is then the record company is going to take the rights from you, determine it for themselves and get what they get. You have to do it on your level, most hiphop artists do that, and that’s the quandary.
Most hiphop artists have sold units out of the trunk, at parties, on the internet or at shows. Without having done that first how do you know if your product sells better at $5 as opposed to $10 or $12. Does it work in this environment well or does video work well with my music? What the major labels are gonna do is what I call cookie mold. They are gonna put it into their stock marketing flows. That flow may have been constructed for artists like LL years ago and it worked then. Those formulas are just the formula of whoever that marketing exec is or was. You need to be your own marketing execs so you can step to them and say I know this works because this is proven. Then you are not beholden to whatever direction they put you in which sadly happens in a lot of cases even with artists who have done well independently. Somehow all the creative control has been lost and they think it’s worth it because they hit a big payday. I guess to a lot of people $250K is a big payday but in terms of music it isn’t, it’s a pittance. When you look at 50 Cent who can sell 1.2 million records in a weekend, imagine someone stepping to him offering $250K for that project but people don’t look at it in those terms.
An artist very rarely looks at it in those terms, they look at what’s right there in front of them. What’s the expendable cash that I can spend? It’s the worst form of bank loan. You don’t have to have any credit and you can have bankruptcy. You can be in the worst financial condition and the record company will offer you a contract and will give you cash so long as they get their money back only they aren’t telling you how they get their money back. They are just saying we are gonna get our money back and the artist agrees and signs it and then they call me and say I didn’t know there were publishing, video rights and other income streams available to me. But you wanted the cash and you were dealing with pressure from the people in your camp to live up to whatever image that you sold them and then got get caught in the mix. The biggest mistake artist worldwide, especially hiphop artists, make is cash. People really believe if they have a mountain of cash that that’s the answer to make them blow and give them the status they want. Money will not do it and it never has. I’ve seen projects with hundreds of thousands of dollars behind them have the bottom just sink out. We were talking the other day about Mic Geronimo and all the cash put on his second album. We can name countless examples of projects have done fairly well and the company says lets try to crossover and puts cash into it and it flops. Mic Geronimo is a perfect example of that. I would argue that happened with The Lox, Black Rob, Eightball and MJG, etc. You see the cycle happening again and that’s one of the blows that I alluded to earlier. They have this marketing plan that works for somebody but in hiphop it doesn’t translate all the time. And most of these distributors don’t have a hiphop expert, what you have is an accountant looking at the bottom line. The best activist in hiphop right now and will be as long as he is alive is Russell Simmons. If he says something will sell people believe it because he has that clout. He has done it, but no one has taken the challenge to do it themselves like Russell did.
