From Elitaste

Click HERE to read their article. Read the complete interview after the jump

1) Who is Daniel Weisman?
Son of Sam…Weisman that is. And Constance. I’m just a 26 year old hustler who is really passionate about music, doing cool shit and connecting dots. I like to think I keep it real and am pretty sincere. That intimidates a lot of people but until my tactics stop working, I don’t see my approach changing too much.

2) Describe your journey coming up in the music industry. How did you reach the powerful position that you hold today? What kind of connections did you establish in your rise within the industry? How did you build said connections?
I went to college in Atlanta at Emory from 2000-2004 which was when the south really started poppin; Ludacris was at his peak, TI was starting to blow, Outkast was reaching legendary status. It was a great time to be in Atlanta. I started out DJing in clubs, then turned to promoting my own parties to my school by the end of my sophomore year after being screwed over by another student promoter. I think it was one of those instances where I was in the right place at the right time; people were making serious money off weekly Thursday night college parties that were essentially only promoted to my school. I’m not sure if similar things were going on at other schools around the country, certainly none of my high school friends were doing anything like I was, but there was a market for it at my school. It was a very cutthroat business; friends became enemies, people would go abroad for a semester and come back expecting to still be involved and someone would have taken their place. Looking back on it, my experiences in Atlanta probably prepared me for the music business better than anything else. I got a little taste of dealing with artists as it wasn’t rare to have the hot artists at the time come through the parties and do a few songs; Nappy Roots, Killer Mike, Chingy, J-Kwon, Cee Lo, and many more would come through. We even did a party for Ciara the week “Goodies” went number 1 on Billboard. Once I graduated with a double major in journalism and African American Studies and a minor in history, I contemplated staying in Atlanta to try and expand what I was doing. After much thought, I decided that I would just be a big fish in a small pond that is Atlanta and decided to move back out to LA where I grew up to pursue a career in the movie business. I started in the mailroom at United Talent Agency making $8.75/hr in March of 2005. I was in the mailroom for 3 weeks then got on a motion picture literary desk, working for an agent who repped movie writers and directors. That job groomed me big time. I had to deal with four phone lines across two phones (you wear a headset which makes it easier), with somewhere between 100-300 calls per day. Add emails and script submissions on top of that plus tracking money for clients and dealing with a lot of mediocre people, the job was literally hell. But you make a game of it, don’t take it too seriously and somehow you wake up for work everyday. I did that until March of 2006 when I blindly sent out my resume to an entertainment law firm, as I realized I did not want to be an agent. I got a job that paid twice what I was making (had bumped up to $11/hr) with less hours and less stress. I started taking LSAT classes but only lasted a month and quickly realized I did not want to be a lawyer bad enough to go through that, not to mention the debt associated with law school. About a month or two into working at the law firm, I became very bored. I was reading a random article about Rick Ross online and found out his manager had gone to Emory about 20 year before me. I reached out and told him I was interested in artist management. He set me up with an email address and told me to find some talent. Right around that time I went to DC to visit my best friend from high school for the weekend. While I was there, a friend from Emory who, ironically, dates Keri Hilson’s sister (also went to Emory but dropped out after her sophomore year), hired me to DJ a club. He played me a song called “Dig Dug” by a local artist Wale which, at the time, was getting a lot of spins on WKYS. I was totally blown away by the song as it was unlike anything I’d ever heard before, plus he seemed to be really into sneakers; a passion I shared with him. As soon as I got back to work on Monday, I sent Wale a myspace message letting him know I was interested in getting involved. I’m assuming because I wasn’t a female he didn’t respond, so I messaged DJ Alizay, his DJ. He didn’t respond. Finally I was able to connect with Kenny Burns who had Wale signed to a production deal through a friend of mine who had interned for him. Kenny and Wale were coming to LA for the BET Awards and we set up a lunch as I was not able to get away from work for more than an hour. The morning of our lunch, Kenny said he had to move it to a dinner and chose Mr. Chow’s, arguably the most expensive spot in LA. I hurried from work, making sure to dress extra snappy that day in a seersucker suit and sued nubucks, and brought a copy of the Talking Heads’ concert film “Stop Making Sense,” as I envisioned Wale’s stage show to be something like their show someday. I think they were kind of impressed by that. I admitted to having no connections and no experience in the music business but what I lacked in that area, I could make up for with hard work and passion. The bill came, I swallowed my weeks’ paycheck and picked up the $600 tab for dinner. Not sure Wale is even aware of that haha. Anyway, that kind of got me into Wale’s life. He would hit me up once in a while for things and I was working tenaciously to get some sort of press. I got him a ringtone deal with Jamster and it was right around that time I got a call from Wale saying he was no longer interested in working with Kenny. I then got him a lawyer to get him out of the production deal. In October of 2006, Mark Ronson was in LA for a Lily Allen show and was DJing an afterparty. I had met Mark a year earlier in Vegas on a drunken night at Pure where I kept asking him to play his song “Ooohwee.” He obliged, we exchanged info and I showed up at the afterparty which was so fucking packed. I managed to get to the DJ booth with the help of a mutual friend Jahad. Mark remembered me, I told him about Wale and gave him a CD. Around December of 2006, I got an email from Nick Catchdubs asking me what Wale’s schedule was looking like in the coming weeks. I had just so happened scheduled a trip to DC and Nick came to DC that same weekend to do a story on Wale and Tabi Bonney. Then in February of 2007, I got an email from someone telling me Mark had played Wale’s song “Good Girls” on his East Village Radio show and he said he didn’t know where he’d gotten the record from but really liked it. I called him immediately, we spoke, I reminded him it was from me and that Wale was actually in NY for this FADER issue release party. Between soundcheck and the show, Wale went to Mark’s studio and laid down a freestyle for Tim Westwood’s radio show as Mark was filling in. He killed it obviously. Mark offered to executive produce Wale’s album when he signed but said he wasn’t in a position to sign him to Allido. About two months go by and I get a call one Tuesday morning from Mark. He asks if Wale would like to go on a UK tour with him. Of course I say yes. I then end up dealing with Ronson’s manager who offers me a job at his management company. Before I start that job, an A&R from Epic, Daniel Werner, who had been checking Wale out for a minute, told me that Charlie Walk, the chairman of Epic, wanted to bring Wale and I to NYC for a meeting. The morning of that meeting, I got a call from Leah Rose, then music editor of XXL, telling me Mark’s partner, Rich Kleiman, wanted to meet about Wale. I met with Rich, he basically tried to sell me on Allido, I told him that wasn’t necessary and we were down, but wanted to see what Epic was offering. We went into that Epic meeting knowing Allido wanted to sign Wale and Epic didn’t really give us what we were looking for. I went to DC that weekend to meet with Wale and Alizay about the Allido situation. Wale only had a vague concept of Mark and Alizay didn’t really know who he was except from “Oohwee.” I explained that I was about 99% sure Mark would win at least one Grammy because of Amy Winehouse and how that association alone would elevate Wale’s status in the industry. After much thought, we decided to sign with Allido. Amidst touring Europe, we shopped Wale a deal at every label. I ended up getting fired from the management company over a disagreement regarding Wale in December 2007. I left with Wale, jobless a week before Ch
ristmas with no idea what my future was going to look like. Luckily we ended up with Interscope through an Allido/Interscope joint venture in March 2008 and I guess the rest is history.

3) Why do you feel connections and relationships are essential in the music industry?
It’s not that I feel that way, it’s just a simple fact. Basically if a tree falls in the woods and nobody’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, in the natural world, of course it does, but in the cultural world, no it doesn’t. This applies to music and connections. There could be some kid who is making the best music in the world in the basement of his parents’ house in Idaho but nobody is hearing it to A. let him know how awesome it is and B. to help him get other people to hear it. There are so many people in the “music business” (a term I use lightly) who are like chickens with their heads cut off. When I started working with Wale, I had zero connections. I mean nothing. Granted, I was a fan of the industry so I knew who people were and found creative ways to get in touch with them, such as Kawan Prather who was head of urban at Sony a couple of years back. He was the first dude to give me a chance on a meeting. But basically I found ways to target people who I thought would “get” Wale. That meant targeting outlets like The FADER and URB, as well as music blogs which were starting to be very relevant in 2006/2007, before I went after XXL and VIBE. Granted, Wale didn’t really get that at the time but I’ve been able to refine the concept of targeting tastemakers and early adopters before the followers. Even if it just meant politicking with someone like Nick Catchdubs who, at the time, was associate editor at FADER and making him a fan of not only Wale, but of me too. You know how many people he was probably in touch with on a monthly basis, asking him who are good new artists etc. Networking, if you do it well, turns every person you meet into a proponent or teammate. If people like you, think you’re smart and like what you’re working on, they naturally want to tell other people about it, like “hey have you heard this new artist from DC named Wale? I met his manager last week, real good guy, and Wale’s kind of a beast.” In this topsy turvy internet world, people tend to underestimate word of mouth but it is still very powerful. Ultimately word of mouth is how Mark ended up signing Wale. I literally handed him a demo, told him it was dope and that he was the first person I thought of when I started working with Wale (all true). It’s important not to bullshit. If you bullshit, you end up wasting a lot of time trying to remember what you told one person versus another and the music business is VERY small and people talk.

4) How did Wale and yourself link up? What was it about Wale that you decided to put your trust in him as your marquee artist?
I kind of gave the whole story about. First off I thought the go-go angle of “Dig Dug” and a few of his earlier songs like “Breakdown” and “1 Thing About A Player” was very fresh. On a very basic level, I just thought it was a dope rapper. Beyond that I liked that he was into sneakers and fashion. His knowledge of pop culture, despite being from a very different background than me, seemed to align with my tastes; something that still blows my mind today. Wale and I are kind of like brothers from another mother. A lot of managers aren’t very creative but I think the fact that he and I are both very creaive and know what we like, allows us to be a very powerful team. In terms of putting my trust in him, it was kind of the other way around. I have no idea why he took a chance on me. I think I will ask him that next time I speak to him. In retrospect though, it feels like one of those things that was destined to happen. Fate if you will.

5) What has been your strategy in promoting and marketing Wale?
I sort of answered this above but basically when I first started working with Wale, I had been hearing about this artist Spankrock a ton on the internet. He even ended up on the cover of the FADER. I was on this message board called the Hollerboard (board.low-bee.com) which seemed to be a haven for some of the world’s best club DJ’s. Not like techno DJ’s. Not like hip hop DJ’s. But like people who make other people dance. I would read what they were listening to, check out remixes, etc and generally those are the types of people who are on the cutting edge of what’s next. I started promoting Wale’s music on that message board and just like networking turns people into proponents, a message board full of working DJ’s functions the same way; imagine it as branches of a tree. Or I like to use my Phase Zero pyramid. Wale, or myself to some extent, are at phase zero as we are the creators of the content. The DJ’s are the tastemakers. The people who listen to the DJ’s are the early adopters. And then the followers are the people who come on board down the line, once there is a video, etc. That’s basically the strategy I used. I knew Wale had a following in the mid-Atlantic and being in LA, I wasn’t going to be able to have much control over that, it would just sort of have to build organically. However, I knew that his “internet following” and his DMV (DC/MD/VA) following would grow separately without one really knowing about the other. I envisioned the two audiences colliding at some point, which it has started to already. But anyway, my goal was to target tastemakers, who are called that for a reason, and the rest will follow. Now, without a record in the marketplace and on radio, I believe there to be a saturation point based on this model. Has Wale reached that saturation point? I think almost but until I stop getting google alerts of people posting the Mixtape About Nothing which came out almost a year ago, I’m going to say it might be an asymptote, that is a graph approaching zero that never actually reaches it.

6) What is the key to appealing to diverse audiences and achieving a mass response in a global market such as the entertainment industry?
I think finding a lane and not being a follower is very important. If you are a follower, it means the window of opportunity in whatever you are doing is probably closing and you are at the tail end of it. However, if you are a trendsetter, it means you are ahead of the curve. Now people think being ahead of the curve and being ahead of your time are the same thing which they are most certainly not. I like to look at it like a wave in the ocean with three surfers. Surfer A has really good instincts when it comes to picking a spot to surf. Surfer B does too but is also more skilled and a little younger than Surfer A. Surfer C just started surfing recently and actually just followed Surfer A and B to the spot because he heard they knew what they were doing. Surfer A, because of age, judgement or any number of reasons, just can’t pick a good wave, despite having discovered the spot before anyone, and ends up tired before he even gets a good wave in. Surfer B catches almost every wave perfectly as he’s a little ahead of the wave, but slows down to let the wave pick him up. Surfer C just follows everything Surfer B does and is able to catch a few waves, but only because he’s copying Surfer B, not because of his own talent. Surfer A ends up being ahead of his time. In retrospect, people might remember him for being the first person to find the spot, but it’s Surfer B who, because of the right timing, ends up being ahead of the curve, not ahead of his time. To me, NERD is a perfect example of being ahead of their time. Their most recent album, Seeing Sounds, is great, but I don’t think the world was ready for it, much like the world wasn’t ready for Bad Brains back in the day. A group is going to come out in the next few years doing something similar to Seeing Sounds and totally blow up because for whatever reason, the convergence of skate, punk, rap and rock cultures will make much more sense in a few years. I also think the abiliy to adapt is very important and to not pigeonhole yourself into a box. I see certain new artists today who shall remain nameless going so hard with an image, whether its hipster, drug dealer or college kid, that whenever that’s not cool to whomever it’s cool to now, I’m not quite sure what they are going to do. Look at all these gangster rap artists, the biggest being 50 Cent whose debut album came out in 2003. By 2008 he has become irrelevant. That’s not cool. Now, granted, he has made more money in those 5 years than most artists will make in a lifetime, but still, money isn’t everything right? Artists want to have a lasting impact and staying power for the most part.

7) Can you please describe the processes of booking various concert venues, television spots, and radio appearances and interviews?
As a manager you aren’t technically allowed to book shows; that’s what agents are for. We don’t really chase shows, they approach us and we make it happen. Wale had an opportunity to do a major talk show back in June but we decided to wait until closer to the album for that kind of stuff. As for radio, when we are in a certain city, we will reach out to connections for radio spots, but again, it really helps if you have a record in the marketplace because most people who listen to radio are followers and they won’t necessarily go on the internet and look an artist up, they will just see what’s on itunes or on the artist’s myspace. At the beginning, you try to get press, but once the ball starts rolling, so does the press. I mean, everyone has a blog or website or magazine these days it seems. In general, I’d say take all the press you can get in the beginning because the more that’s available when people google you the better. However, as you start to get bigger, like say at the level Wale is at, start being more discriminating. I always look up the Alexa rating of a website that wants to interview Wale. If they are not in the top 100,000 then it’s probably not worth it (elitaste.com is top 175,000 but I don’t really go after people for interviews, just people who I know and am fans of). When Is say not worth it, I mean that from a cost-benefit standpoint. The amount of time you will spend setting up the interview and then on the conference call between Wale and the interviewer. But if the site is only getting a few thousand visits a month and most visitors probably already know who Wale is and there isn’t reall an angle to the interview, that hour doesn’t really make sense. Also, if someone whose website is like _____.blogspot.com then don’t waste your time. If you don’t take your site serious enough to buy a domain name then why should we to do an interview?

What is Elitaste? What do you aim to accomplish with this venture?
Elitaste is basically a word I came up with a few months after I started working with Wale. It was actually born out of frustration as I came up with it while writing a letter to the NY Times Magazine regarding my displeasure over one of their articles in which the subjects came off as bastions of super cool and I nicknamed them elitaste (sort of like elitist except pertaining to taste). As soon as I came up with that word, I just bought the domain name and registered the trademark because I thought it might be useful in the future. So I watched as blogs grew and although I had my own personal blog while working at the talent agency where I’d write about my daily activities at the agency with a very dry sense of humor, not many people read it. So last February I had the idea for Wale and I to have our own blog that would be a destination for all things Wale, but also just random stuff we thought was cool. I put a link on his myspace and I started leaking new material through elitaste.com. I had envisioned Wale to be more involved but he’s not really a blogger. I just got him on Twitter last month so hopefully he makes the jump from there but with his ADD, he might be just better suited for Twitter than a blog. Anyway, I ended up incorporating Elitaste, Inc as my company for the management, consulting and music supervision. I imagine should I get into movies it would be my production company. But the blog still flourishes. I’d like to see more traffic but I don’t really go that hard with promoting it. It has built very virally and I get about 30,000 visitors per month from a pretty diverse demographic (you can look up detailed stats at quantcase.com/elitaste.com). I am constantly suprised by the curiosity of my readers. I also love when people reference non-Wale related stuff on my site. For instance, over the summer I did a history of the Jimmy Spicer “Money” sample used in Maino’s “Hi Hater” (see post here). About a 10 days later, MTV.com did a little blurb about my history of the sample and linked to my site (see it here). I was really proud of that. I imagine the equivalent would be if you wrote a political blog and HuffingtonPost.com linked to something you wrote.

9) What are the most significant lessons you have learned, both as a manager and as a observer of the music industry?
I included my rules to success but I am constantly blown away by how stupid some of the people are that I meet. I’d say for the most part, the people I deal with on a consistent basis are pretty smart and tend to be on top of their shit, but as a whole, people are not. If you just do your job, you are already ahead of the game. But don’t stop there. If you do your job well, you are almost godlike. Another thing I’ve learned it try to stick with your gut and trust your taste. Oh, also, very important, a lot of people in the industry, especially younger ones, didn’t start listening to hip hop until after 2000. What that does is leave room for huge gaps in people’s understanding of the genre. It also makes it so when and if they go back and listen to stuff pre-2000, they are listening with very biased ears. For instance, listening to 2Pac’s All Eyez On Me for the first time as a 13 year old when it came out in 1995 is different than listening to it for the first time in 2009 as a 26 year old. And what that leads to is so many people in the industry living with the fear of not being cool or not being right, so much so that many are reluctant to render an opinion on something until someone else does. Now the problem with that is that everything becomes a reaction to a reaction, nothing is a sincere emotion. I don’t care of people make fun of me for liking O’Neal McKnight’s “Check Your Coat” or Soulja Boy’s “Kiss Me Through The Phone.” I got made fun of for being excited about seeing NOTORIOUS. Granted, it sucked, but Biggie is an artist I definitely had an emotional attachment to. Just because YOU didn’t start listening to hip hop until 2000 does not mean you can hate on my love for BIG.

10) What words of wisdom can you offer to anyone aspiring to be in the position you are in today?
Don’t get into the business unless you are prepared for a lot of rejection, a lot of fakeness and a whole lot of work. If you are passionate, like me, no day feels like work. Well, that’s not true, but you know what I mean. Knowing when the next check is coming in gets very streesful sometimes. I’ve been fortunate enough to make a very decent living off Wale for the past couple of years but it only lasts as long as the artist is hot. I think without a record out, Wale has done better than any other artist I can even imagine in the history of hip hop, as he does better than a lot of artists WITH records out. Being self employed is amazing and so far has been worth the stress. I think when you are somewhat of a maverick like me, working your way up in a corporate structure doesn’t necessarily work. In a corporate structure, especially at a record label, all people care about is trying to NOT get fired. Their actual job is secondary. So while some people spend a considerable amount of energy just trying to NOT rock the boat and do enough work to stay relevant, I am at my home office, with my dog at my side, two cell phones in the charger, laptop open running an empire from a two bedroom apartment in Beverly Hills. I have no commute, I go to the gym when I want, I can work in gym shorts if I want and can listen to music as loud as I want. Some people tell me they could never work from home. I’d say since I started working for myself in December of 2007 I’ve accomplished more than I have in any other one year period in my life. I think.