Cash Money Records: A case study in breaking into the Hip Hop Industry

Regardless of your taste, if you’re a fan or practitioner of building awareness, then you should appreciate the trade of skilled rap promoters. Cash Money Records set the precedent in current rap music for how to build awareness from the ground up. They proved that when this is done properly, the foundation is set to secure fans’ passion for the brand for years.

There’s so much written and discussed about online marketing today, however, there’s something to be said about taking it to the people, the old way, face to face aka real social networking. During my conversation with the owners of Cash Money Records, when they were just starting to get known nationally- before Lil Wayne’s household name status- they told me one of their marketing strategies. This assisted them in connecting with their initial audience in a significant way. It seemed so obvious at the time, but I wonder how strange and against the grain their information is in today’s social-media crazed environment, with its saturated haze of blog posts, text messages, and 140 character riffs. Their actions of getting in the trenches may seem arcane by today’s viral-hit chasing standards, but it worked, and today we can clearly see that its effect was far from short-lived.

So, what did they do to make this happen? They told me that they would take their music (on cassette) and make sure that anyone with a huge car and booming system in their key neighborhoods had a copy of their tape. Due to the hand to hand nature of this activity, they were able to bond with future fans, and, due to the authentic nature of the music- dialect, slang and all- it resonated more than any foreign rap (out of their territory) that was played on the radio. Unlike some of their counterparts in the rap world at the time, they didn’t receive radio play. However, the blaring sounds coming out of customized ’70s Cadillac Broughams, and other hoopties, was all the rotation they needed to get their brand of music known.

It’s been over a decade since their groundbreaking $30 million dollar deal with Universal Records. Since those days, this rap outfit has proven their mastery of promotion through extensive and effective exploitation of their brand of brash slang. This interview was completed shortly after the label cashed their initial Universal check. Since then, the cash hasn’t stopped flowing. This New Orleans born label is still one of the strongest properties in the music industry. Despite the continual decline in the sale of recorded music, across all genres, their music continues to outsell its competition. With Lil Wayne’s resigning with the label, it appears that the close-knit organization started by the Williams’ brothers (Bryan and Ronald) won’t slow down any time soon. At least for now, The Cash Money machine seems to be literally, just that.

The power of their brand is most clearly evident with the success of Wayne’s last albums. Despite leaks, Bit Torrent sites, and a plethora of authorized and pirated mixtape appearances, his “Tha Carter III” broke recent records by selling over a million copies within a week of its release, and 2010’s “Rebirth” reached Billboard’s #2 spot on the top 200 chart and #1 spot on the rap charts. With appearances at staple music industry events such as the Grammy’s and network television programs such as Dave Letterman’s show that reach the mainstream, it’s easy to forget how they initially solidified their trademark sound into the minds of their initial audience and then the world- from the streets up.

Although this talk took place over a decade ago, the lessons are still as relevant today as they were then. I conducted the following interview on location at a pre-Katrina Bourbon Street. As time has shown, not only does crawfish, hot sauce, and bayou-side cookouts reign here, but so does the ca-ching of Cash Money. Here, Bryan “Baby” Williams, Ronald “Slim” Williams, and Mannie Fresh explain how they put it all together. Their story is a Cajun-spiced urban music case study for anyone who aspires to one day own the streets, or at least its ears.

I: The Cash Money family consists of whom?
Bryan “Baby” Williams: The Big Tymers, The Hot Boys [Juvenile, Lil Wayne, and Turk] and BG. A lot of them we met over a seven-year period and they came and went.

I: Who started the company?
Bryan: My brother and I.

I: When was the deal official between Cash Money and Universal?
Bryan: April 1, 1998.

I: What was the hardest thing about putting your records out?
Bryan: We paved the way. We did all the hard work. That was the hard part- us putting in the hard work. You know getting out there and bustin’ our head at four in the mornin’- leaving our family, all that kind of sh*t. There was destiny for some kind of opportunity.

I: So you feel it took you seven years to get to the point of where you pressed up your first product to actually getting this major deal?
Ronald Williams: Nah! We were always was getting major offers and all that. We just said just go with it you know. It wasn’t nothing we were looking for. We have turned down a lot of companies.

I: What were some of the companies that you turned down?
Bryan: Def Jam, Columbia, Tommy Boy, Jive, everybody. We were getting tired of flying to New York.

I: Universal proposed the best deal?
Bryan: They proposed what we wanted. A lot of them were trying to take a lot of sh*t. Yo’ we wanted control of our own sh*t because we know what we want to do.

I: I also understand that your group was able to secure ownership of all your masters.
Bryan: We would’ve turned the money down just to keep our sh*t you know. That’s where a lot get f*cked. All we want was a 100% of our own stuff.

I: The final deal was a multi million dollar deal?
Bryan: Thirty million!

I: Over how many years?
Bryan: The whole catch was [for] two-years with an option of three years.

I: How many albums per year will you be dropping?
Bryan: Six a year.

I: What do you think distinguishes your music from all the other albums coming out today?

Bryan: Our sound, our lyrical content, character, and attitude.
Mannie: Our whole thing is we ain’t scared to try nothing. A lot of people be like, “don’t do that, don’t do this.” We take some old school sh*t and do it and try some futuristic sh*t as well.

I: Mannie, I know you’re a member of The Big Tymers, and you rap, but you also do most of the production for all the groups on Cash Money, is this correct?
Mannie: I do all of it.

I: What machines are you using?
Mannie: [SP] Twelve hundred, the same one since the 80’s.

I: Would you say that the reason for your success was the backing of your fans from your own hometown?
Bryan: Fo sho!

I: Where else did you receive much support?
Bryan: Louisville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit, St. Louis, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Houston…

I: I think the biggest problem that a lot of small labels have is securing distribution, and figuring out how not to get ripped off by distributors. Who were your first distributors or wholesalers of your music?

Ronald: Southwest (wholesale) solicited all the distribution. We started with Gonzales, but we got too big. Southwest covered a lot of areas.
Bryan: Instead of collecting the money from six different distributors, we took one and made them solicit to the others.
Ronald: Anybody could get burned. We could get burned. It’s how you handle your business. Watching your pressing.

I: Was this a P and D deal (pressing and distribution)? Or, were you manufacturing your own product?
Bryan: We were pressing.
Ronald: Some people don’t want to get all in the business. You got to be in your business to the fullest in order to know everything. They could say that they pressed ten thousand and press twenty thousand. And, you’re under the impression that you sold ten.
Bryan: You got to be dedicated to it.

I: How many units were you selling per release with Gonzales?
Ronald: We were in the twenties and thirties.

I: Was that outside of the Louisiana area?
Bryan: They had outside, but we knew we had a chance to do more, but they didn’t have the power to do it. Then we moved to Southwest and they got Selecto Hits, that’s how it spread. We got a tour bus and got our hustle on.

I: And how many units did you start moving when you switched to Southwest?
Ronald: About a hundred and fifty [thousand].

I: I know groups on major labels that can’t sell a hundred and fifty thousand units.
Ronald: Almost everything we dropped would go over a hundred.

I: What do you attribute the success of Cash Money Records to?
Ronald: Family togetherness: we built the album as one family; it’s not just going to be one artist. It’s like a compilation; you’re not just going to hear just one voice.
Bryan: We’re business-orientated. We’re about to give ‘em what they want.

I: What was your marketing strategy?
Bryan: We do our thing in the streets.
Ronald: We saturate our markets. Let’s take Texas! We can flood Texas. It’ll blow up and pass on to the next state.

Mannie: If you want things done right, sometimes you have to do it yourself. If we send a team somewhere, and they’re supposed to promote our sh*t and they puttin’ it on the outskirts of the city, and it don’t get to the hood, then it’s our job to go wherever they didn’t go and get it there.

I: What do your marketing teams do in their prospective markets?
Bryan: Go to the hood. We don’t want to see nothing outside of the hood.
Ronald: When we go somewhere with a hundred thousand pieces of tapes, posters…. When we come back, we don’t want to see nothing [left].
Ronald: When you say rap, it’s gotta jump off in the projects and the hoods.
Bryan: Our thing was to make the group or make the artist, cause we know one day it would pave the way to where we are now. We set those seven years up for our big payday.

I: What do you feel distinguishes you from some of the other major players in the South, like MJG, Master P, etc.?
Bryan: First of all, is our sound, our image, the way we talk, our creativity with our slang, what we portray.
Ronald: We create it. Our rappers rap like no one else.

I: Outside of the Louisiana area, what would you say is the oddest market that you received support in that surprised you?
Bryan: Midwest.
Mannie: Every time we do a different show, it’s crazy though. We were In Milwaukee and they were sayin’ all our slang and sh*t. It’s a big impact when you have a bunch sayin’ everything that you say.

I: Who are some of the people that you listened to that inspired you to produce?
Mannie: Old school sh*t like Grand Master Flash, Treacherous Three. I can feel old school rap. There’s a lot of new sh*t I can’t feel.

I: What type of music do you sample?
Mannie: I don’t sample. We give our sh*t some old school party feel. The whole thing is to keep you with us and keep it jumpin’.

I: Let’s talk about radio promotions, how has radio responded?
Ronald: We never really got no radio play. We don’t need no radio team. We need a good ass street team. Our thing is the streets.