From Zero to Sixty

Posted: February 25th, 2009 | Author: CazzyDog | Filed under: Label Life | No Comments »

When something like that happens, the flood gates open, opportunity changes and it becomes time to drive faster, with focus and goals. Press was wonderful, glowing and in abundance, the reviews were terrific and we had access to many outlets that were once denied. India hated doing press and she did some of what we asked, but not all of it.

She was really not happy with all of the attention and I truly believe would have been just as happy playing in Georgia and selling a small amount of records. That attitude would change in time as well.

During this time, Alicia Keyes was also exploding, but she did what was asked of her and for every interview India did, she probably did fifty. She also had the mighty machine of Clive Davis and J Records working her.

Also a tremendous artist in her own right, it was all about Alicia, but we were holding out own. A few times we felt over looked and over shadowed, but that would change and we had nowhere near the budget they did, not even a fraction. We also had an artist who hated the spotlight and attention, talk about having your hands tied, we were bound and shackled in a million ways.

A strange thing started to happen around now, stars from music, film and TV started to reach out to us concerning India. They we enthralled. Stevie Wonder was an early supporter and gracious enough to give quotes long before we shipped the record, but others started gravitating such as Elton John, Kenny Loggins and oddly enough people like Woody Harrelson, who begged me to have India attend his birthday, because her record caused an epiphany for him while sitting in a hot tub in Hawaii.

People wanted to collaborate with her, and one of the first to ask was the legendary jazz great, Cassandra Wilson. I thought this was perfect and would expose India to a demographic we couldn’t reach, so we did it with the blessings of Motown.

Then Oprah, wow, Oprah is the Holy Grail of all mediums and she got it. After India performed “Video” on her show, Oprah said, “Girl we needed that song.” And apparently she was right. That song and India herself, was touching a nerve deep inside a lot of people. My concept of using the self esteem message to get press was working. It set us apart from the competition.

It was getting magical.

We sailed past gold (500,000 units) and were still going, but I knew the ceiling was coming and coming up fast, and I had to do something to expand the audience immediately. Motown had an incredible radio promotion staff with Sandra and Manny driving the ship, but they had no staff beyond the urban formats and I had to get to Hot AC, AC and Top Forty, if we were going to go past the projections.

Universal wasn’t in the same flow of synergy as they are now with Motown, so forget them working it. The independent radio promoters I approached had bad blood with Motown, so forget that as well. Kedar, Motown and Universal were thrilled with the results thus far with the record, and knew it would get to platinum or a little under, just based on present trajectory.

I wanted more and knew we could get it. Everyone was happy, but I saw the next phase and in my typical world of luck, a very lucky thing happened.

John Sykes at VH1 was a very early supporter and he was also close with John Mellencamp, who at the time was recording a new record with the central theme being of all things; racism. This was perfect and Sykes got Mellencamp a copy of the record, and began hyping him on the possibility of a duet with India. Mellencamp got it immediately and I began speaking with his manager on making this happen.

You would think people would be thrilled, and though they were ok with the Cassandra Wilson duet, word came back that Motown was not interested in the Mellencamp duet.

Word came back, because Kedar and I were not speaking again.

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