How I Built This with Guy Raz - Music Mogul: L.A. Reid

Episode Date: November 7, 2016

L.A. Reid began his music career as a drummer. Then he co-founded LaFace Records, discovering dozens of future pop superstars. Reid is now one of the most influential executives in the music industry. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. It probably would have been better if I just kept my own company and not gone to work for anyone because all of a sudden I had a lot of money and not a lot of friends. and I was immediately attacked by the media and the industry, and I felt the cold shoulders from everyone. And I said, oh, my God, I've made a massive mistake here.

From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. On today's show, how L.A. Reed followed his instinct for spotting talent and went on to create some of the biggest hitmakers in pop music. So you know this song, right? L.A. told me you'll be a pop star. All you have to change is everything you are.

So this is, of course, pink. And the guy she's singing about when she says, L.A. told me you'll be a pop star. She's not singing about Los Angeles. She's actually singing about a guy named L.A. Reed, who's one of the most powerful executives in music. He built his own record label. And then he went on to manage several others.

But what he's really known for is finding amazing talent. He discovered Pink, in fact, and Tony Braxton and Rihanna and Justin Bieber, TLC, Usher, Outcast, and many others. And the thing about him is, he just seems to have this sense of what pop music fans want to hear. In that sense, it really began when L.A. was just a kid growing up in Cincinnati in the 1960s and listening to a lot of music. Just hearing music on the radio, buying 45s, buying James Brown's records, old Motown records,

or buying old soul records, and bringing them home and just drumming on the table along with the songs. By the way, I thought I was going to be the next James Brown. Didn't work out. So the truth is that I failed miserably. Did you used to, like, perform in front of the mirror with like a, like a, you know, a fake mic?

Oh, yeah, all the time. Fake mic, the broom, you know, the mirrors. You know, we did everything. You know, we had a great time growing up. And music was everywhere. So how did you get into playing in bands? How did that happen? It's a really funny story.

I played at home by myself forever and never played with the band. And then one day I'm in my basement. And I look out the window while I'm in the basement playing by myself. And there's a guy staring at me. And it startled me. So I stopped and I went outside and I said, hi. And he had friendly eyes. So, you know, the fear kind of went away.

And he said, you play pretty good. There's a band around the corner that needs a drummer. You know, his name was Vince. And Vince took me around the corner to meet a couple of other musicians, a bass player and a guitar player. And, you know, I joined their band. It was really that simple. And one band led to another.

And I think things started to get pretty serious. by the time I was in high school. So I read that this is around the time where you met somebody who would become this sort of transformational figure in your life. His name was Kenny, Babyface Edmonds. How did you guys meet? One night Kenny came to watch my band play.

And about six months later, I got a call from him asking me, could he join my band? Wow. And I said, nah, I don't think you fit. And then I met him a little while later in the studio. And in the session, Kenny Edmonds was writing a song and performing it. And I walked in while he was recording. And when he came out of the booth, I was like, oh, my God, that's Kenny Edmonds,

the guy that called me and said he wanted to join my band. And I said, no, how stupid am I? Yeah. Because he's pretty incredible. So what'd you do? I instantly befriended him. He did join our band. We started to write songs together and made our demos that eventually got us a recording contract.

And the name of the band was? The Deal, D-E-E-E-E-L-E. And you guys started to get attention. Yeah, we had some notoriety for sure. Our first record was a song that I co-wrote called Body Talk, and it became a top five song on R&B radio. That was good enough to get us on tour with the great Luther Vandros who allowed us to open for him.

So pretty much overnight life change. And all of a sudden, we are on a massive stage in an arena with 15, 20,000 people per night. But the most fascinating thing was the talent that was around, watching Luther Vandros every night, and watching the musicians and the background singers and the entire productions that went into the shows. And I think I became more fascinated by the talent that we were around than I was about actually being a performer on stage.

And I think that was probably the beginning. of me sort of drifting into a talent finder and a talent nurturer more so than a performer. So how did you and Babyface go from being in a band to saying, hey, you know what, let's actually get out of this side of the business and go to the other side? We were signed to a label in Los Angeles called Solar Records, and the label was like Junior Motown. The head of the company, Dick Griffey, called, after hearing some demos that Kenny and I did, and asked us to come out and produce other artists on the label. Before long, we started getting calls from all the record labels in town.

And back then, you had to write the song and produce it. So we did it all. How many number one hits did you guys write? We had probably 35. What? How did you guys know what a hit was? Well, A, it just takes great talent, and Kenny Edmonds, my partner, is one of the most prolific songwriters ever. But he had this great talent, and I had the greatest job in the world.

I would hear the songs first and decide which ones were the good ones. So you would say, oh, that's going to be perfect for Whitney Houston. Exactly. This song is great, but the bridge, not quite sure, or that lyric, I'm not sure if that lyric is it. It sounds great as a slow song. let's make it faster and see how it sounds or maybe we should take it from that artist and give it to another artist. So that was my

thing was just to try to find the absolute perfect pairing for the material. So you and Babyface are like churning out these hits and at some point what happens like does he say to you or do you say to him, hey you know we should like

we should stop working for other people we should like build our own thing. Why are we allowing our music to be picked over or people to make decisions about which songs will be singles. You know, we actually know we're very close to it. We should do it ourselves. We lived in Los Angeles by then, and we loaded up our trucks and we moved to Atlanta, Georgia.

Why? Why Atlanta? We didn't have a reason. We really didn't. We decided Atlanta by looking at a map and saying, how about Atlanta? And we did it. We moved to Atlanta. We put our flag in the ground. We opened up a little office and called it LaFace Recife's record.

records. And we held auditions. We would go on the radio and say, okay, auditions are being held at the club Roxy or the Atlanta Knights or any of the nightclubs. And we would just hold auditions looking for talent. And before long, the talent just came running because we were the only shop in town. Because nobody thought of Atlanta as a place to go to. Yeah. And you wonder why people think of things like that. And I did it and I did it wildly, successfully, and I still don't know why we did it. How are you funding the the business. As a producer, we would work for hire, so we would get

paid and we used that money to build a recording studio in Atlanta. As a record label, we were funded by Arista Records, which was the great Clive Davis. So they had like a joint ownership in the company? Yes. We had a joint venture.

We brought the talent. They brought the money. And we made the creative decisions and we would bring it to them for marketing and promotion. So how did you learn how to run a company because up until that point you were, I mean, it was the two of you and you already been a musician, you were a writer, but like at this point you are your CEO. Yeah. It is, I didn't know how to run a company, but what I did know was how to manage people.

How did you know that? Because I was a band leader for so many years. And you know, there's not very much difference between being a band leader and being a CEO of a music company because it's managing talent. and I won't say that I mastered it, but I certainly knew something about it when I started the company, and I figured the rest out. But I mean, you're talking about managing people who are some of the biggest pains in the ass in the world.

Right. Like giant egos. They weren't bigger pains than the ass than the kids I went to high school with. You know? I mean, imagine this. I was at a very young age trying to manage people that were drug addicts or people who weren't particularly motivated,

but maybe they had. had great talent or people who were just difficult for the sake of difficult. And I had to manage to get these people out of their houses and onto a stage. So for me, it was always people management. It was never completely company management to me. It was always people management. And I take it one meeting at a time and one person at a time. So how did LaFace do in the first, like at the beginning? The first two years that we had to label sharp learning curve, And this is all in the 90s, right? Yeah, we started the label in 1989.

Our first signing was a band called Damien Dame, and we gave them our best material, and it didn't work. Like, it just nobody was, it just fell flat, like people weren't buying the records? Yeah, we just thought, you know, we thought Arista records had failed us because we thought we were perfect. Like, you know, look at all these hits we have. So it can't be the music. It must be the production, or the promotion, I'm sorry.

And Clive Davis said to me, Well, maybe it's the talent. Huh. Was he right? Yes. They were very talented people, but they were not world-class superstar level talent. They weren't like Whitney Houston. So we learned pretty quickly that we needed to sign better talent.

Did you feel like a failure after, I mean, because you put all of your effort into this. This is your first big test. Yeah. And you guys are sort of this, you know, this successful duo. and then this thing just like falls apart pretty quickly after you sign them. Were you feeling like maybe this is not going to work? Like maybe we're going to go. Oh, no, I never had doubts.

I never had doubts that it would work, but I did have to think about a different strategy. So my strategy was, wait a minute, this isn't working. Let me think. What are we doing wrong? I said, I know what we should do. We should get a soundtrack to a big movie and we should put all of our artists on it and we should put all of the talent that we have relationships with in the industry, we should ask them to be a part of it.

And we'll use this as a launching path for our label and our new artist. So I dreamed up this idea. Then I said, no, now, how do I pull this off? Yeah, you need a movie. Need a movie. In a minute, we're going to find out how L.A. found that movie. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Stay with us.

It's How I Built Us from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1991 and LaFace Records. It's just had a major failure with one of its first bands. But LReed thinks they can recover. They can pull out of this if they do this one thing, if they produce a soundtrack for a major Hollywood film. But, of course, he needs to find that film.

So he picks up the phone. So I called a friend of mine. Her name is Cassandra Mills. She had recently had a soundtrack for a movie called New Jack City. I said, Cassandra, how did you find that movie? How did you find the soundtrack? Tell me, walk me through it. How does that work?

And she told me, she said, okay, you have to go to the movie producers, and you have to go to the studios and just see what their slate of releases looks like and try to attach yourself to one. I said, okay, that sounds like a lot of work, and I know no one. So this is not going to go well. Presumably you didn't have those relationships, right? Living in Atlanta and living in L.A. working in recording studios, I didn't know a soul. Yeah. So Cassandra called back, and she says, Eddie Murphy has a movie called Boomerang that's in production.

It's perfect for your label. You should go and meet Eddie, and you should meet the producers and the director, Reginald Hudlin and Warrington Hudlin, and convinced them. And I said, you know, perfect. How did you get a meeting with him? I just called. I found their numbers.

I called their office, and I said, Hi, this is L.A. from L.A. and Babyface, and we have a new record label called LaFace Records, and I'm sure you know us. We produced Don't Be Cruel for Bobby Brown, and we produced this and that. Yeah. And they were, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We can meet. They weren't particularly excited. And I thought, well, you should be so happy I'm calling you. That was my. And I also learned that that didn't work. So they gave you a meeting and you flew up to New York to go see them? I flew up to New York and I met them. Were you nervous?

No, I wasn't nervous at all. No. I'm so goal-oriented. I was like, I'm going to get this. I have to get it. What was your pitch? Yeah, what was your pitch to them? My pitch was basically that your movie is a reflection of who we are as music people. We were all cut from the same cloth. We write the songs that your audience wants to hear. I don't remember exactly what I said, but boy, I must have been good that day.

Anyway, so they said, okay, great. Now, who's distributing your label? And I said, Clive Davis from Arista Records. they said, okay, well, if you can get Clive to come in, we'll do it. So I called Clive and I ask him, would you come to a meeting with the Huttlands? And Clive agreed to do it. He came into a meeting with us. Clive used his magic charm and we had a deal. And that was it.

And how many artists at that point had you signed under LaFace? Not many. We probably had, we just signed Tony Braxton. We had just signed TLC. And that was it. And so you needed to have enough artists to sing those songs. But we had great relationships with talent. And we went to Boystam Men and we asked Boys to Men to be involved.

And we asked Johnny Gill to be involved. Because you've been writing songs for these guys already. Yes. And we put it all together. It became Boomerang. We sold 3 million copies of the album. And we launched Tony Braxton. We launched TLC off that album.

And we won Grammys with Boys to Men for End of the Road. So that album was the launch path for our, label LaFace Records. Wow. So you guys, you must have been really busy at this point. Yeah. Now I'm managing, you know, Kenny and I'm managing the artist on the label and the songwriters and the rappers and I'm managing the relationship with Arista. And I'm also putting together a little staff and figuring that out and figuring out how to keep those doors open and keep the bills paid. And I learned.

So what were some of the mistakes that you made, you know, while you were running LaFace? I mean, was there anything that you did that you look back on and you think that was just, I was really dumb or something I learned from that I'm glad it happened because I learned from it? I think I really ran into my difficulties when Kenny and I decided to sell our company to Arista Records. Yeah. Why did you decide to do that? I'd watched Barry Gordy build Motown Records and sell it. I'd watched this as a business practice. I watched David Geffen build record companies and sell them.

So a part of my goal from the very beginning was to build an asset that we could sell. The idea was that we could make a lot of money by selling this company. So, you know, we got Arista to agree to buy the company from us. And there was one stipulation. This was like the most difficult thing in my, probably in my entire career. The owners of Arista, they said, we'll buy your label, but you'll have to agree to, A, move to New York, B, you'll have to replace Clive Davis and take over Aresda Records as its president. I mean, this guy was your mentor.

And also, arguably, the most famous record executive in the world. So was that tense between you and him at all? We went through a very tough period. We went to a very, very tough period. And Clive felt I had betrayed him, and I felt he'd ignored me and ignored my opportunity to cash in on the work that we had done. So we both had issues with each other. Yeah, but before that happened, I mean, weren't you able to just say, no, listen, I just want to cash out and move on. Yeah, but that really wasn't how it worked because it wasn't an option for you? I didn't want to

move. I mean, I wanted to work. Yeah, but I mean, you could have cashed out and then gone and started your own thing, again, a new thing. Yeah, sort of. But the way it really works is I'm the manager of the talent and what you're buying is really me. Yeah. You're not just buying those records that have already been massively successful. You're buying what you hope the future will be. Yeah. So that's kind of how it works.

How did the people at Arista react when you became the CEO? The people at Arista who were Clive Loyalist didn't react favorably. Neither did any of the other record executives at the other labels or, the media or the artist community, no one acted favorably. And so I was immediately attacked by the media and the industry. And I felt the cold shoulders from everyone. And I said, oh, my God, I've made a massive mistake here. Was that a tough time in your life?

Bitter sweet. Yeah. It was bittersweet because leaving Atlanta, moving to the big city, people in Atlanta kind of thought I'd turned my back on them. so that wasn't beautiful either. I loved the idea of taking over this major label and all of a sudden being in charge of Carlos Santana and Whitney Houston's career,

along with all of my LaFace artist. So it was bittersweet because three years after I took over Aresda Records, we were wildly successful, more so than we were at LaFace. What was the word that success come from? Like from which artists? An example was we had Pink

who sold, 10 million albums. How did you discover? Oh, Pink was a great one. Sharon Daly was an assistant at our office. I walked past her office. She was listening to a demo. I said, hey, what's that you're playing? She said, oh, it's these girls from Philadelphia. I said, turn it up. It sounds kind of good. Turn it up. She turned it up. I said, what did it look like? She pulled out a picture and these three white girls and I thought they were black. I was like, oh my God, this is really magic. One of them, Alicia Moore, was the outspoken lead singer who was about 16 or maybe 17 years old.

And we signed the group based on hearing that demo walking down the hall. Wow. And then once we signed them, I encouraged her to leave the group and become a solo performer. And she left the group and she changed her name to Pink and she became a world-class star. How did you, like, how did you identify her as the one in the band that was going to be the star. It's just one of those things, you know, if I get, if I have a gift, that is my gift. I love talent. By the way, I'm not any different than the public. The public knows also, man. If a great artist comes on television or on the radio, the public always knows like, wow,

look at that. That's Lady Gaga. That's great, right? So I think of myself as a super consumer. I don't think of myself as a professional. I think of myself as a fan. And anyway, so Pink became a big success and we had usher who had a big success and outcast had the monumental success they won album of the year they sold over 12 million copies of their album but at the height of it all i got fired wait what what what why i think there were many things we were we were we were really successful so it it wasn't talent are you hard do you think you're hard to work with i don't know that i'm particularly difficult to work with i do you know that i'm particularly difficult to work with i do believe that I'm very different than other people who have my job, or job similar to mine.

Like how so? Look, if I'm in the room with the other record executives, it's pretty difficult to not notice me. You know, for 20 years, I've been the only black guy. Everybody's white. They're all white guy. Everybody's white except me, you know, so I definitely stand out in that respect, you know. Yeah.

That could be good and bad. You know, that's the reality of the world, you know. And I am not playing any kind of a race card or complaining at all because I have a wonderful career. And I've been supported both by executives and by the talent. So I don't say that as an excuse for getting fired. Maybe I just pissed somebody off. And the takeaway was if I not sold my company, then I wouldn't have gotten fired three years later because I was the owner. You know

How did you feel when you lost the job? Like were you upset by it? I mean, did it, did it? I didn't get a chance to get upset. It was the weirdest thing. I think in that moment that I got fired, I felt like someone had punched me in the ear. Yeah.

And I saw stars for a second. And as I'm riding down the elevator, you know, from this skyscraper in New York City and thinking about what just took place, I get in my car. I call my lawyer. And I said, you know, I just got let go. He says, yeah, I know.

Call you right back, right? Yeah? He literally calls me right back within like a minute or two. He says, okay, Doug Morris wants to see you. He's the head of Universal Music. He wants you to come to his office right now. So I drove directly to Doug's office. That day you were fired.

Oh, that hour. That hour you were fired, okay. And 40 minutes later, I was shaking hands with Doug Morris, and I become the vice chairman of the Universal Music Group within minutes. Wow. And Doug says, you know, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. They just let go of a great talent, and I'm so happy to have you. And Doug and I are still together to this day.

So when you were fired from Arista, that was a period when you then went to Universal and Def Jam. Def Jam was where you sort of oversaw Def Jam. Yeah, I oversaw Island Def Jam. Is that where you signed Rihanna? Yes. Rihanna came to my attention through her now manager, Jay Brown, who was an A&R guy at the label. He brought her demo to my office one night.

I usually worked really late at night. And he played me to demo. I said, that sounds really good. Get her here. He brought her to New York. She auditioned for me and for JZ. A JZ I'd hired as the president of Def Jam. We signed her.

On the spot. On the spot, yeah. It's always on the spot. You knew she was going to be huge. Yeah, I don't let people leave. If I think you're going to be a big star, I don't let you leave, you know. Sometimes people insist, hey, can I think about this? Yeah. And then the answer is usually, no, you can't. You need to do it right now because the minute you walk out my door and other record executives know that you're talking to me and I'm going to sign you, you will have 10 offers at your door the next day. So I can't risk that. Yeah. Do you see, like, you've, you have, for most of your career, you've worked with other bigger. companies or for bigger companies, you still work for a bigger sort of parent company now. Right. But do you still see yourself as an entrepreneur?

Oh, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Because I still do music publishing, you know, as an entrepreneur, for example. But I'm also an entrepreneur for the major corporation. So, you know, the truth is maybe it was a little bit of my calling to be a little bit of both. Because, you know, I jumped at the opportunity right or wrong, you know, or whether I handled it well or not, or whether it was difficult or not, I jumped at the opportunity

to come to work at Arista Records. So I think there was something I liked about the major corporation. There's something that they like about me being an entrepreneur. Do you ever miss sitting in a room and writing songs for other artists? Or do you like now just love the deal making and the, you know, in the signing and the creating the artists and all that stuff? I love it all. I love the theater of action. Yeah. I love a thousand moving parts and keeping all the balls in the air. That's what I love. I mean, I love music first, of course, but I think I get great satisfaction from juggling, like, many, many things, and making sure that they all land properly.

You know, that's what I like doing. Air traffic control. Yeah. How much of your success and your journey from, like, Cincinnati and, like, drumsticks on the floor to going to Indianapolis and just hustling. and working for like, you know, whatever money could make to the success you've achieved. Like how much of that is because of your skill and your intelligence and how much of it is because of luck? They say it's better to be lucky than to be talented. You know, I would have to say that there were times that I was really lucky and there were times that I had to be talented, right?

So I'm going to say 50-50. LA Reid, he's now the CEO of Epic Records, and even after 30 years in the industry, he's still discovering new talent. In fact, in 2014, against the instincts of most other record executives, L.A. signed Megan Trainor. And within a year, she brought Epic Records three top ten singles. I see it a magazine. Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or listen to previous episodes, you can go to how I built this.npr.org.

You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes, and please do us a favor and write a review. Let us know what you think. You can also write us directly at hibt at npr.org or tweet us. That's at How I Built This. Our show is produced this week by Ramtin Arablewe. You also composed the music. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkampur, and Jeff Rogers.

I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, thanks for staying with us. Here's the part of the show where we share your stories about the things that you are building. And this week, we heard from a listener in Bend, Oregon. I'm Kent Sheridan, the owner of Vala. Voila, it's a company that makes very delicious coffee, Kent says. Even though that coffee is instant and it comes in a little packet. You don't always have the time to grind your own coffee.

Being able to just add water wherever you are is pretty special, in my opinion, without compromising the quality for even the highest coffee snob. Kent says that he's actually going for a flavor that tastes as good as a $4 pourover. Coffies that have a caramel sweetness, nutty like hazelnut. Leather, wet wool, hyacinth, pine needles. Very mango, tropical fruit notes. Kent is getting these coffee beans from specialty. roasters all across the U.S. and he wants to sell his coffee online. But he's obviously not the first person to try and make a really good high-end instant coffee, right? Like Starbucks has done this. So there

is competition out there. Oh, and one other problem? Now that he's trying to scale up, he still has to work out his freeze drying technique. When you bump it up in size and you have all of these variables with temperature and pressure and when everything's in a vacuum, it's not so clear-cut. Kent Sheridan hopes to have voila-la coffee ready to go by December. He already owes his Kickstarter backers 1,339 cups of coffee. Good luck to you, Kent.

And if you want to tell us about the company or idea that you're building, go to build.npr.org. That's buildwithad.npr.org. And thanks. Here's another NPR podcast you will definitely enjoy. It's called All Songs Considered. It's NPR's Music Discussion and Discovery Podcast. Each week, Bob Boylan and Robin Hilton

share the best of the best new and upcoming music. You can download artist interviews, live concerts, in lots and lots of songs you'll fall in love with. Find new all-songs episodes every Tuesday at npr.org slash podcasts and on the NPR One app.