IW: I’ve heard about this, explain it.
Audio Clip: THE 4 F’s [Listen Here]
KB: I believe in being friendly, Œcuz you gotta be friendly with everybody. You gotta make sure everybody know you and you gotta treat people how you wanna be treated. So it don’t hurt just to be friendly with everybody. The second F is you gotta be firm. And firm means, if you don’t know what you stand for, you’ll fall for anything. The third F, you gotta be focused and what I mean by focused is whatever your plan is, you gotta execute it and you gotta re-plan to re-plan. Don’t just start off with a cookie cut plan, if you gotta re-taper the plan, as long as you stay focused and know what your agenda is you’re gonna focus. And the fourth F, you gotta say fuck it. The clean version is you gotta know when to say forget it. If you spend too much time on something,’ don’t wait if you’re not goin’ nowhere. That’s what I live by, and that’s how I treat everybody. Friendly, firm, focused, and knowin’ when to say fuck it because everything ain’t always a kill.

IW: Right, right, that’s big.
KB: That’s what I mean by I’m the new age executive. I give special thanks to Jimmy Iovine for giving me the chance, I give special thanks to Step Johnson for letting me work with his radio department to show that I had the skills to pay the bills and I love my two bosses, Tommy Marshall and Howard Gieger, because without them two people I can’t do what I do. In this record business there’s no one person that does everything, it’s never an “I”, it’s a “We.” If you kept that concept, “We,” everything will be lovely.

Audio Clip: THE BOTTOM LINE [Listen Here]
KB: I’m a hands on type of guy. I like to get with my artist. I wanna hear my artist tell me their vision. I want my artist to be able to tell me, “look, this what I meant when I did this record.” Because the old school way, you can’t be just a person who just has a cookie cut pattern on how to promote records. You gotta taper a promotion to every individual artist. You don’t promote a Dr. Dre like you would promote Eminem. You wouldn’t promote a Ruff Ryder like you would promote a Rakim. It’s different steps. Once we hear the music it’s different strategies on what you do and how you do it.

IW: Okay, let’s get into it because you guys have had a pretty diverse group of people and have been successful with all of that. You were really involved with the Eminem campaign, let’s start off with that.
KB: If you ever asked me what was my hardest record at first, I would tell you Eminem. Continued on page 3 »