What makes the music industry go ‘round? Money. But the Cornerstone Mix Cd comes in at a close second. What’s so special about it, how come you might not know what it is? It’s exclusive to the industry, and it’s where they hear hottest music and catch a glimpse of hits to come. Ask anyone that you know that’s really in the urban music business what they got in their car and they’ll hit you with the volume number of the Cornerstone CD they just got. So this month in Industry 101 get famaliar with Chris Atlas, the man behind the music.

How’d the Cornerstone MixCD come about?
It started in 1998 by Rob Stone, Lee Majors, and Cory CL. It started out as way to showcase a DJ on a national level and gave promoters the opportunity to break new records. That was the mindset that it started and it has pretty much kept that but has grown tremendously from the amount of DJ’s that have mixed on a Cornerstone, to the reach of a Cornerstone being that it’s still a predominately an industry CD, but the reputation of it extends far beyond the CD.

When’d you come to Cornerstone?
I came in 2001. CL was still here, but he was taking a different role. Lee Majors was the editor, and still is the editor of the Fadar Magazine. So he was becoming less involved with the mixtape and once CL eventually left the company in 2001, I assumed full responsibility of producing the mixtapes, of course with the mixshow team I supervise.

What are your responsibilities for putting together the mixtape?
I supervise the production of it, it’s not like I, or Rob, have the final say in what goes on because it’s definitely a democratic process. I’m in charge of the mixtape, but we try to include the other guys in the mixshow department as much as possible. Ultimately, if it’s something that I feel doesn’t work then I do have the final veto and Rob has the final veto. I supervise the production of the CD’s from the visual’s of it, to the music we select, to the DJ’s we select, to the actual production of the mixing.

Conerstone isn’t your introduction to the music industry, is it?
I interned at various different companies. My last years of college I interned at Jack The Rapper, which was one of the leading Urban Trade conferences. I interned at Jive Records and at Tommy Records, which turned into a full-time position. While at Tommy Boy I took on various roles from working on a multi-platinum compilation- Jock Jamz and Jock Rock. I handled college promotion to mix-show promotion to A&R to heading up the urban marketing for Tommy Boy. When I eventually left in 2001, I was General Manager of urban music. Continued on page 2 »