With a solid reputation dating back 25 years, Warner Music Group Chairman and CEO Lyor Cohen has more than proven his impeccable eye for talent. The Hip Hop mogul has signed artists like Jay-Z, Ja Rule, T.I., and many others. In an insightful interview with Complex Magazine, Cohen gave his opinion on the state of Hip Hop and his sentiments over losing Drake to Universal. He told the magazine that current Hip Hop music, although disappointing, has an explosive future.
“I like moments of staleness and mildew simply because it creates the lane for change,” he said. “Remember when everything was full of color and happy-dappy when Bad Boy was running everything and then we came with DMX? Do you remember that summer? How excited people got? That’s my favorite moment—when I sit on a porch in the summertime and the air gets really thick. There’s no breeze. The birds start darting around. And then all of a sudden a violent storm comes through—raindrops as big as cups; lighting and thunder. I know when things get stale there’s someone making an opportunity.”
While he expressed his appreciation for artists “making an opportunity,” he admitted that he missed an opportunity himself in not being able to sign Drake. After negotiating with Warner, the Canadian-born artist opted to sign with Universal instead.
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“[That was] a very disappointing thing. But I’m a lover of rap music. I want good things to happen to this industry. I have so much good fortune and already have everything. I feel like we have a terrific company, and we’re very old-school in that once we grip someone’s hand, fundamentally we believe that’s a deal. But that’s not this generation. They’ll grip someone’s hand and say they’re coming, but if someone offers them more they will renege. That’s not how we get down.”
While he kept mum about the dealings between Drake and himself, he did give his thoughts on the newer generation of music executives.
“[This] generation is handicapped by the era of excess. I grew up in an era of love and swimming upstream, determined to prove people wrong. We had chips on our shoulders, like, ‘We belong here.’ But now it’s the most popular, biggest segment of the industry. We’ve had a decade of private planes and Maybachs. That’s not the era that I came from. The era I came from, I had zero expectation that I was going to make any money. I was determined to prove to the gatekeepers of the industry that we had a place here and we weren’t going to relinquish our opportunity. I never had to keep up with nobody because we were all on subways. So it was never like, “My subway is bigger and flyer than your subway.” And there was a real fraternal order. We were backstage with Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Keith Haring, and we had zero fucking money. But everybody wanted us in the VIP room because we were doing something that was so important to them. People understood that it wasn’t if it was going to happen, it was when it was going to happen.”
