Back to business

Black Market Enterprises, nestled within an industrial park in East Atlanta, is bustling. Street reps stream in and out of the office to pick up boxes filled with promo CDs for K-Rab & BHI's "Do It, Do It (Poole Palace)" and E-40's "Tell Me When to Go." And when two of BME's co-owners, Rob Mac and Vince Phillips, sit down for a discussion, their BlackBerry pagers vibrate so incessantly that you can hear little humming sounds scattered across the resulting interview tape. In fact, Rob Mac can't sit still, and quickly excuses himself so he can return to work.

This is a busy time for BME Records, the label that launched Jonathan "Lil Jon" Smith and made crunk music a cultural touchstone as reflective of the early 21st-century youth culture as white T-shirts and customized cars. The brawling, hard-hop sound helped make BME one of Atlanta's hottest labels and a potential rival to established giants like So So Def. Now BME's trying to make up for an unproductive 2005, which its owners spent fighting over money and with its distributors, TVT Records and Warner Music Group.

Last fall, the label issued Lil Jon's single "Snap Yo Fingers," its first record in nearly a year. But Atlanta's music scene had changed. Industry experts opined that crunk was passé. Snap music is the new ATL movement, they say, and its rhythmic and percussive beats attract women turned off by the violent, ultra-macho swagger of crunk. Phillips, however, believes snap music's emergence was indirectly helped by BME's prolonged absence on the scene. He notes the rise of Young Jeezy, Maceo, Gucci Mane, D4L and Dem Franchize Boyz. "They're lucky," he says, addressing no artist in particular. "They should be glad that we did it."

"Snap Yo Fingers," Lil Jon's single with E-40 and Sean Paul from Youngbloodz, currently sits in the Billboard Top 10. Ostensibly, Lil Jon appropriates the snap music sound by producing a track with a spare keyboard melody and minimal bass. But with his raspy voice animating the track, "Snap Yo Fingers" could never be anything but crunk.

"There's a lot of haters out there that try to write you off and say crunk music is over with," says Lil Jon in a separate phone interview. Nowadays, he often wears a black T-shirt with the words, "Crunk ain't dead."

Phillips calls snap music "the evolution of crunk music." But he and Lil Jon also believe that crunk is more than just a sound: It's a lifestyle and vibe unique to the urban South. "You can't deny the way the music makes you move and react," says Lil Jon. "We live and we die to get crunk. Even though everybody plays snap records in the club, you'll hear somebody say, 'I'm going to the club, I'm gonna get crunk tonight.'"

For all of its successes, BME is still known as the house Lil Jon built. He co-owns the label with Phillips, Rob Mac and Dewayne "Emperor" Searcy, who is also Radio One's national mix-show coordinator and a Hot 107.9 (WHTA-FM) personality. Phillips and Rob Mac handle the label's day-to-day activities; Lil Jon works as the label's A&R and creative force; and Emperor Searcy serves as a liaison to radio. "We don't really have titles. We all collectively make the decisions," says Lil Jon.

Now in their mid-30s, the quartet of friends met at Southwest Middle School (now called Jean Childs Young Middle School). They threw parties together in high school, and then formally created Black Market Promotions in the early '90s. Their careers span the evolution of crunk: Lil Jon's residency spinning Rhythm & Quad (or mixing sped-up R&B a capella vocals over bass records) at the now-closed Phoenix nightclub; and his subsequent A&R job at So So Def packaging underrated compilations like So So Def Bass Allstars Vol. 1. Along the way, Black Market Promotions/Enterprises helped manage his burgeoning DJ and music production career.

"Jon decided, 'You know what, I can do chants myself over these loud [bass] beats,'" says Searcy. So BME released Get Crunk, Who U Wit, which featured Lil Jon and his rap partners the East Side Boyz (Wyndell "Lil' Bo" Neal and Sammie "Big Sam" Norris). Initially, the label worked with indie distributors Southern Music Distribution (1997's Get Crunk, Who U Wit) and Ichiban Records (2000's We Still Crunk). After those albums and several popular singles ("Who U Wit" and "I Like Dem Girlz"), several major labels approached BME with business offers.

But BME doubted the major record companies could properly introduce an idiosyncratically Southern trend like crunk to the rest of the country. At the time, several artists (OutKast, Goodie Mob, Master P, Juvenile) began to break out of the region, only to encounter a national audience who didn't appreciate Southern rap culture and eagerly dismissed them as one-hit wonders. Phillips says those artists were often misunderstood because the majors didn't properly market them.

"They didn't know how to sell it," says Phillips. "That's why we ended up turning down all those major deals, ultimately taking the TVT deal. We felt like this was a place we could manipulate, and tell them how to sell records. ... As much of a problem as we've had [with TVT] at the executive level, on the employee level, we have people that we can work with and people who pay attention."

With distribution by TVT, BME dropped Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz's Put Yo Hood Up in 2001. But the gold-certified album was marred by several protests against its cover, which incorporates a burning Confederate flag. Meanwhile, Lil Jon's records drew scathing reviews from hip-hop critics. "'He don't rap. Why they chanting? Why does the beat sound like this?' From day one, we've been criticized," says Lil Jon. So BME learned to educate listeners about crunk.

Most major labels begin to promote rap albums a few months before an album's release. Teaser singles "leak" to radio and Internet, fliers hang in key locations in cities, and ads run in magazines like The Source and XXL. Whether these album campaigns continue depends on the number of copies sold during its first week in stores. In contrast, BME Records promotes albums for several months after they are released.

For example, Lil Jon's Kings of Crunk took nearly a year to catch on after hitting the streets in October 2002, but eventually sold close to 3 million copies. Club and mix-tape DJs proved instrumental, playing tracks like "I Don't Give a Fuck" and "Get Low" so often that people eventually capitulated to their wild, unpredictably raw energy. Radio soon followed, making "Get Low" an unlikely Billboard Top 5 smash.

"I guess I've kinda proved myself to people," says Lil Jon. "I quieted a lot of the doubters."

After the triumph of Kings of Crunk, BME struck a three-year label venture with Warner Music Group. (The WMG deal has a "carve out" option that allows BME to issue separate recordings by Lil Jon, Chyna White and Oobie through TVT.) The relationship immediately yielded dividends with The King of Crunk and BME Recordings Presents, a unique compilation featuring two acts, Lil Scrappy and Trillville. Much like Kings of Crunk, Lil Scrappy and Trillville's debut eventually went gold.

But by 2005, relations between BME and its two distributors deteriorated. Lil Jon bashed TVT in several press interviews, claiming that the New York-based independent had ripped him off for millions of dollars in royalties. There were also problems with Warner Music Group. (Representatives for TVT and WMG could not be reached by press time.)

"It's just like anybody. You go through problems," says Phillips now. "TVT's probably a little bit worse than a lot of the others because they're indie. They're small. [TVT owner Steve Gottlieb's] trying to hold onto every dollar he can, and in the process of holding onto every dollar, he's holding dollars that belong to us. So we had to stop recording, promoting and marketing [2004's Crunk Juice]." Despite little promotion on Lil Jon's part, Crunk Juice still sold more than 2 million copies, and yielded a major hit in his collaboration with Usher and Ludacris, "Lovers and Friends."

Meanwhile, BME battled with WMG over the amount and quality of publicity and marketing its projects received. (Atlanta group Crime Mob's 2004 self-titled debut particularly suffered from poor promotion.) That led to BME postponing new projects like Trillville's anticipated second album because, Phillips says, "it wasn't being set up properly" by WMG.

BME eventually negotiated a joint-venture agreement with TVT (previously, BME delivered albums to TVT under a production deal) and a higher royalty rate for Lil Jon. As for WMG, Phillips notes that the partnership expires near the end of this year. "[Over the course of the WMG deal] we learned a lot about what we're looking for [in] a company. And we're looking for Warner to either fix those things now, or we'll find a place that will listen to the things we say needs to be done," he says. "We might stay."

"Warner Bros. and BME are partners. You're going to have disagreements and not like some things. But if it's your partner, you fix that and you keep moving," says Lil Jon. As for his squashed beef with TVT, he says, "Basically, they cut the check. So it's back to work."

BME's long-term prospects, however, may depend on whether it can grow and diversify beyond Lil Jon and crunk music. Ironically, its best model may be So So Def. Although CEO Jermaine Dupri is undoubtedly that label's best-known artist, you don't have to like Dupri's sound to enjoy other So So Def offerings like the snap of Dem Franchize Boyz or the soul of Anthony Hamilton.

That process is already underway with E-40's My Ghetto Report Card, which hit stores earlier this spring. A legend in the San Francisco Bay Area, E-40 is a forefather of the region's hyphy movement, a bounce-music style similar to ATL's crunk sound. Then there's K-Rab & BHI, who helped create snap music; they signed to BME in January. New albums from Trillville and Lil Scrappy are on the 2006 schedule, and a slew of artists — Bohagon, Crime Mob, Chyna White and Oobie — wait in the wings.

Of course, the label's biggest title will be Lil Jon's new album, Crunk Rock, scheduled for release later this year. "It takes time to build your name," says Lil Jon. "Once I became popular and successful, we started to brand BME more. We were always branding it, but we really are branding it a lot more now, because we've had success with not just me, but Crime Mob, Trillville and Scrappy. We've proven ourselves."