Adam Booth & Nate Farrell find a new calibre with rapper 360

As the old saying goes, two heads are better than one. There’s no better and more current example of that than the two industry names co-managing Australian rapper 360.

Adam “Weez” Booth and Nate Farrell are not strangers to how the music business operates, yet it’s their collaborative style that has generated the trust and creativity required to pull together an album in just four months.

Booth has overseen A&R at Mushroom, and now Sony, for almost 10 years. He also co-founded boutique music production management house and studio, Affinity Music. Farrell, on the other hand, is the director of Nathan Farrell Entertainment, specialising in artist management, international tour promotion and venue booking.

But it’s what the pair has achieved with their progressive music management company Calibre and rapper 360’s latest album Vintage Modern that is their greatest achievement of the year.

“The 360 record is definitely a moment to put around this general feeling of like ‘360 is back’,” Booth said.

“The record is a physical thing but I think this feeling we’ve achieved that we’ve kind of reconnected this audience, or this artist with his fans and his audience, and the industry at large. That I think is our biggest achievement to date. Considering that we just started in July, I think you know that’s a great start.”

“You know, if it was any other week we would have been vying for a number one record. And that’s just a wonderful thing, considering where 360 was 12, 24 months ago as an artist,” Farrell added.

The story of the Melbourne rapper’s return to the charts has been well documented by the media – battles with mental health that led to a more recent bipolar diagnosis, overcoming past cancelled tours and achieving sobriety after a long history of addiction.

But his physical and mental health wasn’t the only thing that 360 has addressed in his life – he also parted ways with his manager earlier this year. Which left an opportunity for Booth and Farrell to step in and guide the artist back to a space where he was comfortable enough to create the music he was wanted to and was meant to, make.

360 was the first artist Booth and Farrell had signed together, and it was this campaign that was the first time the pair working on each other’s artists. But it’s the trust that Booth and Farrell have in each other that is palpable, and it’s that trust that radiated out to all of those involved in the process of making Vintage Modern.

“You become more engrossed in each other’s world the more you’re part of a team. When we wake up in the morning we kind of you know maybe you put on your right shoe first, I put on my left shoe first,” Farrell says.

“But with 360 we came together… kind of from the get-go it was very apparent, where we could go ‘Okay cool, we don’t need to get used to how things have been, we can kind of just institute how we’d like them to be’. And I think that was super productive.”

In terms of the pressure the pair felt to get the Vintage Modern album right, it was immense for both sides.

Farrell explains that every part of the process, from the music or how the live show was presented, was discussed at length in a bid to get it “absolutely perfect”.

“It was important to us the mass kind of reintroduction if you will to the industry and to the media and to his fans was handled with absolute precision.”

Booth adds that there was extra pressure on the creative side due to managing every aspect of the album – from the producers (longtime 360 collaborator Styalz Fuego is signed to Booth’s production management house Affinity Music) to the studio and everything in between.

He explains that the album had a few criteria to fulfil – to not only be well-reviewed but also be something they were proud to standby. But the most important measure of the album’s success came down to 360 as an artist.

“It needed to be a watershed moment for him. It needed to have that maturity, it needed to have the creativity and I think if it was another colour-by-numbers 360 record – whatever that sounds like – then you know we’d probably not be in the position we are now with his fans really re-engaged and reactivated.”

“It feels as though you know everyone’s happy to have him back. I think people are just happy to have quality hip-hop music being made, that feels world class and feels like it’s progressing the genre a little bit.”

A #3 ARIA album chart debut for Vintage Modern six years after the release of 360’s last album Falling & Flying isn’t where Booth and Farrell had their attention – it was reinvigorating both their artist and his image.

“He feels like he has a brand new lease on his own life you know… As you can see from the album cover which we did on purpose you know he’s a happy guy, and he’s sort of back and has made this quite positive record that we’re all very proud of,” Booth explained.

This new lease on life also brought with it an air of maturity – something Farrell and Booth both note when expressing the balance between how the album came together.

“In terms of the decision making, speaking from personal experience with him, a lot of the stuff previously was quite thrown together,” Booth says.

“Not that the producers weren’t thinking precision-wise in terms of the decision making but, it was kind of like ‘let’s just do this, yeah that sounds good’ just throw it out’. Whereas now because he’s sober and because he’s grown up, he’s much more aware as an artist, he’s much more aware of his fans and what his fans want.”

“I know that a lot of people will say that it’s all been very calculated and all of the decisions have been, but in terms of the creative it’s has been a super organic process. I probably haven’t worked on a record in my entire career that came together so quickly and so organically,” he continues.

“I don’t think there’s been any stage we’ve been super concerned about radio play and just thought ‘let’s just make the best record we can, let’s service his fans the best we can let, let’s create an interesting story’, and then, sure enough, the dots will connect and that will follow.”