Feature: How Grammy winner Chauncey Black plans to change Australia’s label sector
“The problem is, is these fuckin’ labels are not looking to develop artists here. And that’s what they’re supposed to be doing.”
Chauncey Black, one of the major players behind the ‘90s new jack swing movement with Blackstreet co-founder Teddy Riley, is sitting in TMN’s office discussing his soon-to-be-launched label.
“There’s no one here locally interested in the local talent, on a level of how we do it,” Black, who was awarded a Grammy in ’98 for Blackstreet’s Dr. Dre collaboration No Diggity, says he discovered the issue with Australia’s music industry during his three-month solo tour in 2009.
While he was born in New Jersey – the indelible phonetic prominence is woven through his accent – Black splits his time between Sydney and Atlanta. However, Sydney is winning at the moment as the March 26 launch of Kings Cross Records looms.
As an independent label owner, Black differs significantly from the new-age label heads in Australia. He’s unabashedly uncongenial in his outspoken views on the major label sector. Black urges artists to let go of the 'break America' bucket list item and become the hero in their own home if they have global aspirations, because, as he puts it, “The game is wrong.”
“What they do is, when they play [local talent] here first, they don’t let it get hot here. […] Why would you take that shit to the states where the competition is off the meter?
“85% of artists in the states are successful; here, 10%. That’s fucked up," he states. "The population here is like 23 million people, if you can’t sell records to them, why would you run to the states?”
It was 2010 when Black trademarked the label, but it remained a vision until 17-year-old Sydney artist Lily V ignited his shift in focus last year.
“I was listening to her tone of her voice; she’s got that whole Amy Winehouse vibe, she’s so versatile,” he says. “She could sound like Brandy on one record, like Rihanna on one record. Her music is not like theirs though, it’s hers.”
A silent partner of Kings Cross Records, who was invested in Lil V, got in contact with Black, requesting he remake an original recording with her. “My partner called me because Lil wanted me to do some remakes with her. I said ‘I don’t fuckin’ do remakes’,” he laughs. “We’re so into original music.”
Black wrote three original songs for Lily V and agreed to take her under his wing. One of those tracks was the just-released Tattoos. Lily V’s team flew Black and producer J-Hot to Sydney to write and record an album. As if to back his outsider impression of the Australian industry, he was offered “a box” of a studio to record the album in.
“They sent me [pictures of] the studio they wanted me to record her in,” says Black. “I was like ‘I’m not fucking recording her in that’. It was terrible.”
Lily V’s debut LP was recorded at 301 Studios in Alexandria in a week-and-a-half; Tattoos was the first record they cut. Black and radio plugger Russell Thomas took the single to Nova Brisbane and Black found that his views about our market were met with a collective nose tapping.
“I noticed that’s what the radio PDs [Program Directors] and stuff said,” Black recalls. “They’re like ‘no one sends us local talent’.
“[…] When I took the old school approach of taking a local artist and playing it on a national level they’re like ‘We’ve been waiting for something like this. Yeah we want to support our own but no one has ever done this’.” Nova Brisbane played Tattoos that same day.
The clip for the track, filmed underneath the iconic Coca-Cola sign in Kings Cross, caught the attention of media when it was being filmed. An article was published in the Sunday Telegraph, the image used was a shot of a scissor lift cherry picker – complete with a camera man on top – under the Coke sign with the headline: ‘Lily V gets Black label support’.
“She will expose to the Australian artists here that it can happen on an international level, right here in Australia,” Black says warmly.
With a staff of four, an office currently set up in Marrickville, and a roster of four (Black, Lily V, Blackstreet, and J-Hot – “the next Pharrell”) Black needs just one more thing, a distributor. On Wednesday and Thursday this week Black met with two of the big three majors to discuss a deal.
“It’s been beautiful really,” he smiles. “It really has.”