Rolling Out Magazine

I remember getting into the music business and Dallas Austin’s brother, Claude Austin may he rest in peace, sat me down one day with my big brother Dave Gates and said “You have great ideas, but you have to master one thing first.” That advice really stuck with me over the years. When you think about all the amazing things I’ve done over a 20-year career, I had to master them all individually. It’s made it better for me as I’ve gotten older, because you dream about it all when your young and you come out the gate wanting to do all these different things, but I had to learn the marketing/promo side, the A&R side, the executive side, and all these different facets of the business for me to be able to tell somebody with sincerity what was going on, what to do, or how to curate culture properly.