Global Music Director of YouTube, Lyor Cohen, has expressed delight at the height the Nigerian music industry has reached.
According to him, what the industry is experiencing now is magical.
Cohen notes that Nigerian artistes are demonstrating compelling talent and energy, which are bringing results everyone can see.
“What is happening to Nigerian music is magical,” he says in an interview with Channels Television.
Cohen adds that apart from the fact that time is ripe for Nigerian music, the artistes are taking the advantage of the liberation that digital revolution offers.
Saying everyone is now able to distribute without cost, Cohen notes, “
We were liberated “If there was still an industry dominated by the CD, you wouldl not see what is happening today,” he explains.
A veteran of music business, 60-year-old is an American music industry executive. His profile is indeed an enviable one:
Cohen has been actively involved in hip hop at various record labels for more than 30 years. He started by managing rappers for Rush Productions, then led Def Jam.[1] After Def Jam, Cohen took on a leadership role at Warner Music Group. In September 2012, Cohen put in his resignation at Warner and started his own independent label, 300 Entertainment. On September 28, 2016, Cohen was named YouTube’s Global Head of Music.
Late in 1984, after promoting a pair of rock and rap shows at The Mix Club in Hollywood (one featured Run-DMC, the other featured Whodini), Cohen moved to New York to take a job at Simmons’ Rush Productions (later called Rush Artist Management). Beginning as Run-DMC’s road manager, Cohen quickly began taking on additional responsibilities, working on behalf of an artist roster that included Kurtis Blow, Whodini, Run-DMC, LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, and Public Enemy. By 1987, Cohen himself was signing artists to Rush. These acts included Slick Rick, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Eric B. & Rakim, EPMD, Stetsasonic, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest.[5]
Cohen credits Jam Master Jay with teaching him the basics of the music business. “[Jay] showed me how to settle shows and fulfill my responsibilities to the group,” Cohen told Vibe magazine.[6] “It’s those lessons that I rely on daily to do what I do now.” Before long, according to Rolling Stone, Cohen “became known for his no-nonsense approach to business, his negotiating skill, his ability to forward the plot”.[7] It was Cohen who brokered Run-DMC’s endorsement deal with Adidas, “one of the first big commercial deals for a rap group”.[1] This deal was followed by others that paired up Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince with Le Coq Sportif, LL Cool J with Troop sportswear, and Run-DMC with New Coke.
By 1989, Rush—under Cohen’s leadership—was recognized as “the premier management operation” in the Rap field.[8] Steve Stoute, in The Tanning of America, credits Cohen with “[believing] early on in the cultural melting pot that was being brewed for and by the younger generation”.[9] In his own words, Lyor Cohen has said, “I was determined to prove people wrong, to prove to the gatekeepers of the industry that we had a place here and we weren’t going to relinquish our opportunity.”[10]
Cohen began transitioning from artist management to the label side of the music business in 1989, when he and Simmons formed Rush Associated Labels. The goal was to capitalize on the ability of established recording artists to sniff out new talent by signing boutique label deals with them. It paid off most notably with Jam Master Jay’s JMJ Records, which brought Onyx to Def Jam in 1992 and Jayo Felony in 1994. By then Cohen was starting to groom a new generation of executives, notably Chris Lighty, Julie Greenwald, Kevin Liles,[11] Todd Moscowitz, and Mike Kyser.
In 1994 Cohen teamed up with Simmons to negotiate Def Jam’s departure from Sony[12]:142 (which had been distributing Def Jam since 1985) for a new home at PolyGram. By then, having become Simmons’s partner in the label several years earlier, Cohen was running Def Jam day-to-day.[12]:134 (Rick Rubin, Def Jam’s founder, had left Def Jam in 1988.
