In honor of his groundbreaking moves, let’s look at seven of Stoute’s most iconic moments when he impacted Black culture through his passion for advertising and marketing strategy development. Blige, Stoute is praised for transforming a single-shop business operation into the multi-million dollar beauty empire we now know as Carol’s Daughter, and partnering JAY-Z with Reebok and Beyonce with Samsung.ĭuring REVOLT Summit x AT&T weekend, Stoute will join fellow hip hop businessman Master P for an in-depth one-on-one where the two will discuss the importance of economic empowerment, circulating the Black dollar and transitioning from consumers to owners. On top of being responsible for catapulting the music careers of Nas, Will Smith and Mary J.
Name another figure in Black culture who can say they’ve been recognized as Innovator of the Year by ADCOLOR and honored with an American Music Award for producer credits on a movie soundtrack. His industry-leading brand development and marketing firm has a client roster that expands beyond the most notable names such as Target, Estee Lauder, Budweiser, Wm. Blige for the Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now (FFAWN), Stoute has made it a mission to bring the culture into the boardroom and demonstrate proper representation at all times. As an award-winning marketer and CEO of Translation the Queens, New York native has been recognized as a change agent in hip hop.įrom co-founding Translation Advertising in partnership with the legendary JAY-Z to joining forces with former management client Mary J. As an author, he penned The Tanning of America: How Hip-Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy about how his experience in the music industry translated into the marriage between urban culture and brand marketing. “We’re separate entities, but the big is when we come together.As the executive vice president of Interscope Geffen A&M Records, Steve Stoute guided the careers of such top hip hop artists like Nas and Eminem. “At the end of the day, we understand that we’re Rae Sremmurd,” Swae tells Apple Music. However, unlike Outkast, these solo sojourns were less a sign of a duo drifting apart than a process of shoring up individual strengths for the greater good. Outkast’s 2003 split-personality set Speakerboxx/The Love Below provided the blueprint for Rae Sremmurd’s ambitious 2018 triple-LP package, SR3MM, which supplemented the duo’s namesake record with individual full-album showcases for Slim ( Jxmtro) and Swae ( Swaecation).
But in the ever-sharpening contrast between Slim’s rugged strip-club-prowling persona and Swae’s cosmic loverboy vibe, Rae Sremmurd recall another irreverent Southern rap duo. Rae Sremmurd embraced their role as the eccentric, freaky-fashioned emissaries of feel-good hip-hop, and with their chart-topping 2016 smash, “Black Beatles,” the duo crafted an infectiously melodious trap anthem that invoked the Fab Four as a yardstick for their own world-domination dreams. the Mike WiLL Made-It imprint to which they signed). Atop a chiming Mike WiLL Made-It beat, the Tupelo-reared fraternal duo of Slim Jxmmi and Swae Lee let loose with an excitable, squealing flow that was as delightfully disorienting as their handle (a reverse spelling of EarDrummers, a.k.a. In a hip-hop landscape dominated by lo-fi mumble rappers and woozy Future-isms, Rae Sremmurd’s 2014 debut single, “No Flex Zone,” hit like the high beams of an 18-wheeler lighting up an interstate at night.