In This Case, We Maraude For Ears

Kimani Rogers is a rapper from a group called Masterminds that came out of NYC in the late 90s. He ran a Caroline distributed label during that time called Third Earth. By the early 2000s my hip-hop group, Heiruspecs, had built up the smallest of national buzzes. The whole time Heiruspecs was working I was still working with other projects in Minnesota. I’m eternally grateful for that because it kept me connected with other genres of music and helped me draw inspiration for what I was doing with Heiruspecs. Outside of Heiruspecs my big focus was a rock band fronted by Bill Caperton called Ela. Bill was and continues to be one of the most gifted writers I’ve ever worked with. With Ela we were trying to take influences like Spoon, Death Cab, Wire, Pedro The Lion and make our own thing in that space. I’m writing today not about Ela’s music, but about the way our album got released and the impact it’s having on the way I think of my musical identity nowadays.

Kimani’s label, Third Earth, wanted to release this album from Ela. Up to this point they had strictly been releasing hip-hop music (Roosevelt Franklin, Oddjobs, Jean Grae, Dujeous). I was excited that any label with distribution wanted to release the music and I was excited to be the Slayer of Third Earth (Slayer was the one non hip-hop act signed to Def Jam during their legendary 80s run). But, being the music business focused person I was Kimani wanted to take me out for a piece of pizza while I was on tour in New York to talk about what he thought Third Earth could do for Ela and vice versa. The conversation stuck with me for a couple simple reasons: Kimani is one of the most soft-spoken label head I ever met. He had really good simple ideas, he got them out clearly and calmly and he didn’t promise the band the world. He These qualities are pretty different than my general experiences. But what stuck with me was his really simple idea about why he thought Ela would work on the label.

Kimani said we had the consumer all wrong. Music fans had bigger ears than any label was giving them credit for. They are looking for good music, genres be damned. And more accurately, genres shouldn’t be damned, but they shouldn’t be hallowed as immovable borders to never jump over. A lot of what Kimani was talking about in that meeting seems to be at the center of what GlassNote had cooked up when they signed Childish Gambino. Kimani asked me to list the last five records I had bought, I can’t remember all of them but it was a big blend of new, old, rap, jazz, rock. Kimani rattled off the last couple he picked up and it was the same situation. We were sophisticated music buyers and no label respected that, every label was pitching their stuff and imagining silos when the audience wasn’t bothered by the blend. He knew a label had to build an identifiable brand, but he didn’t think that brand had to be focused on one genre. I found the idea compelling then and in the last five years I’ve been coming back to it maybe weekly.

I work at a radio station, The Current, and the sonic center of our world definitely builds around rock and folk artists. Sonically I think of groups like Arcade Fire, Mumford and Sons, Florence and the Machine, Brandi Carlile and a couple others really sitting at the core of what we do. In my mind, these are some of the most elite writers and performers working today. I believe that sometimes we pair that music with music that locks up sonically with these artists but not in regard to their excellence. If you want to listen to the best artists making the best shit right now that commitment probably doesn’t shake when the genres switch. I think that’s why Kendrick Lamar has become a more central artist to the Current than Macklemore, he’s better. You have to get songs that sound good next to one another, and that requires making some choices about what blends but what fits. But ultimately I believe our target listeners have spent years trying to find the best music on Earth and they have decided to offload some percentage of that searching work to us. So there is a duty to put together a playlist that continues to bring them the best music on Earth. The new stuff and the old stuff. And I think the industry thinks that listeners that like elite critically acclaimed rock music want bullshit filler from their other genres. I see our programming fighting against that, but every time I do I’m thinking about Kimani. Kimani wanted to put out the best music on Earth, genres be damned. Now as I work in my radio gig I keep on thinking about the mandate to share the best music on Earth. I have a duty to remain true to our sonic center, and if I do my job right I put the songs together and present them in such a way that people stick around. Realizing that duty makes my job harder, but tremendously more satisfying. But I find coming back to Kimani’s courage and imagination at that moment to see a curatorial role that I feel was way ahead of its time.