Famous Artists & Their Managers

In my previous post I talked about the roles of artist managers, their tasks and responsibilities, and the pros and cons of having one, so today I will be talking about some popular artists and their managers. More specifically, I will be talking about two distinct categories of artist managers: hip-hop artist managers and artist managers who are no longer with their artists. For those of you who may doubt the need for an artist manager, these examples may help to illustrate the importance of having an artist manager and how he or she can help an artist’s career.

 For those of you who are fans of hip-hop, I set out below a list of 11 influential hip-hop artist managers worth knowing. Below I give a brief overview of a few of the mangers from the list:

•      Jeff Robinson, who was responsible for managing Alicia Keys for the majority of her career, is no longer working in this role. Even though they are not together they collaborate on future records through Jeff’s label, MBK Entertainment.
•          Derek Dudley who has been the manager of Common for almost twenty years. This is an example of a good artist/artist manager relationship.
•            Next up is Cortez Bryant, manager of two of Young Money’s greatest, Lil Wayne and Drake. He is also the co-manager of Nicki Minaj.
•             Another huge artist manager is Phillana Williams, who has an impressive track record of past and current clients. The list includes Outkast, Usher, Kayne West, Neyo, Young Jeezy, Rick Ross, Jaicko, etc.    

Two artist/artist manager relationships that ended on a bad note were Taylor Swift and her manager and LMFAO and their manager. Taylor Swift’s ex-manager, Dan Dymtrow, issued a lawsuit against Taylor claiming he is owed millions of dollars because he discovered and signed Taylor Swift in 2004 and helped play an instrumental role in developing and building her career. He was then fired in 2005, just before Swift was signed with Big Machine Records. LMFAO got into a similar predicament with their ex-manager. LMFAO are now facing a $7 million lawsuit filed by their former manager for terminating his contract and subsequently firing him. They then hired two of the firm’s former employees paying them a salary rather than commission, which often times work out to be a lot cheaper.

This is why an artist/artist manager agreement is a risky business. Both sides often times try to cheat the other of what is due to them so that is why having a professional contract is so crucial. Another important factor is having a lawyer who is trustworthy and someone you can rely on to draw up a fair and binding contract, as a bad contract could mean the difference between you getting what is due to you and you getting nothing should the artist and artist manager decide to part ways.