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Jordan Evans (left) and Matthew Burnett photographed by Devante Browne in Makati, Philippines in 2026
Management
Managers of The Year: How Matthew Burnett and Jordan Evans Channeled Daniel Caesar's Creative Ambition Into Global Success
Evans and Burnett, Caesar’s longtime managers, are this year’s Billboard Canada Managers of the Year.
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For Jordan Evans and Matthew Burnett, trust and creative freedom are the most important parts of management.
The longtime managers and collaborators of Daniel Caesar have a relationship that goes back to high school. They've been with him as he released his first EPs, broke through with his debut Freudian in 2017, won a Grammy award and embarked on international arena tours. Caesar’s global Son of Spergy arena tour is underway after kicking off in Asia, and it will continue in North America this summer with nine Canadian concerts in seven cities, making it one of the biggest treks within the country.
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In a “no risk, no reward” industry, the duo have prided themselves on putting full faith in Caesar’s creative vision and ambition, reuniting with their longtime collaborator to execute his most ambitious rollout yet for his recent album Son of Spergy. For them, understanding their client and letting him do what feels right is capital, even if it means spontaneously driving from city-to-city and announcing pop-up concerts in parks just mere hours in advance.
“How can we maximize this to make sure that you get what you need out of this and we make this as big as possible? If we're gonna be wrong, let's be wrong big because if we win, we're gonna win big too," Burnett explains. "It's the difference between being an innovator and just following the norm. He's on some innovative sh-- right now, so we’re like, 'Let’s go.'"
Recognizing their contribution to Caesar’s success, Evans and Burnett have been named Billboard Canada's Managers of the Year, which they will accept at this year’s Managers to Watch and Honour Roll event in partnership with Music Managers Forum on June 11 at SOUNDSTAGE at the W Toronto.
In an interview with Billboard Canada, both managers reflect on their unconventional path to artist management, their unique business background as self-taught creatives, their reunion with Caesar ahead of his latest album and the importance of supporting your client through and through as a manager.
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Congratulations on winning Manager of the Year! The last year has been quite busy for both of you, between the rollout for Son of Spergy and Daniel Caesar’s latest world tour which just kicked off in Asia. How has this latest touring experience been for you so far?
Jordan Evans: It's been so much fun starting there. We usually end [our tours] there. The beginning of a tour process is working through and finding what the show is. You can only take it so far in rehearsal, and then you get in front of the fans and you feel it.
The philosophy for the show is to lead with how he feels that evening and letting it flow and change as he goes. It’s been a lot of fun. We get off stage and we debrief for an hour about what we’re going to try [the following show]. It’s the fun part of the process, and Matt and I always make sure we're present for the beginning to work through what the show is.
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Matthew Burnett: [We’ll discuss] what worked musically versus what didn't work, or it could be a band thing. It’s also about balancing what he feels led to play versus what the fans want to hear, finding that balance of what the artist needs to continue giving 100% of themselves while also giving the audience what they came here to see.
Daniel Caesar is known for being somewhat spontaneous and off the cuff. How does that define your collaboration?
Burnett: I think that’s been the recurring theme of the Son of Spergy era, doing things that are a bit left and that the average artist isn't doing. I think that's been his thing, always wanting to do things that he felt led to do, and sometimes those things are against the norm.
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For the pop-up concerts that we did [in parks], he was like, “I don't wanna do traditional marketing, I wanna go out and touch the people and do a road trip and feel led to pop up in the city and do a proper performance for free,” and we said, “Okay, cool.”
Good management is understanding your client and supporting them instead of trying to change what they feel led to do.
Evans: You have to give everybody space. If you create an environment where you're allowing that exploration, something's gonna come from it that's genuinely special. I think that's where we are as a team and I think that takes a long time. There's a lot of trust required to be trusting in the ability and the intuition of the people that you work with.
When did you both meet? When did you connect with Daniel Caesar and how did that working relationship begin?
Evans: Matt and I started making beats in Grade 9 of high school. We were in a small community of beatmakers back when there weren't a lot of us, so it was like a hobby. Over time, while getting more experience in music, we found our way to making R&B records. In 2012 or 2013, we were introduced to a young Ashton Simmons, before he was Daniel Caesar, through a mutual friend and producer named Jordon Manswell, and the three of us really connected and clicked creatively early on.
Burnett: In high school, we were fortunate and blessed to be recognized by our big bro Boi-1da, who was also from the same high school and really took us under his wing. We were signed to him, and he gave us our window into the industry. Our first stage of learning the business was experiencing it for ourselves, not reading it in a book or hearing it via your friend. That laid the foundation for us even being able to think about managing Daniel.
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What stood out about him and made you want to start working together?
Burnett: Musically, it was such a breath of fresh air in comparison to what we'd been making for the last few years, and Jordan and I were ready for something different. [Making R&B] with Ashton was so collaborative, we'd be in the room together starting some chords. I think that was our shift from being beat makers to producers.
You both have a unique approach to managing given that you’re also creators. How does that play out in practice, being on both sides of the equation?
Burnett: Initially we didn't want to manage, the plan was to just produce. We didn't have a choice to manage because there was nobody else to do it at the time. We needed to fill a gap until we brought in a manager, and the fact that we were producers and creators who understood the business is what allowed us to even think, “okay, let's just kill time [managing] in the meantime.”
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Evans: I considered what we were doing to be artist development. It was about trying to understand what a young Daniel Caesar needed to get to where he was headed. I think that led us to understanding the business.
Eventually, in our search for a manager, he came to us like, “Why can't you guys just do it?” By then, we felt like we understood enough of the business to at least start and take on the responsibility. Then it's just an enormous learning process as you go through every single step.
How does having a creative background influence your management style?
Burnett: When you are the same thing as who you're managing, you manage from a different place. You're really able to feel and manage from a place of firsthand experience. You're able to really fight for the artist in a different way because to a degree, you are also [an artist] at the same time.
Evans: Even just thinking about where we are today, I never imagined we would be here. Not that I didn't think we were capable of it, but you never know how life's gonna go and it wasn't a straight line. The more time you spend in this business, trying to think that you could make every right turn or every right choice is humbling, and it makes you accept the process a bit more.
Do you think that's been an advantage, figuring out your leadership and management style as you go?
Evans: Absolutely. I had a dream and goal of running and having a record label before I even knew what that even meant. Being able to do that independently forces you to learn every single part of the business. It was genuinely just us and TuneCore and we had a few really strong partners and made some key relationships.
Matt was [Daniel’s] business manager and I was doing the royalty account. That's what it takes when you're building any business from the ground up. That led us to a lot of different places in music and learning how to put on shows, and then stepping into a creative direction or musical direction role in the show because we have the understanding and the creative insight towards those things. I feel really grateful for building our careers down an independent path because it exposed us to so many different parts of the business.
Burnett: Even now, Jordan and I are able to do so many different things with our work and that is because we were independent. It was us on every level. What I didn't realize was that it would set us up for a very long career in this business because it blew up the way it did.
You’ve also grown Golden Child Recordings as a label. What skills did you learn that you were able to put towards the label’s growth?
Burnett: Making records for other people is always something we love to do. Working on Golden Child, the goal was just to make that business as big as possible and get it to a place where it was self-sustaining. We had this business down to a point where we were able to plug in and benefit other artists because of what we learned coming up with Daniel.
We managed Charlotte Day Wilson for a while. I started doing a lot of musical direction on the side for other artists because of what I learned with him. I learned what it means to be a musical director, how to service an artist, how to take care of an artist.
As a musical director, the cool thing about working with other artists and teams is that I'm able to have conversations with on a manager-to-manager level where they're asking me for advice on the artist’s touring strategy, and my thoughts on touring industry news. All the skills that we developed through working with Golden Child and with Daniel allowed us to really level up and scale thanks to all the tools that we have now added to our belt.
Daniel Caesar signed a major label deal for his third album Never Enough (2023) and was briefly working with new management. Can you talk about that brief separation and your eventual reunion?
Evans: I think that period was an enormous period of growth in his life. When the three of us started working together, he was literally in high school, he was super young. I think that was an important period for him to find himself and his confidence in this business on his own.
Our relationship is like family, we're like brothers. It’s like a brother saying he needs to go and do something for a minute. We’ve got you, go wherever you need because we're not so rigid in the business.
Even in that period with Never Enough, when he asked us after a few years if we'd consider working with him again in that [management] capacity, [we said] 'absolutely.' It doesn't even really feel like management, it feels more like something that we built together and we're all taking care of it.
Burnett: It was more like satisfying curiosity. We built this independent thing and there was the unknown of what the other side looked like. Sometimes you have to go and scratch that itch for yourself and I think that was part of his journey.
He went all the way, and so we encouraged him. If you're gonna go on the other side, go all the way and really see what the other side has to offer so that you know for sure whether you got what you needed out of that period.
He experienced both sides, and I think he just wanted to come back to a bit more of a boutique, independent approach. There was more free flow in that regard.
Last year, Daniel Caesar told Billboard Canada in his cover story interview that reuniting with you guys felt like “picking up where you left off” and like he was starting again. Did you experience the same feeling as well?
Burnett: Another recurring thing was that sense of coming home, of coming back to us and connecting with the early partners and collaborators that we had. It just felt like rebirth in a sense.
Daniel Caesar released Son of Spergy in Oct. 2025. What was the process like of coming back after that break and making that album?
Evans: His process has been pretty consistent. There's a period of time where he lives his life and he writes as the thoughts and the ideas come to him. He doesn't force it. There's periods where he's [writing] all day, every day and there's stretches where he’s just living his life. Then there’s a point in the process where he'll say, “I think I'm ready. I think I have something.”
One day, he'll sit us down and play us a million things, and all the light bulbs are going off and you get all these ideas. It's overwhelming, but it's my favourite part of the process because it's pure potential. There’s maybe five albums [in what] he'll have made.
Then through the process, we start recording more intensely and composing the music and putting it together. That’s our production process. We're collaborating with other producers and the album sort of presents itself to him. Halfway through it becomes something else, and then there's a point when he’s confident in what the final album is. That’s how this album came together.
A big part of the rollout was the series of impromptu, acoustic concerts that Caesar played in parks across several cities, with him announcing them just mere hours beforehand. What inspired that unconventional rollout?
Evans: It started very conventional, and it just didn't feel right to his spirit. He just said, 'I'm not doing all of those things. I'm gonna do this instead.' I was like, alright, let's do it. That's the space that you have to have working with a genuine artist. You have to give that creative space, because that had an enormous impact and it was very incredible and honest.
It's very difficult to plan around that kind of [tour]. You just have to surrender to what it is. As we started rolling, I think everyone on the team started to understand. That was one of the most impactful things that I've been a part of and seen him do.
When looking to take that sort of approach, what’s the importance of being able to work with someone who has that ambitious vision?
Burnett: We also have to acknowledge we are in a place where we can afford to do that. Some artists are not in a position where they're ready to take that risk because they're not comfortable enough yet.
I don't block an artist from making any decision that they feel is best for themselves. Luckily, we're in a position where we're able to be creative and not fear whether things work on a global scale or not. It's creativity and creative freedom first, and that drives everything else.
What has been your proudest achievement over the past year?
Evans: Matt and I went into this new period making a conscious effort to bring people together, newer collaborators and team members and older team members, styles and different approaches. What we’re seeing on tour, where everyone is forced to be together all the time towards a certain goal, is a level of collaboration and synergy that makes me proud.
Burnett: Jordan and I came into [this chapter] to support our brother, and if he doesn't want to do certain things, we're not doing certain things. Even if we don't know what that means, let's just be there for him and everything else will fall into place.
When you look back at the cycle, from marketing to the tour to how we're approaching the show, everything is so unconventional. We were able to make that same impact while being true to him and to ourselves. Management is about support. It's about supporting your client, making them feel like you're empowering them to do what they feel is right for themselves. Then, everything else will fall into place. Even if it doesn't, it's fine because at the end of the day I want to walk away knowing that we did what was right for him and for ourselves, versus what we felt like was right for numbers and for accolades.
What's one piece of advice that you would give new managers starting out now?
Burnett: Managers need to remember that you have to manage the person first.
Person first, client/artist second. At the end of the day, the artist can't be the artist if the person is not in a good place. You can't be so focused about the career and the person is in shambles behind closed doors. Manage the person first, make sure they're good, and then you'll reap your dividends. Everything else will fall into place.
Evans: The most important thing is to give the artist space to be an artist, and sometimes that's painful or frustrating, especially when you feel like you haven't made it yet. The truth is nobody knows what's going to lead to a breakthrough. We're so flooded with every kind of song and every piece of content that [you need to] give the artist the space to try some sh--. You might be surprised.
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