"I want our community to feel represented," says Plaku, who is based in Los Angeles. "I want them to be able to see speakers and executives that look like them, that have the same goals or path as them, and I want them to be able to feel like 'I can achieve this, and I can do this.' I want our mentees to be inspired by women who are in an executive leadership position like Tina's to know that being the president of a record label is not far-fetched, you can go after it."
Girl Connected launched in 2020 to offer mentorship and development for women in the music business. Each year, the program accepts a cohort of 15-20 women in fields from marketing to publishing, branding to A&R. Part of the programming includes guest speakers, from panels on how to pitch streaming services to publicists on how to build a press campaign. While much of that programing is closely tailored to the program's streams and its participants' interests, this new Conversations series is also open to the public.
As with the rest of its program, though, there is a heavy focus on tangible skills and development.
"What I want people to get out of it is real, tangible information about how to how to help their career," says Plaku. "What Tina talked about was actual plans that somebody could utilize to be able to go to the next level. At one point I stopped and said 'I don't know if you guys are writing down, but this is a real plan. She gave an actual label strategy that your marketing team would put together for you as a musician. It was real."
Davis spoke about her journey as an executive, from A&R at Def Jam to discovering a teenage Chris Brown and working with him as manager while his career exploded, to now, in 2023, becoming president at EMPIRE. The independent Bay Area-based label, publisher and distributor is turning 15, and its been on a hot streak. The artist-first label has seen the rise of Shaboozey, an expansion into African music, and a multi-genre global explosion. The same weekend as the Girl Connected event, Davis was honoured as part of Billboard Women in Music in Los Angeles.
Before the Conversations with Pros event, Davis sat down with Billboard Canada in Toronto for a wide-ranging conversation about her entire career and teased some of the gems of wisdom she would drop later that night.
Tina DavisCourtesy of Girl Connected
How does it feel to be honoured as part of Billboard Women in Music?
I've been in the business now for 32 years. When I first started, we didn't have anything like this. We didn't have rooms or events that celebrated women, let alone celebrated executives for that matter. It was really more about the artists and the labels. It's wonderful to be able to celebrate each other. It's exciting because no matter who's on the stage, you just feel the energy from everybody and you get excited for everyone.
What were the sparks of your career as an executive? How did you get into the music business?
When I was younger, I always loved music. My father had this band in his garage that he would jam with. Later, I found that one of the band members was Sly Stone. I always got in trouble for trying to be in there with the adults listening to music. In the third grade, I started giving concerts for my friends at recess. It made me fall in love with shows. I also played classical piano for 8 years. I'm dating myself now, but I got to see Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, and I said, I just want to be in music. I just want to do music. That's when I realized I couldn't sing. I needed to be behind the scenes.
What steps did you take to pivot into the music industry?
I went away to college to become an anchor [on TV], and I loved it, but it wasn't still serving my soul. I was an on-air personality in Louisiana when I was going to college. A friend of mine started getting into distribution, working for a family member. She said, hey, you want to get in the music business. Come on the holidays or on your breaks and hang out. I caught the bug. I came back to L.A. and my friend said, I'm going to start a publishing company, a division in Chrysalis Music Publishing. They had a Black music division. That's when they had Black music divisions. Okay, now I'm really, truly adjacent. But she told me when she hired me, "I'm going to fire you in a year. So in this year, you need to build a name for yourself. You need to learn all you can learn. And hopefully somebody will give you job after it's over."
Literally to the day, she was in my office with a box telling me to gather all my things. I had to go. My best friend fired me. What I didn't know is she had called a couple of people and told them that she was getting ready to fire me. I left there with a job at Def Jam doing A&R admin, and the rest is history.
Moving into A&R, you have to be able to spot talent and know how to get them to the next level. You almost have to be a psychic, right? Or if you don't want to say psychic, a trendspotter.
No, I would say that. A really good A&R person knows where music is going in the next six months to a year.
Do you find that's different now than it was in the '90s and 2000s?
Believe it or not, no, it's not. The difference is that it's now a fusion of genres. A year or two ago, I was telling my team, it's time to start looking for rock. It doesn't necessarily have to be heavy metal, but it's time. Some of the younger guys didn't necessarily understand because they weren't raised in an era where rock was really controlling the airwaves. And then certain songs started coming out, pop-rock records, whether it was Benson Boone or whether it was Sabrina Carpenter, or Chappell Roan. They're like, oh my gosh, you told us this. I could see it coming.
What did that lead to? Who did you sign?
We signed a rock band from New Zealand by the name of Borderline. They're so cool, so amazing. And what I love the most is that they're so young. They just have it. But they're a fusion. It's a mix of the Beatles with Coldplay with a little bit of Strokes.
What did you see in the world that would draw people to that kind of music?
People just want to be happy. People want to love. People want to have togetherness, family, unity. We need unity in the world. And it's time for thought-provoking music. Part of A&R is psychology, and the other part of it is sociology. What's happening in the world, it affects music. It's the only universal language.
You started out specializing in hip-hop, but now there are so many different genres, especially at EMPIRE. Is there some specific quality that you're drawn toward when you're looking for talent?
It's this thing that's called frisson that you get when you feel it. I look for that every time I see an artist, every time I hear the music. Their job is to evoke and provoke and invoke emotion. It's no different than a painting. You look at Starry Night, it makes you feel like it's night time. There is an influx of different emotions coming at one time. Music does the same thing. So whether it's Latin music, it's hip-hop, it's country music or pop, it's the same feeling that you get no matter what it is.
One of the big wins of the last few years for EMPIRE is Shaboozey. He broke a Billboard chart record here in Canada with "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" and then in the United States as well. How did you start working with him and when did you start to see that huge breakthrough coming?
One of his attorneys reached out to our attorney and said, hey, this guy just got dropped from RCA, and he's looking for a deal, let us know what you think. We sent one of our country reps down to check him out and vibe with him. He called us, and he said "this man is amazing." He sent us a package with videos and stuff that Shaboozey had created on his own, because he directs, he comes up with the treatments and everything. And when we brought him into the office, you could just feel that energy. He has such a presence. Not to mention he's tall as hell. But he's like a gentle giant. He's such a sweetheart. When he came into the office and talked a little bit about what he needed to work on, what he wanted to work on, who he really loved, what he wanted to be, we got the vision.
Beyonce's album Cowboy Carter album came out and a lot of people were talking about the Black Roots of country. EMPIRE was on the pulse of that, and Shaboozey was featured on the album.
That's the thing, right? Because, as I said, if you know where music is going, you bet on what's coming in the next six months to a year. We knew this is going to come at a certain time. If you look back, whether it's Darius Rucker or it's Nelly or it's Lil Nas X, there's always a time when it peeks its head out and says, remember, we're here.
When we started listening to the Shaboozey records, we were like, wow, this is a mix of several genres and it's going to be special. When we signed him, nobody was talking about it. Now, when we were putting out his singles and setting up his project, we didn't know he was going to be on Beyonce's album. To be honest with you, we didn't know that he was going to be on those two songs until the day her album was coming out. But we already had "Tipsy." We had that in the cut, we’re holding on to it. He had started having a little momentum with "Let It Burn" and "Anabelle," but as soon as Cowboy Carter came out, it exploded, and we kept going after that with "Tipsy."
You have a whole country division, a whole Nashville division. What's drawing you towards country artists that you're working with?
Like I was saying, the world needs love. I think there are two genres of music that kind of heal you. I think country is one of them and the other is R&B. Country is R&B with a twang and R&B is country without a twang. They talk about real things. They talk about love and their lives and they use their music as therapy. Just listening to what they talk about, it's healing. Even if it's 'I just need to go to the bar and drown my sorrows for a day. 'You know what that feels like.
One artist we have in the pipeline is a young lady by the name of CeCe. Oh, this young lady is so phenomenal. And little tidbit, she creates the costumes for The Masked Singer. She's already a creative powerhouse and an incredible singer and incredible writer.
It's the 15th anniversary of EMPIRE. Looking back at your whole career at Def Jam and managing Chris Brown, what lessons have you learned where now you can guide the label into the prominent spot that it is right now?
I started in this era where it was all about gut and instinct. We didn't have the cheat sheet of analytics. Knowing that and bringing that into today's time always puts us ahead of everybody else who's chasing down analytics, who's looking for the viral artist. We like viral artists too, but we also want to look under the hood and see if it's something that gives us that gut feeling that that's truly something special. It's not only about the best record that's working right at this moment because it's fleeting. You know, you have a great hit on TikTok. Then you have a show, and the crowd only knows that 20 seconds or 90 seconds. It's embarrassing, you know? Because you can't build it off of that. It's more about the talent and overall product that they're trying to envision and direct it that they're trying to portray.
You've worked in so many different facets of the music industry, from publishing to A&R and management. Does that give you a fuller view of how to approach an artist?
Absolutely. Publishing is all about the splits and the producers and the writers, which led me to the A&R admin part of it, which is about the credits and the lyrics and so forth, which then led me into the A&R portion of it. I found "This Is How We Do It" and knew, oh, we own this sample. I know I can clear this sample. This record is going to be a hit. So me being in management, I had all of the relationships that I had from Def Jam for 10 years. I did radio, so I had all the relationships that I had with program directors. That set me up to break Chris Brown. From there, when I signed Ne-Yo, same thing. And at Empire, it all culminated to this. If you have a one-sided view of anything, then you're behind.
