After years adrift, Motown and Def Jam are seeking new leadership to restore their mojo.
As early as next week Universal Music Group, Motown’s parent, will tap Ethiopia Habtemariam to head the label, people close to the matter confirm to TheWrap.
A top executive from Universal’s music-publishing arm, Habtemariam (photo below) in early 2010 was responsible for wooing Justin Bieber into a global publishing deal.
Similarly, the appointment of an uber-artistic leader is looming at Def Jam, also owned by Universal Music Group, though no final candidate has yet been chosen.
The world’s largest music company is said to be narrowing a list of veteran hip-hop talent scouts, managers and label execs that include Chris Hicks, currently Def Jam’s executive VP, as well as outsiders Kevin Liles, Irv Gotti, “Kyambo “Hip Hop” Joshua and Chris Lighty.
Also read: Sylvia Rhone Seen Headed for the Exit at Universal Motown
At both Motown and Def Jam, the changes come amid wrenching deliberations.
“The ultimate goal is to get the labels working again,” a top Universal insider told TheWrap.
How to do so was a matter of extensive debate over artistic direction among the incoming Habtemariam and Universal’s top corporate and divisional executives, according to knowledgeable insiders and outsiders.
Should Motown be youth-driven and home to artists of all races? Or should it find rebirth by appealing to an older audience with more mature African-American artists attuned to the label’s legacy?
That argument between Habtemariam and her new boss Barry Weiss was settled by deciding to pursue both audiences.
For Def Jam the questions were different:
Should the new leadership be focused solely on developing artists and hits, or should it be a multitasker in line with the emerging 360-label model that encompasses all facets of an artist’s career -- including merchandising, Madison Avenue and movies?
To be sure, both labels need new leases on life after historic success has turned to hears of doldrums.
Under pioneering impresario Berry Gordy Jr., the “Motown Sound” became a dominant and glossy soundtrack of the tumultuous '60s. Born in 1959, the label introduced legendary acts ranging from the Temptations and Stevie Wonder to the Jackson Five and the Supremes.
Most important, it bridged music’s historic racial divide, with whites joining black fans in openly and enthusiastically embracing its mass-appeal style of rhythm and blues.
Similarly, a quarter-century later, college friends Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin began establishing Def Jam as a force in American culture, introducing “loud, abrasive, anti-R&B, anti-commercial hip-hop,” as Simmons recalled to TheWrap. Def Jam remained vital into the early years of this century.
But both labels began to falter after their initial leadership teams sold and departed or -- in Gordy’s case -- shifted their attention.
Motown, for example, has never again amassed a bevy of superstar artists or regularly cracked the top end of the charts.
