« Back to Page 1

During the three-week hiatus between gigs, he sometimes flies back to LA. On one return home, he finds himself stuck in traffic. Tuning his car radio to urban music station KDAY, he hears what sounds like the seductive horns of Smokey Robinson’s Do Like I Do. But Robinson’s voice is nowhere to be found. Instead, a young, husky-voiced rapper speaks about his life, his neighborhood, and gang violence:

I remember we painted our names on the wall for fun
Now it’s “Rest in Peace” after everyone…
They say “be strong” and you’re tryin’
But how strong can you be when you see your Pops cryin’?

The lyrics of the song, Dead Homiez, by West Coast rapper “Ice Cube,” mesmerize Bivins. Every rap song he ever listened to was about hanging out and sex—party anthems and dance songs. They weren’t … this. “These guys are talking.”

Bivins isn’t the only one listening. It’s a volatile time in America. The recession of the late 1980s has been especially difficult for the lower classes, making the American dream seem out of reach. Although it’s not at the level of the 1960s, racial undertones are undeniable.

Rap music has changed with the nation’s uneasy mood, and songs have graduated from lyrics about poolside lounging to first-person accounts of street life. Many of the rappers are accompanied by the catchy jazz, soul, and R&B songs from their parents’ generation but with far different messages than unrequited love. For Bivins, the music speaks to him in ways that the blues and R&B never had, and he realizes he has found his professional calling. After multiple job interviews and resistance from executives who think he’s too educated—and therefore not “hip” enough to work in the rap business—he finally lands an internship for urban music promotions at MCA. He shortens his name to “Geo,” kicks off his dress shoes, and gets to work.

At its core, music promotions is getting songs heard, which typically means creating heavy radio play by persuading radio DJs to play the songs. The more radio play a song receives, the bigger the album-buying audience. It’s not brain surgery, but the truth is, at the age of 32, Bivins is an old man in an industry rife with younger, hipper promoters. If he wants to make it in the industry, he’ll need to tap into his Western Pennsylvania work ethic.

He takes to the streets, street promotions to be specific, which means increasing a song’s audience from the ground up by getting it heavy play in clubs. Once a song gets hot there, people call radio stations to request plays, magnifying the promoter’s daytime efforts. So, every night, Bivins heads out to clubs armed with cassettes and vinyl records. He passes out as many as he can carry, making sure to hand the club DJ copies, too. He averages three clubs per night, sometimes seven days a week. And whenever he can squeeze in the time, he stops everywhere from hair salons to gyms, dropping off more music.

The effort pays off. Several songs Bivins represents climb the charts simultaneously. Soon, the work is going so well that he and a colleague start a private street-promotions company on the side called “Sammy Van Gogh,” because they’ve “always got an ear to the streets.” Business booms.

In early 1994, an Arista Records executive asks Bivins if he’d like to street-promote the debut single, Juicy, by a new artist known as “The Notorious B.I.G.,” or simply “Biggie.” Biggie is a 21-year-old rapper from New York City with a sizable following on the East Coast. He’s virtually unknown anywhere else. Can Bivins change that?

On his first listen, he knows Biggie is special. The album, Ready to Die, uses almost 50 samples of songs from artists like James Brown, Miles Davis, and The Jackson 5, in tracks that weave autobiographical street poetry into buoyant party beats. What’s unique is that Biggie sings many of the choruses, a concept known as “singing hooks,” unlike other rappers who let the sampled songs or other vocalists perform the choruses. The singing hooks make it “more melodic, more radio friendly,” says Bivins.

(Continued …)

1 2 3