I am hitting you back, but not because I think you are off in any of what you said, because you have pretty much confirmed a number of my suspicions about this venture.
To be quite honest, I am not entirely sure that "starting a label" is really what we are trying to do, although when I start jotting down the steps and processes we need to take to do what we are talking about, it sure sounds like a label.
I think maybe we are more describing the creation of a songwriting coop with he and I at the helm and a stable of musicians and recording facilities at our disposal - is that a label? Not sure... could just be a songwriting and producing factory - but that sounds like a label... I don't know...
Our passion is music. We are both keenly aware of the 'tret' that is getting sold as music these days and my partner is actually already in full-swing generating 'beats' and 'cuts' that can be used for that very purpose. He even has a roster of artists who leverage such material to lay their 'rhymes' over - and as much as I am not into that genre, I can see how it is the bread-and-butter of this sort of thing - especially here in St. Louis, home of Chingy and Nelly and so on...
That being said, a number of these 'rappers' and hip-hop artists have expressed a desire to extend themselves beyond the 'beats' and 'cuts' level and move to a more 'respectable' form of musical support for their 'rhymes' - namely, a more 'Motown/Jazz - even old-school rock' sounding bank of material to use. Even they are getting tired of the ultra-mechanical, low-end music that is the norm for many of the 'hip-hop' songs these days. THAT end of the production line will still be the cut-and-paste song creation process that permiates the hip-hop world of today. Taking musical clip-art and laying rhymes and vocal choruses over the top. Lots on the production end, not so much on the musician end. Reach into our bag of beats, melodies, sounds, etc. - cut together a bed of coolness - lay in vox and color - push it out.
My partner and I both have a deep appreciation of jazz, rock, motown, soul, gospel, and RnB - the 'real thing', not the hip-hop-ized version of it. We both have songs we have written in our personal catalogs that we want to take to the next level by pairing our songs with the right artitsts and getting them recorded. My partner has a really impressive catalog of motown and soul songs from 'back in the day' that are currently only on lo-fi 4-track tapes that could easily be on the radio today if they were redone with the technology and musicians we have at our disposal. I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I tell you that these songs are really good and should be heard!
Along with his pre-existing catalog of songs are a number of half-starts and soon to be finished parts and pieces between the two of us - so again, as we start completing these pieces, we will want to put together bands to get them recorded. That is ultimately what we want to get rolling - I don't think it is the current industry model - but we both want to try to create our own version of the Brill Building/Hitsville thing here in St. L. Maybe try to up the standard of music by focusing more on quality material - good songwriting, good arrangements, great instrumentation and musicianship, and less on what the market seems to want. Delusional, maybe...
We also have a growing catalog of 'outtakes, cuts, beats' whatever you want to call them, that are what get used these days as foundation tracks for hip-hop songs. These 'beats' reflect our musical taste and sensibilities (old-school rock, pop, jazz, RnB, soul, gospel, experimental) and so on... They are NOT the standard casio-sounding "beats" - they have substance and flavor because they are all from songs we began composing in the traditional sense, but lost steam or direction. So as parts, they are great, as songs, they never found their legs - but as parts they are very viable in the well-established cut-and-paste model... So we could still fill the need for cut-and-paste song production material with a higher standard of musical clip-art.
Long-winded, as usual - but in short, what we are trying to do is get our musical vision out there using the musicians, songwriting, recording, performing, promoting, and publishing resources we have at our disposal. I guess we are talking about a more organic growth model - instead of jumping in the deep end right away, we plan to start with what we can do ourselves - baby-steps and see if we can successfully take our musical vision and get it turned into a publically consumable musical reality.
