Music Extraordinaire Big Heff Discusses How To "Break" An Artist

Big Heff checked in with Mike Boyd from Cleveland, Ohio to talk all things music, starting the convo discussing his role at Def Jam and what that entails. “I do mostly artist development, promotions, and marketing. A couple of years ago I got the chance to start my own imprint label called Capital Structure, and I did a joint venture with RCA. I just say that I do what’s needed for the teams that need me! Sometimes I may be doing radio promotion, and other times I do promo tours. Anything that’s needed to help the artist become successful!”

Boyd and Big Heff continue their conversation with Heff giving advice to those aspiring to work in music promotion/artist development (he says there is no “right” or “wrong” way to break a song, and that the process could be different every time), the two then discuss the importance of not only knowing an artist’s story but where they come from. “With today’s streaming society—sometimes knowing where an artist comes from doesn’t matter, but for the longevity of the artist, it does because there are going to be certain people that check out Chicago music, and certain people that check to see what is happening in New York. There is a balance with how you can connect with those people, and it’s really easy because they are giving you all of the analytics with the top five/top ten streaming markets. They are giving people all of that information easily.”