No Creative Left Behind is making sure everyone understands the music business.
Recently, the organization’s A&R Rob Jua and co-founder Paris Roserie spoke to rolling out about it all.
What is No Creative Left Behind?
Paris Roserie: No Creative Left Behind is an initiative that we put together where we’re putting all of our resources down to St. Lucia, and creating a luxury retreat mixed with a music production camp. We’re going to have Grammy-nominated producers. We have an army of songwriters all coming down and A&Rs who are pretty experienced in the game to come down to St. Lucia and try to bridge the gap and educate the locals [to] show them how to monetize their music, how to get their music out there, the different ways to network and creating different opportunities and lanes for our locals to shine on a global scale. It’s been a pleasure working with everybody and bringing everybody a part of this has been a special movement. We had a lot of support coming from the ground in St. Lucia, as well.
It’s something that’s brewing.
Rob, why is this something you’re passionate about?
Rob Jua: I came up in the music business in a time where there was no social media. There was no way to really get to the people that you are trying to get to. There was no way to get to the executive.
Being able to utilize social media and shrink that line of communication, shrink the gatekeeping and speak to the people who are trying to get in position directly is something that means a lot to me, because I remember trying to get to these people I remember blowing up. Almost every executive in the business or rapper over the last 10 years got a DM or something from me just trying to like [say], “Hey, hear my beats.”
Now, I’m in a position as an executive, as a label owner, to say, “Hey, man, what do you have?” It feels good to be able to give something that wasn’t available when I was trying to do it.
What do you want to teach aspiring music executives to help give them a better reputation?
Rob Jua: I’ve been in music for 20 years … the whole industry isn’t weird. The whole industry isn’t one way. It’s a bunch of different people in this space.
There are real people here. There are not a bunch of people here who just follow everything… Every industry is weird or has whatever going on in the background.
Me speaking to [young] execs, I tell them don’t get caught up in the hype. When you were broke, you were humble and chill. Then, when you get rich, you look at it differently because you have so much access. Everyone tells you, “Yes.”
[I tell young exes] don’t get gassed off of all the access you have. Keep it 100 with yourself and be like, “Yeah. I’m not going to bug out because I have $100 million now. I’m not going to partake in all this other stuff I wouldn’t normally do.”
Have some balance, some anchoring, some foundation building and realize you don’t have to do what everyone else is doing. You don’t have to abuse any type of power. You don’t have to partake in stuff if you don’t want to like it’s cool.
Again, I’m not going to pinpoint it to the music business. It’s just humans. Humans are bad; humans are good.
