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Aliquippa native thrives as a top music exec

Posted on 19 Sep 2007 by Webmaster

By: Scott Tady
09/19/2007

Running a successful hip-hop label isn't as glamorous as you might think.

"I work 22 hours a day, and I'm on a plane at least six days a week," says Melvin Brown, an Aliquippa native and chief executive officer of Konvict Muzik, the label that boasts of superstar Akon.

Interviewed from his Atlanta office hours before boarding a flight to Amsterdam, Brown is asked how many gold records Akon has released.

"Wait a minute, I'm looking at them on the wall right now," Brown says, before rattling off smash-hit titles such as "Don't Matter" and the Grammy-nominated "Smack That."

"His new album has sold almost 4 million," says Brown, who helped initiate those sales a few years ago by booking Akon on a nationwide series of radio station visits.

Together with Akon, Brown also has fostered the careers of Konvict artists T-Pain and Ray L, who has grabbed attention with his single "My Girl Gotta Girlfriend."

Brown recently added to the label Glowb, an international throwback to the boy-band era, with members hailing from Morocco, the Netherlands and St. Maarten in the Caribbean.
"Akon's working on a single for them now, and we're assuming that it's going to be huge," says the 33-year-old Brown, whose father, the Rev. Charles Brown, opened the Prayer Center Soup Kitchen on Franklin Avenue in 1984, a facility the family ran until 2000.

Growing up on Sheffield Avenue, Brown stayed tuned to the freshest urban music.

"I listened to WAMO (106.7-FM) day in and day out," Brown says. "I'd listen the whole time while I was doing my homework."

That distraction didn't hurt his studies, as after moving to Virginia in 10th grade, Brown enrolled in Duke University, where he majored in political science.
While in college, his cousin Johnny Wright of Boston found success by operating Wright Entertainment Group, which listed among its clients *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys.
"Johnny was having huge success with his groups. I saw him riding in a Bentley, and I took an interest in the business," Brown says.

Brown persuaded Wright to hire him as a personal assistant, and soon the former Aliquippa resident was tending to the day-to-day needs of artists.

"Then I moved up to director of A&R, finding songs for the groups, traveling with the tours and overseeing the operation of tours and interviews," Brown says.

Brown's days as an underling ended in 2003, when a package arrived from an aspiring West African artist named Akon.
Many labels had passed on Akon, but Brown instantly recognized the singer's potential.

"He's got a mixture of so many styles," Brown says. "It's music you can't classify into one category, and the fact that he's from Senegal, I thought that could be the niche.
"I'm the kind of person who likes to go against the grain, so when the industry said no, I said yes,'' says Brown, who with Wright's blessing left to start his own management company, hiring Akon as his first client.
In June 2004, Akon released his debut album, "Trouble," on SRC/Universal.

"About six months later, Akon and I started Konvict Muzik," Brown says. "We both own 50 percent of the business."

Akon's first album for Konvict, "Konvicted," was a blockbuster, making the artist a constant presence on the Billboard 100 chart the last two years.

The first single, "Smack That," with guest vocals from Eminem, soared to the No. 2 spot, where it was surpassed by Akon's follow-up single, "I Wanna Love You," which included a guest stint by Snoop Dogg. The third single, "Don't Matter," also topped the charts.

From April to July, Akon toured with Gwen Stefani. A May tour date initially scheduled for P-G Pavilion in Burgettstown was dropped in favor of an Atlantic City show.
Brown hopes to get Akon a headlining show in Pittsburgh with another Konvict artist.

In April, Brown gave Akon a drive-through tour of Aliquippa. They didn't get out of the limo, though, worrying the singer might be mobbed by fans.

Earlier, on a return visit to Senegal, thousands of fans surrounded Akon, causing a two-mile trip to a hotel to take six hours, Brown says.

"They all wanted to touch him like he was some kind of icon," Brown says. "We had 20 security guards, but that wasn't enough."

Brown persuaded Nike, Reebok and other companies to donate clothing to homeless children in that third-world country, where Akon also plans to help pay for a new school.

Scott Tady can be reached online at stady@timesonline.com.
©Beaver County Times Allegheny Times 2007

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