I explained to India what I wanted to do and why it would work. She wasn’t interested in selling more records and wasn’t that familiar with John, but she agreed to do it for one reason; she knew Mellencamp was my favorite writer of all time and she would do it for me. She was a really good kid, back then.

Immediately John’s manager and I made arrangement for India to record with John and also appear in the video. This was a massive breach of protocol, as I did not have permission for either thing from her label, but I had to make it happen.

Mellencamp flew India and her mom out to Indiana to record and then they went on to Georgia to film the video, which would be his first single, “Peaceful World”. I told you about all of the red tape and politics to allow these guest appearances to happen, well this roadblock was astronomical. I then went back to the label for clearance, and a resounding no was once again uttered. Shit, now what?

Me being me, I broke protocol big time and pissed Kedar off even further, went over his head and right to higher powers at Universal. This time the answer was, again no. I was told how Columbia and Universal had a problem on a St. Lunatics track, I was accused of being Donnie Ienner’s boy, I was told no way would they allow the clearance, I was like, “Doesn’t anyone understand I am trying to break a record? Donnie doesn’t give a shit about Mellencamp, it’s not a favor to Donnie, and it’s what’s right for India.”

It went on and on for days and here we are with a single recorded and video shot, ready to go.
Kedar was livid; I won’t even go into detail what he said to me. You wouldn’t believe it and it doesn’t matter, as I forgave it because I know too well about speaking from emotion, which is one of my faults. Universal was livid, it seemed like the whole fuckin’ world was pissed and I was just trying to find a way to introduce my artist to more people. Sorry about that, it’s called doing my job.

Now I know I breached protocol and completed recording and filming without approval, but fuck me, you’d think I killed someone. Sometimes you have to do, what you have to do, to make it all work. After meeting upon meeting, we might have been more intense than the damn Geneva Convention, bartering, promises, trades, insanity, ill will and a lot of baby shit, we finally got India cleared for the both the single and video and I am certain to this day, that those appearances and the ensuing involvement with Mellencamp and all we did with him, is the primary reason we had as much Grammy recognition as we did.

Hands down the primary factor, because we broke through the ceiling and her name recognition sky rocketed and that, unfortunately, is the key to the Grammys. Let me talk on that for a moment and explain my position. The Grammys have one giant flaw in my opinion, and that is you should only be allowed to vote in the genre or genres you have experience in.

When it becomes a blanket vote, you will vote for the name most familiar and that is just wrong. I myself am guilty of that, and it’s similar to voting for the party across the board, rather than voting for the individual during an election. It explains many mysteries of the Grammys, like when Jethro Tull won, or when Metallica lost. I’m not sure a classical violinist in their seventies knows a Metallica from a miasma, but somewhere in the corner of their mind, they may have heard of Jethro Tull. Maybe got it confused with Jethro Bodine from the Beverly Hillbillies, but a Jethro nonetheless.

It just makes no sense and to me, makes the Grammys a marketing game more than anything else. I still have great respect for the Grammys, I understand their value and I am humbled when involved.

When something like that happens, the flood gates open, opportunity changes and it becomes time to drive faster, with focus and goals. Press was wonderful, glowing and in abundance, the reviews were terrific and we had access to many outlets that were once denied. India hated doing press and she did some of what we asked, but not all of it.

She was really not happy with all of the attention, and I truly believe would have been just as happy playing in Georgia and selling a small amount of records. That attitude would change in time as well.

During this time, Alicia Keyes was also exploding, but she did what was asked of her and for every interview India did, she probably did fifty. She also had the mighty machine of Clive Davis and J Records working her.

Also a tremendous artist in her own right, it was all about Alicia, but we were holding out own. A few times we felt over looked and over shadowed, but that would change and we had nowhere near the budget they did, not even a fraction. We also had an artist who hated the spotlight and attention, talk about having your hands tied, we were bound and shackled in a million ways.

A strange thing started to happen around now, stars from music, film and TV started to reach out to us concerning India. They we enthralled. Stevie Wonder was an early supporter and gracious enough to give quotes long before we shipped the record, but others started gravitating such as Elton John, Kenny Loggins and oddly enough people like Woody Harrelson, who begged me to have India attend his birthday, because her record caused an epiphany for him while sitting in a hot tub in Hawaii.

People wanted to collaborate with her, and one of the first to ask was the legendary jazz great, Cassandra Wilson. I thought this was perfect and would expose India to a demographic we couldn’t reach, so we did it with the blessings of Motown.

Then Oprah, wow, Oprah is the Holy Grail of all mediums and she got it. After India performed “Video” on her show, Oprah said, “Girl we needed that song.” And apparently she was right. That song and India herself, was touching a nerve deep inside a lot of people. My concept of using the self esteem message to get press was working. It set us apart from the competition.

It was getting magical.

We sailed past gold (500,000 units) and were still going, but I knew the ceiling was coming and coming up fast, and I had to do something to expand the audience immediately. Motown had an incredible radio promotion staff with Sandra and Manny driving the ship, but they had no staff beyond the urban formats and I had to get to Hot AC, AC and Top Forty, if we were going to go past the projections.

Universal wasn’t in the same flow of synergy as they are now with Motown, so forget them working it. The independent radio promoters I approached had bad blood with Motown, so forget that as well. Kedar, Motown and Universal were thrilled with the results thus far with the record, and knew it would get to platinum or a little under, just based on present trajectory.

I wanted more and knew we could get it. Everyone was happy, but I saw the next phase and in my typical world of luck, a very lucky thing happened.

John Sykes at VH1 was a very early supporter and he was also close with John Mellencamp, who at the time was recording a new record with the central theme being of all things; racism. This was perfect and Sykes got Mellencamp a copy of the record, and began hyping him on the possibility of a duet with India. Mellencamp got it immediately and I began speaking with his manager on making this happen.

You would think people would be thrilled, and though they were ok with the Cassandra Wilson duet, word came back that Motown was not interested in the Mellencamp duet.

Word came back, because Kedar and I were not speaking again.

I wasn’t preoccupied with India, on the contrary, my sister Nikki was handling all day to day for India and worked her ass off, and without her, it would never had happened. I would do the strategy and the heavy lifting, but Nikki did it all.

The next call was on one of those rare days when Kedar and I put aside our differences enough to actually speak to each other. His ominous prophecy was, “Watch, she is going to turn on all of us after this happens.” I didn’t believe it at the time, and in many ways he was right, unfortunately.

We did the video for “Video” that sounds funny; it was a cute little thing and worked well for perpetuating her image. I think MTV added it early, in fact, I know they added it early when I got a call from them saying, “You’re not getting enough radio to justify us keeping this in high rotation.”

That was true, but I begged them to stay on it until we hit “street date” and if the sales sucked they could run away without any hard feelings. I argued my case that though radio wasn’t exactly exploding, I could feel something big about to happen, and just stay with us until street. They were kind enough to do so. BET was already there and being highly supportive and we were starting to get a little love from VH1 as well.

I could feel the heat, but I truly think there were two people who knew we had something about to explode; me and Kedar. No doubt our respective teams were believers and many, many industry mediums were as well and God bless them all for taking a chance, but me and Kedar, the two guys who fought each other every single day, agreed on one thing: this was about to explode.

With street date looming, we all poured it on, connecting every dot we could find, and going at it guerilla style, as we had virtually no budget, at least not by current industry standards. This was truly the little engine that could and we were working around the clock knowing a bad showing on first week sales would kill our inertia immediately.

That’s a real fucked up thing about this business that has changed since the advent of Soundscan, first week sales. Before that, a record was allowed to grow, find its market and progress. Now it’s like Hollywood, bad opening weekend and you are dead in the water. A real cause for problems yet no one really gets it.

We were sweating out week one even though we saw great orders coming in. Of course we knew those orders could easily convert into the dreaded “returns”, records shipped back when they gather dust on retail shelves. We believed in her and we believed we had enough intangibles happening that would all converge, not in the standard fashion, but nothing was standard about this project.

We had a fraction of the radio, TV and press that most explosive records had. We had a miniscule budget, but we knew something was connecting, you could feel it. First day sales were impressive and we watched and cultivated all data like you count contractions before childbirth.

Again, Kedar and I were screaming that this was going to pop and pop big. I’m pretty sure our teams thought we were nuts, but then street date comes and out of almost nowhere, a girl with an acoustic guitar, a God given voice, and a small team of crazed believers, explodes onto the Billboard sales charts with over seventy six thousand units sold, entering at nine with a bullet in the top ten and causing the first of many, “Who the fuck is India.Arie and how did that happen?” ponders to be blasted across the industry.

We went nuts and most people shook their heads. We were off and running big time.

It took us months to convince her to take part in the massive GAP television and print campaign and we actually missed the first run, because she wouldn’t do it until she felt comfortable in finding products of theirs that she liked. You have to applaud that but, it makes your job so difficult and then you have to scurry around the answers and solutions.

We took the single, “Video” to radio and the reception was good, but far from great. A tremendous amount of this business has and will always be based on what we call the “radio story”, how well a record is doing at radio, what size is the listening audience and what type of reaction there is. Radio is the primary driver, but not in this case.

The primary driver was word of mouth, nonetheless, radio helped connect the dots.
You had people finally hearing the artist that they heard “buzz” on, and people remembering her from the samplers an snippet campaign months before; an instant “Oh yeah, I know this song”. The song also personified her position as the anti-star with its lyrical content.

The lyrics became fodder for conversation, “Man, did you hear that song with the girl saying she don’t shave her legs?” and then the pulse of self esteem issues really kicked in and people just started “relating” to her. We were now able to get further in the press due to so many angles.

There was no preconceived agenda on her part, but there was plenty on ours like, positioning her early without genre tagging, the focusing on self esteem issues, down to Kedar’s use of the peacock feathers on her album cover because of the symbolism attached that would be recognized by African American women.

We were finding the angles, she was just being herself, but that drove us to unique arenas. Another thing I feel was a massive boost early on was we toured her in the U.K first, where she was instantly embraced and the media loved her. That very important U.K. press washed back into the U.S, where it becomes a primary driver of hipster consumer base. It lends great validation and far too often is ignored.

It also helped us strategically land the tour in which India would be introduced to the U.S. audience, the Sade tour.
India became a “hot ticket” in London and Stuart Matthewman caught the show, the next night bringing Sade herself and her niece. Without a booking agent, we suddenly had a massive tour presented to us and one with anticipation, as Sade hadn’t toured the U.S in years. I had already somewhat committed to India touring with Maxwell, so I had some untangling to do, as the Sade tour served our purposes much better.

It was time to find a booking agent, which is no easy feat in this business for a new act; however the phones were ringing off the hook from the crème de la crème of agents. We made a decision in a very unconventional manner. The agent we settled on was the least powerful, but he really needed India because at the time his career was in question and his mom was ill. We felt that made sense, because you want to be where you are needed, not just wanted and it made us feel good to do something nice.

The other agents were power hitters and would do just fine without India. It was something of a karma move and she understood that. The competing agents didn’t get that, so I lost a few “new” friends.

There were two phone calls around this time that were significant in different ways. One was from the artist I was managing on Capitol, she simply said to me, “India is taking my slot, but that’s ok, she’s great and I want you to win.” Fucking heartbreaking for me to hear that, because I wish things had been different and the Capitol artist went on to scale those heights, she deserved it and would have been humbled by it.

Instead of turning into a jealous artist, she turned into a cheerleader and I loved her even more for that, but it broke my heart that I couldn’t get it to happen for her.

There are no better hubs of community activity and social gathering than barbershops and beauty parlors in the south; it’s a way of life. That was one of many guerilla activities that was launched for this record, and one that I felt made a tremendous impact to move it towards tipping point. Word of mouth is a powerful tool.

Another process that began early was tacking snippets of India’s songs onto Motown soundtrack CDs, allowing the targeted consumer to hear it months early.
The heat started to build and was palpable but not by standard measure, it was ground swell of people talking about her. She had early support from Creative Loafing, weekly newspaper out of Atlanta that was and is very “tastemaker” and extremely influential.

Much like the Norah Jones phenomenon, a lot of India’s inertia was purely people telling each other about it and that my friends, is the real key. As the first single was readied for radio, press began interest in earnest. I can remember many midnight calls between us and the publicity crew, going over plans and strategy.

That was also an essential cog, everyone around this record felt the build and all worked far beyond the call of duty on a daily basis. You really felt you were part of something magical and that made everyone take far more emotional stock in the project than just “working a record”.

Serena Gallagher, who was head of Motown publicity at the time and our independent publicist, Tracy Miller, were pivotal and worked constantly on trying to find early believers in this artist. We also had a great back story on her, with her dad being an NBA star, her parents’ divorce and her adamant desire to be portrayed as herself and not a made up glamour queen, that central core of India becoming the “face” of a self love, self esteem position.

She was so fierce in her desire to be real, that when the photos came back for the album cover, she was pissed that they were airbrushed and demanded they go back to the original form. Her desire being based in, “I have bad skin and I want my fans to know I have bad skin.” How’s that for honesty in a business where the superficial is paramount? Can you imagine most artists wanting their bad skin to be seen?

The exact opposite results in daily blow ups with most artists, screaming about bad photos, but India wanted it all to be real and that started to connect with people who also wanted music to be real. This is not something new, as it is the core of many artists like Bruce Springsteen; it was very new in the world on R&B at the time, when glamour and opulence ruled.

It could also prove to be a detriment as she would decline doing things that could have spread the word even further or made her tremendous amounts of money. I had to respect her beliefs and support them, but at the same time try to build a career and expand her profile.

I remember one time having to turn down a massive synch license fee because she didn’t use the product (soap) and had no desire to even try the product out to see if she liked it and would switch brands. Things like that were daunting.

This rocket ride wasn’t all peaches and cream, but we’ll save the negative for later.

There is not enough space to go through the details of this set up, and some things are better left for private consumption (and future use!). One of the first pieces of any puzzle is identifying the potential consumer; doing something I call the “police sketch”.

You take what you assume to be the targeted consumer and just give it some thought; what do they do, what do they read, what do they watch, what do they eat, where do they go?

Now of course, that generalization is silly and you can’t possibly predict or know for certain the life style habits of someone, but at the very least you can broaden your own horizons of not thinking a restrictive or assuming fashion.

It’s just as effective as all of the high technology methods in use today, with the exception of not being able to trace Internet habits, which indeed give a bigger clue.

I always say one of the most important things I have ever learned in business came from a quote of Mike Tyson. He said when asked why he jogs at 4 a.m., “Because I know my opponents are home sleeping.” Brilliant!

Even in the case of something like print advertising (an archaic, dinosaur thing), when you have a multitude of records being advertised in groovy colored ads, all sparkly and shit, in a magazine where that type of advertising is the norm, it all becomes one giant blur and regardless of how snappy your ad is, it blends into the landscape and its effect is diminished by the competitions ad on the next page.

One time we did a survey of our data base, and found a high percentage of them read a certain magazine that had nothing to do with music, as well as reading the usual suspects.

When we looked at that magazine, we found no music related advertising, but yet we had a huge number of music fans reading it.

It didn’t take a genius to realize that by advertising there, it would stand out more than it would in the music magazine, and we would reach the bulk of the same demographic with no competition. We were jogging at four a.m.!

Not that I am saying print advertising works, it is merely one of many repeated impressions needed to connect the dots. I am saying you need to think out of the box, always.
It’s an unfortunate trait of human nature to tag, assume, profile and compartmentalize in general.

It’s not only the basis for prejudice; it eliminates discovery and our ability to broaden our horizons. Same can be said when assuming an artist’s fans.

You have to minimize the constriction of the moniker and assumption. I have a dear friend who did a masterful job of managing a new, up and coming metal band. I would play devil’s advocate and my constant argument was to lose the tag metal.

Bring it into a wider thought frame, how about just rock? The common denominator is rock, regardless of how the DNA splintered, the core nucleus is rock and if you take further into fragmenting, the commonality is guitars.

Even if you can get only .5% of “rock” fans to like the band, you have escaped the restriction of being tagged “metal” and have cast the wider net. You look deeper into the commonality and lose the blinders of assumption.

Eminem has the same DNA as Bob Dylan. Why? Because both are masterful lyricists and though they have completely different impetus to draw from, and “speak” to different lifestyles, they share the commonality of a poet.

A big reach, but that is an idea of not isolating the artist to boundaries.
From day one with India, when I was asked to describe her music, I always answered with, “It sounds like India.Arie and its good music.” I encouraged everyone to use that answer. Simple; it is good music.

That was my intention from the start, to make sure she wasn’t typecast into restriction. One of the first components of this almost year long set up, was CD samplers sent to a vast number of beauty salons and barber shops in the south.

The 4 a.m. ideology again as the point was to ship them to where it mattered most, and where the competition was not.