Drew “Dru Ha” Friedman’s ardour for hip-hop runs deep. Because the cofounder and CEO of Duck Down Music and the CEO of 3D Consulting and Distribution, Dru Ha has been entrenched within the tradition for over 30 years. On this episode of XXL’s Inside Observe podcast, the White Plains, N.Y. native discusses his early days of managing Smif-N-Wessun with Buckshot, how that led to working a profitable unbiased report label, working with MCs like Younger M.A and Joey Bada$$, at present managing comic Druski and extra.
After rising up DJing events and dabbling in breakdancing, Dru Ha broke into the enterprise by way of an internship beneath the late advertising and marketing veteran Rob Stone at SBK Information/EMI Publishing whereas attending Syracuse College. There, Dru labored with early Nineteen Nineties acts like Arrested Growth and Vanilla Ice. He then landed a gig heading up the rap division at Nervous Information. On the identical time, he was managing Brooklyn rapper Buckshot and his Black Moon crew in addition to Smif-N-Wessun. After the success of Black Moon’s 1993 observe “Who Obtained Da Props,” Buckshot and Dru Ha cofounded the unbiased report label Duck Down Music in 1995.
From there, Friedman began consulting for Jonny Shipes’ Cinematic Music Group whereas working at Cornerstone Advertising and marketing as a music director and a liaison for locking down model offers.
In 2024, being an unbiased artist is all the trend. In lots of instances, the extent of management an indie rapper has over their profession is interesting versus being signed to a significant label. Nevertheless, Dru Ha displays on a time when being unbiased meant that artists and labels needed to be artistic as a way to financially compete in a hip-hop panorama dominated by the majors.
“Licensing and discovering different avenues of income have been essential for indie artists as a result of we weren’t going to beat the majors to the punch at radio,” Dru Ha explains within the video beneath. “We weren’t going to beat them to the punch at MTV or BET, these locations have been on lockdown. So, we needed to discover different methods to get the music out. In the event that they weren’t concentrating on licensing, then, hey, possibly we may name 2K up or ESPN or no matter and get our music in right here. For some time, we felt like there have been totally different locations that we may go that the majors possibly weren’t placing all their time into.”
Whereas Duck Down Music stays as an iconic legacy model within the hip-hop area, Dru Ha can also be the CEO of 3D Consulting and Distribution. Via his relationship with Jonny Shipes, he began managing the profession of famed comic Druski in 2019, which is a sure-fire signal that Drew “Dru Ha” Friedman continues to push the tradition ahead.
XXL is again with one other episode of Inside Observe, a biweekly podcast that spends time with a few of hip-hop’s most influential business executives, entrepreneurs and extra. Hosted by XXL Editor-in-Chief Vanessa Satten and music govt Courtney “Courtney CL” Lowery, every episode will proceed to discover hip-hop by way of the eyes of people that have lived and breathed the tradition.
Watch or take heed to the episode of XXL’s Inside Observe podcast beneath. The podcast could be discovered on xxlmag.com, XXL’s YouTube web page and on most podcast platforms: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and XXL Stay.
