Welcome to The Manager’s Playbook, my personal newsletter where I share weekly insights for aspiring artists, emerging music managers and executives on how to navigate the music industry, by Ruiz.

Ruiz Note:

TRULY IN A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

It is an honour to sit down and talk shop with my brothers Jordan Evans and Matthew Burnett. They are in a league of their own.

Matthew and Jordan are prominent figures in the music industry, initially known for their work as producers and songwriters. Soon after, they became sharp Entrepreneurs & Artist Managers, Co-Founding Golden Child Recordings with the gifted Daniel Caesar, and breaking him to international success as a recording artist.

A bit of background on the two if you’re not familiar.

Matthew Burnett

Matthew Burnett is a Canadian music producer and songwriter. He has worked with numerous high-profile artists and is known for his versatile production style. Burnett's credits include collaborations with artists such as Daniel Caesar, Drake, Eminem, and Lil Wayne. His production work often spans various genres, showcasing his ability to adapt and create hits across different musical landscapes. Matthew is also a musical director for some of the top talents in the business today like Victoria Monet, Jessie Reyez, Kelly Roland, Daniel Caesar and several others.

Jordan Evans

Jordan Evans is also a Canadian music producer and songwriter. He is known for his work with a wide range of artists, bringing a unique touch to each project he undertakes. Evans has collaborated with notable artists including Daniel Caesar, H.E.R., Drake and Eminem. His production style is recognized for its creativity and innovation, contributing to the success of many tracks in the music industry.

I remember meeting the guys outside of my old Mad Ruk Entertainment office on Wellington Street a few years back. It was around the time Daniel Caesar had just come onto the scene, and I had just begun managing Jessie Reyez. Burnett, Jordan, and I spoke, and it was immediately clear that we saw eye to eye on nearly everything about this music business. It was refreshing to know that these young upstarts, with an already seasoned approach, shared the same mindset as I did.

We understood the democratization of distribution.

The power of self marketing and promotion in the form of the internet.

The level of importance in maintaining strong relationships.

The revolution of the independent act.

Above all, they’re gifted musicians. They are some of the best A&Rs who never officially held the title, and better than most who do. The team they built around Daniel was incredibly self-sufficient. They were not only the main producers but also handled all management duties, taking the music business by storm as a truly independent act.

And this it what we all valued. Independency.

Jessie, Byron Wilson (Jessie’s manager) and I took a different approach. However, if you asked anyone at the label who was part of UMG back then, they’ll tell you we operated with the independent spirit. Matthew Burnett, Jordan Evans and Daniel Caesar on the other hand, were completely independent, self-financing the entire operation.

During their ascent, our careers intersected numerous times. Both Daniel's camp and ours with Jessie have collaborated so often that it’s hard to keep track. For me, the key point is this: the six of us had a very unique experience. Both Jessie Reyez and Daniel Caesar were heavily pursued by major record labels in 2016, in what the industry calls a "bidding war." I can't recall another instance, before or after, where two artists from Toronto were simultaneously sought after by everyone at the exact same time. It was truly a unique, once in a life-time experience.

Since we were friends beforehand, we were fortunate enough to stay tapped in with one another and share our experiences with the majors. We exchanged information and insights in real time. It was truly a blessing.

One of our biggest collaborations our collective teams put together was “Figures (Reprise)” which we debut live on Canadian National Television. The performance was so big it still holds the record for most views on that particular award show and created a moment for all of us in the US.

It was great to catch up with the guys and delve into their origins, the rise of Golden Child Recordings, and the infrastructure they built around Danny. Although they no longer manage him, they remain partners in the label, which still generates revenue to this day.

I have a lot of love, admiration, and respect for Matt & Jordan and I'm thankful for their time and information provided here for us at TMP. This is a master class in an unconventional approach that took the global music industry by storm.

Below are some KEY PLAYS of the full conversation which is set to go live on TMP Podcast Sunday June 30th at 6pm ET.

Ladies and gentlemen, a conversation like this doesn’t come cheap. I hope you find value in it.

-Ruiz

KEY PLAYS 
(FEAT. JORDAN EVANS &

MATTHEW BURNETT)

My Conversation with Matt & Jordan

^{Ruiz: There’s T-Minus, Boi1da, Matthew Burnett and Jordan Evans, you guys all go to the same high school, Pickering High, you guys are only maybe 4-6 years apart, how does this happen where these 4 producers that are so prominent in the game today all come from this town in Ajax?}

Matt: We always used to have this running joke where it was kind of like there’s nothing else to do in the burbs outside of you know, school and work, but like it’s so cold especially winter time everybody was just inside locking in, but at the same you could make the same argument for Brampton, for Mississauga, so why Ajax in particular? It’s just divine orchestration, I don’t know.

Jordan: But at the same time, you go to Brampton or Mississauga, that’s like PARTY, WondaGurl, Eestbound…

Matt: The other hub, that’s true. But the same school is crazy. Like same city is one thing, but same school?

Ruiz: Same school, same time!

Matt: Yeah, I don’t even know how to make sense of that.

Jordan: I think the school thing, like honestly I give a lot of credit to both of them (T-Minus and Boi1da) because it was literally hearing it, like I didn’t know it was a thing, so I went to their school you know what I mean?

I literally remember we had another friend who made beats, remember Winton? It was just us, we made beats. And he brought a laptop to school and he just had the demo version of FruityLoops. The demo version of FruityLoops now has good sounds, you can make good music with it, but this is like a video game, this is back in you know – And we watched, I remember Tyler at lunch made a beat with the demo version and it was good.

Ruiz: Just at lunch?

Jordan: Just at lunch. Made a little beat. He didn’t have a keyboard. He was clicking it in. You know? We’re in high school and it’s like some people you kind of see they’re born to do it and I think Tyler is one of those people. So I think because we saw and they went to that school, so there’s inevitably people to see them do it and be like “Oh that’s crazy. I want to do that too.” You know?

Ruiz: Same thing?

Matt: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think a lot of it was also divinely orchestrated because I can’t even make sense of that like Jordan putting me onto Boi1da and then T-Minus going to the same school. 

Funny enough, when Boi1da started working with us and giving us pointers and listening to our beats and vice versa, that was kind of like remotely, but like for me, T-minus was kind of the first one because of the proximity because we went to the same school and we would talk and I would ask him questions.

He would be walking around with his drumsticks, anybody who knows T, he would always have his drumsticks in his back pocket walking around high school and because of the proximity I was able to be like “Yo, like I just found out about FruityLoops and I want to make beats”  and I remember one day he was like “Yo, come over and I’ll show you how to use the program” and I went over to his house after school one day and just got a masterclass “Yo, this is how you do this” and of course anybody who knows T, he’s just flying, he’s explaining everything, but I’m seeing it in real time. I’m like there’s so much to this program one, but two, this guy knows, like I could just tell he has one of those you know hyper focused minds where he just locks in on something and that’s it. 

So I’m literally getting a masterclass with him, he’s playing me beats and I’m just like “what am I hearing?” Just like beautiful.

To this day, some of my favourite beats in the world are beats that I heard that day.

Ruiz: What's the best way to structure the business for people that are coming up to make sure that they have a fair share in this whole thing?

Matt: Yeah. I mean, I think just as a start, a lot of the conversations that I had with other managers during our time because obviously, you know, we were independent and we shouted from the rooftops.

Ruiz: I've never heard him so soft spoken in my life, by the way…

Matt (laughs): Independence is sexy bro what can I say?

But I feel like a lot of the conversations that I was having with them was being like, yeah, well, people hear independent, but it's such a wide term. It's such a broad term. There’s levels to independents.

Ruiz: Go through the levels.

Matt: You can be an independent artist signed to an independent label that has support through distribution. You can be through a major or you know, like an indie.

There's also companies like AWAL, which offer you major label services or artist services. Where it’s like, yeah, you're independent, like you own your music, but you're not quite like ground level independent, as I call it. Which again, there's no right or wrong. I think you have to do whatever's best for yourself and for your business and for your team.

We were like TuneCore level independent, where there's no artist services or label services. We are the label. So literally you talk about pieces–we're managing, we're also making the music, which you don't have to do if you're independent, you can have a producer, but we happen to be the producers first. So we're making the music, we're managing, Jordan's handling marketing and promotion. We have a creative team that handles all the creative, assets, videos–everything's in-house.

Ruiz: That’s Sean Brown and Keavan?

Matt: Yeah, Sean Brown and Keavan shout out to them. And then when it comes time to release, setting up, teeing it up, making sure all the DSPs get it, then hitting the DSPs to make sure that our people there know that that music is coming so we can activate.

We're uploading and we're messaging everybody individually being like, “Hey, we just uploaded it. Do you see it in the system? Do you have enough time to really activate within the company?” All those things we're doing literally on text.

Ruiz: When you're saying you're messaging people individually, you're messaging your partners at Apple? Do you have partners at Spotify?

Matt: Yeah and then later on partners at Spotify, people that were invested at this point “Please let us know when new music is coming.” We're maintaining those relationships ourselves. At the labels, they talk to those people every single day. You just say, “Here's the song” and they take care of everything else. With us, we’re handling the label side and then also the creative side and the musical side. We're also managing his touring business. I'm putting together shows. Jordan’s doing creative for the shows. So it's like literally every single part and every single facet of Daniel Caesar’s career and business, we all collectively were doing. Mind you, we were all talking about everything, so it's not like, you know, we're taking the reins to do what we want. Everything's communal. We're all talking about all decisions, touring, what cities to do, what does the poster look like, you know? "No, that font is too small. Make it bigger. They can't see that XYZ." Everything is being discussed. We would all, depending on what it was, be the person leading the conversation or the face of that part of the business.

Ruiz: How involved is Daniel in these conversations?

Matt: He's at the heart of every single one.

And again, to Jordan’s point earlier, his gut was almost never wrong. It was him who was like we have such an interesting team. And again, I say all this to say, if you're going to be ground level independent, you have to have a team like how we had, because think about, if you don't have the support of an indie label or a company like an AWAL or a major, who's going to be doing those things? And so that's why I don't ever really fault an artist for doing business that makes the most sense for them, even if it's a shitty deal unfortunately. If that is what got you to the next level that was better business for you, then you have to do that. Otherwise, imagine saying no to to a deal because it isn’t the greatest, but you have no team to do anything else.

Ruiz: How did you identify that Daniel was special?

Matt: I think for me, he's probably a pound for pound, one of the most impressive songwriters I've ever worked with.

Period. Like one, his ability to translate what he's feeling and translate what he's living into lyric and then into song, into melody, it’s uncanny. But for me, he just has the gift. I remember when we were finishing Freudian, we would end every single one of his sessions playing basketball outside. We were working out of Red Bull Studio. So we would just hoop, right? And it was one day where he was hooping and he got really winded.

Jordan: Feeling lightheaded.

Matt: Yeah. Well, I mean and I think his asthma was acting up and so he had to sit down and so he got winded and he was like, “I need a second.” So he was like this (crouching down) breathing heavy and I heard him start to sing something. And I was like, “Yo, what are you singing?” And he's just like, “Yo, somebody pass me their phone.” And so we pass him the phone and he recorded. I can’t remember what song it was for.

Jordan: It was the verse of “Transform.”

Matt: And so then he records it half winded after just playing basketball and like, we heard the melody, like the whole game stopped.

Jordan: We all ran back into the studio.  We got to get in there.

Matt: Sweating. Right. But it's like that's, that's his process, he's literally channeling a greater power that's like through him.

Jordan: While getting cooked on the court!

Matt: He was getting worked still lowkey. But for that to happen and for him to end up channeling something that fire. I was like “you have it” and artists like that don’t come around very often. You know what I’m saying? He’s got it. It’s 100% a gift.

Ruiz: Do you think there's any truth to the fact that people say it's way harder to break an artist today than ever before?

Jordan: Yes, because I think we're in a system that rewards content creators. So some artists are good content creators. Some of them are not at all.

Matt: That’s a good point.

Ruiz: Right.

Jordan: It’s not a knock to either. Some people are very good at that. So, I think it's where we're breaking content creators. We’re breaking the artists who know how to be content creators. That’s what we’re doing. Could you imagine asking a young Frank Ocean or Amy Winehouse to be on TikTok? To do any of these things? They would probably stop. I think that’s probably why we don’t have many new artists that we hold them at that high regard. You know what I mean? A Kendrick Lamar, Amy Winehouse, Frank Ocean.

Ruiz: And to the fact that I think audiences are so fragmented these days as well too. Not everything is coming through one outlet or one medium right? So you’re getting them from so many different places.

Jordan: So you’re getting very concentrated fanbases in different places.

Ruiz: Yeah.

Jordan: Yeah, but I think that's, that's the biggest difference is if you make a system that rewards content, then the content creators are going to kind of break through easier.

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Bio

I’m Mauricio Ruiz, the Founder/CEO of 8 Til Faint, an Artist Management company with over 5 billion audio streams worldwide. Our past and current clients include Grammy nominated, Juno Award winning multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter Jessie Reyez, Marley Bleu, Skratch Bastid and more. I am also the Co-Founder of Mad Ruk Entertainment, a content agency with over 3 billion long form video streams worldwide. Our client list includes The Weeknd, Eminem, and Celine Dion, along with renowned brands like Nike, Pernod Ricard, Canon, and the NBA.

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