Hip Hop Success

ATLANTA — Music impresario Michael Mauldin's office is like a family album covering three decades of music history. The walls are lined with plaques showing his collaborations with everyone from Luther Vandross to Kriss Kross, Arrested Development to Wyclef Jean.

In a music career that spans 30 years, Mauldin, 52, has worked with all these acts and dozens more. He is a largely unknown figure who has worked in this city since long before its "Dirty South" sound propelled it to the forefront of hip-hop culture.

Mauldin was the first African-American president at Columbia Records, serving as head of the black music division during the 1990s. He takes credit for promoting the careers of artists from Alicia Keys to Bow Wow.

Yet, much of his career has been overshadowed by the megasuccess of his son, super-producer and rapper Jermaine Dupri, who founded So So Def Records before he was 20 and is famed for blockbuster hits with superstars such as Mariah Carey, Usher and TLC. Even Mauldin's own press material acknowledges that he is "often known simply as Jermaine Dupri's dad."

But Mauldin has his own business, Artistic Control Group, a small, Atlanta-based entertainment firm. It includes Mauldin Brand Films, which provided production and music on the 2002 movie Like Mike, starring Bow Wow; Mauldin Brand Agency, which manages artists and specializes in connecting corporate brands to urban consumers; a music publishing component; and a tour-management division.

The firm has just 12 full-time employees, and generates most of its revenue from touring and management. "It's not uncommon to gross seven figures, and in some years, eight figures, just in this sector of the business," Mauldin says, declining to provide specifics.

But he's willing to discuss his family's impact on the city's red-hot hip-hop scene. "There's been very few artists that came out of Atlanta that Jermaine or I don't have something to do with," Mauldin says. "We, in some sense, have been associated with probably 60% of the artists that come from the urban hip-hop side in Atlanta."

And, for him, it all started because there wasn't anything much to do in Mauldin's hometown of Murphy, N.C. — and because he just happened to own a yellow "ghetto supervan" in the mid-1970s.

Rap City

Atlanta has emerged as a major player in the music industry, due largely to its popularity among rap stars. The ATL is home to some of the biggest names in hip-hop: the Grammy-winning duo Outkast; rapper-actor Ludacris; the group TLC; T.I.; and Young Jeezy and his group Boyz N Da Hood. 

The hometown roster also includes Lil John; Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston; India.Arie; Usher; Monica; and Blaque. Diddy has a home and a restaurant here. The group Goodie Mob, credited with coining the term "Dirty South" in 1995, is from here.

The city might not yet be on the level of such traditional music powerhouses as New York, Los Angeles or Nashville. But its music scene has come a long way since 1976, when Mauldin got his break because the Atlanta funk band Brick — whose hit singles Music Matic and Dazz were rocking clubs from Underground Atlanta to Buckhead — needed someone to haul its equipment, and Mauldin had that cool van.

Today, the city has more than 300 recording facilities and is the driving force in a commercial music industry that has a statewide annual economic impact of nearly $1 billion, according to a Georgia State University study. The 2003 study estimated that the commercial music industry statewide annually generates 8,943 jobs, $1.9 billion in gross sales and $94.7 million in tax revenue.

Much of that success is driven by Atlanta and its emergence as Rap City.

Matt Miller, an Emory University graduate student who has studied the emergence of Southern rap for three years, says Mauldin — along with such better-known names as Antonio "L.A." Reid, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, Dallas Austin and Dupri — helped Atlanta reach that point.

"I'd say he's kind of an unacknowledged, behind-the-scenes kind of person," Miller says. "He's not very well known outside the industry, but when you start looking into the business side of the music, you notice his importance."

The big break

In the early 1970s, Mauldin was a member of a racially integrated band The Other Side, which played at small clubs in and around his hometown of Murphy, which would become famous three decades later as the hideout of Atlanta Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph. "We were doing our thing," Mauldin says. "I had no clue then what the music business was about. Most of the guys had no idea. I don't know what my career would have been like if that band had had a Michael Mauldin-type manager."

But they didn't. So Mauldin left Murphy for Atlanta. "I was escaping, man," he says. "Escaping from a little country town with literally one red light."

He briefly attended DeVry University but "I ended up getting married to Jermaine's mother in 1972," Mauldin says. "Jermaine came along shortly after that. So here I was, 19 years old with a son."

His big break came because of his ride. Mauldin was trying to make it as a drummer and vocalist and driving what he calls the "ghetto supervan": a mustard-yellow, 1971 Ford Econoline van with a sofa in the back. In 1976, Brick was playing a club in north Atlanta when a band member's car broke down. "They needed to get their equipment back," Mauldin says. "A friend of mine was with the group. They called me. We put all the equipment in the van. They were like, 'Man that's cool. We've got a gig in Savannah. Why don't you help us with that?' "

After that, he says, the band paid him $15 to $20 per show. They later hired him as stage manager, then production manager. He went on to work with the funk and soul group L.T.D. and later started a touring company that provided staff and crews for groups such as Sister Sledge, Cameo and the SOS Band. He worked with Roberta Flack, the Atlanta Rhythm Section, Luther Vandross and Arrested Development.

The next stage

In 1982, Mauldin put together a Diana Ross concert at the Omni here. At one point in the show, Ross invited children in the audience to come on stage and dance with her. Jermaine Dupri, who was not yet 10 but an accomplished break dancer with moves patterned after Michael Jackson's, made his way to the stage. "He was in the center of the stage by himself and turned the Omni out," Mauldin says. "Diana was like, 'Why you come up here and try to steal my show?' "

In the mid-1980s, Mauldin produced the New York City Fresh Festival, a national tour featuring rap pioneers Whodini, Kurtis Blow, Run-DMC and the Fat Boys. 

At the time, rap music was in its infancy, and Mauldin says many record executives scoffed at the new sound. "But I believed in it. I had a kid who was spending time and learning the beats. I know some real powerful folks that laughed at it. A lot of those cats have changed their minds, or they're out of the business."

From 1995-99, Mauldin was president of the black music division of Columbia Records, where he signed off on such acts as The Fugees, Nas, Lauryn Hill, Maxwell, Destiny's Child and Keys.

These days, much of Mauldin's energy is focused on branding — on taking advantage of the popularity of hip-hop culture to market products to urban audiences. He is trying to help NASCAR penetrate the young African-American market. He recently signed a deal to produce an apparel line aimed at that market. He also runs a non-profit, Hip Hop 4 Humanity, that he founded after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But Mauldin's always on the lookout for new talent. During a 2002 Grammy Awards brunch, he heard a singer from Charlotte named Anthony Hamilton. "He sang Comin' From Where I'm From. The first thing I thought was this guy would be perfect for So So Def. The next morning, I called Jermaine. I said, 'Y'all gotta sign this guy.' He had a record deal four months later."