Fat Beats is a hip-hop institution. If you don’t know that, first go punch yourself in the face. Then come back and read this interview.
I initially met Joseph Abajian through our mutual partnership at the time with Koch Entertainment. Fat Beats had a distribution deal with Koch as a record label, but it also handled account purchasing for its brick-and-mortar stores and operated a one-stop distribution network supplying niche retailers around the world.
Beyond that, we did business together on various levels and eventually connected on LinkedIn. At the time, I noticed that his profile listed a seminary under education.
My interest was piqued, and I reached out to ask about his time at seminary. I found out that we had much more in common than a love for hip-hop, but I’ll let him tell you about that himself.
Please introduce yourself.
My name is Joseph Abajian, or DJ Jab. I’m the founder and owner of Fat Beats.
Before I launch into my full-blown, no-holds-barred, comprehensive interrogation, is there anything specific you want readers to know?
Being that your audience is my audience, too, I wanted to compare the hip-hop community to what it is today, how rap, gangster life and all these things that aren’t hip-hop have kind of taken over hip-hop and called themselves hip-hop.
To me, it’s very similar to the faith. If you ask the bulk of America, people say they’re Christian, but they don’t practice Christian beliefs or really follow Christian ways.
Just like with hip-hop, everyone says they are hip-hop but doesn’t do anything to participate in the hip-hop community. They’re really just hijacking the name, like much of America has done with the faith.
So, specifically regarding Christian hip-hop, you think there are many people who call themselves hip-hop to reach people, but outside of that, hip-hop was never really part of their lives?
They claim the name. They say, “I’m hip-hop,” but they don’t study the history of what hip-hop really is.
Hip-hop isn’t thugged-out life, a ridiculous number of tattoos or wearing your pants in a way that makes you look foolish. That’s not hip-hop. That’s a rap persona people put on, and then they say, “I’m hip-hop.”
Then you say, “OK, let’s see what your history is in hip-hop. Give us some history.”
Most of the kids don’t know the history of Rock Steady Crew. They don’t know the Cold Crush Brothers and Fantastic Five or the true foundation of hip-hop. Do they know Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, the Zulu Nation and how it all came about?
So, even more specifically, hip-hop itself has many people saying, “I’m this. I’m hip-hop. This is part of my life.” But when you peel away the layers, that’s not really who they are. You also said much of America claims to be Christian and may attend church on Sunday, but there’s a good chance they aren’t.
They might attend church occasionally, but ask them what their favorite Scripture is. They know the general stories of the Bible because they watch television shows and movies.
Like VeggieTales?
Yeah. Every so often, The Ten Commandments comes on, and they watch that. A lot of people went to see The Passion of the Christ.
They know a skeleton of the Bible’s stories, but to get the real story and understand what God was communicating, you have to study. You could study one book for years to draw out its full message. Most people never study like that. They never even read the book.
Hip-hop is the same way. My generation grew up on Wild Style and Style Wars. We’re advocates for graffiti, art and the entire scene.
But we saw a change in the late 1990s, and this decade has embraced rap because the money rap makes is greater than what deejaying, B-boys and graffiti writers make combined.
When I see a rap video or attend a rap show, they’ll call it a hip-hop event. But all I see is a rapper looking kind of strange because his pants are crazy, cupping the microphone with no DJ and just standing there. He says that’s a hip-hop show.
When I attend a hip-hop show, the emcee interacts with the DJ. They go back and forth during the show. B-boys may come out and dance. Otherwise, it’s just a guy rapping. That’s a rap show.
How Fat Beats Began
How did you get your start in hip-hop? After that, we can get into how Fat Beats began.
In 1992 or 1993, I was a DJ in New York, and it was difficult to find records.
I wanted to open a business. Initially, I was considering the restaurant industry, but as I looked deeper, I saw how difficult it could be with licenses, food restrictions and laws.
While shopping one day, I came to the conclusion that it was very difficult to buy hip-hop records in New York, the mecca of hip-hop. Looking back now, I have to say the Lord gave me a sign to open a record store.
You couldn’t really buy records in New York, and I strongly believed that if I opened a hip-hop vinyl shop, people would come.
As I went around the music industry, everyone was against the concept. They said, “We’ll give you all these records, but no one is trying to buy records anymore.”
At that time, Sony had cut vinyl and was specifically focusing on CDs because Sony also had a large share of the CD-player market.
From a business standpoint, you could see what Sony was doing. It could push people toward CDs and CD players by eliminating vinyl, which was still widely available in 1992, 1993 and even 1994, when companies really began cutting it out.
I don’t call it luck because it was simply what was happening at the time. When we opened the first store, there was a major retro movement, and people were really getting into vinyl.
People began buying vinyl again, and I happened to be opening an all-vinyl shop. It took off immediately.
That’s great.
What about the early years of Fat Beats and some highlights from the retail side, the golden years, if you will? Then we can talk about the record label and distribution.
The whole scene was golden at the time. It wasn’t as divided as it is now, and the independent scene was just beginning. There was a time when it was really cool to be independent.
We had a good balance of artists coming through. The artists involved in the emerging independent scene were really good, and New York is small enough that everyone would hang out.
Many artists came to the store and spent time there. You also had up-and-coming artists and DJs. The store became a meeting ground.
We were literally a hip-hop shop. If emcees were in the house, I would pull out the microphones. Whenever DJs came down, I asked them to do a demonstration. It was very open. People were ready to rhyme, and they were ready to DJ.
When Redman came down, in 1994, I think, he got on the microphone and did his thing. I don’t know whether word got out because I wasn’t part of the emcee community, but rappers started coming down wanting to get on the microphone.
They would even arrive with their managers, and their managers would ask whether they could perform for a little while.
The first store’s walls were covered in graffiti. You could see it between the record bins, and posters covered the ceiling. It created a colorful little scene.
When you entered the store, you felt hip-hop energy. The first record I had on the wall was “Hey You, the Rock Steady Crew,” signed by the group. You could immediately see that there was a genuine hip-hop connection. This wasn’t merely a store carrying current local rap artists.
I am a B-boy first, so I connected with B-boys. Our first location was in the East Village near the Lower East Side, a heavily hip-hop-influenced area. Many Lower East Side kids came to the store.
The music industry also gave us a lot of love when we opened. We had a strong mixture of people in the store.
El-P from Company Flow, who later started Def Jux, used to hang out there. J-Live was always around. You would see L-Swift and A-Butta all the time, along with many DJs.
I spent so much time with Roc Raida, may he rest in peace, Rob Swift and Mister Sinister that I began managing them.
The people involved in the scene at the time are now legends. Cash Money would come down, and we’d say, “You have to get on.” DJ Riz, an amazing DJ, and J-Rock would walk in and ask whether they could get on. Then they would start deejaying.
We also sold graffiti magazines and books. For a while, I sold graffiti tips, so kids came down with their black books, compared their work and went back and forth.
The store was difficult to explain. Anyone who has been in a real hip-hop environment knows the feeling. Everyone is hanging out and talking, and before you know it, we were branded as the hip-hop spot.
From Record Store to Record Label
Very cool. It’s nice hearing about it directly from you.
That’s the store. Now let’s talk about the distribution and record-label side.
We were always a distribution company. We did pressing and distribution deals.
Things were going well, so I never thought about starting a label because so much was already happening. But people began coming to us.
When Eminem was shopping his deal around 1997 or 1998, he, or his manager at the time, came to us and sold us his EP. We bought it, and it did well for us, so we took all the remaining copies he had.
I think they pressed 5,000. By the time we received them, 3,000 remained. We took all 3,000 and sold them.
We were also selling records from D.I.T.C., Big L, Showbiz and A.G., and many other artists. Some did extremely well for us, but we weren’t signing them to label deals. We were simply receiving our share for vinyl distribution.
The business became tighter in 2001, and distribution started feeling the internet’s effects.
That was when it became time to start the label.
We had an act we were working with that was performing well through distribution. They wanted to release an album and were talking to us about it, so we approached them.
That group was Atmosphere. It was the first record we partnered on as a label. The label was Fat Beats Records, but we worked with Atmosphere and Rhymesayers.
Atmosphere, especially Slug, worked hard. He played the game correctly and did everything well. That record sold phenomenal numbers.
It was called God Loves Ugly, of all names, and SoundScan recorded 185,000 units. It was a great launch for the label.
Unfortunately, when we tried to use that model with every artist, it didn’t necessarily work as well.
Unfortunately, once you find a formula and think you have it, you try it with the next artist, and suddenly it doesn’t work. That is one of the major challenges of running a record label. It isn’t scalable.
Do you have advice for up-and-coming artists or labels about where to spend their energy?
Learn how to perform.
So many artists are stuck in the studio. You can make money as a studio artist, but you’re never going to succeed on a large scale and make real money.
The music industry was created to build awareness for artists’ shows. It was during the 1980s and ’90s that the industry grew larger and realized it could make substantial money from record sales.
When the industry began, there were shows. Now, at least in rap, most shows stink.
I’m the first to say that, with many artists I’ve seen and worked with, it would be better to put a poster of them onstage and play the record.
You’re supposed to sound better at a show than you do on your album. People should say, “Wow, I really like this artist’s music. I’m going to buy the album so I can listen privately.”
Instead, you go to a rap show, and I’m yelling, “False advertising,” because that isn’t how the record sounds. The record sounds much better, but the artist sounds horrible.
You have gold- and platinum-selling rappers playing tiny venues who can barely fill 300 or 400 seats. I tell them it’s because of the show.
A great show and a decent album will generate strong sales. A horrible show and a decent album will kill the sales.
So, I’m always saying: Show, show, show. It’s always about the show.
Not every rapper is bad. KRS-One still has one of the greatest live shows. But most rappers’ shows really stink.