Golden

by Isabelle Santana

They say luck is what happens when hard work meets opportunity. Hold that thought, add in a bit of streetwise braggadocio and a panache of fiery bookwise knowledge. Mix, shake, stir and what do you get? Thought provoking lyricism and authoritative bass thumping head nodder’s dreams. In short, you get Golden, a Jewish rapper who hails from St Paul, Minnesota.

This MC serves up the cure for what ails the atrophied limb that is modern hip hop. His self-styled album, Peddling Medicine, is a bold project that puts to shame the mass production that is the modern major label dominated music industry.

Because the music industry is in such disarray, any independent music artist in need of direction should take the following advice from Golden. Make it your Golden Rule. “If you’re going to put a record out, it’s going to last hundreds of years. It’s a record of what you believe and what you think. So, whatever you put down on record you’re going to have to be proud of for the rest of your life. So for me to just rap some bullshit over a dope beat really doesn’t make too much sense for me if that’s the one thing people are going to take away from me as a person.”

Although golden is a native of Reading, PA he identifies with the Minnesota hip hop scene where he currently lives. Listening to him speak about coming into his own as a successful and freely creative Indie, you get the sense that he is successful not because he’s been fortunate, but because he’s made fortune fall on his side by harnessing very basic business principles. He credits Nas’ Illmatic for his transformation into an MC. Very early on in his career he attempted to form an Indie label around a group called S.U.S.P.E.C.T.S that he had formed with some friends. The effort failed due to personal divisions.

He did make important connections during his time with the group though. He met two members of the Black Eyed Peas’ backing band Bucky Johnson—Printz Board and George Pajon, Jr—after his group opened for them at an event. Shortly after S.U.S.P.E.C.T.S disbanded Golden began working on new tracks with Board and signed with his production company, Beets and Produce. That gave birth to his inspired debut album Peddling Medicine.

More than anything, Golden’s work should make anyone reflect on how one goes about becoming a successful self-styled independent artist from a business standpoint. And that’s important because music is often business more than it is art. We caught up with Golden to learn more about his music and what thinking for success looks like.

MADE: What is your background?

Golden: I’m from Reading, PA…about an hour northwest of Philadelphia, but now live in Minnesota. I grew up in Reading until I was 18. I grew up culturally and religiously Jewish.

MADE: What kind of an impact do you think that had on you as a hip hop artist?

Golden: Growing up Jewish, I felt that I was kind of different socially and culturally from your average white person. Three days a week after school I had to go to Hebrew school. I experienced certain things that your average white Christian person in America doesn’t necessarily think about. I always felt a little bit like an outsider or outcast of sorts. It’s the same thing being Jewish from the underdog perspective. It’s always drilled into you growing up that your people were oppressed people…from being slaves in Egypt to the Holocaust. So I think that gave me a little bit of perspective on what hip hop culture was that maybe other white kids didn’t get.

MADE: So perhaps it permitted you to be able to identify more closely than the average white person with the black experience?

Golden: I would say insofar as a white person can do that, you know what I mean? Obviously I can’t put myself in a black person’s shoes and know what it’s like to be black. But I’ve definitely experienced the hatred that comes from someone calling you a dirty Jew when you’re like 4 years old. But I can float through 98% of my life and nobody would know the difference unless they saw my tattoos or talked to me about it. As a black person you can’t change your skin color so you deal with it every single day.

MADE: How did you get started in Hip Hop as a serious pursuit?

Golden: My best friend since the 4th grade was half black/half Puerto Rican and that’s when we started rhyming. Through him…I was always exposed to Puerto Ricans and black people my whole life. At the time I was loving Kool Moe Dee and the Wild Wild West…we were also into R&B at the same time so it was like this weird mix of Bel Biv Devoe meets Eazy E. The idea was since I was the white kid I’d be the DJ even though I had never DJ’d and could never save up the money to buy the DJ equipment. The idea of turning hip hop into a serious pursuit for me then came about. I think that from just really loving it and having fun with it to really being serious about it happened after the first time that I heard Nas’ Illmatic. I remember saying to myself, “Wow, this is what I want to do, this is what it’s about.” I loved the way he spoke about what was going on around him and he did it intelligently…and he wasn’t doing the same stuff that was out there because what was really poppin’ was The Chronic and Doggystyle…I was just kind of like this cat can do it raw but like really say something and say it in poetry. So that’s when I decided it was something I would take more seriously in terms of my writing and wordplay.

MADE: What other than the pursuit of financial success motivates you, especially being an Independent Artist?

Golden: I think it’s just the love for the music man. The love for creating something new, bridging genres and just knowing that your words, however imprecise they may be can affect people. Whether that’s on a mass level which ultimately is the goal or whether it’s on a one on one level to know that what you’re going through and what you put down on paper can help someone else going through those same experiences or it just might be the soundtrack to somebody who’s got their window open on a summer day and they’re just bangin’ it with a smile on their face…and not to mention I got these little homies in the neighborhood who look up to me and they started writing their rhymes and talking about, “I got my AK and I’m gonna cap a bitch,” and they’re like 13. I’m like, “You shoot women?..a 13 year old and you shoot women?” and they’re like, “No” and I say, “Why don’t you rap about what you rap about? We already got 50 Cent and we don’t need 50 Cent Jr down the block.” So they come back and write about their experiences and that motivates me to know I can make change on that level too.

MADE: What are the highlights of your career to date?

Golden: I think the first real breakthrough came in 2000 when I was freestyling at some college gig and Naughty by Nature called some people up on stage to freestyle and I went up there to freestyle and 5000 people were going crazy and Trench came from backstage, pulled me onstage and said, “This cat is going to be on our next record.” Then we went offstage and talked about it. But KG who was really running stuff at that point when Eminem had just come out said, “What we want to have you do is be like the clean Eminem,” and I was like, “Damn, I’d rather just be, you know…me.” Then came my stint with the Black Eyed Peas and Fergie.

MADE: How did you get Fergie to work with you?

Golden: She actually approached me about it, which was cool. I had been down with the Black Eyed Peas since their first record and I was out in L.A working on some stuff when Fergie first joined the group. So I met her on her first performance with the Peas which was at Coachella and she was just cool, so I got to know her a little bit better. They were in Minnesota doing a couple spot swing and we were working on the bus kind of polishing up some demos and Fergie ended up hearing my track “Elevator Music” and she loved it. Then she was asked by one of the band members if she wanted to do some vocals on it and she was down with it. At some point we pulled into the University of Minnesota. We set up one of my little mobile ProTools rigs in one of the classrooms and she just cut it right there.

MADE: What’s she like?

Golden: She’s super down to earth and cool. She’s probably one of the nicest people that I’ve met in the industry. Even though she’s one of the biggest stars on the planet she won’t be like, “I won’t talk to you.”

MADE: Are you signed to an Independent Label or Management?

Golden: I am signed to an independent label and I have managers, both of whom kind of started around my project…I hope to move to a label with a little more know how…that knows how to work a project correctly…the record industry isn’t something that you get into and learn in 2 seconds. But at the same time I’m not one of those dudes who’s like, “Indie or Die!” because I would take a major label deal if it was the right deal because in all reality, I don’t really expect to see my money come from record sales because I do know that licensing and touring would come a whole lot easier on a label that has a reputation and the connections to make that happen whether that’s an Independent or a Major label.

MADE: What are some of the biggest lessons you've learned as an artist being Independent?

Golden: Number one, it’s not quick. It’s not a quick journey. Sometimes you don’t even get what you put in. Sometimes it comes down to luck. But I would say the main thing is, you know, a lot of people are concerned with distribution. I mean if you don’t have the money and if you don’t have the street team and the fan base to promote that record wherever it is, why would anyone in Texas care about a rapper from Minnesota they’ve never heard of sitting next to a thousand other rappers in the Best Buy. So I think a lot of people get caught up in how big they can make the release. It’s really about, “How focused can you make this release?” You don’t have millions of dollars as an Indie unless you’re incredibly lucky. If you’re working on a budget you have to figure out what 6 or 7 markets you can reach over and over again. If I had to do it over again, I would work college radio and I would put 90% of my money into touring. I wouldn’t put any money into major PR. It’s like this. Tour once, lose money, get emails. Tour twice, lose money, get more emails. Maybe the third time break even and make sure those people on your email list are working for you on the ground and by the sixth or seventh time you’ve built a fan base and a loyal following in 6 or 7 markets and you can use that as a stepping stone to 6 or 7 other markets outside of those. And I think a lot of people look for that quick way, but it’s a long, slow process.

MADE: So it’s basically like you’re building a small business, right?

Golden: Yeah, pretty much. You can’t go global until you go national. You can’t go national until you go regional. I know that’s something that’s kind of hard to come to terms with for a lot of people. I know I definitely thought it would work differently when I put Fergie on the record. I thought it was going to be a snap because people were going to push it and people were going to care. Well people don’t care, you know. Cause you’re not Fergie! As an Indie you’ve really got to be prepared to just do it yourself and try to make links and inroads with people who are trying to do the same thing. If you can build that team around you, it’s good because it’s not about being on MTV, it’s about doing what you love.

MADE: How did you raise money for your album?

Golden: My manager told me that there was a guy interested in talking to me so they came to a show and the guy told me he was interested in being my agent. I said, “I don’t want to give up 10% just so you can call yourself my agent.” Then we got to talking over the course of almost a year and it boiled down to, “Ok, we’ll start a record label.” Everybody was down for that. They knew guys and they thought they could get $100,000 for the record. So they put up the money for recording. A majority of that money, unfortunately, was spent on the wrong things. Like tens of thousands of dollars to a major marketing firm that absolutely achieved nothing. I could maybe attribute 30 record sales to those tens of thousands of dollars spent.

MADE: What kind of marketing?

Golden: It was PR. It’s just like sending out press releases to magazines and websites and it was done under the belief that if the Majors have major PR, then that’s what we need. Unfortunately, my cries for investing more of the money towards tour support went unheeded because it’s not as glamorous as saying that your artist has the same PR firm that Usher or Michael Jackson has. I think that tends to be where the trap is set. People either get it or they don’t. The only way to get it is if you’re around it long enough to understand how it really works. I think if I had that cash right now it would be a whole different ballgame with what I know about touring and everything else.

MADE: Being that it’s a political year, I have to throw a political hardball at you. How do you think the current political climate affects Independent artists like yourself? Any theories on that?

Golden: I think the only way things will get better is if we put Mitt Romney in the White House,lol. But seriously, to answer your question in a roundabout way, I wasn’t really feeling Obama because I thought he was too centrist. I think America’s pretty full of shit for the most part. I went to the primaries here in Minessota and was going to vote for Hillary until I voted for Obama and I did it because he inspired people…I was voting for the idea of Obama. I thought if a black man with a Muslim name was in charge of America, that’ll be great for our foreign policy…my support was solidified with the speech on race that Obama gave. It was without a doubt the greatest political speech of my lifetime. He was able to speak to people as adults about an issue that many white people in this country would say isn’t an issue anymore...many white people forget that 60 years ago black people couldn’t vote. Funny story, I was up in Chicago with my girl and we were driving and some taxi cuts me off as Obama’s walking across the street behind us and I yell out the window to the taxi, “You fucking piece of shit!” and Obama’s secret service agents quickly usher him into the hotel. I can’t help but think that they took that as a threat against him even though I was yelling at the cabbie. That’s my link with Obama, lol.

MADE: Are there any book that have impacted your thinking and helped you so much that you would recommend them to others?

Golden: One of my favorites is one called Martin and Malcolm in America about King and Malcolm X. It basically juxtaposes their careers and talks about how Malcolm started as a revolutionary and Martin was a pacifist…but that at the time of their respective assassinations they were much closer to each other in their ideals than people realize. The book kind of affected me to see that in order to push society, or a person or yourself to get anything accomplished it’s going to take a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of perseverance. A lot of people are going to have whatever opinions they’re going to have about you and classify you however they want to. But ultimately at the end if you have a vision for something, whether it’s being an Independent living off of your music, starting your own business or just being a political activist, you have to be willing to push further than is necessary.

You can check Golden out at www.myspace.com/golden

*If you have talent and would like to be featured on the site, please email the Editor at editor@madepublishing.com

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