In February, TikTok’s 1 billion-plus users received an unexpected gift for Valentine’s Day: exclusive access to the catalog of one of hip-hop’s most revered labels, Death Row Records. Snoop Dogg had purchased the catalog in 2022 and pulled it from streaming services. So the only place to hear tracks from Snoop’s classic Doggystyle or 2Pac’s 10-times-platinum All Eyez on Me was TikTok.
This partnership — as unusual as it was savvy — was the handiwork of veteran music executive Larry Jackson, 42, who seized the attention of the industry this year when he launched his entertainment company, gamma. Backed by $1 billion in financing and focused on putting that capital to work “in particular and acutely on Black culture,” Jackson has created a deep-pocketed alternative to the major labels.
His TikTok gambit paid off, showing a younger generation that “knows Snoop only from Corona commercials” why the rapper — and gamma investor — is a “national treasure.” “ ‘Gin and Juice’ went viral; ‘Who Am I (What’s My Name?)’ went viral,” Jackson says. “We were able to have three hits on social media before we put the catalog [back] on streaming services” in March.
Aligning with Death Row for a long-term distribution deal was one of gamma’s first public moves. Its roster has since grown to include established stars like Usher (whose long-awaited next album is coming “very soon”), Rick Ross and French Montana (two new singles on the way). On top of that, gamma works with the promising newcomers Sexyy Red, who appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in June with the gleefully raunchy “Pound Town 2,” and October London, who is rising inside the top 10 on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart with the suave Marvin Gaye homage “Back to Your Place.”
Funded primarily by Todd Boehly’s Eldridge Industries (a stakeholder in Billboard parent company PMC as well), gamma also acquired music technology company Vydia, which Jackson boasts is “the fastest-growing distribution service in the business,” and it has a “sibling-like relationship” with A24, “the hottest motion picture studio right now” (Everything Everywhere All at Once). In addition, gamma’s tendrils extend into podcasting — it’s developing projects with Angelica Nwandu, founder of The Shade Room, and Jackson says Ross will be involved in a podcast coming later this year — and the lucrative world of high-end brand deals. (Jackson is the U.S. ambassador for Cartier.)
“What LJ is doing is a new way of thinking about things,” says Travis Scott, who has known Jackson for around a decade. “I love that he is opening up ways for an artist to come in and really elevate, and it’s more than just music.”
Jackson “is going to disrupt how people do things,” says Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, who started working with the gamma boss in the early 2000s as part of R&B songwriter-producer team The Underdogs. “Creatives, we’re weird people, but he knows how to get the best out of us — that’s one of his superpowers. But then he can also do deals, structure agreements, really see trends and what is going to be next. He was built for this.”
Clive Davis, who hired Jackson at J Records when Jackson was still a teenager, adds that his former mentee is also financially positioned to compete for any prominent deal, “whether it’s artist signings or companies to be acquired. He delivered a capitalization that enables him to start like a major label.”
Jackson’s origin story seems cribbed from the script of Almost Famous, except his Rolling Stone was the Bay Area radio station KMEL, where he started hanging out at age 11. By the time he was 16, he was assistant music director. “He was relentlessly dedicated,” recalls Joey Arbagey, a longtime major-label A&R executive who was then program director at the station.
Jackson helped select tracks to put into rotation, often ignoring the label’s chosen single in favor of one he thought sounded better. And he had his own show, developing a seductive on-air patter that always ended with a simple question: “What’s my name?” “He said it in a sexy voice,” Arbagey remembers, and callers “were lining up just to talk to him.”
“I didn’t know that it was called marketing, but that’s what I was doing,” Jackson says. “Women thought that I was 35 years old when I was really 17.”
Many of the relationships Jackson built at KMEL and then J Records endure. He recently got married and likens the wedding party to a personal Summer Jam, with Alicia Keys playing a pair of songs (“crushed it”) and 45 minutes apiece from Timbaland (“probably the best performance of his career”), Swizz Beatz (“equally as incredible”) and E-40 (“E-40 is to the Bay Area what Bruce Springsteen is to New Jersey. I could die and go to heaven at that point”). Jackson has known Keys for over two decades and describes Swizz and Timbaland as “my brothers.”
At J Records, “artists like Alicia felt very comfortable and didn’t deal with [Larry] as the teenager he was,” Davis recalls. This in turn meant that Jackson “could provide me with insight into their mental attitudes, their reactions and how a personal reaction could be different from what was said professionally.”
“It’s not often you see an executive have an actual relationship with an artist in a sense of hanging with them socially or going for a hike,” adds Roy LaManna, CEO of Vydia. “That’s part of Larry’s magic.” As a result, “he got Nicki Minaj on [Sexyy Red’s] ‘Pound Town’ in like 48 hours. Larry arranged for Travis Scott to bring her out onstage. We had a kickoff meeting for the company, and Dave Chappelle was there, hanging out and making jokes.”
Scott describes Jackson as a “mentor” and crucial source of “guidance.” Their relationship extends “beyond music,” he continues. “Being able to connect with somebody on that level, who’s walking on the same side of the street you’re on but can also control the other side of the street, that’s a little bit different than most execs.”
After Jackson’s stints at KMEL and J (later absorbed into RCA), he hopscotched to Interscope, then Apple Music. “I didn’t graduate high school and didn’t go to college,” Jackson says. “My university was working with Clive. Graduate school was working with Jimmy [Iovine].”
“Larry’s always had a feel for marketing, and he’s really good at understanding the flow of how music interacts with technology,” Iovine notes. “He’s always pushing the ball forward.”
Over the course of his career, Jackson steered albums or Apple initiatives for a wild variety of acts, from Jennifer Hudson to Whitney Houston, Drake to Frank Ocean, Kanye West to Nicki Minaj. (Both Drake and West have rapped about Jackson; West did so twice.) “His bravery and musical expertise as a rising A&R exceeded his job description and encouraged a new confidence in me as a young artist breaking new ground,” Hudson tells Billboard.
Jackson also emphasizes that he helped singers Scotty McCreery and Phillip Phillips, as well as signing Lana Del Rey: “I’ve run away from genre classifications and really prided myself on diversification.”
Even with all his experience at radio, labels and streaming services, launching gamma wasn’t easy. Jackson met with an alphabet soup-like collection of top private equity companies — KKR, TCV, TPG and more — and was politely rebuffed by all of them. “The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my career is raise money,” he says. “Especially for an idea that is pre-asset, where the [intellectual property] is my brain.”
Hearing “no” is part of the game, of course. “I raised close to $1 billion for Spotify in the early days, and we had a 97% no rate,” says Fred Davis, a partner at The Raine Group who helped Jackson raise his capital. “You only need one yes.” (Raine was also involved with Downtown Music Holding’s acquisition of CD Baby and advised Quality Control during its sale to HYBE America.) Crucial early support for gamma came from Jackson’s former employer, Apple. “It was because they wanted to invest that everyone else followed,” he says.
Gamma has a blizzard of projects in the works: collaborating with Warner Bros. and the studio’s label, WaterTower Records, on the soundtrack to the upcoming movie-musical adaptation of The Color Purple, executive-produced by Jackson’s pal Oprah Winfrey; possible big-screen appearances for Snoop; and an album from stalwart independent rapper Russ. Rapper Chief Keef is gearing up to join gamma’s executive team.
Jackson has also been closely involved in the rollout of Scott’s Utopia, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 dated Aug. 12. “He’s always at the roundtable with us,” Scott tells Billboard. “I’ve got a lot of crazy, wild ideas. He has a million ideas, too. And he’s just able to bring things to life.” Although the rapper is not on gamma’s roster — at least, not yet — Jackson says he has functioned as “chief consigliere” to Scott and his manager, David Stromberg, since 2015.
In the midst of all this deal-making, Jackson holds tightly to a piece of advice Iovine gave him roughly 13 years ago before hiring him at Interscope. At the time, Jackson was an A&R executive anxious about his future. “I said, ‘Man, I can’t leave RCA. We’ve got all these great artists I’m working with,’ ” he remembers. “ ‘What are you talking about?’ ” Iovine replied. “ ‘You can leave anytime you want. You’re the talent.’ ”
A version of this story originally appeared in the Aug. 5, 2023, issue of Billboard.
