![]() Blige, and a North Carolina band of brothers called Jodeci. Sure! and rapper Heavy D, both talented producers, as well, Harlem polymath Teddy Riley and his group Guy, Yonkers vocalist Mary J. “I wanted hit records that make you feel a certain sexy way,” Harrell told New York in a 1995 cover story, “records that would get a pretty girl to dance with you at 2 a.m. Uptown’s aim was keeping hip-hop connected to its inner-city New York roots, giving black talent and executives a measure of power in a business structure they didn’t always have control of and bridging the growing gap between R&B and rap music. Vernon, and beyond - that served as ground zero for the hip-hop explosion. With a few years of music business experience under his belt, Harrell founded Uptown Records in 1986, saluting the expanse of New York City north of Central Park - including Harlem, the Bronx, Yonkers, Mt. Harrell split his time between rapping and working as a radio account exec until his group dissolved, and he took a job with Def Jam founder Russell Simmons’s Rush Management, where he brought a savvy Israeli finance major named Lyor Cohen on as an employee. Hyde (whose “Genius Rap” flipped the Talking Heads offshoot Tom Tom Club’s disco hit “Genius of Love” years before smash records like Mark Morrison’s “Return of the Mack” and Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” brought it back to the charts). Harrell’s impact on black music - and on film and television, as a multimedia deal with Uptown’s distributor MCA led to Strictly Business, the film that gave Halle Berry her first starring role, and New York Undercover, the gritty cop procedural that filmed in the inner city and showcased singers like Mary, Aaliyah, and D’angelo - is immeasurable.Ī native of the Bronx, Harrell got his start in the ’80s gigging in Harlem as one half of the rap duo Dr. Hip-hop lost a visionary thinker and a lifelong tastemaker over the weekend in the late Andre Harrell, founder of the seminal hip-hop label Uptown Records, home to a number of the architects of the new-jack-swing revolution of the ’80s and ’90s and an integral stepping stone for black music icons like Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, the Notorious B.I.G., and Mary J. Under Harrell’s leadership, alongside Sean “Puffy” Combs’s vision, Uptown Records gave Def Jam a run for its money in its best years. ![]()
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