Tues April 6, Showbox, 9 pm, $25 adv/$30 DOS.
Legend has it Quannum Projects founders Lateef Daumont, Tom Shimura, Tim Parker, Xavier Mosley, and Josh Davis met while attending the University of California, Davis. Housed at the highly agricultural small town close to Sacramento, the rappers and DJs were unified by a shared aesthetic sensibility that recognized hiphop's full potential as an expressive art. The college students were also unified by the isolation of the campus, and, most importantly, by the only show on the local campus station, KDVS, that played hiphop during their stint there in the early '90s.
The radio show's DJ, Jeff Chang (who at the time was a graduate student known as DJ Zen, and is now recognized as a leading hiphop critic and scholar), was the main intellectual and spiritual force of what was to become Solesides, one of the few legitimate hiphop movements/labels born on a university campus.
Under Solesides, Gift of Gab (Parker) and Chief Xcel (Mosley) released records as Blackalicious, and Lyric Born (Shimura) and Truth Speaker (Daumont) put out material as Latyrx, while Davis built a name for himself as DJ Shadow. At the end of the '90s, Solesides was dissolved, and its members moved from the woods back into the city, where they reformed in Oakland as Quannum Projects. Unlike most of the indie hiphop labels established at the time, Quannum was fully owned by the artists (DJ Shadow, Chief Xcel, and Lyrics Born). However, to manage the business end of things, they hired Isaac Bess, who to this day is the only full-time employee of the label. "Logistically, we are a very small operation," says Bess from his office. "We have a small space, and I have one assistant, a wonderful lady who is glaring at me right now. She works part-time."
Asked how a label with such a large national presence can be run by one and a half people, Bess explains, "We have to wear a lot of different hats, do our own marketing and publicity. Instead of flashy campaigns, we rely on word of mouth, and we use street teams to do grassrootsy kinds of things, like putting up posters and handing out fliers."
Bess, who grew up in New York City and Tokyo, never managed a record company until he was appointed to run Quannum Projects five years ago, shortly after it formed. Before obtaining the rather envious position of heading a highly respected and visible hiphop label, he taught English and worked as an intern at Matador Records. It seems odd that DJ Shadow (who was already famous when Quannum became a reality), Chief Xcel (a veteran of the Bay Area's underground scene), and Lyrics Born would pick someone with seemingly so little recognition and experience to run their label. But whatever the reasoning might have been, the decision has proved to be a wise one. Quannum is surviving the worst economic environment for any type of small business, and, as evidenced by the present national tour, is boldly heading toward the future.
This year, Quannum is set to release several CDs, the most anticipated of which is Gift of Gab's solo project, Fourth Dimensional Rocketships Going Up (recorded in Seattle and produced by Seattle's Jake One and Vitamin D). And last year, Quannum released an impressive debut by Portland's Lifesavas, Spirit in Stone.
"We have very limited resources, so it's not even really an option to sign people casually," Bess explains with the air of a perspicacious businessman. "That's why we don't sign very many acts. We have to know if we can work with them, and if they have enough overlapping spirit to make things work. Otherwise I'd just lose it. There is a finite amount of the A&Ring that I can handle myself." He says that one of the reasons Quannum was happy to sign Lifesavas is that "their ideas are close to our ideas, and they have a work ethic that is in keeping with the realities of being signed to Quannum," adding, "As a result, their record has done very well."
Clearly, for Quannum Projects, making and releasing music is a matter of carefully building on a close-knit core. The artists/owners thoughtfully produce their music, and they aren't in a panic to grow fast. In the end, the mindful selection of new acts and new music takes very good care of their business.
