BLOCK WORDS: MAURICE G. GARLAND PHOTOS: ERIC JOHNSON
M
any people recognize Russell “Block” Spencer as the dude that was all over the Boyz N Da Hood commercials and videos. But this man’s job goes much deeper than that. Spencer has a respectable track record in the music industry that a lot of people will be surprised to hear about. The newly-appointed Head Urban Music Consultant for Warner Music Group has been on his grind for years. Read here as the Atlanta-born mogul-in-the-making talks about going from picking up “stuff” for Tupac to getting deals for Yung Joc. Where are you from originally and how did you get introduced to the music industry? I was born in East Lake, raised on the eastside and bred in Kirkwood. I came in on the investment side of the game [smirks]. I was running around with Tupac for minute in ‘94 when I was like 19-20 years old. I met ‘Pac through his sister. Really I met him through the streets, you know, getting weed for him and stuff like that. Then I just started running into people. I eventually met Greg Street when he first came to
68
OZONE
Atlanta. I met him at a remote at [legendary Decatur nightclub] The Gate. I was asking him how to get in the game. He gave me his number but I never called because I was still in the streets. But I saw him two months later at a record store and he was like, “I thought you was gonna call me?” I finally took him serious and started talking to him. At the time I had a rapper from East Lake Meadows named Sacrifice and I used to take him down to the radio station. I just started hanging with Greg, he really introduced me to the rap game. What’s the first thing you learned when you got into the game? Chris Hicks at Noontime told me to always keep some producers. Rappers come and go but producers are around a long time. Then I saw how Noontime was eating, they was eating better than rappers I was seeing so I was like, I’ma get a production company too. They didn’t even have Jazze Pha then. They had The Hitmen, half of Puff’s producers was from Noontime. They had Ant Dent, Bryan Cox, Johnta Austin, a lot of cats over there. Chris told me to get money through publishing and producers. Greg taught me how to use relationships