“I’m A&Ring myself now.”
The story of Darcus Beese—one of the UK music industry’s most respected execs—is one that feels almost unreal until you realise how much heart and soul is behind it.
Born into London’s Caribbean community in the late ‘60s to parents who were trailblazers in their own right (his late father, Darcus Howe, and his mother, Barbara Beese, were leading members of the British Black Panthers), he grew up surrounded by culture, conversation and a strong sense of purpose. That upbringing quietly shaped everything that came later. When he started out at Island Records in the late ‘80s—first in the mailroom and then in promotions—he wasn’t chasing titles; instead, he figured out how the industry worked at every level, while never losing sight of the artists at the centre of it all.
Darcus Beese rose through the industry to become Island Records’ first Black president, playing a pivotal role in shaping the careers of artists including Amy Winehouse, Jessie J, U2, Mumford & Sons and Florence + The Machine. He wasn’t only skilled at clocking talent early on: he knew how to nurture and protect it, too. Darcus believed that the best music grows out of trust, giving artists the freedom to be themselves while skillfully navigating the commercial realities of the business. Through his new BET doc, Darcus Beese: In His Own Words, and Rebel With A Cause—his debut memoir—Darcus looks back on that journey with real, no-holds-barred honesty; not just to tell his story, but to inspire the next gen of music minds.
We caught up with the man of the moment to talk about shifting the spotlight from artist-artist-artist to Darcus-Darcus-Darcus, his new music stable, D.A.P., the future of A&R and more.
COMPLEX: As someone who has followed your career from afar over the years, watching your BET documentary, Darcus Beese: In His Own Words, was super-inspiring. You’ve had a hand in shaping the careers of so many gifted acts and to still be doing it decades later with the same zeal is really dope to see. But before we get into the A&R chat, let’s start with the documentary itself—how did it actually come about?
Darcus Beese: Off the back of my book—Rebel With A Cause—I had people coming to me with the madness of a documentary and even before the book, I had people approaching me to do a documentary. People were thinking and feeling stuff that wasn’t even on my radar. I had a lot of people hitting me up and saying: “What if we do this or that?” and “I want to introduce you to this person and maybe we can do a documentary.” Nicky [‘Slimting’ Walker] and Femi [Oyeniran]—who I had worked with on The Intent 2—came as a tag-team, alongside Cecilia Dean from BET, and they were like: “We are doing this! No questions asked. We are doing this.” I trusted them to tell the story. There was a bit of back and forth, but Cecilia obviously had the passion to tell these kinds of stories and was attracted to my story, and Nicky and Femi, I already had a relationship with them so they were like, “If anyone is gonna tell your story, Darcus, it’s us.” So, I was like, “Go brave, people! Go brave.”
Before this doc, like you mentioned, you released your debut book/autobiography, Rebel With A Cause: Roots, Records & Revolutions. What prompted that move, and how would you say the book differs from the documentary?
I come from a family of eloquent, literary…
—legends!
Legends, characters. My dad [Darcus Howe] had written books, and he had just written his political autobiography before he passed away. My great uncle, C.L.R James, had also written The Black Jacobins—which is a pretty well known book—so when someone asked me if I wanted to write my biography, at first I was like: “Not really, no.” It was the same publishers that published Chris Blackwell’s autobiography; he’s the founder of Island Records. The publishers came with this guy, David, who was consulting with them and trying to get some Black stories going and, again, just like the documentary: “Do you want to write an autobiography?” I said no. I said, “I’m still here, still doing my thing,” and they said, “Well, what about a memoir?” I didn’t even know what a memoir was, but I was like: “If I’m going to do this, if you think I should do this, then it can’t be about the stories, it can’t look like a sizzle reel with all the good things and the things that people want to know—there will be no myth busting, no vacuous stories or salacious stories. That’s not going to happen. If it’s a story of a young Black boy and his journey, then, that’s different.” So they said, “Absolutely! Let’s do it.” I collaborated with David Matthews on it; he is a fantastic writer and journalist, and we spent 18 months doing the book—on Zoom and in person. I was talking and he was recording and doing the writing. That came about like the documentary: as a man that’s been on this journey that should tell his story, and it should be there as a resource for people. For me, it was a resource for people, but it started to change the rooms that I was in and the conversations that I was having that weren’t just about music.
Shifting the focus from artist-artist-artist to Darcus-Darcus-Darcus must have been a challenge because you really live and breathe this music industry thing. How did you manage that shift?
Because I’ve got decades of experience in the music industry and now decades of life experience, I’ve had the failures as well as succeeding to a spectacular extent. On both sides, spectacular failures and spectacular successes, and then to end up as the CEO in the nosebleeds. My successes were never about the money; it’s about if you do something, you do it well, and if something happens, you’ll get the upside of it. If you’re consistent, then you’ll be able to stay in the job. It was never about money, and it was never about race. If I took those things away, I would have no obstacles except to be good. And then everything else followed. I knew that I had another few decades in me and I knew that it was bigger than what I was just doing. What the documentary confirmed for me was that I did all the right things to end up back in the room with all my own people, 35 years later. This documentary and that room confirmed for me that it’s bigger than just having a hit now and bigger than just being the CEO, and that’s why it was a memoir thing because the story doesn’t stop here. It’s about what the next phase can be; if I’ve made hundreds of millions and a legacy catalogue for Island Records, then at some point, what does that look like if you’re doing it independently for yourself but with the same kind of mindset in today’s landscape? Taking those life experiences of success and the economics of it all is a great thing, but unless you really get to know thyself, you arrive at these places and you’ll feel empty.
Agreed.
My thing now is, what is life beyond music? Music can still soundtrack it. We get up in the morning, we turn on the radio, we put the tunes on, so music is the soundtrack. But for me, now it’s like: if I don’t have to go and sell a shit-load of records for a corporate company, then why would I want to? That would be a lack of confidence if I did, and that’s why I ended up at Warner. After I left university, I did this stint at Warner Records and I realised that was just lack of confidence. So yeah, now it’s like: what am I to the people in this next landscape and this next reiteration? I could disappear in a puff of smoke on my sofa every day, but the mission is still the same: to create, because out of creation comes excitement and out of excitement, people get in a room and when people are in a room, great things happen. That’s kind of where I’m at... I’m A&Ring myself now.
I’m gonna use that one: I am A&Ring myself! Everyone in music considers Darcus Beese a GOAT, but do you look at yourself in that way? Do you ever look back and say, “You know what? I’ve actually achieved a lot. Let me sit in this legendary status for a bit”?
At some point, it starts to become like you’re being snobby with it. It takes a while because the music industry—anything at a high level—if you take your eye off the ball, it just humbles you and I’ve seen it happen a million times over. I was always able to press the reset button and be like: “Last year is gone; I’m starting again… I am fearful again.” All the [gold and platinum] discs that we collected over a year, ask anybody: at the start of each year, I would clear my office of the ones we got the year prior, to the point people would come in and go, “What’s happened here? Have you been fired?” [Laughs] I’d be like, “No, no, no!” I never had discs on my wall that used to date when I last had success, so it was easy for me to press the reset button and say, “I’ve got start from zero and repeat what I did.” I was always fearful, so I never saw myself as the GOAT. But now I’m here and it gets laid out in book form…
—you can receive the flowers now.
I can receive the flowers because working at Universal was no joke. I remember when Amy [Winehouse] won her 5 Grammys, I saw Lucian Grange the next day walking up the stairs and was like, “Yes, Lucian! We did it.” He looked at me and went, “Did what?” And I’m like, “What do you mean, what? Amy…? The 5 Grammys…?” He was like, “Okay, so do it again.” You lived in this thing where you didn’t have time to smell the flowers. It’s like, if you’re [Marcus] Rashford and you get gassed that you’re scoring goals, you’re gonna end up on a low, so don’t get gassed! I learned very quickly. I used to get excited about getting hits—Sugababes’ first hit, wicked; second hit, wicked—but there comes a moment where you go, “Oh, this is my job. This is why they pay me this much money.” People say to me, “Wow! You signed Sabrina Carpenter?” I go, “Yeah, that’s my job!” I got past getting gassed about things like that, but some of it is regret because you weren’t able to enjoy a lot of it. You just didn’t have the time to. But now, I’m kind of at that stage where I can go, “You know what? I did do bits.”
I want to ask you some questions about back in the day. So you started your career in 1989 as an intern at Island Records, in their promotions department, and then you worked as the tea boy. Looking back, how would you say those early experiences—being at those levels–shaped your career on the way up? What values did it teach you?
I learnt from sweeping the salon floor when I was trying to be a hairdresser about what it was just to do the menial tasks, and then it was what is it to turn up on time consistently and just consistently be a help and an energy. If someone asks you to make tea then just make the best tea. Then, when they gave me that first bit of responsibility, it was because someone was ill, and the head of TV was also ill. I was a TV assistant at that time. Aswad was doing international TV in Hong Kong and the only time I’d travelled was to Morocco with the youth club on a plane. I was one of those Black youths with dreads when there were no young Black youths in the music industry. Aswad, who were Rastas, were like: “Yeah, man. Bring Darcus!” And so the head of promotions said to me, “We are going to let you escort and be the promotions person on this international TV tour.”
It was the first time I had been out of the country with a band; I was 19, and even though there was some madness on the ground in Hong Kong, I got them to and from Hong Kong. And because I loved the job so much—I loved it to bits—someone goes, “You shouldn’t be in promotions. You should be in A&R.” I wasn’t looking to be in A&R; I was just happy to be in the music industry. I got myself into the industry, made my own networks, befriended a lot of people, and I managed to get myself into Island Records. When you’re a young Black kid and you’ve got a circle of mates and you’re just doing a madness every weekend, and then, all of a sudden you’re in this space as a young Black boy... It was like everything had gone to technicolour. I was in this world and I was a unicorn because I was one of very, very, very few Black people in that space at the time. There was Lincoln Elias, who was many years in front of me, but of my generation, I was the first. So I was a bit of a unicorn. There weren’t microaggressions—it was fucking massive aggressions, you know?
But you didn’t let it phase you.
No way. If you’re the only Black person in the room, make that your superpower! That’s why I never had a problem with the race thing. I had that shit growing up, so all you had to do was bite your lip and stop yourself from ‘tumping some people up sometimes [laughs].
And sometimes, that restraint can be extremely tough [laughs].
But people were just happy to be around a unicorn, man. It was like something tropical, something foreign to them. I don’t want to dumb it down, but if you grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, some things are a minor compared. I was never about being a role model or being a mentor—that’s for other people to put on me. All I wanted to do was achieve success however I was measuring success, and I had different metrics for it. I had time as a metric, my children are a metric, the mortgage. I had different metrics of success. It was never the “hit.” It sits with me because it was literally my own vision for myself—no one helped me with it. As much as I love Chris Blackwell and Lucian Grange, and they gave me good advice, they didn’t sit with me and tell me to make moves. The big successes, I don’t try to ride anybody else’s coattails because I’m very calm and confident in what I’ve done. I would never claim anyone else’s success. One time, the president of Polydor [Ben Mortimer] did an interview and he sent it to me. When I tell the story of Florence + The Machine, I always say it was Ben’s act. But Ben would always be like, “Darcus deserves his flowers for Florence,” and so he’d tell the story—but it’s not out of my mouth.
You quickly rose through the ranks at Island—from A&R Director to Co-President in 2008 and then President in 2013—working with top-tier artists like Amy Winehouse, U2 and Jessie J. What do you think was key to your progression, and how did you approach nurturing talent along the way?
As much as I knew what it meant to be a Black person in my position, I was never gonna be a “Black” A&R person—I was just gonna be a successful music person, A&R person. I learned that and the penny dropped for me. I wasn’t gonna let anybody paint me into a corner, because Black music informed all music. If Beethoven was fuckin’ Black! [Laughs] Do you know what I mean? Everything is from the bass and the drum. If my taste was rooted in Black music and the groove, it’s easy because everybody wants to groove. If your records weren’t grooving, then your records weren’t working. If you looked at Island’s roster and you didn’t know me, you’d go: “That’s not a Black guy who comes from where he’s from and he’s running the label.” I wanted the roster to be colourless, in my point of view. The decade that I was running Island was how I got up in the morning and wanted to be as a human being and that reflected the roster, that reflected in the executives as well.
I always used to say to my Black executives: “Don’t get trapped; be a leader.” But I think everybody wants to be cool in front of their peers. I remember having a conversation with Colin Batsa, who has cornered his market like a fucking G. He will tell you I said, “Let your roster be broad.” He brought in Oh Wonder, who was this alternative pop band, and he brought me KSI because I said I needed an influencer. Influencers are a thing. I loved Colin for those moves, but that wasn’t him. What is him is what he’s doing now. But in the general sense, I wanted my A&Rs to be leaders across everything. Just because you’re Black, that doesn’t mean you just do Black music. So that’s what I wanted for the executives and for Black artists as well—to get them over to the economics of what the crossover looked like.
What are some of the most surprising lessons you’ve learned from working with world-class talent?
The great thing about the music industry, the mad thing about the music industry, is that it lets you bet large sums of money on stuff that might not work just because you’re excited about it. People have a go at record companies and I’m like, “Do you know that we just give money to people just ‘cause it might happen and when it doesn’t happen, you hate us?” We were really successful—I was really successfu—when we just did it and we didn’t overthink stuff, and we were like, “I don’t know, but we love it.” When things would start to go wrong was if you believed it a bit too much, and you think that things are happening just because you are involved. Then you start applying your opinions to stuff. One of my A&R people, Annie, brought me Ed Sheeran. He had won a competition that she put on, and he won the record deal but it was a singles deal and I was like, “Who the hell is this ginger kid?” It was an easy deal to do but I was like, “He’s a bit sixth-formery; I’m not sure that I like his lyrics.”
Ed then went on to sell millions of records and then you sit there and think, “Yeah, that was snobbery and ego on my part.” What I should’ve said was: “Okay, this ginger-headed kid with his little pop songs—I’m not all the way sure, but just do it.” And then I would’ve looked like a genius! [Laughs]. Your opinion is like an arsehole: everyone’s got one. And most artists, when you look at them—whether it’s Chris Martin, whether it’s Ed Sheeran, whether it’s Florence +The Machine, whether it’s Amy—they’re gonna be who they are, with you or without you. A lot of it is to do with—did you get them to like you, and did you pay enough money in the deal? And then there’s moments where you do add value to those things, but sometimes deals are just about how much you pay for them and do you pay more than the other person and do they like you. Some other deals are about—do you have a vision for this? You signed a jazz act and now it’s this; you signed Mumford & Sons when it was that, but now it’s this. Or you sign this Black kid that didn’t say boo to a goose, and he became one of the biggest pop stars of the noughties and had No. 1 hits in America—Taio Cruz. Some things just require different skill sets and different energies.
What’s the one misconception that people have about A&R executives that you wish wasn’t a thing, and what—in your opinion—makes a good A&R?
Everybody who worked with me knew that I was fierce about the A&R process, and that it was your duty to be the lifeblood of the company. I took that stuff very seriously. If you were an A&R person, people would moan about blah blah blah, but then prove you’re not a drain on the company. Once I had the Sugababes, there was not one year that I was a drain on the company—my salary wasn’t a drain on the company. Every year, for decades, I paid my way by the acts that I signed and the money that I earned for the company. I always had the mind of: if I covered my salary, I wasn’t a drain. I would literally do the maths. I was very fierce about what the responsibilities of an A&R person was. Signing, dropping… Dropping was just as important as signing because dropping was realising what you are doing is just not that good, or you’ve done it too early. And consistency, but understanding that it was okay to have a cold snap because we all have cold snaps, but you had to bring it back. The job was to make records and take them to market and be successful, and if they were, you move on to the next one. But at the same time, I wanted a balance of what it was to make records, make the numbers and then do the culture stuff. When I was coming up, I was like “culture, culture, culture…”
—but that doesn’t always pay the bills. I get it.
Right! Lucian Grange was like, “I will turn off the lights in here if you go on about culture one more time.” So the penny dropped: sell a shitload of records and then you can do what you like.
We have to talk about your dad—the late, great broadcaster and activist Darcus Howe. How did your pops influence your early love of music, and are there lessons from him that still guide your career today?
Back then, it was all about protest music, when we were going on marches or the marches were ending up at a place and there’d be a blues dance. As much as I wanted to be in front of the TV on a Thursday to watch Top Of The Pops, I was still listening to Bob Marley, Exodus, Linton Kwesi Johnson—reggae, soca and calypso. I was listening to really great and super-important records from an early age. Lyrically, I was in-tune to highly political and highly racially-charged lyrics at 7, 8, 9 years old. I was already reciting Linton Kwesi Johnson lyrics, “Sonny’s Lettah” and that kind of stuff. I was already tuned in to a lot of music in its early forms—two-tone, ska, The Specials, and their two-tone label. That whole era was all part of the resistance. I had my dad’s name—I had the DNA—but I was also front row at the demonstrations. I was front row in terms of lived history. So I was gonna take a form of activism into my job. If I took the metaphorical petrol bomb out of my activism, and that was me biting my lip or not wanting ‘tump someone down, then I wouldn’t be outside throwing the petrol bomb. I wouldn’t be inside with the metaphorical petrol bomb and getting fired; I’d be inside, activating, not getting fired and being successful.
Show dem!
Basically. I was always aware of that shit. Activism was my success. My dad saw that early doors, and my mum saw that early doors. They would’ve metaphorically bombed Buckingham Palace until I’d got my OBE [laughs]. They were proud when I got that. That’s why they were throwing petrol bombs back in the day, so that I would have a run at life. My dad would always say he's British as much as he was Trinidadain, and you can’t tell me that I’m not British. And this is my thing—I’m gonna go to Buckingham Palace and take my tings dem for my services to music. That’s my form of being Black and being British and now my children have a run at it, too. From being at demonstrations with my dad and ending up the Old Bailey to going to the Palace, it meant something.
You just broke down the reason why getting an OBE (Order of the British Empire) was important to you and the family, but there’s a section of people out there who really don’t agree with the monarchy and certain values of the British empire. What would your response be to them?
A mate of mine on Facebook, who’s got a bit of a community on there, was piping up the other day because it was the Honours list and he said he didn’t understand people who go to the palace to take their things from the king. I wrote in the comments, “I got mines!” He replied, “Yeah, but,” and I was like, “There’s no, ‘Yeah, but.’ If you’re gonna activate, then seriously activate. Don’t do armchair activating.” The ‘70s were different from the ‘80s, and the ‘80s were different from the ‘90s and the 2000s—and it’s different now! So, people had different reasons at different stages. My dad could’ve gone back to Trinidad saying he hated this country, but he’s like, “This is my country. I’m staying here.” If people are telling you you’re not from somewhere, it can become quite bad for your mental, and if you can’t accept where you’re from then it’s “I don’t want this fucking MBE! This is empire,” blah blah blah. Then what? My thing is this country is our country, too. You cannot replace us so, yes, let me get my things! We’ve contributed a lot to this place and so getting this OBE was my reward for my contributions and having to go on those demonstrations with my dad all those years ago for the benefit of our people.
You’ve pretty much done and seen it all, but how does Darcus Beese define success today?
What I’ve realised is success is brilliant and having records that go to No. 1 was a byproduct of what I initially did—just give a fuck about the music. The jazz artist who sold only 100,000 records went and sold 20, 30 million. Tao Cruz, who I picked up because he had an R&B single on the radio in America kind of buzzing, I signed him because of “I Just Wanna Know”. He didn’t have “Break Your Heart” or “Dynamite” at the time. The Sugababes had made “Overload”—an amazing record—but that’s all I knew; I didn’t have “Freak Like Me”, I didn’t have “Round Round”. So that’s where I’m now: giving a fuck about the music again. I worked with Jessie J recently; we got the album [Don’t Tease Me With A Good Time] in the Top 20. It was a stressor, but getting back to the roster of stuff that I’ve got at the moment: Roses Gabor, Parker SEREN and this kid called Jake Murphy, these are artists whose music I just love and are keeping me excited about the future.
Tell us about your new venture, D.A.P.
When I left Warner, I launched Darco Recordings. I didn’t want to call it “Darco Records.” Darco was my dad’s nickname when he was back in Trinidad. When me and Ted [Cockle] hooked up, it developed into Darco Artist Partnerships, and one day someone told me they’d Googled the name and it had already been taken. I always knew it as Darco Artist Partnerships; I hadn’t abbreviated it in my head. A DAP is a fist bump; it also abbreviates Dignity And Pride. So, dignity and pride became a thing and DAP became a thing. The dap fist bump originates from the ‘60s Black power salute that Black servicemen did during the Vietnam war; they couldn’t do the Black power salute, so it went to the dap, which was the secret handshake.
I did not know that!
Basically, it was: “I’ve got your back!” And that became the mission statement. It’s dignity and pride—as we show up, how do we keep our dignity and pride? The Black servicemen used to do the dap before they got onto the battlefield, like: “I’ve got your back.” So that was the essence of our partnership with the artists. It’s not a record deal—we have a partnership. People say it’s 360; we’ll do your management—no, we partner up. I don’t own the masters; we license them for a bit, but the artists own their own masters and we license it from them. We resource them to go to market, just like a major would. When I used to run Island Records, Jessie J turned up because she was doing a lot of stuff on YouTube—she was one of the first YouTube stars. So I’m sitting in that sweet spot of developing and having a partnership with these artists, to get to a point when major record labels will come. But when they do the deal, they’ve got the leverage. I think deals will start to develop into partnership deals because artists will be like, “I’m not doing a shitty, royalty-based deal.” I think the majors are finding out how they operate in this new landscape, where they don’t have control over the levers. And the independent sector is what’s going to be the most interesting, exciting wild west with AI, where the rules are rewritten.
People used to complain about young kids from the ghetto using a sampler to “steal” music, like: “Why don’t these people just learn how to play an instrument?” But the sampler was our instrument. That’s what we learned how to play and make these records. They’re sampling basslines. What’s gonna happen to the bass player? The bass player will be just fine. He got money for being sampled, now everyone’s cool. I think there’s gonna be a wild west with AI, and there’s gonna be young kids who are just excited about technology, repurposing it. The second part of the book, the second part of this interview, and the follow-up documentary is to be made. I’m in collaboration and meeting mode. If you’re not building communities and places for people to commune, if records aren’t made for people to play at clubs, if club records aren made but there are no clubs, you can’t have one without the other. It’s like the chicken and the egg: you’ve got to make the chicken, and you’ve got to make the egg. If we get back to that, the AI, the algorithm won’t reach live. I’m excited about the next 10 years because I think where we all could be if we all do it for the right reasons.
Darcus Beese: In His Own Words is out now.