GOING PLACES
Local musician signs distribution deal with American company
Glace Bay hip-hop artist sees career start to take off.
Glace Bay hip-hop artist Mitchell Bailey may have his eye on an international music career but on Thursday morning, he had his mind on more important matters than talking to a nosy reporter.
“Sorry about getting back to you a little late — I was visiting my grandmother,” the 19-yearold said, adding he now was on his way to a voice training class.
Keeping those vocal cords limber is probably a good idea. Bailey has just signed a deal with U.S. distributor Forbes Music Entertainment that he hopes will bring his music to more people around the world.
On their website, Forbes describes itself as one of the largest music distribution companies in the United States “with an audience of over 10 billion weekly listeners and over 240,000 music contacts.”
Bailey has been seriously involved in music for the past four years, even performing at the prestigious South By Southwest conference in Texas and has performed in Atlanta and Miami. Although he’s released singles, he’s now completing the work on an album that he hopes will be released by early to mid-July.
He came across the distribution company on the web and sent them a biography and some of his music. Within hours, they were in touch.
“I found I had a missed call from New York and I didn’t think too much about it because I was like, who from New York was calling me, I just didn’t put two and two together,” he says. “I got another call at like 8 o’clock that night — I picked it up and we proceed to talk for like two hours which was good because at the same time, I’m getting mentored about the music industry that I wasn’t previously aware of — I’m learning a lot and at the same time being able to push my music into a more global market.”
While he has his own company, Bud’s Entertainment, which he runs with Sydney Mines video director Brendon Lyle, which already promotes their work, all the extra help promoting his album is needed in today’s music industry.
“I can focus more on being an artist and making good content. Then I can put it out and release it and then they can pick it up and distribute it through all their markets and all their channels.”
This should help him broaden his fanbase and hopefully land more lucrative gigs, especially in the U.S.
“It’s definitely a long time coming and I’m excited to share the music with everybody that supports me. Hopefully new supporters will come along with all the business we’re doing now. I’m a rapper but I’m branching into more of a songwriting role and being a lot more melodic in my music. This album will be more experimental and more musically driven than all of my previous releases. It’s definitely stepping outside the box for me.”
Bailey tries to listen to at least
one new album every day so he can learn from others.
“I’m always hungry to hear new sounds and new ways of making music. Whether its hiphop or R&B or pop music you would hear on the radio, I draw influences from everything and try to incorporate it into my own sound and my own music. At the
end of the day, the music comes before absolutely everything regardless of what business ventures we decide to go into — if you don’t have quality music, it’s kind of hard to push it in the first place. That’s always my top priority.”