Rob Stone, master marketer of hip-hop, is dead at 55
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Monday, November 25, 2024


Rob Stone, master marketer of hip-hop, is dead at 55
A photo provided by Jonathan Mannion shows Rob Stone, a founder of the influential music magazine The Fader who also bridged the worlds of hip-hop and the Fortune 500 with his innovative marketing agency. Stone died on June 24, 2024, in Mount Kisco, N.Y. He was 55. (Jonathan Mannion via The New York Times)

by Alex Williams



NEW YORK, NY.- Rob Stone, who as a founder of the music magazine The Fader and the brand-strategy firm Cornerstone Agency bridged the sounds of the streets and the corporate suites, giving early exposure to rappers such as Kanye West and Drake while brokering lucrative endorsements at a time when corporate America was still resistant to hip-hop, died June 24 in Mount Kisco, New York. He was 55.

His longtime professional partner, Jon Cohen, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was lung cancer.

Early in his music business career, first at SBK Records and later at Arista, Stone was charged with finding exposure and radio airplay for new artists. He began to establish himself as a hip-hop insider, working with performers includoing the Notorious B.I.G. and Craig Mack, as well as with Sean Combs, whose label, Bad Boy Records, had entered into a joint venture with Arista.

Before long, Stone decided to set out on his own, and in 1996 he started Cornerstone with Steve Rifkind, the founder of the hip-hop label Loud Records. Rifkind left the agency after a year and a half and was replaced by Cohen, who had also worked at SBK and had been Stone’s best friend since middle school on Long Island.

Stone and Cohen went on to create eye-opening campaigns for brands like Sprite, Converse and Johnnie Walker that leveraged their relationships with labels and with new artists, who in the early days were all too sensitive to charges of selling out.

In the early days, it was no easy feat to bring hip-hop artists to the attention of brand representatives at Fortune 500 companies. “It’s crazy, because not many people realize that back then we had to fight and work our way up to earn respect,” Stone said in a 2015 interview with Forbes. “Hip-hop wasn’t invited. We had to kick the door down.”

Over the years, the agency scored a string of hits — sometimes literally. For a 2007 Nike campaign to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the company’s Air Force 1 sneaker, long a hip-hop staple, the agency brought West, Nas and KRS-One together to record “Classic (Better Than I’ve Ever Been),” which was released as a single and performed at an anniversary party televised on MTV2.

A remix by DJ Premier, which also featured Rakim, was nominated for a Grammy Award for best rap performance by a duo or group.

By that point, Stone and Cohen, who founded The Fader in 1999, were already a force in music journalism.

Their magazine, printed on heavy stock paper and brimming with sumptuous photos, unearthed the latest music and fashion bubbling up in hip-hop and alternative rock. The Fader, which its owners strove to keep independent from their marketing operations, has been credited with giving artists such as Drake, Nicki Minaj and West, now known as Ye, their first magazine covers.

In a period when the distinctions between rock and hip-hop were starting to break down, The Fader nudged along the growing cross-pollination among genres. The cover of a 1999 issue featured Reverend Run of Run-DMC, Zack de la Rocha from the fiery political rock band Rage Against the Machine and DJ Premier of the hip-hop duo Gang Starr.

“Zack and Premier met at that shoot and went on tour together after,” Stone told Forbes. “It showed people the reach hip-hop could have, and how much further there was to take the culture.”

The Fader’s influence was soon felt beyond its pages. It established a beachhead at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, with a festival-within-a-festival known as the Fader Fort. Housed in a huge tent covered with corporate logos, it hosted breakthrough performances by the likes of West, M.I.A. and Amy Winehouse.

“In its 10 years,” Ben Sisario wrote in The New York Times in 2011, the Fader Fort “has grown from a hotel chill-out to one of the biggest productions in town.”

All along, Cornerstone was trying to tap the spirit of young musicians grasping for stardom. In a notable campaign for Converse that began in 2011, the agency created Converse Rubber Tracks, a state-of-the-art recording studio built from scratch in a Brooklyn, New York, warehouse that local bands could use free of charge.

Stone told Fast Company magazine in 2017 that when he and Cohen were working to establish Cornerstone, “we didn’t understand the agency game” and never tried to play it.

“We don’t care what everybody else is doing,” he said, “and as long as we can deliver for our clients and have this connection to culture, that’s what’s paramount to everything we do.”

Robert Alan Stone was born July 12, 1968, in Brooklyn, the youngest of two children of Charles Hitzig Stone and Rita (Dolgin) Stone. His father was an entrepreneur in the trucking and warehouse business, and his mother worked as a sales director for an import company.

His family moved to Cedarhurst, New York, on Long Island, when he was a child. As a student at Lawrence High School, he was a soccer and basketball standout. He also fostered a growing love of rap music, taping shows by influential New York disc jockeys such as DJ Red Alert.

“I realized that hip-hop culture could move the world,” he told Forbes, “because it was moving me.”

Soon after graduating from Albany State University in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in business, he followed Cohen, who had recently taken a job at SBK Records, the label founded by industry heavyweight Charles Koppelman, financier Stephen Swid and Martin Bandier, another music executive, known for hits by Vanilla Ice, Wilson Phillips and Jesus Jones.

After jumping to Arista, Stone became close to Christopher Wallace, the young rapper from Brooklyn known as the Notorious B.I.G., and traveled around the country with him trying to break him into the mainstream. “We spent a lot of time in cars going to hip-hop mix shows at 2 in the morning, just me and him,” Stone said in a 2015 interview with Billboard.

Stone is survived by his mother; his wife, Lauren (Gonzales) Stone; his twin sons, Jett and Charlie; his daughter, Mika; and his sister, Michelle Stone.

Stone learned he had cancer last August but continued to work until the final weeks of his life, Cohen said. It was not his first brush with cancer; when he was 20, he survived Hodgkin’s disease. The experience, he told Forbes, “gave me a heightened sense of gratitude and belief.”

“When you’re consistently going into radiation,” he said, “there are no meetings or business decisions that are more important than surviving.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

July 5, 2024

The wide, wide world of Judy Chicago

Audrey Flack, creator of vibrant photorealist art, dies at 93

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen opens a new presentation of its collection

'Mapping the 60s. Art Histories from the mumok Collections' opens in Vienna

Salvador Dalí's iconic Mae West Lips Sofa goes on display at NGV International

San Francisco's arts institutions are slowly building back

The Beatles and the Beach Boys lead Heritage's Music Memorabilia & Concert Posters Auction

The man behind the Minions

Solo exhibition of new work by Lorna Robertson on view at Alison Jacques

Kröller-Müller Museum restores '56 Barrels' by Christo

parrasch heijnen's first solo exhibition with Nabilah Nordin to open in Los Angeles

One of comicdom's most (in)famous covers, 'Black Cat Mystery' No. 50, scares up a record $840,000 at Heritage Auctions

How a patriotic painting became the Internet's soap box

Paul Theroux on necessary solitude, risks and the joy of writing

Niclas Larsson is ready to shoot more close-ups

The Phillips Collection presents 'Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage'

On the Jersey Shore, there's a flag for everything

Ben Hunter and Offer Waterman announce co-representation of Tess Jaray

Paul Smith's Foundation announces inaugural Director

The Dutch LAM museum adds flavour to art viewing experiences

Casino Luxembourg presents 'My Last Will', a project by M+M

Chinese coins celebrating scientific inventions lead Heritage's $8.4 million HKINF World & Ancient Coins Auction

Rob Stone, master marketer of hip-hop, is dead at 55

The Future is Furry: How AI is Reshaping Anthropomorphic Art Creation

The Evolution and Appeal of Online Casinos

Capturing Emotion: Techniques for Creating Expressive Portraits

Master the Game: Top Scrabble Tips and Strategies to Elevate Your Play

9 Must-Have Digital Art Tools for Students

Creative Mixed-Media Art Ideas for Your Living Room

Hidden Gems and Iconic Vistas: 10 Breathtaking NYC Photo Spots Off the Beaten Path

Strategies for Students to Make the Most of Online Art Communities

Exploring Florence: A Guide to the Uffizi Art Museum

In Their Shoes: The Importance of Role Reversal in Customer Service Training.




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Houston Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง
Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful