Joe Kay is due on a flight to Hawaii in a couple of hours when he calls. The 26-year-old curator and Beats 1 Radio host juggles preparation for the trip with recounting his journey to becoming a DJ for Apple’s radio project, all while his daughter vies for his attention in the background.
As well as his job at Beats 1 (a project Zane Lowe said was “like a three-month-old baby. They make a lot of noise … and they shit everywhere”) Kay is also the co-founder and head of A&R for Soulection, a Los Angeles indie label and creative hive for genre-bending musicians. In only a few years, he’s wrangled one of the most eclectic talent pools in independent music, taking the grooves of hip-hop and R&B production and distilling them through electronica and house music.
Kay first became a music curator in 2008 as a DJ and podcaster exploring sound and promoting experimental producers through his Illvibes series. He started Soulection three years later with co-founders Andre Power and Guillaume Bonte (who has since left the label). Soulection has primarily become a stable for beatmakers operating on the fringes of more traditional sound. There are no predetermined guidelines for being on the label, but it has a unique feel, and its artists all occupy similar creative space. “I just look for people doing their own thing, making music that stands out,” says Kay. “When you hear it, you know.”
Soulection producer Sango, who landed credits on Tinashe’s debut album, Aquarius, last year and performed a Boiler Room set at MoMA PS1 earlier this year, has been around long enough to have seen Kay’s vision through. “When I first heard about Soulection, it was simply an idea: this was something that will help represent artists like myself. I wanted to be a part of Soulection because it felt like a home base for my sound.”
The Soulection mainstays have been popping up on festival tickets and in production credits all over for some time now: Producers like LAKIM, Ta-Ku, Abjo, ESTA and Mr Carmack. Most operate with sounds you would associate with the roots of rap and R&B production, but unlike the typical producers of those genres, who often play second fiddle to vocalists, these producers are front and centre – making multi-genre, instrumental-based music similar to that of Flying Lotus and Tokimonsta, things like Ta-Ku’s album, Songs To Break Up To, and Mr Carmack’s recent collaboration with singer Kehlani, All In.
After building this hub for producers and DJs, Kay and Power have become emissaries of a new music community existing mostly on streaming platforms such as SoundCloud and Bandcamp. Kay uses Soulection radio to promote artists who almost exclusively exist in these spaces, mixing in productions from unknown artists like Ordnry Yngstr, a 14-year-old producer from Ohio, with B-sides from Erykah Badu and Usher. He is often the first to new sounds, long before A&Rs at majors, and he sees his Beats 1 radio show as an acknowledgement of a shifting tide. “Record labels know that the artists have the power now,” he says. “They’ve gotta come to people like us.” He calls these people “consultants”.
Kay hopes to one day subvert majors entirely by growing his Soulection label into a suitable alternative. “All these big labels care about is money,” he says. “They don’t care about what’s real.” All the members of Soulection seem to be wary of majors. Sango echos this sentiment: “I just fear that the bigger labels may attempt to change up to emulate a Soulection-style label. I always tell people to protect the sound.” Long term, Kay wants to start a Soulection festival that would feature artists on the label’s roster (there are plans for an event next year). Short term, he wants to build stronger infrastructure on the business side, becoming, in his words, a “real” label. That means expanding the brand.
“We’re looking to add more vocalists,” Kay says. “We want to expand our sound. The next step is finding the next Kendrick [Lamar]. The next Drake. The next Kehlani.”
The first step in that direction has been partnering with surging DC rapper GoldLink, a genre migrant who mixes electronica and hip-hop with a pliant flow. With a style that hedges toward the avant garde, GoldLink has quickly become one of the most promising new faces in rap, which is ironic because for quite sometime fans had no clue what he looked like. He was an enigma surfacing on blogs until he ended up on the cover of XXL magazine’s Freshman 2015 issue in June. He’s one of the frontrunners in a new class of rappers testing the limits of what hip-hop can be and do. His sound spans several different genres of dance music, all underlined by infectious soul and funk grooves, and its sound-melding feels remarkably lively and progressive.
When asked about perhaps being a model for Soulection’s “Sound of Tomorrow” tagline, GoldLink implies that that future is far closer than we think. “I think it’s low key the sound of today,” he says. “You know, like, Skrillex and Diplo made Jack U, which did the Bieber album [Purpose], which is actually amazing. Mainstream music is starting to sound more garage dance pop.”
More than just an artist with similar vision or a compatible sound, GoldLink is a rapidly developing personality, one the label can rally behind: producers tend to be understated, used to playing the background; rappers are showman, and GoldLink is a star in the making equipped to represent the Soulection brand well on a more visible scale. His debut is the most open he’s ever been, detailing bits of his personal life. He says it’s almost a predecessor to The God Complex in a way because the events explored on this album turned him into the artist that made that one.
“The God Complex was almost like an art piece. It was really cohesive in its own right,” he says. “I think it’s important to see a young black man becoming more mature and growing up in a society where he doesn’t have to feel like he’s angry anymore. That’s a blessing. Seeing that a black kid can be a stereotype and not become a stereotype.”
GoldLink has become a voice for Soulection and a marketable act on the indie scene, but the strength of the label still lies in the creative spirit at its core. Soulection has quickly become one of the most viable indie properties in the States by simply encouraging eclecticism.
The tight-knit community has provided both creative freedom and a friendly competition that keeps the artists sharp and looking to innovate. It’s fostered genuine relationships. You can hear it in the way GoldLink talks about the producers or the way Joe describes what the label’s become. If you ask anyone at Soulection which of their colleagues inspire them to be better, you’re liable to get a revolving door of answers. For Sango, it’s Kay, Power, The Whooligan, and Jacqueline Schneider, the label’s Director of Communications. For LAKIM, it’s Ta-ku, the “man of many hats”. For Ta-Ku, it’s the entire team: “My answers seem so cliche, but everyone really pushes me to never stop thinking outside the box.” The word that gets thrown around a lot is family and it’s easy to see how the atmosphere nurtured by Kay and Power can breed so much great music.
The label has tapped into the hyperconnectivity of the internet age, which has blurred the lines of commerce and sound. ESTA thinks genre barriers are dissolving with Soulection leading the charge: “I think genres will be non-existent [in the future]. The fusion of genres and everything coming together so often now is only going lead to more experimentation. At least I hope so.”
Soulection Radio on Beats 1 airs every Saturday from 10pm to 12am ET
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