New York, NY. (Top40 Charts/ Sunset Records) - Sunset Records Group (SRG), one of the world's largest independent music company, has created Sunset Urban to offer a full slate of distribution, promotion, marketing and digital services for the independent urban music marketplace. In this new venture and division at SRG, Sunset's Urban indie music group will offer music artists these services through SRG's independent distribution arm. The new label group will provide additional resources to developing urban artists within SRG's major indie label system, including its distributed labels like Alamo and Tropical.
The label will be based in New York, and there will be satellite offices in New Jersey. Darnell Hicks and Lydell Russell have been brought in to run the Sunset Urban music division at SRG. Both new staff appointees at Sunset Urban will report to the head of the Sunset Records Group of Distributed Labels and Chairman of Sunset Holding Co., Don Lichterman. Russell and Hicks will also work very closely with the head of Sunset Music Publishing, Rejean Germain. The two new staffers at Sunset will also advise Germain and Lichterman on strategies related to Sunset's urban initiatives.
Russell and Hicks will bring The Fly Boyz, along with The Regime and Isaiah, with them to SRG. The label group has now reassigned many licensed products over to the Sunset Urban catalog. Those branded titles include the most popular Music Videos on DVD Series that now boasts more than 25 DVD titles by urban music artists such as Jay Z., P. Diddy, Notorious B.I.G., Cam'Ron, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, 2 Pac along with more DVD titles of live concerts by popular urban music acts, Ray Charles, Kevin Hart, 50 Cent, The Temptations, Deon Cole, The Dells and Mark Simmons.
Hicks and Russell comes to SRG after meeting in college where they performed together in the popular acappella singing group, Legato, and the singing group, Kalaj. Russell had recorded and been the staff A&R representative with the Independent label Skirt Records and Hicks won an awared for best arrangement at the New York Acapella competition at that time. As the founder of Darn / Ly Music, Hicks and Russell are best known for working with top producers Teddy Riley, Rodney Jerkins, and Roy Hamilton and they helped launch the careers of major artists and producers alike including gold and multi platinum artists No Question (Ruff Nation Records), Grace Little (Philly International Records), Billy Crawford (Jive Records), and Tiffany Evans (Sony Records).
"Considering how the music business is thriving today, there needs to be distribution channels in place for all styles of independent music and from all types of communities, said Lichterman. "Darnell's and Lydell's experience in the urban independent world are key as we grow the SRG Distribution system into even more of a fully-serviced operational label group". Continued Lichterman, "Lydell has a knack for spotting and nurturing great talent, particularly at the grassroots level and Darnell is one of the most creative people I have ever worked with to date. "Both Lydell's and Darnell's experience and great ears for music in this area will be an amazing resource for the Music Publishing Division at Sunset and for the entire group of distributed labels at Sunset," said Germain. "Don's and my vision are for Lydell, Darnell and his team to also work with all of SRG's US labels on developing urban artist projects."
"I am really excited to come and build this new urban-styled music division and work with the labels within Sunset" says Darnell Hicks from a satellite office based in New Jersey. Hicks, goes on to say that he is "very excited to develop up and coming artists throughout SRG system." Lydell Russell says from the same office in NJ, that "SRG understands the importance of supporting independent urban music artists throughout the world." And, we will provide great A&R for acquisitions to help expand Sunset's capabilities,". Sunset has some of the best indie signings distributed through its system and this is just a great opportunity to show Don and Rejean what we can offer them right away from day one. It's also great to be working closely with Darnell once again and we can't wait to start working with Don Lichterman and Rejean Germain who two of the most progressive and innovative music people in the music industry."
