‘Being at every party does not mean that you’re the best executive. Not being at the party and actually cranking out hits means you’re the best executive.’
MBW’s Inspiring Women series profiles female executives who have risen through the ranks of the business, highlighting their career journey – from their professional breakthrough to the senior responsibilities they now fulfill. Inspiring Women is supported by Virgin Music Group.
Across more than three decades in the music industry, Tina Davis has worked with some of the biggest names in US hip hop and R&B, including Jay-Z, OutKast, Macy Gray, DMX, Chris Brown and Ne-Yo.
In her role as President at EMPIRE, she’s now using her storied experience to nurture the next generation of executives and artists, which include the likes of J Hus and Shaboozey.
Davis was set on a career in music after watching the ‘80s film Krush Groove, which is loosely based on the inception of Def Jam Recordings.
She says: “When I saw LL Cool J bust in to try and get signed, that’s when I realized, that’s exactly what I like. I want to sign talent. I was a hip hop head at that point because it had permeated throughout the country.
“When I saw them sign him, him going into action and the whole experience, that’s what drew me to Def Jam, that’s what drew me to Russell Simmons and that’s what drew me to A&R.”
After initially studying to become an anchor and reporter, Davis left to pursue her dream. A job in radio led to joining Chrysalis Music Publishing before Davis landed her dream job at Def Jam, where she stayed for 11 years.
Her standout memories of that time reflect the storied, decadent ‘halycon’ days of the music industry. “There were so many great highlights, outside of the fact that we were the purveyors of taste and the mecca of hip hop,” she remembers.
“We were all very young in our ‘20s, we had very large expense accounts and credit cards to be able to move around the city and do everything that we needed.”
Perks of the job aside, other highlights include the concert for The Show soundtrack (featuring Snoop Dogg, Slick Rick, 2Pac, Dr. Dre and Mary J. Blige, amongst many others) and facilitating collaborations, which was a fairly new trend at the time, while doing the music for films like Rush Hour and The Nutty Professor.
After discovering a then 13-year-old Chris Brown while working at Def Jam, where she had been elevated to SVP of A&R, Davis left the label to manage him via her own company, Phase Too, and sign a deal with Jive Records.
In 2018, Davis joined EMPIRE, where she’s been spending the last seven years helping to build out the A&R department and increasing the company’s headcount from 50 people to 250 around the world.
Here, we chat to her about lessons learned across her career, the state of hip hop today, advice she’s giving to the next generation of music business execs, and much more besides.
Tell me about your biggest lessons during your time at Def Jam.
Absolutely do not tell the guys your idea because they will run to your boss and give them your idea. Pitch your own idea to your boss. I wanted to have a sounding board so I pitched the idea of creating an imprint called Def Soul to my friend and as soon as I finished, he ran to Lyor Cohen and pitched it. The only thing he did was change it to Def Songs.
I wanted it to be called Def Soul because at that time, hip-hop could only be played once or twice an hour at a radio station.
Because we were iconic and known for the turntable arm on our artwork, every time our vinyl would go to radio, they would automatically assume it’s rap so they wouldn’t put it on for an hour.
I found that Montell Jordan and a few others were having some of those issues and I wanted to create Def Soul so that radio stations and programmers would know this is R&B coming from Def Jam and not hip-hop.
You had a long stint in management at Phase Too, working closely with Chris Brown. What did you learn during that time about what makes a good manager?
A lot of what I learned came from working at Def Jam because we were like management to the artists as well. We weren’t considered management, we weren’t paid as managers, but we played a very strong part in management.
What I learned, which I applied to Chris and the other artists I managed at the time, is that: one, everybody’s not the same; two, you have to engulf yourself into the sound, the vision and the direction of the talent you’re working with, but more importantly, you have to manage the people who are going to work with your clients.
So yes, you can be the manager and you have a road manager, a tour agent, a publicist, an accountant, the business manager, and you have to manage them as well as manage that artist. When you’re putting on tours, you have to manage all of those people, plus all of the people that are on the road.
For the vast majority of your career, you’ve been working during a storied period for US hip-hop. What do you make of the scene today?
It’s going through a transition period, which happens every decade or so. Being in the business for a long time, you see the ebb and flow of music and art, and I feel like it’s going through that normal transition to better itself, to change and fuse with different genres. Country and hip-hop are distant cousins right now.
I do see true and incredible musicians starting to get better shine. At one period, people were loving to just hear production on record and not necessarily caring whether or not there is a live instrument. Now, the younger demographic, who are seeking new sounds and new music at all times, are looking for the talent of a musician, singer or entertainer.
“There’s a big difference between a star and an entertainer and the music will reflect that want for rap that has a little more depth to it.”
There’s a big difference between a star and an entertainer and the music will reflect those changes and that want for rap that has a little more depth to it than some of the other things that may have come. We just need a little more depth, love and caring. That’s why Afrobeats and Amapiano have had a good chance to come in, because we were in a space where the love, fun, happiness and togetherness wasn’t being celebrated as much as it is now.
You’ve spoken about mentoring being part of your role at Empire. What kind of advice are you giving up-and-coming executives about what it takes to be successful in the music industry?
Because of the instant gratification of social media and everything, especially with AI coming, one of the biggest things is to be patient.
You can’t take the elevator up, you need to take the steps. If you don’t take the steps to the top, you’re going to find yourself falling pretty fast because you didn’t understand and learn. We have an intern and I tell her, ‘Master every single thing you’re doing. I don’t care if you’re just putting lyrics together for a song, master that. If it’s credits and you’re doing A&R admin, master A&R admin, if you want to end up doing sync or A&R, you’re going to need it.
‘Study, learn, figure out what it is, what it takes. For some of these incredible marketing campaigns, find out the intention behind them. Be patient enough to give yourself the time to learn and master these things so that by the time you get to the top, you know what you’re doing, and you know when someone is not doing what they need to do.’
What’s the best career advice that you’ve ever been given and who did that come from?
One was from a guy named Ernie Singleton, who said, ‘Don’t ever apply for a job. Just work so hard in this industry that people notice you and they come and ask you if you would like to work with them.
When you start looking for jobs, they’ll give you what they want to give you. But if you are working so hard, and your hard work speaks for itself, they’ll be obliged to give you more than you ever imagined.’
Lyor Cohen [pictured] always told me, and this is something that I share every day, ‘Don’t leave a stone unturned’.
What is your approach to A&R and how do you get the best out of the creatives that you’ve worked with historically and continue to work with today?
A lot of A&R people don’t realize that the job actually entails psychology and sociology. If you look at it from a scientific perspective, you’ll start to realize and learn how to move artists, music, the energy or mood in the room.
It’s important that you spend time with the artist. You have to understand their vision and try to evangelize it or create the direction they’d like to go in. But you have to hear them out. You have to be with them a long time to really understand, or even, for that matter, to feel, to be a vessel that can actually figure out where that artist is supposed to go.
It’s not our plan, it’s not my plan, it’s not the artist’s plan, it is a higher being’s plan. So if it’s a higher plan, and it’s about creativity and art, no one can control art; art is going to be as artful as it wants!
It’s a matter of you understanding that artist, understanding their mind and where they’re at in that moment when you’re in a session, understanding where they came from and what’s going on in the world. All of it affects where the consumer is putting their money, what they’re thinking about, what they care about.
“if you’re trying to do what you hear on the radio now or trying to sign an artist that is currently winning right now, you’re late.”
Also, if you’re trying to do what you hear on the radio now or trying to sign an artist that is currently winning right now, you’re late. You have to be six months to a year ahead of where music is today.
Every artist that got nominated for the 2025 Grammys Best New Artist is a prime example of that. They were doing this for 10 years before music finally caught up. And when it caught up, we had one of the most amazing best new artist categories in a long time, which is why they had to allow them all to perform.
We had Doechii, Teddy Swims, Raye, Shaboozey, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Benson Boone, and all of them were incredible. You just have to figure out what roadblocks and what stepping stones you need to remove and put in place to allow music to get to that point.
Is there anything that gets overlooked in artist development today that was standard practice when you started?
Yes, artist development, period. That is the biggest thing. It’s the thing that separates the superstars, like a Beyoncé or a Chris Brown, a Diana Ross or an Elvis Presley. They studied, they trained, they did the Chitlin’ Circuit. They did vocal training.
Whitney Houston, rest in peace, had vocal lessons. That woman can sing us under a table, but she was still getting vocal lessons and making sure she had someone there to keep her on her game, keep her sharp, teach her how to work around the aging of her vocal cords and to have vocal stamina.
You see artists on stage, two hours in, and they can’t even breathe. Or rappers walking back and forth with no excitement. That’s not entertainment. That’s just rapping. There is something that is missing.
There are so many artists that are huge on TikTok and social media, and even streaming-wise, they stream more than some of the more talented people, I have to say. But when you put them on stage, people only know a piece of their song because that’s what’s on TikTok, or they’re boring, they don’t really understand how to be an entertainer.
Right now, the star bar is very low and the difference between being a star and an entertainer that can sell out stadiums is artist development.
What’s the most exciting development happening in today’s music business?
The most exciting and scary development is AI, I think for everyone. No one really knows how to react to it yet.
When people are being outliers, stepping out and showing that they are trying to embrace it, people are attacking them for it when it’s coming and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s a matter of you trying to figure out how it can work best for you and with you.
It’s exciting to see what’s going to come from it. Obviously there are going to be bumps in the road. There’s going to be a time in which they’re going to find that AI is too much in the art world and they’re going to have to dial it back a little bit in certain areas.
What would you change about the music industry and why?
Every culture has a sound and I would love for us to celebrate that and hire the people who do that. Not send someone from America to Africa to run African music, or send someone to Asia that’s not from Asia or not of the ethnicity or culture to go and actually do it.
“You can’t teach someone culture.”
Even in America, you have people who aren’t of the hip-hop culture, but because they know how to do research, see numbers and can read Luminate, they know what’s going to work or what’s not. But that’s not the be-all and end-all. For it to grow, expand and include the different nuances of every culture, you have to have someone in that place who can give you that and tell you that, not someone who just studied it well. You can’t teach someone culture.
If you could go back to the beginning of your career and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?
Fight harder for what you deserve. Even though I’ve been very accomplished in my career, there are times that I should have gotten more than I accepted.
I hear my partners and friends constantly saying, ‘Man, these kids want something way before it’s time, they always want something. I can’t believe they come to work for five minutes and they’re fighting to be the President of the company’.
“Fight harder for what you deserve.”
Part of it is annoying. It is like, come on, slow down, you haven’t even done anything. You’ve only been here three months and you’re complaining that the guy who has been here for four years has more work and better clients than you. You’ve got to get to that point. But at the same time, them fighting for what they want is exciting and I love it.
Is there anything you’ve never been asked in an interview that you wish someone would ask you?
I don’t know if it has so much to do with music, but I will say it does affect culture.
I feel like in African American culture, people don’t realize that the material things that we spend our money on, like you get a deal, then you go get a home, a car, a chain and you go get diamonds. That is not building generational wealth. In fact, the system is set up for those people to spend their money that way so that they’re not building generational wealth.
Everyone has the option. So at this point, it’s up to the people who chase that. And it’s not just African Americans, it’s urban culture I should say. They chase that as opposed to putting their money into art or into things that will appreciate, into homes.
You get a check from the label, put half of it up for taxes and spend the rest on new homes. So let’s say your record doesn’t work on the next album, you have homes so you have money coming in that you can lean on. I wish the mentality of the urban community would adjust and learn a little bit more about ways to build generational wealth.
That ties into what you were saying earlier about the social media age and instant gratification. There does seem to be a loss of values associated with the proliferation of platforms like Instagram…
Yes, 100%. I did it too. I was young and at Def Jam, I was making a lot of money. I spent a lot of money on expensive bags and shoes, trying to keep up with the Joneses and being in the mix. This industry pushes you toward that.
They look at what you have on and what you’re wearing, but that’s about the stars. It’s not necessarily about the executives. I want the executives to realize, Hey, guess what, you don’t have to have all that expensive stuff. That’s just part of entertainment. Being at every party does not mean that you’re the best executive. Not being at the party and actually cranking out hits means you’re the best executive,
The employees right now want to be as ‘fly’ as the artist, which drives me nuts. They want to have what the artists have. But there’s a differentiation between an executive and an artist that people need to recognize. And right now, you can’t tell sometimes.
Back in the day, you could tell between myself and the artist when we were walking down the street. Now, sometimes the executive has spent more money on what they look like than the artists that they’re working with.
Virgin Music Group is the global independent music division of Universal Music Group, which brings together UMG’s label and artist service businesses including Virgin and Ingrooves.
