In late July, two dozen employees gathered at the Love Renaissance office and studio space in Castleberry Hill for an all-hands meeting. Acknowledging the music company’s growth and need for a more corporate structure over the last three years, LVRN has been holding the company meetings once or twice yearly, flying in employees from Los Angeles, Nigeria and London.
For the most part, the meetings follow a standard all-hands structure: Various departments give presentations about the work that is their current focus, and company executives set future goals and intentions. But there’s one element of LVRN’s all-hands that defies the norm: Many of the employees listen intently to LVRN’s business while smoking a hookah. Its executives speak frequently about how the company grounded in Atlanta’s music culture is maturing and diversifying, but it’s clearly not at the expense of its easygoing, youthful ethos.
Founded by five Atlanta residents — Tunde Balogun, Sean Famoso, Justice Baiden, Carlon Ramong and Junia Abaidoo — in 2012 while they were attending Georgia State University, LVRN has become an innovative leader in the city’s music scene and beyond, thanks to its roster of label and management clients.
As an independent label, the company has helped artists such as Atlanta’s 6lack and Summer Walker achieve massive chart and streaming success. As a management firm, the group has worked with Atlanta rapper Baby Tate as well as Canadian R&B duo DVSN. Today, with more than a decade of industry experience and a proven track record of cultivating star talent, the founders say they’re pushing to solidify their success, shaping a bona fide business that can thrive regardless of their involvement.
A $25 million investment and $100 million valuation from the holding company MUSIC last year has added fuel to LVRN’s already-revving expansion plans. A Billboard magazine story about the deal included a telling quote in its headline from a MUSIC executive about LVRN: “Young and Seasoned Is Really Hard to Find.”
From Nashville, Tennessee, to London to Lagos, Nigeria, LVRN has added international artists to its label and management rosters, all while ideating on how to grow the business beyond music, too.
Credit: Courtesy of LVRN.
Credit: Courtesy of LVRN.
The wooing of country singer Tanner Adell is illustrative of the energetic way the company operates.
Before she was featured on Beyoncé’s cover of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” for the singer’s latest album “Cowboy Carter,” Adell was already looking to expand the narrative about Black women in country music. The biracial singer had started making the rounds on social media for her single “Buckle Bunny,” a braggadocios, trap-infused country anthem that found her likening herself to “Beyoncé with a lasso.” She was an independent artist, after splitting from Columbia Records the previous year, when she was approached for the coveted feature alongside fellow Black country singers Tiera Kennedy, Reyna Roberts and Brittney Spencer.
Adell is the latest label signing for LVRN, marking the company’s entry into country music following its efforts to take on other genres such as pop and Amapiano behind artists such as U.K. singer Äyanna and South Africa’s TxC, respectively.
“We’ve always been known as the R&B label, which is fine,” CEO Balogun says. “Now we’re in our second phase of the company.”
Breaking down cultural barriers in Nashville — a place much closer to home — felt like a natural next step for the executives.
The CEO says the company learned Adell was looking for a new label home through her attorney. LVRN, he says, was immediately interested and set out to impress the rising singer-songwriter. That included renting a billboard featuring a photo of the singer — accompanied by the message “Tanner Adell is the next big thing in country. Sponsored by your biggest fans” — on the road to the Stagecoach Festival in Indio, California, where Adell was performing in late April. Then the executives showed up to watch the show. They also made a 40-slide presentation for the singer and her management team to demonstrate that they understood her artistic vision and goals.
Atlanta rapper Baby Tate, who is co-managed by Quinn Goydish and LVRN, says she values how hard the company has worked to make her feel cared about since she signed with its management division in 2022. “The work ethic of everybody at LVRN is really unparalleled,” Tate says. “The amount of care that they put into each and every artist on the roster, whether it’s from management or they’re signed directly to LVRN, is just beyond. It’s almost like they’re the artist themselves. That’s how hard they’re going.”
Balogun and other LVRN executives believe their passion about Adell’s future is what sold the burgeoning talent on signing with the label in June. In any case, it’s clear he takes pride in lassoing strong talent.
“All of the stuff we’re doing internationally still is true to our heart in our core. It is dope that we’re doing everything in South Africa and West Africa and Europe,” the CEO says. “But in our own backyard, (in) Nashville, a city that’s a few hundred miles away … this Black independent label from Atlanta (signed) one of the hottest unsigned country acts. And everybody’s looking around like, ‘How the (expletive) did they do that?’”
Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC
Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC
From the start, LVRN has been a driving force behind numerous R&B and hip-hop artists based in the city, including Virginia native and former signee DRAM. Singer and rapper 6lack’s sophomore album “East Atlanta Love Letter” debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart when it was released in 2018. That same year, the label released the debut project of Summer Walker. Since then, the singer has cemented herself as an R&B mainstay thanks to her transparent songs about love and heartbreak. In 2021, her album “Still Over It” topped the Billboard 200 chart. Immediately upon its release, the album broke Apple Music’s records for the most album streams in a day by a female artist; it became the streaming platform’s biggest R&B album debut, as well.
Balogun compares LVRN to a tech company, describing a culture that is flexible, fast paced and encourages innovation. As the pace quickened, its leaders began to believe they needed to establish a loose corporate structure that helped accommodate the company’s mushrooming responsibilities.
The five founders brought in Amber Grimes, an Atlanta native, longtime friend and former senior vice president of global creative at Capitol Records, to help. She assumed the role of executive vice president and general manager in 2022.
“Tunde 1,000% came to get me to corporatize the business,” says Grimes, lounging on one of the many couches within the company’s 7,000-plus-square-foot Castleberry Hill office. “He will tell you himself, it was like, ‘OK, we need some structure.’ Me and him are the only two I think that have had real jobs,” she says.
Staff training — in time management and effective communication, for example — is emphasized, and that extends to senior leaders who meet every Friday for two hours.
“No one’s allowed to miss the meeting,” Grimes says. “If you have to miss the meeting, then (it) gets moved to Saturday (or) Sunday. We have things in place that we do so that we show up properly for each other and for the company.”
Credit: Photo courtesy of LVRN
Credit: Photo courtesy of LVRN
The leaders even participate in group therapy sessions twice per year, each time for a full week. It was in one of their sessions that a counselor asked the executives to verbalize their values and expectations to one another so they could better communicate them with the wider staff. Grimes says she left the conversation and created a set of ideals that were eventually painted onto a main hallway wall at the Atlanta office.
For so long the founders were relying on their work ethic to grow the brand, Grimes says. Today, they’re responsible for empowering and encouraging others to take on some of the load alongside them.
“What yesterday (was) about is trying to make people care about the company as much as we do,” Grimes adds about the recent all-hands meeting. “And it’s going to take a long time. It’s going to take a lot of meetings. It takes a lot of opportunities. But we can’t expect them to show up how we show up until that’s how they feel.”
Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC
Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC
Such buy-in is essential for LVRN as it seeks to expand beyond the music industry. Earlier this year, the company announced it invested in the Afro-Caribbean entertainment brand Jerk x Jollof, which regularly hosts parties and events from Detroit to Sydney, Australia. Balogun says LVRN is open to acquiring other music-adjacent brands. Meanwhile, co-founder Sean Famoso has been working as the company’s head of film & TV to expand into visual forms of entertainment.
Now, LVRN is even looking into making lifestyle products.
“People trust us, so why can’t we create things that have our logo on them that sits on a shelf at Target?” Grimes says. “If you trust us to make your music that makes you cry or makes you happy, or makes you feel anything, why don’t you trust us to make a hookah, right?”
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