Behind The DJ Khaled And Influence Media Deal

The most important component in the music business? Relationships.

DJ Khaled has known Rene McLean, Influence Media Partner and CEO of SLANG for 25 years. Through McLean, he met Lylette Pizarro, Influence Media Founder and Co-Managing Partner.

Having all known each other for years and developed a close friendship, it was natural they would eventually work together. I spoke to all three about their new joint ventures. Steve Baltin: What inspired the deal? Why was Influence the right company for you to go with?

Khaled: It was not only the right place to go with, I call it perfect because I love Rene, I love Lylette and I love everything they’ve done from the minute I’ve known them. I’ve known them for over 25 years. I got to see them do so many amazing things for the culture. And just not only being friends but just being in business and to see their vision and for them to see my vision. We see each other’s vision. It’s just beautiful, man It’s always great to work with people you love who understand your vision and just get it.

Baltin: I always say one measure of success is getting to work with the people you want. Do you feel like getting to work with people that you’re friends with that you’ve known forever is a reward for being successful in your career?

Khaled: Absolutely, and at the same time it’s one thing to know somebody, but it’s another thing knowing that they know what’s good and what’s right and what’s great and where we come from. How hard I’ve worked throughout my career and how hard they work throughout their career. When you climb that ladder it is love and respect because you broke so many barriers in the game and accomplished so many blessings and so many goals and we are just getting started.

Baltin: Talk about what your deal with them encompasses and what kind of stuff you’re looking forward to really branching out into.

Khaled: The film and TV side is something I’ve always dreamt of doing. But now we’re making our dreams live. I’ve always done some movies here and some great commercials here and some great content daily and stuff like that. But I’ve always wanted to be not just on the TV screen and the big movie screen, I also want to be somebody behind the scenes, to give other opportunities to other visionaries and bring their visions to light. So, being an executive producer alongside Lylette and Rene, as well as creating film and TV for the DJ Khaled brand — and the We The Best brand, We The Best with the Influence film and TV department — it was only right. I can call Rene as soon as I get up in the morning, they’ll call me, we go over ideas, there are things that we’re looking for, those things that come to our lap that we’re just like, “Man, this is incredible.” I’ll let Rene talk about some of the things that we locked in already, but at the same time, the things that we’re going to lock in in the future. It doesn’t feel like work. And if we both got the same type of energy and vibe, we believe in each other. And that’s what it’s about when it comes down to rocking with other creatives and doing this beautiful blessing that we do every day.

Rene McLean: Yeah, I feel like the relationship we have with Khaled is extremely special, especially because of our history. There’s no idea too big or too small that we can’t discuss and have real a creative vision on things, where we see ourselves with this business in the next year or five years and how we keep growing. As Khaled always says, I feel very blessed to be connected with him at this juncture in both of our careers because we’ve been supportive of each other along the way on both sides, cheering each other on. Now we’ve just come together; me, Lylette, Khaled, and it really works out. On the executive producer side of things, like Khaled said, there’s a couple of projects that we already have in play. First one being Killing Castro, which is a film. We teamed up with Romulus Entertainment, the director is Eif Rivera. It has a great cast; Diego Bonetta, Al Pacino, Kiki Layne and Kendrick Samson are all starring in it. We’re about to take it to the Tiff Film Festival, might bring it to a couple other festivals and we’re trying to get it out as soon as possible. So, we’re really excited about that one. Then we’re also getting ready to jump into production on a very special project called Janko Nation, which Khaled has a history with this director Cess Silvera who did Shottas. Janko Nation is going to be the next level of that.

Khaled: Like you said, Cess is well known for putting out the movie Shottas. It’s just a special time in the dancehall world, in the Caribbean world. It’s just that feeling, every 20 10 years you get these certain type of films that capture this energy from the Caribbean islands in a film. There are not many people that could pull it off like Cess. At the same time the first film is with Al Pacino, and I also grew up with Eif too. I’ve known Eif for over 30 years and to see how far he’s come. He shot a lot of my music videos, and he’s just been a brother from day one. To see his success in the movie that he’s doing with this great cast it’s a blessing, just like working run with Rene and to be able to see other greats we meet on this type of level to talk about executive producing each other’s films. Working with Rene and Lylette, we all have families. We have kids and it’s a blessing to know I can talk to Rene and Lylette while they’re at their son’s basketball practice or game and they’ll call me and I’ll be at my son’s practice. We still can not only be great parents, but also do this for our kids and our legacy. So, it’s just beautiful, man. This partnership couldn’t get better. It’s truly a beautiful thing.

Baltin: How does being around all these other creative people motivate you?

McLean: When I get around other people who are great, it makes me work harder. It just creates more focus. I love working with people who just feel like anything can happen. There are no barriers. We make things happen and have real vision. So, working with the best is the winning formula for having huge success and doing things differently and breaking barriers. That’s the most important thing for us at Influence. Let’s not just do the regular thing. We’ve got to be different. We have to win regardless, but let’s win and be different. We’re in a different class and we’re number one at what we do.

Baltin: Khaled, who would you want to star in a buddy movie with? If you’re remaking like Lethal Weapon or 48 Hours, who’s your partner?

Khaled: I would work great with Denzel [Washington] and Joe Pesci. I think Khaled and Denzel and Pesci, that’s going to be legendary.

Baltin: What excites you most about this partnership with Khaled?

Lylette Pizarro: As we were thinking about this call, we were talking about some of the work that we have in the pipeline for Khaled. We got really excited, there’s one thing to write strategy and thesis and have an ambition as a founder and a startup, but then actually executing it. As you know, Steve, sometimes you have to pivot, you have to make changes. But I think what we’re both really proud about is what the ambition and the vision was for Influence a few years ago and how it’s taking shape. We get kind of giddy about it, because we feel like it’s not necessarily such an ingenious idea. It was a pretty simple white space. And obviously the space has gotten pretty crowded, but we still think the way we’re approaching it is fairly differentiated.

Baltin: You mentioned pivoting. I imagine you have to do that a lot working with artists.

Pizarro: We had a meeting last week, which I would call one of the most legendary music executives in the game. We’re talking about possibly producing a documentary with him that’s connected to our larger strategy. And one of the things he said to us, which I found interesting, is a lot of people specifically, when we were talking about rights management, so not necessarily acquiring IP or catalogs, but specifically rights management, like think about large licensing firms. A lot of folks don’t really understand how to work with active artists. They can understand licensing at scale and those opportunities, but they’re better to deal with estates. But active artists can be hard to crack. The only data points I had is how few people were approaching what we did historically, pre -Influence at RPM. There weren’t that many competitors who were servicing the advertising community very focused on music rights and really understood how to partner with active artists and active rights. But now in this next iteration, which is Influence in which we partner with artists and songwriters around their IP, but then we have these two adjacent strategies, one being Slang, which is where all of our new music goes forward, and opportunity sits. The other is called the Acceleration Studio, which is in pilot phase, but that’s where our name, image, and likeness rights sit. It’s exciting now that we’ve built these engines and they’re starting to rev up and we’re starting to see pipeline and we’re executing. It’s been a great journey.

Baltin: Do you feel like knowing how to communicate with artists, you have a very distinct advantage because musicians speak their own language?

McLean: With my background being at five major labels, being heads of promotions and marketing while I was there at all those storied labels. That’s one thing that’s genuine to us. We come from the music community, but also too, when Lylette and I had our consultancy on the brand side, we were able to be effective on both sides. To understand and communicate how the brand needs to communicate to the artist and the artist needs to communicate to the brand. Both of them are brands themselves. So, you have to look at them. I literally just went through this last week with a with a brand and another artist deal we have and explaining that hey it’s a compromise, it’s got to work both ways. So that’s what makes us unique. Not only that, Lylette and I also managed several acts previously. So, our perspective on how we see the business is very 360, in that sense, from being able to have an agency to doing management. We have a very wide scope of how to deal with talent, how to deal with brands, how to see things three-dimensionally.

Baltin: How does the partnership with Khaled represent the next step for Influence?

Pizarro: We explained to him the vision and the ambition was that we believe the next stage of the business was to be able to partner around IP rights around catalog. So, whether it’s recorded music or publishing and then think about marketing and the future in partnership, not just necessarily a one-off endorsement deal or one-off transaction, how could we work together for long term? His first response was, “Sign me up. How do we do this? Let’s get Theo on the phone. Let’s figure it out.” Let’s get you on the phone for your lawyer, Theo Sedlmayr, which we’ve also known for like 20 years. It didn’t happen necessarily right away, but we kept thinking about how could we be in business with each other? How can we help each other? How can we lift both sides of what we’re doing? Yeah. Also, we explained to him early on the thesis. With Khaled, there’s very few who I believe could have this many commercial endorsements, but then continue to be in demand and he’s one of them. I was like, Khaled, where are spaces that might be white spaces for us to think about together? He explained to us around opportunity around film and TV and we have amazing film and TV advisors – Jon Jashini and Lisa Licht — who have been part of the business for a long time.