21st Century Hustle

The Bosses:Akon with Steve Rifkind and Universal Motown Chief Sylvia Rhone

It was the closing of 2002.  I’d built three recording studios in Atlanta. It couldn’t be better. I got operations.  I got any kind of car you can think of. Everybody in Atlanta knew me.

So [choreographer] Divine Stephens was like, “Listen, man, what you going to do with your life?” While I was locked up, I’d created a plan for what I planned to do when I got out and it was focused more on music. At the time Divine’s working with Puffy so he used all his contacts. He called Bernard Alexander who was working with Def Squad. Bernard flew in from L.A., listened to the music, was blown away. He was like, “Yeah, I can get you a deal by tomorrow.”

He flew to New York, met up with Kenny Burns who was vice president of Roc-a-Fella. Kenny heard the music and called back with Steve Rifkind on the phone. Kenny was like, “It’s critical, we’re trying to reach you now.” Steve was playing basketball and broke his nose and was on the way to the hospital in his car playing the music.

He calls like, “I just broke my nose.  I want to come to Atlanta first thing tomorrow.  Do not talk to nobody. I’m interested.”  But we had other offers. So Steve was like, “I’m coming to Atlanta tomorrow.”

The next day, we’re sitting upstairs and we see this white guy with two Secret Service looking guys parked out front. I was like, “Shit!  Fuckin’ fed.  What the fuck they want now?”

I open the door. “Steve Rifkind.” We click instantly. Everything that we were going to tell him we want to do, he just said it. He understood it.  He wasn’t offering much money compared to the other labels. But these other labels want me to switch up and be more commercial and he wanted to give me all creative control and let me do what I do. I told myself it’s less money but I think this is more of a question of whether I believe in myself or not. It’s going to come later.

So we decided to go with Steve.  The fact that he had a broken nose and showed up, I was impressed.