The New Black History: Interview With Felton Brown

The New Black History: Interview With Felton Brown

The Dreamville Records Vice President of Creative Services spoke about his career journey from passing out fliers for the Def Jam street team to helping J. Cole bring his art to life, his place in Black History, and much more.

Matt DeSciora

When I spoke with Felton Brown on a Zoom call on a recent Friday afternoon, he was balancing his baby nephew in his lap in a room in his home in Brooklyn. He was wearing a plain white tee, his signature glasses, and swiveling around in what looked like the most comfortable office chair in the world. At one point, Felton paused mid sentence to put his headphones in and relocate his nephew—who was happily answering imaginary questions to his own interview—down to the floor. “Don’t worry, man, I can still see him. I’m not a terrible adult,” Felton assured me with a laugh. His laid back vibe made me feel as though I was talking to someone I had known for a long time, not someone I had just met that day.

The plaques dedicated to J. Cole’s “Born Sinner,” “2014 Forest Hills Drive,” and “KOD” studio albums on the wall behind where Felton sat reminded I wasn’t talking to a friend about something mundane, but to someone who’s made significant contributions to the success of one of the most influential hip-hop labels in the world. Throughout our conversation, Felton made it a point to tell me that it was always the “regular people” who had inspired him the most throughout his career. People that held cool, high-power jobs that looked and talked like him. And were, most importantly, humble.

Clearly Felton’s interactions with his mentors have had a profound effect on him. Though he’s achieved considerable success as the the Vice President of Creative Services at Dreamville, and plays an important role in bringing the artistic visions of the label’s artists like J. Cole, Bas, and Ari Lennox to life through various creative lanes, there’s a sincerity about Felton that naturally puts you at ease. He’s accessible. You could imagine yourself running something important by him because he’d undoubtedly give you his honest opinion on the matter and you’d walk away better for having asked him instead of twelve different people. That’s the kind of energy Felton is on. Always.

Folks like Felton are creating New Black History with their contributions to culture, and are inspiring those that look up to them by showing that a little bit of humility can go a long way. After all, who wouldn’t want to pattern their career after someone like Felton who’s achieved success everywhere they’ve been?

Read more on Felton’s story below.

Felton, appreciate you taking time out of your day to talk to us about your journey, and what New Black History means to you. But before we get into that, please help bring our readers up to speed on who you are and what you do.

I’m Felton Brown, I’m a Creative Director by trade. I’ve worked in the space of creativity for the last 18 years of my life, both in advertising and in the music industry.

Many know you as Dreamville Records’ Vice President of Creative Services, but before pursuing a career in the music industry, you went to art school and wanted to be a comic artist, right? Art was your first love?

Art was my way of communicating with the world at a young age. It helped me realize my individuality. I wasn’t a kid who was into sports or anything, so art was something that just consumed me. Whether it was art in the way of cartoons, comic books, acting, etc. whatever. Those things spoke to me the same way someone who’s into sports gets to see their favorite team win a championship. Seeing and partaking in my favorite forms of art was fulfilling in the same sense.

Did you ever think you’d ultimately end up in the music industry?

I got my foot in the door in the music industry through an internship at Def Jam. My dad had a friend, and I feel terrible because my dad is no longer with us and I can’t remember his friend’s name, but all I remember is that he had a champagne-colored Cadillac CT-S (laughs). Anyway, he had a friendship with Russell Simmons and other people connected at Def Jam. My dad knew I’d spend all my lunch money, on CDs, Source Magazine, Vibe, etc. I was so engulfed in this culture. My dad was like, “Word, that’s all that boy’s into, let me connect him to someone to help him out.” So I got down with Def Jam’s street team in the ‘90s in high school. Nowadays you can’t do that stuff because of child labor laws (laughs), but I remember being on the West Side Highway putting up wheat paste posters and hanging out in front of the Virgin Megastore handing out flyers.

I eventually ended up in the office doing clerical work for people. While I was there [at Def Jam’s office] it was crazy to see executives that I had heard about in magazines. Like, cool executives—not like a banker—in Phat Farm suits. In my mind, they were rich! Def Jam, to me, is still one of the greatest hip-hop labels in the world. It always will be.

So there was actually a point in time, early in your career, when your background in art helped open some doors for you. Can you talk about designing album artwork covers and creating flyers and posters for different record labels like Def Jam, Virgin, and Warner and Atlantic Records?

So when I was at Def Jam I was just interning. When I came home after college I was working on a lot of independent projects. Through hustling-and-bustling, I started getting connected and started working on bigger projects, one of which was a web design company I put together with three friends. Looking back, that’s really what helped us move forward in the music industry. We worked on microsites for various artists, including Ne-Yo and D4L. We even worked on a little game, an online browser game, for Pimp C for his “Pimpalation” studio album called “Pimp Slap.” We got all these little jobs and the web stuff kept us afloat. I didn’t get into album artwork specifically until later on. In my personal time, I’d rip magazines apart and scan different images and whatnot, but I didn’t get into designing album artwork until much later on in my career. But it was definitely always the dream.

What were some of your earliest thoughts of J. Cole as not only an artist but a person? It seems like you were a believer from the moment you put ears onto “The Warm Up,” and more importantly, formed a tight bond almost immediately after meeting him.

Well, for one, he’s just a chill dude and we mob as homies. He had this innate talent for rhyming, producing, etc. that was clear from the moment I heard him rap for the first time. He had a raw talent and sound that was unique at the time. Like it wasn’t manufactured from within the industry or anything like that. At the time when I met him, I had my own hip-hop blog while I was doing projects with different labels. To my knowledge, I was one of the first people to write about J. Cole. We connected right away and had a similar vision of what the culture could be for hip-hop. But yeah, I knew he had it in him to be an elite MC, an elite producer. Those are rare attributes to find in one person. So to me, he was a sure shot to succeed. He was such a student of the game that was so locked in. And it was so clear from “The Come Up.”

How Felton helped bring J.Cole’s “The Off-Season” Album Cover art to life

What’s it like bringing the artistic visions of musicians to life?

I tell everyone this—the art that I create for myself is the art for myself. But the art that I help create with a client comes from me nurturing their idea and helping them bring it to life. I play the role of a surrogate. I make suggestions holistically around the idea, but at the end of the day, I want them to sit behind it as if “that’s mine.”

How has being from New York City influenced your work as a Black creative?

I spent a lot of time in advertising, which isn’t exactly a space with Black creatives. I feel like I had the inspiration of Black creativity very young because one of my mentors was Cey Adams [the founding Creative Director of Def Jam]. Seeing someone like him, being the most creative influence in hip-hop who had a hand in everything. I’m talking about putting together the artwork behind “Ready to Die,” Public Enemy’s album covers, the Beastie Boys, Jay-Z, Foxy Brown, and the list goes on. He was a Black man who was also one of the most influential graffiti artists in New York City in the ‘80s. And like seeing this dude who was mad cool and laid back, yet still running the creative for Def Jam and how it looks to the world.

I was like, “Oh, I’m sold!” I know that this thing is real, he made it real to me. You know, I’ve seen Spike Lee’s movies, but I’ve never met Spike Lee. Having known Cey made it real to me. So to me, I saw Black creativity there. It made it possible for me.

How do you define New Black History, and how would you say you’re creating it?

To me, New Black History is two-fold. One, it highlights the people of today who are shaping who we are of Black people, in the diaspora and around the world. Also, New Black History is about telling the stories of the untold. As a grown adult, I’ve learned so much about history that was never taught to me while I was in school. That’s knowledge I went out and obtained on my own. Whether it be books I’ve read, museums I’ve been to. For instance, just the other day, I found out the founder of the band No Doubt is a Black guy. Like, literally. He died in 1987 or ‘88. I never knew that. And that’s a light one. There’s people who have sat in the senate who are Black in the 1800s. They don’t necessarily teach you that in school.

Alright, this is Stadium Goods, after all, so let’s talk sneakers. Do you have a favorite Black sneaker designer? (can either be the actual designer of a shoe model or a collaborator)

I’ll be honest, my favorite sneakers are the Nike SB Dunk Low “De La Soul.” I have an original pair in my closet. They’re dusty as hell, though, and I need to buy another pair, but I love those sneakers, man. I love them because of what they stand for. I remember the day I bought them. I was working at McGarry, an advertising agency on W. 26th, and on my lunch break I went downtown to Dave’s Quality Meat. I got them, brought them back, put them on my desk and just admired them. I don’t even know who designed them or anything, but I know De La Soul is Black, De La Soul is hip-hop, and they just spoke to me. You can’t even wear them with anything, like they don’t match with anything, there’s way too much going on. (laughs)

What’s the rest of 2022 looking like for Felton Brown?

I turned 40 years old last year, and I’m trying to understand what my life is going to look like as a creative in a place that’s a mentor to younger creatives. I’m learning how to delegate more instead of being so hands-on. I made some real key moves in figuring that out at the end of last year, and I want to keep building on that. That goes back to Cey. He had a whole team under him. Dude was like Morpheus. He was like “How can we do this? Let’s pool together ideas.” I feel like having that kind of collaborative thought process is the masterful way of being a creative director. Pulling in different ideas, having deep conversations. I’m excited for that. That’s for me for the next 10 years.

I want to leave by telling people to not get discouraged by other people not reposting their work or sharing or things like that. As a kid growing up, I would be at my parents house making album covers all day. I would read the back of album booklets and then go and create my own versions of that. I would share the work I created with my friends, but I didn’t necessarily care if my friends talked about it. These were things I really cared about by myself. And I feel in this new “social media” era, if people aren’t involved in every little thing, it’s a waste of time or it’s not good enough.

I tell people, “You gotta understand, people have a million things going on, it’s not personal.” If no one cared about what I was doing as a creative, I’d still be doing it anyway, because it meant something to me. People who are real creatives know this to be true. Maybe people have to do a reassessment to figure out whether or not whatever they’re creating is really something they want to do. If you still love it, then maybe it’s meant to be.

Yeah, everyone’s looking for validation on social media to see how many likes they can get, and whatever.

Exactly, it’s poison. It’s poison. None of it means anything. It’s empty. It doesn’t lead to anything. But yeah, if you’re creating from a place of love and not like, “how much money I can make,” then you know that means something. That’s special.

You can follow Felton Brown on Instagram: @feltonamus

Photos compliments of Felton Brown