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by Minister of Information JR Valrey, Oakland Bureau Chief
Big Rich has been known in the Bay Area Hip Hop world as a legendary Frisco rapper for a decade plus, but that is the least of his accomplishments when you look at the thousands of youth that Big Rich and his wife Danielle have served internationally for over a decade with their non-profit, Project Level, as well as the success of their record label and management company, 1015 Management, which helped to make Stunnaman02 a household name regionally and nationally. Now Big Rich, Danielle and their team are the executives applying pressure behind another just-scratching-the-surface-soon-to-be-big-name-in-Hip-Hop, Lil Kayla.
I talked to one of San Francisco’s biggest homegrown talents about his upcoming event, his Hip Hop career, his career as a service provider for inner-city youth in San Francisco and now the world, as well as his current business endeavors which include his fashion company and turning Project Level into a incubator for schooling aspiring young music and media executives for the Bay Area. Check Big Rich out in his own words.
On Thursday, Dec. 22, at the Midway, Big Rich’s 1015 Management Co. will be hosting a talent contest called “The Next Big Thing,” where $10,000 is the grand prize, along with a contract with 1015 Management. So get your tickets now.
JR Valrey: Can you talk about your event, “The Next Big Thing,” coming to the Midway on Dec. 22? What will be happening? Who will be featured?
Big Rich: Absolutely! We are doing what I would say is one of the biggest showcases in Bay Area history. It’s 10 contestants competing for a $10,000 grand prize and a contract with our new label, 1015 Digital. We have celebrity judges from the music industry, from artists like 24kGoldn, who’s a worldwide, international superstar rapper. We have an executive/RNB legend in JValentine who manages the artist Tank and used to manage Ginuwine and other artists. It’s a huge situation.
We got one of the hottest DJs from the Bay Area, DJ Shellheart, who also DJs for the Warriors and all these other people, just a great DJ. We have DaBoyDame who is probably, arguably, one of the biggest A&Rs in the music industry right now and he works for CMG Records, which is Yo Gotti, ESTG, GloRilla, everybody like that.
I used my career as a rap artist as a vehicle to get me in and once I got in I started creating companies and businesses and brands.
And then, last but not least, Seaside Stretch, who is responsible for probably about 80% of the successful artists coming out of the Bay Area and California over the last 15 years. So, it’s going to be a great night and we are going to find the next star coming out of the Bay Area.
JR Valrey: Earlier in the summer, one of your companies and Warner Brothers hooked up a deal where they invested in helping you to build a record company. Can you talk about that? How is it going?
Big Rich: Yes, so during the pandemic, one of our friends knew an executive over at Atlantic Records and they caught wind of Project Level and what we were doing. They reached out to us and kind of got more information about what we’re trying to do out here and what we’ve been doing for the last 10 years.
They loved it, and we kind of just brainstormed the idea of creating more young executives in the Bay Area. The plan was that we need more executives to help support the great talented artists in the Bay Area. So, since at Project Level we’ve been developing young artists the whole time, we thought it would be dope to go the other route and mentor and develop more young executives to break into the music industry so we can have more support for our artists.
We came up with this plan. It’s kind of like an initiative situation; no major record label has done this for an incubator program like ours, so we’re making history, and they believed in us and we figuring it out step by step and I think we already starting it out on a great side, you know.
JR Valrey: Your management company, 1015 Management, helped expose Stunnaman02 to the world, and now you have Lil Kayla. What is 1015 Management about, and what kind of talent does your roster hold?
Big Rich: Right, so yeah, so 1015 is basically like the mother company of everything that we have. 1015 Digital, which is the record label, and Project Level is a product of that as well. That is the company me and my wife Danielle Banks started, and it’s kind of like the major leagues versus the minor leagues for Project Level, which is like the development side, and 1015 is the agency that takes the artists to where they need to go.
So, with Stunnaman02 we fully got behind and created the Big Steppin movement and everything he did and took that nationwide, and it did great. And now he’s like a Bay Area staple. Now we are working with Lil Kayla, finalizing her record deal with a major label that we’ll be announcing soon and helping restructure her old stuff, and now she’s taking off and performing all over the country, making a lot of money and selling a lot of albums.
And recently – we haven’t even announced it yet – but we just signed an artist named Poosie, who’s from Oakland via New Orleans, young emerging artist that’s glowing up, so we are working with him right now. Of course, we got Jasmin Corley who is a big influencer on social media. She works for big companies and brands like Footlocker, Nike, shit, Reebok, Bank of America, she’s all over the place with it.
So it’s a multi-level entertainment company and we’re able to do multiple levels of things in different genres like music, modeling, fashion and even event planning like “The Next Big Thing.”
JR Valrey: You made a lot of noise in Bay Area Hip Hop as a well known Bay Area rap artist. What made you want to step behind the scenes and play more of the executive role? Do you miss the stage and attention?
Big Rich: Well, it was kind of always in the plan to do more of the executive role. It was a passion of mine, but I used my career as a rap artist as a vehicle to get me in and once I got in I started creating companies and businesses and brands so I could do this shit forever. You know what I mean?
I couldn’t really complain about how it’s panning out because it’s almost picture perfect to how I saw it even when I was a kid. So, it was always in the works, it was always in the vision and now we’re executing it and in the middle of the whole plan.
So, I miss rapping, I miss the stage from time to time but I still get out there every once in a while. Mac Dre’s people just brought me out to his birthday party in July at the Warfield, sold out 4,000 people and I was able to perform so I still get my little taste of it but then I get to go back and do what I love doing and that’s helping other artists pursue their dreams and platforms themselves, so I can’t complain.
JR Valrey: With you being one of the guiding lights helping to bring the City’s Hip Hop scene to prominence over the last few years, how does it feel to currently see San Francisco leading Northern Cali Hip Hop?
Big Rich: Oh my god! It’s amazing! Seeing Lil Kayla, Stunnaman02, Larry June, and what Berner is doing business wise, and Lil Bean, Zaybang, Lil Pete, and Lil Yee – everybody is doing really well. I think in my heyday I looked up to the Messy Marvs and the San Quinns and all of them because they were doing great, and I had the chance to stand next to them.
At one point in my career, we were partners in this stuff so to see that; and to see it transition into where it’s at now is dope. It’s super dope! I feel like we got the ball and people are finally getting the recognition from the City the way that they deserve in the rap game, and I just want to continue to help contribute to that.
Me and Danielle created Project Level to offer a safe haven for a lot of young creators in the neighborhood because we were losing a lot of people around 2010-2011.
JR Valrey: At the beginning of the pandemic, you and your Project Level crew had a store in the downtown San Francisco mall. What’s up with that? And do you think y’all will ever get back into running your own store at a mall?
Big Rich: Right, actually it was at Stonestown Mall and we ran it for about a year, and once our lease was up we transitioned and put it back online. We still have the boutique but it’s online. Retail is a little rough, and we had gotten real busy with Stunnaman02’s movement, so we just didn’t have enough time to maintain the store the way that we wanted it but it’s still there. It’s called The Pop-up Shop SF. It’s still around.
JR Valrey: For those that don’t know, what is Project Level, especially after the pandemic? What is its history, and what is it up to nowadays?
Big Rich: Project Level is an incubator for young artists to learn everything inside the entertainment business – from acting, modeling, rapping, singing, dancing, entrepreneurial things, also of course, social media influencing, which is the ecosystem of everything right now. That’s our media, that’s how everyone gets their businesses off the ground, gets their information on a daily basis and we’ve been doing it for the last 10 years. So we are a little bit ahead of the game on it, and we are looking for the next wave to innovate.
That was the basis of it, but to begin, me and Danielle created Project Level to offer a safe haven for a lot of young creators in the neighborhood because we were losing a lot of people around 2010-2011 and we established it in 2012 and started the age limit at 11 because that was the year I discovered music and kind of fell in love, and music ultimately saved my life.
So we wanted to do the same for the community. Once it came out, it excelled so well, so fast, it kind of got bigger than we expected at a faster pace so we started gearing up to make this bigger and bigger, and we brought in the resources that we had from the industry. It worked out and the rest is history!
So, we are still making history, and when the pandemic hit, we took it online and that was amazing. We did a deal with YouTube and created something called The Future Insiders Program, and within that we were able to meet kids all over the country. We had kids from Brooklyn, N.Y., Africa, Brazil, Atlanta – all over the place – and now we can say Project Level is international and that was a messed up situation with what was happening with Covid, and all the kids didn’t know what they were going to do next. Hopefully we gave a few hundred kids something to be motivated about. Now we are international; Project Level is still growing.
JR Valrey: Do you think that you will ever come back to the mic and do a Big Rich album?
Big Rich: Probably not, but I think about it all the time. When I get the fans and the love they show or whenever I perform and the love is still there, I love it. That’s what I live for; that’s in my bones and blood. When I walked away from rap to start Project Level and everything else, I was at the height of my career and left on a good note so I want to keep my legacy intact. You know what I’m saying?
The last time I was doing it, the fans still loved me, the buzz was still there, the excitement was still there, so I don’t want to tank that. If I drop something new and people don’t like it or people don’t receive it the same way, then the last thing they will remember Big Rich for is a flop, and I want to keep it where it was at.
JR Valrey: Can you talk about your fashion line “Mogul”? What is the idea behind it?
Big Rich: Right! So, Mogul is a very big passion project of mine. We released it September 2021 and it’s been doing good. We’re revamping and gearing up to relaunch it in March of 2023. Me and Danielle were actually brainstorming what we are going to do for it.
We have a great idea that I think the people are going to enjoy. It’s an experience. It’s a lifestyle. It’s an upper echelon type of lifestyle. We are trying to exude a higher level of thinking as far as business, building and thinking bigger, motivating the youngsters.
I grew up listening to JayZ and going from the Reagan era with drugs and crack, which was our pandemic at the time, and then turning that money into businesses with a lot of Black folks making a lot of money and creating jobs for our community. Mogul exemplifies all that as far as how I look at it. Some elegant shit for the older crowd, you know; the youngsters mess with it too but a lot of my customer base is 25-35, so I appreciate that because sometimes that age group gets forgotten about.
JR Valrey: How do people stay online with you?
Big Rich: Tell them follow me. Instagram is kind of like my headquarters for all my content and information. It’s @big.rich and I’m on there, all of the time. Let’s do it, “Next Big Thing” is going to be the biggest thing of the year. Let’s end the year off right!
JR Valrey, journalist, author, filmmaker and founder of Black New World Media, heads the SF Bay View’s Oakland Bureau and is founder of his latest project, the Ministry of Information Podcast. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com and on Instagram.
