Jake Paine of HipHopDX.com sat down for a very in-depth and revealing interview with Travis O’Guin, CEO of Strange Music. The man with the business sense and drive responsible for a great amount of the label’s success discussed the trials and tribulations of the record business, his philosophy behind signing artists, and his opinion as to where the music business is headed. It’s a good and informative read from the executive behind the most successful independent rap label in the world.

Highlights from the interview:

“Here at Strange, we look at shit differently. We look for individual artists who have a story to tell and interesting content. It isn’t all driven by the idea of a dumbed-down song that we’re gonna put on radio.”

“I don’t have to have any middle-men involved. I don’t have to play the radio game. I tried to play it, Jake. I spent $1.6 million pushing four singles off of the Absolute Power album. If I had to do it all over again, I would take every dime of that money back, tell all those dudes who took my money to fuck off, and do something totally different with the money. I would’ve been in the streets giving away samplers, I would have done a variety of different promotional ideas, and I would’ve spent the money touring. You know we tour like nobody else.”

“If you ever hear a Strange Music album, and it only has one or two good songs, we fucked up. If you ever run a poll online and you ask ‘What’s your favorite song off of the album Everready?’ and everybody picks one song, I fucked up. I want them to pick 10 different songs. That’s what happens with our albums.”

Click here to read the entire interview.