26/06/2024
RIP
Co-founder of The Fader and Cornerstone Marketing Agency, Rob Stone is credited with a hip-hop inspired approach to marketing and this gave inspiration to The Fader magazine which “set out to champion new artists across genres.”
Of it weren’t for The Fader, we would never have discovered Biggie and we would never have been inspired by the song Sky’s The Limit where our name, Far From Timid, came from.
There are a lot of stories Rob shared with the world, but this is my favorite.
……Heading to a visit at LA’s Power 106, Big comes down from his room wearing a black T-shirt with a Ku Klux Klan member holding a K*K baby, and in bold type it says, “Future Police Officer.” Here’s where the pressure to deliver for Clive and Puff kicked in, and I start thinking the worst. What if this shirt pi**es off some of the execs at radio? What if Big is asked to pose for trade photos and the entire network of white-owned hip-hop stations see the shirt and refuse to play his record? So I asked Big to walk with me away from everyone and said, “Big, you know we’re heading to radio stations to get your record played.” He shook his head in agreement. “Well, these are white-owned radio stations. The shirt might offend them and get in the way of us getting your record played.” He looked down at his shirt to see what I was talking about. He paused, then chuckled and said, “We’re good Rob Stone, we’re good.” Well, he didn’t change his shirt and needless to say, the record got played.