Darkroom Productions honchos, Juan Donovan and Jamal Roberts, recently announced a deal with MTV that allows them to produce music for all of MTV's programming. Props to those dudes for gettin' the attention they deserve, but let's quickly take a look at the wonderful programming MTV has to offer, taking into consideration the decline of music videos in recent years:
The Hills
Rob & Big
Real World
Road Rules
Bam's Unholy Union
Two-A-Days
Yawn. Hopefully, the commercial beast that is MTV won't ruin Darkroom.
If you're scratching yer head, wondering "WHO?," Darkroom Productions is THE production team behind the rap scene in Baltimore. When I was A&R'ing at Capitol, I made it my mission to make people aware of Darkroom, to no avail. When Capitol merged recently with Virgin (as part of the EMI shakedown), The Capitol Music Group acquired Bossman, one of the top dudes on the scene in Baltimore. Expect his debut later this year.
Most notably, Darkroom is responsible for the music that you hear on HBO's The Wire, which, combined with the show's success, turned people's heads toward Baltimore. To their credit, Darkroom Productions also released two key mixtapes in Baltimore, "Hamsterdam, Vol. 1: The Best of Baltimore" and "Hamsterdam, Vol. 2: Stash to the Strip," that ended up in the hands of reviewers in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Fader, and XLR8R (who, in turn, lavished the releases with praise.)
Check out Darkroom Productions.
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