Why Influence Media Is Expanding Beyond Catalogs and Investing In Hip-Hop’s Future

In the ever-evolving world of music asset trading, Influence Media Partners early on broke away from the initial frenzy over evergreen rock music classics to pursue a riskier strategy: acquiring contemporary music catalogs, including hip-hop. One of its biggest deals was the 2022 acquisition of Future’s publishing catalog, which consists of 612 songs composed from 2004 to 2020. 

Last year, Influence Media, which is backed by BlackRock and Warner Music Group (WMG), expanded its operations with the founding of SLANG, a label and music publishing operation. While the music company has signed publishing deals and separate joint ventures with Future and DJ Khaled that allows them to sign songwriters to publishing deals, its label is betting on such developing acts as hip-hop artists Camper, RX YP and TruththeBull — a sector of the business that usually does not attract institutional investors. 

Rene McLean founded Influence Media in 2019 with his wife and business partner, Lylette Pizarro McLean, a former music industry marketing executive, and Lynn Hazan, a former CFO for Epic and RED. He grew up in New York just before hip-hop music and culture were becoming mainstream in the early 1990s. “What do you do when you’re 18 in New York City?” he says. “You start clubbing. I got drawn into nightlife and music, and I loved hip-hop and did break dancing and graffiti and all that stuff.” Even though he was the son of jazz musician Rene McLean Sr. and the grandson of renowned jazz saxophonist-composer Jackie McLean, “I didn’t want to be a musician or in the music business,” he recalls. “But then something went off in my head.” 

After landing a promotion position at Virgin Records, followed by similar jobs at RCA — where he worked with Mobb Deep and Wu-Tang Clan — and Elektra, McLean formed Mixshow Marketing and Promotion company The RPM Group before founding Influence Media. 

What led you to found Influence Media? 

At that point in time, I had created a conference, a trade magazine, and, through the conference, we were doing a lot of brand work. That’s when Lylette Pizarro entered my life. We had gotten corporate clients to sponsor the conference, so we went out and created our own boutique agency, which wound up having a bunch of Fortune 500 clients like PepsiCo, LVMH and Verizon. We did everything from sponsorship to endorsement deals to strategy work, and that led us to think if we’re going to really get back into the nuts and bolts of the music business, the only way to really be impactful was to create Influence Media. By then, streaming had come on, and we saw the future. So we raised money and acquired three catalogs, which we then sold to Tempo. 

After selling those catalogs, you got $750 million in funding from BlackRock and WMG and bought more catalogs — Future, Blake Shelton and Enrique Iglesias. Why start SLANG? 

Lylette and I felt that, outside of acquiring and investing in these catalogs, there was an opportunity to build a label and a publishing company. I’ve always looked for the white space. We’re not just finance folks; we come from the music business. 

Is WMG a partner in the  label? Are you using them for distribution and publishing administration? 

Yes, SLANG is a part of Influence and Warner is one of our strategic partners in Influence. 

Who is doing the A&R  and signing the artists to the label? 

I’ve done all the signings to date, but we’re going to bring in a head of A&R. We now have a staff of about eight. But it’s been very boutique in the way I’ve been looking at these acts. We really want to develop these acts properly and break them solidly. And it seems like it’s really going in the right direction. 

In looking at your roster, the bigger names are Will Smith and The Underachievers. 

Will Smith is a distribution deal. But we’re highly involved in all the marketing and everything else. We work closely with Will’s camp. They’ve been great partners. And we just had our first No. 1 gospel record with him. So that’s wonderful right there. 

I would classify the rest of your roster as developing artists, like Camper and RX YP. 

Camper is incredible. He is a Grammy-nominated R&B producer, and he’s done a lot of things with H.E.R., Daniel Caesar and Coco Jones. RX YP is a rapper from Atlanta, very street. We also have, like you mentioned earlier, The Underachievers, who were originally signed to RPM and we picked them back up. They have a project coming out soon. They’re doing something with the clothing designer Kid Super. We’ve got TruththeBull, which is a true artist development story in the making. His debut mixtape is coming out in April, and his most recent single debuted [at No. 28 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50]. We’re really excited about that project. 

You have eight albums by developing acts either out already or coming out this year. With such a small staff, does SLANG have the bandwidth to try to break that many acts? 

But they are not all coming at the same time. Some of them, like RX YP, are releasing things later in the year. The focus right now is on TruththeBull, Leaf, Isaia Huron and Camper. When you are working with developing acts, there are no days off, so it’s constant development, building and building. And if things are going in the right direction, then you just keep fueling it to keep it going. But then certain acts are just very creative on their own, so we lean on their creativity and just amplify it. Some acts require heavy lifting and then there’s some light lifting. 

Why start a publishing division? 

In my mind, it goes hand in hand with the label. The great thing about the publishing side of things is that you can step in at a more accelerated [pace]. We’ve had three No. 1s in the last six months courtesy of our relationship with Future. We also publish Lil Durk and, I love this one, RaiNao. It’s pronounced “right now,” and she’s currently on Bad Bunny’s album. It’s getting huge exposure. She’s working on her new project. We’re excited about her, as we are about our friend DJ Khaled. We are currently his publisher, too.

In addition to a publishing deal with Future, you have partnered with him on other business. What does that entail?

We also have a joint venture with him regarding signing writers. The same thing with DJ Khaled. We get vertically involved with a lot of artists that we work with. For instance, with Future we secured [a deal for] him to be the face of Grand Marnier, which just started rolling out. And we helped Visa organize their first large event at the Louvre and secure Post Malone [for it]. We had RaiNao perform at the Louvre with Post. That’s an example of how we see the world. 

How are these deals structured? 

It depends. Some of the [artists] are signed directly to us; some of them are [joint ventures]. There’s the distribution deal [with Smith]. We have the ability to be flexible. 

Earlier, you indicated that SLANG is funded by Influence Media, which primarily invested in contemporary, established artists. SLANG works with developing artists, a sector of the business that institutional investors typically don’t fund. Does SLANG have the same investors as Influence? How much funding does it have? 

Same investors. I am not going to disclose [financing], but you know Influence is well funded. There’s no lack of capital needs. But you have to look at it right. Most companies that start with too much money usually don’t win because, when you have access, you can be very undisciplined. We’re very conscious of the mindset and how we allocate what we spend and invest in. It’s really about discipline and focus. That’s what got us to where we’re at.

This story appears in the Feb. 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.