Merlin Bobb on Signing En Vogue, Breaking Missy Elliott, and Building the Next Atlantic
Merlin Bobb grew up in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with 15 relatives and music on every floor. Jazz from his grandfather. Motown from his mother and aunts. The bank wouldn't lend his grandfather $15,000 to buy the building. Decades later, Merlin went back to buy it himself. Too late.
A Section 8 apartment in Murray Hill changed everything. His cousin Tony Humphries taught him and Timmy Regisford to mix on a Radio Shack Realistic mixer. A label exec explained A&R to a 16-year-old Merlin, and the light bulb went on. He worked the coat room, then the stage, then the door at Zanzibar, collecting business cards from every label that walked in.
Then Timmy needed a fill-in on WBLS. Merlin stayed more than a decade, right behind Mr. Magic and Marley Marl, and rose to assistant music director. Then Sylvia Rhone called. At Atlantic they took R&B from No. 11 to No. 1 with LeVert's "Casanova," Audio Two, MC Lyte, Ten City, and an En Vogue production deal Merlin signed on harmony alone. That run became EastWest Records, then Elektra, where he ran A&R across Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliott, Metallica, and Björk.
Plus: co-founding the Shelter after the Paradise Garage closed, a terrifying LAPD stop with Eazy-E and Dr. Dre, the seven-month campaign to get Missy to rap, why Gen Z watches the DJ instead of dancing, Greenhouse, and his challenge to young Black founders: build the next Atlantic.
This is Mixed and Mastered with Merlin Bobb.
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