We've had podcast guests in the radio, news, and sports arenas, but today's episode features an alumnus who has spent most of his career working with artists in the record label world. Adam Eisenberg always knew he had a passion for music. And when he came to WJPZ his junior year, he quickly became friends with Dion Summers, Kafele Khalfani, Marvin Nugent, and so many of the great class of 1995.He was heavily involved in the radio station, both on air and as assistant program director.
Following graduation, Rocco Macri helped him get in the door at Hot 97 in New York, where he realized he had a passion for aritst relations, moreso than being on the air. Following a stint in Baltimore living with his Cuse roommate Dion, Adam headed to LA for a record label job.
In over two decades, Adam's worked with Toni Braxton to Rihanna, Fall Out Boy, Lizzo, and Jack Harlow, just to name a few. He tells a great Toni Braxton story, but he really went viral by being on Rihanna's now infamous 777 - when she did 7 concerts in 7 countries in 7 days. Bringing a bunch of press and contest winners along seemed like a good idea at the time....
From on the label side and the artist management side, Adam credits his success to the lessons he learned at WJPZ, as you'll hear throughout this podcast. And we pick back up on an issue raised by Adam's close friend and roommate Dion Summers in this episode - where he describes the pushback that he received as program director. What was that like from Adam's perspective?
But we can't end on such a serious note - we close with the story of Adam, Nicki Minaj, and a picture that went viral of NIcki signing the chest of a previous WJPZ at 50 podcast guest.
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
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JAG: Welcome to WJP Z at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. Today I'm joined by yet another member of the iconic class of 1995. Mr. Adam Eisenberg, welcome to the show.
Adam: Hey, Jag. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here and part of this wonderful project you've put together.
JAG: Thank you, and I'm really excited to talk to you today because we're gonna dive into the record label side of things.
We've talked a lot to other guests about the radio side of things. We'll hear your side of the business, but we'll start at the beginning as we do with most guests. How did you end up at Syracuse and then at the radio station?
Adam: So my father, he relocated during the mid eighties up into Central New York.
He was in mortgage banking and he wound up, needing an office based out of Syracuse and oddly enough fell in love with the area and just was very happy there. And I would visit him. I lived with my mother, single parent in Long Island. And I would take trips over summer and, holiday break and, my dad loved the area and he loved the University.
And it was always a big plan of his, for me to be there and wind up there and he would take me to games and it was like prime sports time for Syracuse. Derek Coleman, Sherman Douglas era. And even a football team was great, Don McPherson, Rob Moore, they just had great teams and it was just, it was an intoxicating environment, but he knew I loved music.
And he would always show me he listened to WJPZ was because he's from New York, he was from the land of Hot 103 at the time and KISS and BLS and the market was bleak when you're coming from that area. And, he couldn't get into 93 Q or whatever. He wanted to hear, whether it was the Janets or George Michaels or whatever it was at the time.
And he was listening to JPZ and he would show me that there's kids that do this and this would be perfect for you. And he was trying to nudge me to to make my way there. It happened very naturally. I knew I was gonna come to Syracuse for a very long time and it was my only choice.
JAG: Really smart on your dad's part too. You gotta give him credit there for getting you up, up into town.
Adam: Yeah, he missed me greatly and wanted to be around so he pushed that angle.
JAG: So you got to the campus, he went to JPZ immediately then In that case?
Adam: It was not, and I've listened to most of these and my story is very similar to something I've heard you say.
I was lost for a little bit. I was very socially awkward. I was very nerdy. I went to all my classes. I was a good student, but I struggled socially. I missed New York. I was very homesick. And I was very depressed and I didn't know if I was gonna make it at the school.
JAG: Same.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And I wandered in my junior year. Regret now greatly that I did not go my first two years, but I went in and I've heard you use a phrase. I found my tribe and it happened to me as well. I went there instantly at the recruitment session. It was led by, Neon Dion Summers. And it was just obvious he was a superstar.
Andthat there were all these kids that were my age doing this kind of stuff that I grew up listening to in New York. I fell in love immediately and dove right in. And I get emotional. And when I talk about it, and Dion and I have talked about it many times, but it changed my life in so many ways.
It altered my course at Syracuse. It wound up helping me find my career and just developed socially and in who the person I am. It changed me in so many ways, but much like I've heard you say, I actually, I found my people walking in those doors and it's one of the greatest things I've ever done in my life.
JAG: It's funny you say, find my tribe because the aforementioned Dion Summers, in his episode, that's the phrase he used time and time again, finding your tribe. Find my tribe. And I feel like that was such a thing for you. And obviously you've got all those great numbers of the class in 95 and the classes immediately around you, but we were saying offline before we started recording.
You forged relationships with folks from all different classes and years at the radio station.
Adam: Yeah, it's happened on both sides. When I first started the station, Rocco was making some big moves at Hot 97 in New York City, which was the station I idolized. And he was out only a few years, he moved at this time from him being a student and was very active as an alumni, would come to Banquet frequently.
And I just latched onto him like a puppy. I just, I needed to get into Hot 97 and he took care of me in every way possible. Every summer break or holiday break, he would let me come visit him and just come to the office and just stare at everything. He set at me for a couple of internships there. He just broke down the first door for me.
And then on the other side of it I mentioned to you before we start recording I'm good friends to a lot of people in your group after, graduation, whether it's Beth and Jana and Matty D. Yeah, on both sides of my tenure I've developed some very special friendships.
JAG: Okay, cool. So you mentioned Jana and she is somebody you worked with post-graduation. Let's start with your story. So you graduate in 95, and where did you go from there?
Adam: Yeah, so Rocco set me up with some internships at Hot 97. And most of the interns are people who sit in vans and go around and, Hot 97 New York City.
They had, it wasn't just one van, they had a fleet. It was strong with the street van stuff, but I didn't wanna do that. I wanted to work in programming. I was a music nerd, a programming nerd. And I wanted to work with the programming team and he would tell me that, most of the interns don't really do that.
They do the van stuff, but he spoke to the program director which was Steve Smith at the time, but I really worked under Tracy Cloherty, who would later become program director. And he hooked me up with her and she has a reputation for being very tough. But she took to me very quickly and I think she just picked up that I knew what I was doing or had this radio music nerd gene to me.
JAG: Let me stop you right there for a second, Adam, because I almost forgot to ask you what you did at the radio station. Cause it sounds like that played into the story here.
Adam: We were just there all the time. Yeah. Me and Dion and just Kafele Khalfani. Big Daddy, Marv, Alex Coraless, all of us, we were there all the time.
We were just stealing everyone's shift, just wanted to beyond at all hours, staying summers, staying over breaks. So most of my stuff was just being on air, which is ironic cuz I was absolutely awful. I am one of the alltimers.
JAG: Oh, see, everybody says that, but I don't believe that.
Adam: No. My tapes are embarrassing. Embarrassing, but everyone was great and I loved it to death, so I was on air a lot. I mostly did programming stuff, working under Dion, and then Melanie Kushnir was program director. I was the assistant program director under her, and I just fed into that and just. All of us just rotating selector. I was such a nerd.
I was so excited to go in there and just, we would do selector every day and just program the station, to the best that we could. And I just loved doing all of that stuff. But the greatest part about that was we were serviced pretty heavily by the radio reps at time and a lot of major label reps, they would not send their college reps to Syracuse. We were serviced by the same people who were working New York and Philly and Boston.
JAG: Oh, wow.
Adam: And so we had some pretty heavy hitters wouldn't come a lot, but they would call, weekly. And when we would produce ads, it would show up on sound scan at the time.
We were making some, pretty moves in the market and they were respectful of that. And it was amazing because a lot of these reps who would talk to us on the station all the time once I got to Hot 97, it was the same reps. So they were so happy to see me cuz I hadn't met a lot of them.
We were mostly on the phone and they would all tell Tracy, they were like, oh, that's Adam, he's at Syracuse, he's great. They have this great station. It sounds like yours. So like, all the reps were so great to me and would just inflate my ego and really talk me up. And I'm still know most of them to this day. It's pretty amazing.
JAG: So back to your time there at Hot working for Tracy, that obviously was a feather in your cap that her reps are saying they know you and they're vouching for you. And where do things go for you from there?
Adam: Yeah, she, she would look at me like, how do you know these guys? And I'm just like, they service my station and I became friends with them.
The plan was to stay at Hot 97 and talk my way into getting on air with my awful voice and working in programming and, you learn a harsh reality of the struggle at radio and the pay scale at the intro level. And I tapped out after a couple years struggling and wound up moving to Washington DC and I stayed in Baltimore and Dion and I continued being roommates who, roommates at Syracuse, who roommates in Baltimore, Maryland.
And I was in publishing. I got a "real job," did it for about two or three years. Started making some decent money, getting caught up on my bills, was miserable as hell. Just miserable. And moved to Los Angeles and just said, I'm gonna work these radio people and these record people and tried to get a job and one of them hired me at Arista records in Los Angeles.
It was my first job working in radio promotion. So I was now working with all the people that worked with radio stations and, it's just basically a salesman job trying to, get your records on the air. And I started doing that and it started, a 20 year run.
JAG: What year was it that you started at Arista in LA?
Adam: It was 2001. I started working at Arista. I was an LA Reid guy. He ran the company. So it was just prime Arista. It was Outkast. It was Usher was breaking, P!nK was breaking. Yeah. Then just the legacy artist that I worked with at WJPZ., I was working a Whitney Houston album, TLC, Toni Braxton, like these artists I was playing five years prior.
I'm now like going to radio shows with, and it was just an amazing experience.
JAG: Any stories working with those iconic artists that stick out to you, that you, that are appropriate to tell for the podcast?
Adam: So one is Toni Braxton, cuz we played a ton of Tony Braxton at Z89 and I was just in awe of her and she had a reputation cuz she was just, this was peak Toni and she was a megastar.
And she was tough and she was not friendly and everyone was afraid of her. And it broke my heart. I was like, I wanted to hang with Toni Braxton and that was not happening. And then, I cut, not to jump ahead too far, about 15 years later I'm at Def Jam Records. And Toni Braxton's career over the course of the time had some ups and downs and she had been dropped by a couple labels.
She landed back at Island Def Jam with myself, both with LA Reid, cuz we're both LA Reid guys. And, she was humbled and. Was the greatest person in the world. Wow. And it was so great to me. And I have all these pictures of like her kissing me in the cheek and it's just wonderful.
So there's a lot of stories like that. Just the journeys you're go on together, and a lot of these artists, like you see over 15, 20 years and it's pretty cool.
JAG: So you are on the other side of it. You're at Arista in la 2001 starting out. Obviously, the world changes in 2001. How does your career go from there? You bounce around a little bit. What's next for you?
Adam: Yeah, so I was fortunate enough at Arista working with LA Reid and his team for a couple years, and you tend to travel together. There was some consolidation. Our label closed down in 2003. LA wound up landing at Universal at Island Def Jam and just hired a bunch of us.
So I started working at Island Def Jam in 05-06 and I was there for a few years and that was Jay-Z. peal Kanye, Rihanna. Oh yeah, I got to launch a band, Fall Out Boy.
JAG: Oh!
Adam: And worked with them from the time they were just like six dudes in a van doing about 300 shows a year, and then just blowing up onto TRL.
And I got to work with them so closely that they hired me to be part of their management team in 06. And that sent me on about a five-year run of working on the artist side, working directly in artist management. So I worked at Crush Management, which manages Fallout Boy still to this day.
I worked with them for a few years and just started getting offers and just a branching out, expanding, getting into touring. I worked with Ciara for a couple years. I was with Estelle and it graduated up a ladder where I wound up at Bad Boy working for Puffy for a little over a year.
And that was just like world tour level where you're just, you travel the entire world. And it became a lot. And I was ready to go back to radio and one of my mentors at Universal, gave me a chance to come back. In 2011, I went back to the label side at Universal. Was at Republic Records where again, they were just on fire.
Still are. It was Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Post Malone. Just the biggest stars in the world. And I was there till about 2019. And since then I've moved over to Warner Music Group and I am now working with Atlantic Records and Electra Records.
JAG: Who are the artists you're working with now?
Adam: Yeah, so right now we're, it's a lot of Lizzo, it's Jack Harlow, 21 Pilots. I'm fortunate I get to work with some of the biggest and greatest artists in the world.
JAG: Oh, and that's a reflection on you, Adam. Obviously, you've made a name for yourself and it's a small industry, so if you weren't good at what you did, you wouldn't be landing with these A-list artists, that's a credit to you.
So Adam, a little birdie told me that you have a story about Rihanna, or Rihanna if you prefer, she performed the Super Bowl halftime show this year, and bus, plane? What's the deal here?
Adam: Yeah, It's the highlight of my artist relations experience.
When I moved over to Def Jam from Arista, I segued from a radio promotion position to artist development, which is really just getting into weeds with artists. And I was just incredibly fortunate because I was hired. And it was the end of the totem pole at Def Jam at the time and was given an office all the way down a hallway and at the end of the office was just a corner, which was empty and filled with boxes and that kind of thing.
But a month earlier they had announced that Jay-Z was gonna be named president of Def Jam. And a lot of us thought it was just superficial and it was just like a title. But turns out, he came to work every day. So by sheer luck, my office was where Def Jam section ended and then where him and his Roc Nation team moved in and I went from having an office that was very desolate to being very popular and highly attracted cuz everyone wanted to come and, just be around him and hear his voice and stuff.
So I was fortunate to get to know a lot of people on his team. Guys that are still there are part of the Roc Nation team. And they were playing this record over and over again. It was 16 year old Rihanna. It was Pon De Replay. Was an obvious smash. It was right in the time of Sean Paul and Lumidee had very similar sounding records, and so I got to be around her a lot.
I was part of her first ever showcase, which was in July of that year. And not to say that I knew her but I was around her enough that I was a friendly face, which goes a long way. After I had left Def Jam and I was gone for a few years doing my touring thing, I came back in 2011.
At this point, she's six records in, she's a massive superstar, and she was doing her seventh record and she was churning out records at a very quick pace. And we came up with a promotion, with her and her team. It was called 777 to celebrate seven albums in seven years. We had this crazy idea to do seven shows in seven countries over seven days which is a pretty ridiculous pace.
And, from her idea that we fleshed out with the team, we packed the plane. We reserved a 777 jet from Delta's fleet. We turned it private and packed it with about 300 people. There was about a hundred people of Def Jam and her staff. And we had about a hundred press and radio people, and then there was a hundred contest winners.
So on this plane is 300 people. A lot of people are not used to flying private, and so when you fly private, you don't have FAA regulations, so now when you fly and you're so used to the routine of, strapping in and being yelled at, you can't do this. And when you're private, the plane just takes off, and everyone's in the aisle.
It was crazy. On the opening day, she gets on the intercom. We're working down the aisles. She's like pouring like Ace of Spades champagne for everybody. It was ridiculous. But as the week went along, it got very taxing for everybody because it's, you fly, you land, you go to the show and we were on a plane of a lot of people who are not used to that pace, and it turned quickly into it was very chaotic.
There were a lot of articles that ran, you knew a lot of trades of just " Rihanna Plane in Anarchy" and I was fortunate cuz I had a lot of good video. It was my one time of going viral for a little while. Just cuz I had a really cool stage access. So I had just like really cool videos and just backstage stuff.
But it got to the point where she was so exhausted, she disappeared. And kinda stayed to herself and everyone was just like, you had writers and press who, needed to do interviews and she had checked out and she was exhausted. We were all exhausted. It was the most chaotic experience of my life.
But it does tie back into WJPZ a little bit because a lot of those skills and just managing expectations and dealing with artists and deliverables. All this stuff is the best stuff that I dreamed about, coming into Syracuse and, none of this would've never happened without the connections I met, at Z89 and just Rocco placing me in Hot 97 and introducing me to this artist culture.
Like just, everything ties back to those moments.
JAG: It is funny how it does all type back and it's funny, I was thinking of you, watching Rihanna doing the halftime show. Any thoughts on that? Knowing her as you do?
Adam: It's just awesome. Every time she does anything, I had a ton of messages and I loved every minute of it.
She just went through the catalog. She just has so many hits. I thought it was great. But yeah, I get a lot of messages every time she does something. I'm long removed from the Rihanna experience at this point, but I do have great contact with her and our team and I try to attach myself to anything she does whenever possible.
JAG: Crazy to think how long she's been so successful. I remember playing Pon De Replay in was it 05? I think that it came out.
Adam: 16 years old man. It was 18 years ago.
JAG: What is the biggest difference, aside from the crazy travel schedule on working with the label side and the artist side?
Adam: Yeah, so the artist label dynamic is very similar to almost the label radio dynamic.
When I was working with radio and trying to make my way in programming, you're dealing with all these labels that are coming in and they're selling their four or five priorities and, trying to get airplay. And then when you go back to the label side, you become one of those people who are, trying to pitch, whether it's to radio or to television bookers and stuff like that. So the label artist side is very similar dynamic. So I went from the label, just trying to deal with artists and managers and saying, hey, we can do Fallon, or we could do Kimmel. What makes the most sense?
And so now working on a management side, you become the guy that's taking those calls from the label. And you're working with the artists in trying to just map out a schedule and just trying to figure out what you know is the best strategy and what's gonna drive revenue and things like that. So it's a very similar dynamic, kind of two sides to the coin type of thing.
JAG: That is really fascinating to me. And I've gotta imagine that throughout your career there have been lessons you learned at JPZ that have served you well from working in radio, working for the artists, working for the labels and back and forth in between all these different entities. It's gotta be stuff you learned foundationally at Z89 that helps you.
Adam: Yeah, absolutely. And the thing that strikes me the most is just, the competitive nature. My era was, I'm sure every era is, but we were so competitive. We had this kind of sweet spot. Our little pocket was, right after the flamethrower years where, you know, Hal Rood and that whole group just killed and just set us up for, in such a wonderful spot.
And then it was, right before, the transition to The Pulse. So we had this really sweet spot where We didn't have the line of the issues and we had all the benefits of the class before us. It was just such a fully staffed, competitive environment. And all those questions translate, especially in the music business, it was very similar.
You go to a label and the label is 50, 60 people deep. Everyone's brilliant. Everyone's a music nerd just like you. Everyone grew up listening and reading credits and knows their shit, so you learn how to play nice with her very quickly. And a lot of things I learned at Z 89, and especially after the fact when you think about it and you start going at banquets and you start talking with everybody, you learn those lessons of just how to thrive in a competitive environment, how to compromise and play nice with others is very important.
And I dove right into that on the music side. And a lot of those mistakes you learn help you in the future and prime you for success.
JAG: Any other funny stories that come to mind from your time at Z 89? You look back cuz, gosh, you had an unbelievable cast of characters that so many of us know because you've all been a so active as alumni.
Adam: Yeah, absolutely. And my crew, like we were together all the time and the station was just present everywhere. We were always at the station, we were always at each other's shifts. We had everyone's shift memorized. Like when Dion was on, it was literally like a crowd. There'd be five or six of us, like in the studio.
Just hanging out through 11, 12 o'clock and then just once his shift's over, just move to the back room and just always in the station is my greatest memory, is just always being around, always listening. We would always have it on Dion and I lived on South Campus. It was like a hangout.
For a lot of people, the station would always, in our apartment, always listening to the station and we would just be constantly like trying to egg Dion on. Like we all had Selector memorized, so we knew if someone played something like out of rotation, we would just constantly beg him to call and just like yell at someone. And he never wanted to do it and we would just constantly be egging him on the call and then he would do it, and then we'd just give him a hard time about what an asshole thing that was to do.
Like just little things like that all the time, but like in terms, I had a car, and I don't drink, so I did a lot of driving. Okay. And as bad as I am on air, I'm probably a worse driver. There were multiple accidents. Where I was in a car with multiple staffers, but there was one incident we drove up to Utica cuz BB Good, who had graduated just a few years earlier, she was doing nights at a station in Utica, which we thought was the coolest fucking thing that she was on and getting paid for this kind of stuff. Oh yeah, we just decided, I don't know why, just to get in my car and just drive up and visit her and hang out. But we got lost and we were wandering through some side roads and I had to make a three-point turn. But the roads in upstate New York had these, like snow ditches on the side where they could dump the snow.
And my car wandered into it where it tilted on its side. And, we had Marvin Nugent in the car. It was nickname was Big Daddy, and it tilted onto his side, which became a joke afterwards. My car was stuck in the stitch and. I don't remember exactly was in the car, but I believe it was me and Dion, and it might have been Kafele and Marv.
I'm the only white person, and so we had to go knock on someone's door and get a tow truck, but there's no cell phones, there's no just a car in a ditch. So they're all like, I am not knocking on any of these doors. So I had to go knock on someone's door and get a tow truck to come bail us out.
So it's just, We, little things like that would happen constantly to us.
JAG: So you mentioned having these great friendships at Z 89. There was no issue with white guys and black guys being friends, and you said you're the only white guy in a car full of four people in Dion's episode. I'm curious to ask you now, both as a white guy and as Dion's roommate. In Dion's episode, he was pretty open about the fact that there were some moments when he was the program director.
As a black guy adding "black music,", that he got a lot of push back and he wasn't quite sure sometimes where that pushback was coming from, if that was academic, when it came to music or if there was something a little bit more nefarious there. I'm curious, since you were there with him at the time, I'm curious how you remember that time from your perspective.
Adam: Yeah, man, it was it was very hard for him. Very hard for him. Obviously he loved the station, he loved programming. He's a brilliant programming mind, but he was a black man programming, a largely white staff. And part of it also was just the business top 40 radio in the mid nineties, right before the big TRL boom of 97, 98.
In the mid nineties, radio was very splintered. You had the remnants of, the grunge sound and the early nineties alternative sound blossoming. And then you had, the hip hop R&B sound and it was like radio was forcing to go one way or the other, there weren't a lot of middle of the road pop hits. And just based on, Dion's knowledge and a marketing, 93Q, Y94, playing more of the rock stuff.
And it was a huge void for a lot of the, urban acts that had major superstars, whether it was Whitney, Janet, Boyz II Men, TLC, these artists were not getting played in the market. And Dion really felt, as a programmer, that it was the best thing to do. It was the best way to train the staff, the media classroom aspect of it.
And it just happened. He was a black person just advocating for black music, and it was very hard. And it was a lot of feedback. And racism's a very strong word. But it's not always the ugliness of racism. There's, there's systemic racism. And it struck him very hard and there were times when he almost wanted to not deal with it anymore.
We almost lost a great programmer because of that. And just, you look at all the people that he is touched and how close we came for him walking away from the station, it's very heartbreaking. But he really thought he was right. He stuck to his guns. He had a support team there. And I think in retrospect, he turned out to be right.
Just in terms of his programming success for 20 years after this. Just an incredible programmer, but just you look at how music has evolved. And a lot hindsight he saw in terms of where music was going, also came true. But it was hard and, as a white person just trying to be an ally in those situations.
I came from a diverse background and just always knew that I had an affiliation for black culture. And, I was fortunate always to be accepted by my peers. But I always considered it a privilege to have the opportunity to thrive in a space that's not mine and I don't have ownership.
But I was very fortunate to have able to make a career in that music. But more importantly, just like lifelong friends. And, you mentioned diversity and it's just, I know it's a huge issue for Dion and it's something he's still working on to this day of the station. And we go back to Banquets and a lot of times we'd be so excited whenever we see someone, whether it be like Mina or Rashaud Thomas.
People of color who are thriving, but he knew. What they were probably dealing with the same thing he dealt with in a largely a white space. And he would always go out of his way to try to make them feel at how made them feel like they had family and just encourage them to not walk away in the same way.
He didn't walk away. And it's hard and there's not a lot I could do in my space, but you don't need to be a person of color to understand that and identify that what's going on. It's something that I know the station and the alumni are trying to work towards and improving and, I'm very much trying to be a part of that and I'm hoping it's something that we can, make some progress with
JAG: Well said. You mentioned the difference, Adam, between overt racism and I guess maybe the phrase is implicit bias. What was Dion dealing with? What kind of pushback was he getting when he was adding these records?
Adam: Yeah, I think a lot of it is just, I think what hurt him most was distrust as a programmer, and people thinking that he might have been just wanting to play his favorites because he was black and he was playing black artists, and I think that's what hurt him was that.
There was a lack of trust in this programming sense, and now you're just playing your records you like. As opposed to, no, this is best for this market. This is the best for the station to thrive. This is the best way to teach how to be competitive and put students in a position to succeed. And I think that's what hurt him more.
JAG: And looking back 30 years at the charts from the mid-nineties, the proof is in the pudding that he was making the right decision from the radio station. When you see which one of those songs had the chart power and the staying power.
I'm glad to hear this from your perspective as well, and again, we're recording this prior to the Banquet, but at the Banquet, by the time you hear this, there is a diversity initiative that the alumni are putting together to make us more of an inclusive group to make it that way. So I'm glad that we're getting this issue out in the open and I gotta imagine, we talked about lessons for the station.
Adam, you work with a lot of hip hop R&B type artists from, you said Toni Braxton, Diddy. Aving that experience and as you said, being a fan of black culture, I'm sure it's served you well working with black artists.
Adam: Yeah, it's a fine line. You wanna avoid appropriation. Yeah. And I feel like I've always done a good job of that, whether it's going out in my youth to black clubs or working with black artists.
And it's like you adopt a culture, but it's a very fine line of appropriation. Just in terms of how you dress and how you talk in the language you use and the slang you use. And I've never had an issue, I've always had, whether it's my friends of color, artists of color, I think they catch on that, that this guy gets it and he's respectful of the culture and he's participating, but in the right way.
It's a very fine line. But it's very important to learn where that line is.
JAG: Adam, I really appreciate your insight on what can be a pretty heavy topic, but I obviously don't wanna leave it there. So let's transition out of that and I wanna close with one more funny story. I know you worked with my classmate, Jane Fiorello from the class of 2002 when you were at Hot 97 and when you were in New York. I know there's a story there that you're dying to tell.
Adam: Yeah, and I love that girl to death. We met at a banquet.
JAG: I feel like this might have been a Banquet where the two of you were like just cracking jokes the whole time, like in the limo and like it was easy to see that the sarcastic sense of humor between the two of you shared that you two were quickly becoming friends.
Adam: Yeah. That has not changed. We are very much alike and we still play that role. We hate on everything, in good nature of course. I like to think we're both good people, but we hit it off like really quickly and I integrated pretty seamlessly into your group. And I love them to death. But we got to cross when I was working with Nicki Minaj as part of her management team, and I was on a road with her a lot, and she was at Hot 97 a lot. And at that time, Janna was with Hot 97.
JAG: I'm gonna stop you for one second because this only came up on the podcast yesterday. Jana, not Janna.
Adam: I do it all the time. Sorry. But yeah. So Jana was at Hot 97 and she was a big fan of Nicki. And at the time, Nicki was running the gimmick where she would meet her fans the die yards called "the Barbs," and she would sign their breasts in Sharpie, and she wanted her breast signed.
So we were at an event, I think it was a Hot 97 concert that Nicki was on. And I brought her backstage and introduced her to Nicki. And Nicki signed her breast pretty low in front of me. And it was quite the moment, but it got picked up by a magazine, I don't know which one it was, but it was one of those supermarket trade magazines actually ran a photo of her breasts with Nicki signing it.
And I think every time it comes up in my feed on Facebook, we each repost it and share that moment of me looking at her breast in a sisterly fashion cuz I love her to death.
JAG: Thank you for the disclaimer. Adam Eisenberg class of 1995. Thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us today. Really appreciate having you on.
Adam: Thank you. I love all these podcasts and you are doing just a terrific job with this and it's quite a wonderful legacy for you to leave the station.
JAG: I appreciate that. Thank you.