*Azim Rashid has spent decades inside the machinery of the music business, working at Motown, MCA, Atlantic, Capitol, Roc Nation and Columbia. Now, as president of The Living Legends Foundation, he sees something happening that should get the industry’s attention.
“I think the business, especially for Blacks specifically, but minorities overall, the business is where it was 40 years ago,” Rashid told EURweb‘s Lee Bailey in an exclusive Zoom interview ahead of the Living Legends Foundation’s 35th anniversary gala, set for Oct. 2 in Atlanta.
His concern isn’t about the music itself. It’s about who has power behind it.
“There were very few Black executives in seats of power,” Rashid said of the earlier era. “We had very little control.”
Today, he argues, the industry again has too few Black executives with “autonomy, ownership, and the ability to actually nurture and grow people who look and sound like them.”
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But Rashid doesn’t view that reset as surrender.
“We’re starting over,” he said, “but we’re starting over with the knowledge of how to do it.”
From Rapper to ‘Navy SEAL of Promotion’
Rashid’s perspective comes from an unusually long view of the business.
He started at 17 as a DJ before becoming a rapper with Dallas group Nemesis, which signed with Profile Records. After leaving the group and returning to college, internships at Mercury and Motown led to a career in promotion.
Eventually came executive positions and stops at MCA/Universal, Atlantic, Capitol, Roc Nation and Columbia.
A pattern emerged.
“It seems like every time they want to reboot something, they bring in me,” Rashid joked. “I feel like I’m a Navy SEAL of promotion.”
When EURweb noted that his résumé sounded considerably older than the man appearing on the Zoom screen, Rashid laughed.
“Well, I did start at 17.”
Then he revealed another possible career-survival secret.
“And I drink a lot of water.”
Why the LLF Still Matters
Rashid is now serving his second term as president of The Living Legends Foundation, an organization whose mission he describes through three pillars: protect, honor and fund.
The (October 2) gala is the highly visible part. Much of the foundation’s other work deliberately isn’t.
“The work that we do is quiet,” Rashid explained. “We don’t advertise, we don’t publicize the people we help. We do it with grace, with honor, and we allow them the dignity, because this could happen to anyone.”
That assistance can include helping industry veterans through difficult transitions and providing death benefits, while the foundation’s educational work includes scholarship opportunities.
Rashid traces that philosophy to mentors who helped him advance without demanding anything in return.
“You don’t owe me anything. Just pay it forward,” he recalled being taught. “Just do it for someone else what I’ve done for you.”
He worries that philosophy has weakened as generations of executives have left the business.
“Our business is a hustler’s business,” Rashid said. “It’s an on-the-grind, moving-and-shaking, and it’s kind of a taker’s business.”
Getting ‘The Love Back Into the Music’
For Rashid, the problem goes beyond corporate titles.
“We live in now a very selfish and a very ‘what about me, look at me’ kind of society,” he said. “People aren’t doing things for the love, they’re doing it literally for the likes and the clicks.”
That extends even to executives, he argues, in a business where the people behind the scenes increasingly want to become the stars themselves.
“The challenge is to get the love back into the music,” Rashid said, while also restoring education, history and what he calls “the pure love of the game.”
That mission will be on display when the Living Legends Foundation gathers in Atlanta for its 35th anniversary gala.
Rashid describes the celebration less like an awards show than an industry family reunion, where the connections between generations become visible — who mentored whom, who opened a door and who subsequently opened one for somebody else.
Among those helping lead this year’s celebration are honorary chairs Chaka Khan and Q Parker, a founding member of 112.
For Rashid, surviving 35 years is itself significant.
“It’s a big industry, but it’s a small community,” he said. “And we have to support each other.”
His prescription for the next generation sounds remarkably similar to the lesson his own mentors gave him: learn what came before you, do the work, and then make sure somebody else gets through the door.
“If we do that,” Rashid said, “we can continue to try to thrive, and we can rebuild this business.”
Click HERE to get more info on The Living Legends Foundation Gala, in Atlanta on October 2.
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