Photo credit: Corey “C-Notes” Calder

Corey “C-Notes” Calder is one of today’s most influential creative minds in music marketing, known for his immersive, artist-first approach and cultural fluency. As SVP of Marketing & Creative at Artist Partner Group (APG), Calder has helped shape the careers of breakout stars like Lay Bankz, Odetari, BunnaB, BabyChiefDoit, and Baby Kia, while creatively directing major artists including NBA YoungBoy and Kevin Gates. His reputation as a cultural driver extends beyond accolades like Billboard’s Indie Power Players and XXL’s Awards Board; it’s grounded in his hands-on, authentic approach to building artists’ worlds, from story and visual language to viral strategies that resonate far beyond social media.

Calder’s unique background includes roles at Warner Records, Apple, Beats Music, Wasserman, and the LA Clippers, bringing a cross-industry perspective few in music can match.

Most recently, his creative direction on 803Fresh’s viral hit “Boots on the Ground” sparked a national line dance craze amplified by co-signs from icons like Michelle Obama and Beyoncé, cementing Calder’s ability to transform songs into cultural moments. His belief that “every artist is a universe” drives campaigns that are intentional, truthful, and purpose-driven, ensuring each release isn’t just heard but felt, remembered, and woven into the fabric of culture.

The Hip Hop Museum caught up with Corey to talk about working with music industry veteran Mike Caren, his unique approach to music marketing, the future of fan interaction with music and artists, and much more.

Adam Aziz: At Artist Partner Group (APG), you work very closely with Mike Caren, a music industry veteran who started the company. What is the most important lesson he has taught you?

Corey Calder: That’s a great question. Mike is a savage and creative businessman. I’ve had experience at major record labels in the past. I’ve worked at Warner Records. I had a stint at Interscope. Going from a major to an indie is very interesting. 

Over the past five years, I’ve been working for Mike. One thing Mike does really well is work with a sense of urgency. He calls it patient urgency. It’s this idea and philosophy that we use with our artists, where it’s like, ‘ Hey, we’ve got to move really, really fast, but also be patient with the results we’re seeking. ‘ This relates to developing artists, which has been our sweet spot.

AA: In the old days of the music industry, it was a lot easier to determine the success of a single or album and determine where you allocate the budget, basing it around early sales numbers. Today, everything moves a bit differently, especially in the sense that success isn’t necessarily determined right out of the gate. How do you make those budget decisions today?

CC: On the marketing side, I put it into two different buckets—reactive and proactive marketing. Today, we’re more reactive. The modern record label is more reactive. We test, take shots, experiment, and put the product out in the market, letting fans decide, talk back to us, and tell us what’s working and what’s not. And that’s the new way of doing things. 

And the reverse of that is that once we see something moving, we double back and decide what budgets are and choose how much money we’re going to invest in it. 

The approach is very different from back in the day, when it was like, ‘Hey, here’s a million bucks up front, go spend $200,000 on radio.’ It was front-loaded marketing.

AA: You work closely with NBA YoungBoy. He releases so much music that it can sometimes be challenging to keep up with it. Is the volume of music the marketing strategy for him as an artist?

CC: Yes and no. YB is different, and he always has been since signing him at the age of 15. He likes to win, and he likes to give his fans a lot of product. A lot of content. He works at a neck-breaking speed, which is even tough for us on the marketing side because he’s just ping-ponging around getting multiple things done. I wouldn’t say it was ever a strategy to begin with. I think with him specifically, he was just being himself, wanting to feed his fans. Over the past seven years of his career, Mike Caren and Atlantic Records were picking up on that. They built teams around him to keep up with his speed, and then it became a strategy.

For many young Hip Hop artists emerging from Atlanta and Chicago, or wherever, we embody that patient urgency at APG. We’re moving fast; we’re cranking out two to three videos at a time, dropping lots of music. There’s no traditional format to how we’re doing things.

AA: What does a typical day look like for you as SVP of Marketing & Creative?

CC: It’s a bit different for me than it is for most heads of marketing. I think traditional marketing heads are probably sitting behind a desk, putting together plans and serving as the central cog of the wheel, communicating with different parties that need information, both internally and externally. 

My approach has always been very hands-on; I am more in the field. I have moments where I’m in the office, putting together a plan and timelines and ensuring the product management piece is in place. 

But in 2025, artist marketing is heavily rooted in content and excellent content and content that cuts through. And I’ve always had a pretty creative, sharp eye for that. I tend to be in the field with my artists when they’re performing a show or shooting a video. I tend to be able to do a lot of my development on the ground and be really hands-on with them. I travel a lot more than most of the SVPs of marketing.

AA: You’ve played a big part in 803Fresh’s record, “Boots On The Ground,” which is currently burning up the charts. Why do you think there has been such an explosion of blending of genres, like Country with Hip Hop? We’ve seen it before, but it is exploding right now.

CC: My perspective is two things. One, the appetite of fans has evolved. And a big part of that is because of social media. I think platforms like TikTok, with their ability to create mashups and edits and the flexibility in genre, have allowed Hip Hop and other genres to blend together more.

I feel like people are more accepting of it. It’s really more about what can make a cool dance on your channels, and that’s growing, spreading, and getting out to a wider audience that probably wouldn’t have been reached twenty years ago. 

If you’ve got a mashup of Country and Hip Hop, and it sounds great, and your friends are doing it, you’re going to do it too. That’s where the industry has been, where we’re just mixing and mashing things due to technology. 

AA: I’m going to make a statement, and I want you to respond to it. Traditional A&R no longer exists, and it’s now more about data mining and social media engagement.

CC: My thoughts are that’s true. I don’t want to say, unfortunately, because I do feel like there have been so many great and talented artists that have been discovered on social media, just strictly through research, not because they were at a bar in Wisconsin and they had a great singing voice.

Research and the data element are extremely important in modern A&R. However, because of this, I feel that it has probably become a little lazier than it has traditionally been in the past. 

It’s less legwork than was required. I feel like A&R’s before needed to know how to move around a studio, needed to know how to structure a song, needed to understand things like Pro Tools and different platforms, needed to really have an ear for certain things. And now you don’t necessarily need that as much, right? If you’re able to utilize certain tools, find an artist with a trending sound, and be a bit of a slick talker, you could probably secure a deal with an artist.

AA: The “Blog Era” was critical in the discovery of Hip Hop music. Today, the primary shift has been toward playlisting. But is there a discovery element that is missing now around the music?

CC: I think that the industry will eventually shift to fans being the gatekeepers. I think right now, it’s very much about Spotify being the gatekeeper, or SoundCloud, or YouTube, and executives like myself who sit at tables and try to guess hits. That’s the current state of the business.  

But ultimately, there will be a shift. I feel like there’s a missing element of fans controlling the narrative a little bit more, including what songs are released, what the artwork looks like, and what the video looks like. Being able to go to do a drive-through and say, hey, this is what I want to eat, as opposed to being served something that you don’t like, and then you’re picking at it. I think that’s missing from the current landscape: a little bit more fan-driven rollouts and fan-driven interactions with the artists. 

AA: And how about the tangible value of music? There was a time when you could hold the music in your hand, and now, it’s mainly digital. Do you think there will ever be a new physical music product where fans can interact physically with music again? Does that matter?

CC: I think it matters. I think it matters less with new artists.  It’s still a thing for more established artists. For me, it depends on the case, but we still offer bundles. We continue to seek out cool, unique collectible items to give to fans in connection with specific projects. 

It’s harder like we’ve moved away from the days of the Nipsey Hussle $100 album. But I do think there are artists that are at different levels that do cool shit. Like Travis Scott and Utopia with the briefcase and the handcuffs, that was really cool. Taylor Swift has done some really cool things.

Around a new physical product, it’s hard to say. Who knows what it is, like 2.0 of the CD or something? We know that everything is going digital. Will it be a newer version of the iPod, or will it always be on the phone? There will be new ways for fans to interact with and collect music, much like what they were trying to achieve with NFTs. There will likely be another version of that.

AA: What’s coming up next at APG that you’re excited about?

CC: I’ve been working with Kevin Gates a lot recently, just getting him back into the conversation. Next month, we have the next installment in his ‘Luca Brasi’ series coming out. It’s all about getting him into a new artist mindset and doing things he hasn’t done before, like creating TikToks. I’ve also been working with NBA YoungBoy and his team on the ‘Make America Slim Again’ album coming this Summer.

Follow Corey “C-Notes” Calder on Instagram.