The Europe In Synch Podcast
The Europe In Synch Podcast
EP17: Everton Lewis Jr (Wracket Music) - Sheepshit, Vice, Apple, & Dilla: This Supervisor's Story.
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Welcome to episode seventeen of the Europe In Synch podcast.
This time we are talking with Everton Lewis Jr., founder of Wracket Music, based in Toronto, Canada.
Everton gives us his expert view of one of the entertainment industry's most misunderstood professions, the world of Music Supervision. From his own unexpected beginnings when a filmmaker wanted to use his hip-hop track "Sheepshit" in an independent film, to founding his award-winning company Wracket Music, Everton's journey shows some of the surprising ways through this specialized field.
Mentored by the legendary David Hayman, Everton reflects on how his time at Vice Canada reshaped his understanding of music supervision and established him as a sought-after collaborator. He developed a deep appreciation not only for the creative thrill of matching music to visuals, but also for the complex administrative side of rights clearance—an area many newcomers underestimate. For Everton, the profession’s unique balance of creativity and paperwork became something to embrace fully as his success grew.
Our conversation also explores his work with global brands like Apple, where the technical precision required for commercial syncs pushed his skills to new heights. Beyond advertising, Everton has contributed to a wide range of projects—including a proposed J Dilla documentary with Questlove—that reflect both his versatility and his deep roots in hip-hop culture.
Throughout, Everton underscores his commitment to nurturing new talent, describing music supervisors as “the new A&Rs” of the industry. His dedication to mentorship—paying forward the support he once received from Hayman—reveals his belief that opening doors for others keeps the industry vibrant, diverse, and evolving.
We recorded this conversation at De Oosterpoort during Eurosonic Festival in Groningen on Friday 17th January 2025.
We hope you enjoy the episode and thank you for listening!
Find out more about our guest:
Homepage: Wracket Music
Instagram: Wracket Music
Instagram: Everton Lewis Jr
If you have comments about this episode - or have questions, ideas, requests, recommendations, or general feedback, feel free to contact us at feedback@europeinsynch.net.
Europe In Synch is created, managed, promoted, and driven by several European organizations and companies and is a truly cross-border collaboration.
The goals are to bring together professionals from the music sector with decision-makers from film & advertising to provide a real-life, hands-on, learning experience, and to promote European music in the complex field of synchronization, through communication, knowledge-building and networking via focused mentoring and peer training sessions.
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Intro/Outro music is an instrumental edit of "Gimme" by Daffodils.
They're on Soundcloud.
Europe In Synch is co-funded by the European Commission.
This podcast is a SuperSwell production.
Meeting Everton Lewis Jr
Speaker 2It's the Europe in Sync podcast and we're at Eurosonic Festival in Groningen and we've got one of the greats to talk to today. You can't laugh while I'm saying that.
Speaker 2Start over. Sorry about that. Welcome to the Europe in Sync podcast. We've got one of the greats to talk to. Today. We're with Everton Lewis Jr, founder of Racket Music Supervision, based in Toronto, canada, to talk to. Today we're with Everton Lewis Jr, founder of Racket Music Supervision, based in Toronto, canada. He's an award-winning go-to music supervisor for the hottest and most dynamic music syncs in the business. Everton also sits on the board of the Guild of Music Supervisors of Canada. Hi, everton, how are you doing? Hi, paul, great man, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming along. One thing that I always hear when I'm talking to music supervisors is quite a few of them. They describe a light bulb moment when they discover music supervision. Of course, they grow up loving music. They grow up loving films, right, and it takes a while for the light bulb to go off that there's someone in between all that putting it all together.
Speaker 2How did it happen?
Speaker 3for you. Yeah, I was always into music. Parents put me into organ lessons as a child just to stay out of trouble. It was organ lessons, being a Boy Scout and playing football. But yeah, it was at that time I fell in love with music. And then my younger brother and I we had a hip-hop duo production unit. We called ourselves the Beat Doc Saints after the movie Boondock Saints, so you could see some of the parallels with movies and music and love that we had.
Speaker 3And it wasn't until then where we produced this hip-hop beat and a film director had stumbled on our music on MySpace. The movie was called Sheepshit. It was an independent film filmed in London, ontario, and he reached out to us about using the song that we named Sheepshit and he wanted to use it for the theme of the film. And my brother and I replied we were like, yeah, sure, go ahead and use it. And he was like, well, how much do you want for it? And my brother and I were like, oh, you're going to pay us for it. So right away there was a monetary value. That started to kick off that light bulb for me. And then obviously, we handed over the beat. We gave him a high res wave of the instrumental. And then he emailed us a master sync license. It was at that point when I saw this document that I realized, wow, this is the business here. So that was my first light bulb moment and really the first master sync license and legal documentation that I had ever seen. And then it took off from there.
Speaker 2But seeing all the paperwork thrown at you that didn't put you off in any way.
Speaker 3No, it didn't. I was just quite interested in it because I just started to realize what was involved in actually being able to license a song to use over a film visual medium of any sort. So I dove right into it, started looking at what the territories were, being able to license a song to use over a film visual medium of any sort. So I dove right into it, started looking at you know what the territories were, what in perpetuity mean, what in and out of context usage mean, and I was just like, wow, there's so many things that are involved in using a song in a film. It's not just like, yeah, here, use my music. And literally, paul, everything took off from there. It was life-changing.
Speaker 2Life-changing, paul. Everything took off from there. It was life changing, life changing. Great that you had that sense of curiosity, rather than being put off by it then, right, right, but what was your next step then? What made you realize that that's what you wanted to do?
Speaker 3now. I mean the next step for me was I started diving into what music supervision was, what a TV film sync was, and I stumbled on a company out of Canada called Jingle Punks, which is massive now and Jared Goodstadt is the CEO, and I stumbled on his business and when I landed on his webpage it really amplified my interest in my exploration into TV film and sync. It was at that point where I decided to start reaching out to music supervisors to see if I could get in and intern for somebody, and obviously nobody answered any emails. They're like who's this guy? And then I was like you know what? I'm going to start my own thing.
Speaker 3At the time I was stage managing for Canadian Music Week and I decided to start my own company. So I started this company before Racket. It was A-Side Music Licensing and the objective was to curate an aggregated music library strictly for Canadian music, for sync, and built this website. A lot of it was off of the model of Jared Goodstass, jingle Punks and all of those bands that I was stage managing for Canadian Music Week. I started signing them on and representing their music in this music library. So that's where it really started and a lot of my background is social media and marketing and just really making things look really good online, and at first it was smoke and mirrors, but then we started to gather some business just based on a lot of social media posts that we did. I was very active on Twitter. On Facebook I started building this tremendous network from Canadian Music Week, yeah, and then the rest was pretty much magic Were you focusing mainly in hip-hop.
Speaker 3Yes, I mean. A lot of my friends were from the hip-hop genre and industry, so I started collecting a lot of their music, which I was soon to find out was not probably the best genre of music. No, that's jumping in the deep end. Jumping in the deep end because everybody was ripping samples and that was something that I found out and learned that clearing samples is not a joke. But the other breakthrough moment for me was to really open up and broaden my taste in music.
Speaker 3Hip-hop kind of veered off, and then a lot of the bands that I was stage managing for Canadian Music Week. For two years in a row I had bluegrass concerts. For the following year I had folk. The following year I had folk following year at a jazz concert series. So it started to broaden then. With that I noticed that I needed to curate the library a little bit more to make sure that it sounded well and to make sure that the music really applied to tv and film productions that were coming out of Canada so, yeah, you must have learned some hard lessons very early on, which put you in good stead for later on.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 3Yes, yes, we did.
Speaker 3At the time I was still producing music and then I was getting into, you know, like TV film sync, and when I was producing music for quite the renowned hip hop artist, shad K, who we helped produce two tracks off of an album that he won a Junior Award for, two tracks off of an album that he won a Juno Award for.
Speaker 3We had produced a song for him where we had accidentally ripped a BG sample and it got to the label and the label was like that's a BG sample, and then we had to rework the song, so on and so forth. So, yes, those sort of things really kind of paved the way and made me understand more clearly what's involved, how dangerous samples are, and to really do your due diligence when somebody submits a song to you, to figure out whether or not there's a sample in it. So there's one thing producing for an album, and then you know the label catching it, but there's another thing where it may slip through and go onto a TV show and then the whole production or TV network is within a copyright infringement lawsuit and that's the last thing you want to do. I think that's your one-way ticket to not be a music supervisor anymore.
Breaking into Music Supervision
Speaker 2Well, respect for carrying on after all that and still being encouraged to do it. But when you discovered this role of music supervision and you started to realize there were music supervisors you could at least try to connect with, even though they were ignoring you at first, did you feel like you discovered a secret world, Because music supervision it's really underground, isn't it?
Speaker 3it's funny so I do a lot of panels and I speak about this and my late mentor, david hayman, who really took me under his wing and showed me the ropes.
Speaker 3Because there was one thing of me I was self-taught, but there was another thing of having somebody there who's been in the industry and was kind of the go-to music supervisor in north america that showed me the way. But him and I had this running joke where it was. The music supervision realm was sort of like this dark Jedi way that you really had to, you know, find your master to get into. And yeah, it is like that it is. It's sort of like this underground society of people that are behind the scenes in a lot of TV and film. You don't really understand or know until you start to put a magnifying glass over what it is exactly that we do. So yeah, it was very cool and I feel like now I'm accepted into this Jedi way of music supervising and supervision and it's been interesting, but having a connection like David Heyman, that's really not a bad thing to have had, is it?
Speaker 3Yeah, a beautiful segue into David Heyman. So, david Heyman, he stumbled on my company, called me into his office, which was Supergroup at the time. I went to go meet him. He's like, so what? Are you working on I?
Speaker 3was like you know all kinds of stuff. He's like no, you're not, because I'm working on everything. Call me out. And he was like listen, man, I have an opportunity for you. Vice Canada at the time didn't have an in-house music supervisor. They were outsourcing everything to David Heyman at Supergroup. He's like let's make a deal, I'm going to get you into Vice, I'm going to place you in there and you and I, in tandem, are going to work on Vice Productions and with that I will train you top to bottom and let you know everything that you need to know about music supervision. So at first he was like I'm going to do the creative stuff, you're going to do all the administrative stuff. And man, four years of working on 10 to 12 productions at a time, an office full of 350 people, various editors, producers, directors that was my masterclass in music supervision. So that's how I got in.
Speaker 2It sounds like an absolutely dream scenario.
Speaker 3It was a dream scenario, as it turned out.
Speaker 2What was the reality, though? Having to focus a lot more on the admin side than the creative side I know that some people in the business prefer one to the other did you feel like you got the rough end of it at first?
Speaker 3I did, man, I hated it. But working alongside David Heyman I learned to love it. And you are right, there's two sides to music supervision and a lot of people that are just getting into music supervision they think it's just I get to pick songs for all these cool movies and the next Spider-Man movie. Yeah, no, there's the other side of it and I feel to truly be a great music supervisor you have to love both sides of it. So I've learned to love it to the point now where I love the creative side. It comes naturally. I love the creative side. It comes naturally. The administrative side is what keeps me going, because it's the digging, the discovery and to figure out who the writers are of a recording and what percentage of the drummer from the band retains this much of it, or what label or co-publisher. So that mapping and that information-based research side to music supervision is something I absolutely love.
Speaker 2It must have been a nice situation when you were saying that, vice, they didn't have anyone doing anything before, so you weren't taking over from anyone. Did that give you a feeling that you could build your own vision of what it should be? Yes, totally.
Speaker 3Here's the thing with Vice. They went for about two years without having somebody there. They had Heyman doing the creative stuff but the administrative stuff wasn't getting done. So a lot of my job was coming into Vice and cleaning up mountains of paperwork and license that were just surrounded my desk. It was a lot of outstanding licenses that I had to clean up. So I had this opportunity to build the Vice Music Supervision Department to what I wanted it to be and, man, it was such an experience. I think back just speaking with you right now, and had I not had that opportunity, I don't think my company now today would be where it's at, because I've managed to take that and apply it to my company now and really build this internal machine that is necessary to having a viable, successful music supervision company. So, yeah, I built it from top to bottom and I'm super proud of it, and I feel like I was the first music supervisor there and the last, as they unfortunately had to close their doors.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, exactly had Vice been using music through this process and just not administering it?
Speaker 3yes, that that was happening around the time they had introduced the Vice television channel in North America. They were running these productions and placing and gathering this music, but not signing off on all these licenses. So, yeah, it was some crazy stuff, but here was the good thing about it the amount of music that they had placed on all of these productions that were there. I then had to reach out to musicians, artists, bands, whoever, and be like hey, I'm everton, I'm the new guy here, I owe you two thousand dollars, I need you to sign here. So it made me be sort of this hero in the canadian music industry of you know, reaching out to and I'm super lucky and super humble to be in the right time or right place wait a a minute.
Speaker 2So you're in Vice. They love you because you're clearing up their mess, right? David Heyman likes you because you're doing all the kind of dirty work from his point of view and the whole business love you because you're giving them the money that they didn't even know that was there.
Speaker 3Again, like as I'm talking to you and as I'm thinking about it, it's just the right time, right place and the about it it's just the right time, right place and and the right thing did the right thing, right, yeah.
Speaker 2So yeah, you mentioned there that vice came to a sticky end, so that would have put you out of a position there, I guess yes but what was your move there? Were you still connected with david hayman?
The Vice Years
Speaker 3yeah, so david hayman had passed towards the end of my vice career. Yeah, so the first two weeks of me starting vice we had massive layoffs and I'm like I just started here what's happening? And then we had three more layoff periods of just losing a lot of people out of Vice office because they had downsides, downsides. The channel wasn't doing well and the pandemic hit. Vice couldn't sustain and literally laid off more than 200 people all in one shot. I was left with kind of you know what am I going to do?
Speaker 3At the time my partner she was in PR and decided we were going to do the entrepreneurial thing. Let's do it Picked up left, moved to Bermuda where my mom's from lived there for a year and that is where Racket Music Supervision started. So I built a website, put up all my accolades for Vice on it and Paul out the gate, producers, directors, editors all started reaching out to me because that was the only thing that they knew music supervision-wise. I was busy Like thankfully and I know a lot of people didn't have the same experience during the pandemic, but we did notice that everybody was at home. A lot of people didn't have the same experience during the pandemic, but we did notice that everybody was at home.
Speaker 3A lot of TV networks and productions. They were churning everything out because everybody was in front of the tube. I was lucky enough to be the music supervisor for a lot of productions. That happened during the pandemic and that was where, again, right time, right place thing, where I was just lucky to be there and it was great. I stumbled on working on some MTV shows. I worked on some Amazon shows. They had a Toronto Maple Leafs talk. Cbc reached out to me because we had some co-productions at Vice with CBC towards the end to try to pay the bills and it was just again super humbled to be where I am today and super lucky to be where I am.
Speaker 2That's great that that happened for you, but also it brings us to the point that you've been offered so many things, and very diverse things, as you've just said. How do you approach projects when they're so varied, so diverse? What are the differences in how you approach?
Speaker 3it. Yeah. So being a music supervisor being a black music supervisor, put it that way I started encountering a lot of, like you said, diverse productions and a lot of the productions that were coming from a lot of Black directors and movie film producers that were reaching out to me and relying on me for very specific, very niche kind of urban music for their productions. And the approach was kind of natural for me because I was from that space. I'm a hip-hop producer, so I had this network of urban music as it was, because naturally it was just within it and then, because it was at Vice, who used a lot of diverse music as well too, I had this network. So when I was approached by some of these producers, it was second nature. I'm like, well, what do you need? I have the perfect people for you. It was very easy and it was fair game because I had done all these favors for people at Vice. They were owed money and I fixed that up for them. So they were like Everton anything that you need, we got you. So it was great.
Speaker 3But the way we approach films and TV productions, it's very straightforward. Typically I ask the director or producer give me some reference songs, it doesn't matter how expensive they are, it doesn't matter who it is, and we'll start from there and then we'll just kind of silo things based on the reference tracks and we'll try to match up sound of likes based on what they could afford and cost effective ways of going about it. I mean, typically when we get a music grief, now it's just everybody. They have an idea of what they want. You know, everybody wants the beatles, everybody wants billy eilish. Problem is they can't afford it with the music. They have.
Speaker 2How do you handle that situation?
Speaker 3it's tricky because sometimes you have film directors that just don't understand the TV sync realm because placing a song on their production they feel that you know that's enough exposure for somebody and it shouldn't be this expensive. It's not how it works. Obviously you have to pay for this creative sound that you have, right. So it's tricky. It depends on the director, it depends on who's on the production team. You know some people understand it and then others are just totally blank to what's behind licensing a song and why it may cost this much and so on and so forth. But that's what a music supervisor is right. We're the bridge between the production and the music labels and artists and bands and that's our job to find common ground between everybody, to make everybody understand how it's supposed to work.
Speaker 2You must have been happy, but were you also a bit relieved that you were now back in a position where you were doing a lot more of the creative work again after so long doing a lot of the?
Speaker 3admin stuff. Yes, it was great to be back into the creative seat again. There was a little bit of a learning curve for me because towards the end of ICE I got into that creative role. But Heyman really started that out for me. So it was the first time where I really had to juggle simultaneously the creative and administrative role. I found it tough because before I was just concentrated on one thing and I found that starting at Racket I was like, ok, cool, I got the administrative stuff but I still have to be super creative and I still have to have that creative flair for these productions to like me because I have to provide good music. But fortunately I brought in Zoe and Zoe was very instrumental in taking some of the administrative heat and I was training her because she didn't know what she was doing either. So I kind of got into my David Heyman bag of mentorship I do a lot of mentorship now, by the way and it really helped bring the company forward.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's excellent. We've talked a little bit about the film and TV placements that you work on. What about brands?
Speaker 3You're also successful when it comes to doing brand music as well.
Speaker 2Yeah, I love the way this conversation is going because it's going in a chronological order right now.
Administrative vs Creative Balance
Speaker 3That's pure accident, right, let's keep it going. So when I was in Bermuda man, I received a call from Apple and, like you know, this is Apple. And I'm like, get out of here. It's like this is not Apple calling me. I just couldn't believe it. I thought it was a prank and at that time, you know, like the pandemic, there was a lot of crazy stuff going on. I was like this is not real. Fortunately it wasn't a prank.
Speaker 3So, yeah, so they had reached out to me because they were inundated with a lot of Apple productions that were coming out at the time, because it was like post-pandemic sort of, and Apple was pushing everything. There was also somebody else from Vice that was on the Apple team, cupertino, and they recommended me to the team. That's where the advertising stuff really started for me. So I was fortunate enough to take on a contract at Apple. I was their relief music supervisor where I would help the inner music team on the brand side, and I was just there to help If you had too much work, if you needed me to do a search, if you needed me to do some cutdowns of a song 30 second cutdowns, 15 second cutdowns. I was pretty good at that through my hip hop production experience, where you know I could take a song and crunch it down to something that sounds really great in 60 seconds, and that's where they utilized me for it first, which then kind of turned into oh Everton, I don't have time for this. Airpods 2022 commercial. You do it.
Speaker 3So I found myself again the right place, right time, diving headfirst into advertising, and I had some experience with it at Vice, because Vice had Virtue, which was their internal creative ad agency, and you know I had just done stuff for Vans.
Speaker 3I had done stuff for Sephora, walmart, durex, but not to the level of what Apple was working through. The Apple lens for that first six-month contract that I did for them took my music supervision to the next level. It really blew me into like this next stratosphere of what music supervision is and what it really is to sync a song with a visual medium. Those guys on the Apple team are so technical. Every single thing matters Lyric, you know, reverb, you know snare, drum kick. Everything in a song has to be explained and I took a lot of good pointers from those guys that I now use on a daily basis.
Speaker 2But it moves you into more of a corporate space as well, which maybe the wrong person wouldn't be able to handle. That, coming from originally quite a niche area, were you okay with?
Speaker 3that I was. I think I was okay with it because Vice was super corporate as well. But yeah, it took a little bit to adjust. Fortunately, I didn't have to deal with any of the administrative stuff because they had their administrative department, so all I had to do was stay creative. So, yeah, it was a little strange getting to this very corporate level. Not only that, the level of security that was involved working at Apple. I mean like I couldn't work in open spaces at Apple. It was like a big thing and if I were to, I had to notify people and let them know I were to. I had to notify people and let them know I had to make sure my back was turned to a wall. You know the Apple security clearances stuff.
Speaker 2It's not a joke, but it was cool Talking about the creative role you had there. There's a difference in the way you need to tell a story when it comes to brands. With brands, it's about actually getting someone to buy that thing isn't it Within 30 to 60 seconds. Right.
Speaker 3And the impactfulness. It's totally different from like you're saying, from, like you know, placing a song on a scene montage in a film and whatnot. You know we have two and a half minutes to connect with the viewers, brands, you don't have time and you have to find certain transitional elements within a song piece that together within 30 seconds to really make it impactful and to make a sale. At the end of the day it's revenue-based. We're trying to turn over numbers. We're trying to sell as many iPhone 14s as we can in one commercial. So yeah, it wasn't easy. But then, in that challenging moment, you find the beauty in successfully completing an advertisement as well too, and what's involved right. So it was just very gratifying to work through the Apple lens and finally break through. When I first started, I thought I was going to quit. The first two weeks it was like I can't handle this. It was a lot. It was meeting after meeting after meeting, on the way the iPhone, the sound effect, on the way it turned in the commercial. I had to be the right, right.
Speaker 2So it was great, great. I think we're talking about an extreme version of brand work. Yeah, we were talking about the pinnacle of all. Yeah, but what about, in general, when it comes to brand advertising and you know the storytelling behind it? Brand values, yeah, when it comes to brand values, how do you think this has changed from classic commercials from bygone times like 80s, 90s or before?
Brand Work and Apple Experience
Speaker 3I don't think it's changed at all. I think the music has changed, but the art of placing a song over a brand it still remains the same Because, you're right, there's the brand value, there's certain key elements within a song that you really have to find and pull out to make you connect and resonate with a particular brand, right? So I don't think it's changed so much from back in the day. I think what's more or less changed is just our musical tastes have changed and it's interesting to play around with and see what makes people tick and how to use visual medium and the song together to impact so many people to buy a product. It's interesting.
Speaker 3That's a really great question. I don't really know the answer to it, but I don't think the art of the sync has changed. I just think that our musical tastes have changed. So it's just how do we maintain and sustain the art of the same while playing around with this new music? Now, right, because music's faster. Now things are coming at you from all angles, it's more transitional, so how do you take all those moments and crunch them down to something that?
Speaker 2can make a beautiful piece. Do you believe in the power of nostalgia? Yes, do you buy into that? Do you use that in your work, or you're a bit more towards finding new cutting edge?
Speaker 3it's both ways. Nostalgia still hits. I mean, nostalgia is something that works really well, depending on what you're trying to sell about that brand, what value you're trying to highlight. And then, yes, you have the newer stuff that resonates with the brand value and whatnot.
Speaker 2That's also a thing too, but I do like the nostalgia sinks where do you think your role comes in in supporting new emerging artists? Because having music in film tv commercials has become more and more significant and kind of essential for artists, hasn't it? To get exposure and finance?
Speaker 3I'd like to say these days, you know the music supervisor, we're the new a and r. I think we have a very important and integral role into ensuring that. We have our ear to the streets, to pretty much seek out and find these new artists and break them in a commercial. I think it's super important for any music supervisor to be on top of new music and I like to tell a lot of artists and whatnot. Like music supervisors, we're more on the musician side of things. Yes, we're in the TV film industry and we work with directors and producers, but we're here to ensure that we're placing the correct new and emerging music into these productions. We have a huge responsibility to ensure that we're pushing the music forward within TV and film properly and, yeah, I consider us the new A&Rs of the music industry these days.
Speaker 2Very nice, very good. Something I really have to ask you about. I don't know if it's going ahead, but I'm a huge fan of the Roots. And Jay Diller another one. We sadly lost way to Donuts is a masterpiece. Oh man, there's a plan or it's happening. This collaboration with Questlove about a Jay Diller documentary, yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3How's that going? So it's been rough. You you know we haven't started production yet. We were supposed to start last year, I think due to the writer's strike. There was some craziness that happened funding and things like that. But we're looking at gearing up this year and getting it off and running. And it's one of those things where the roots pretty much started me off in hip-hop. Questlove, the music god on this planet pretty much started me off in hip-hop Questlove, the music god on this planet, pretty much, and the music authority and then Dilla is the reason why I got into music production. So to stumble on this production and have the opportunity to work on it. We're just waiting for everything to kick off. I've been aggregating and curating a library of music for the film and I keep on adding stuff and just looking forward to hopping on that phone and getting everything kicked off.
Speaker 2I'm stuff and just looking forward to like hopping on that phone and getting everything kicked off. I'm armed and ready right now to jump on this production.
Speaker 3I hope it happens I really hope it does, even though it's going to be hard work for you. It's gonna be a lot of hard work and yeah, like I'm ready.
Speaker 2So yeah, yeah but on the other hand, is it intimidating going into something that you care about so much because to me this feels culturally so significant, or are you just wildly excited to get into this?
Speaker 3yes, yes, totally. I mean, for for me I am very happy with just sitting there and doing the administrative stuff, sort of like what he's stupid for it's quest love. I'm not going to question his creative musical juice or whatever he wants done. I'm the music supervisor. I'll take that administrative role. You tell me what you need, I'll clear it. But again, like I said, I've been kind of aggregating this library. But am I intimidated? No, I think it's more or less because I have this opportunity to do something that is so amazing and so great for J Dilla and for the J Dilla estate. I've been on the phone with J Dilla's mom. I've talked to his stepfather. They've talked about all this unreleased music that he has in his basement. I feel that I'm contributing to something that is truly special and in this instance, you know I'm not intimidated by it, not whatsoever.
Supporting Emerging Artists
Speaker 2So, Well it's in the right hands. So, fingers crossed, fingers crossed. Yeah. Just want to wrap up getting onto that wonderful subject of new technologies and AI. You know that's a conversation that comes up all the time, but I'm bringing this up with you because you were at Eurosonic, where we're talking now. You were on a panel yesterday. Yeah, the Emerge app. Yeah, the Emerge app panel. What's your view on AI in the business, in particular this Emerge app which you were discussing yesterday? And how do you see technology reshaping the sync processes without losing all this creative flow and creative input that you?
Speaker 3have to have. So the Emerge app is great because for music supervisors it's a great search tool. Typically I use Disco, which is an open-ended software music management organization thing that we use for music supervisors and artists to send us their catalogs within this cloud software based program. So I use Disco and I really use my emails. So when I have an artist send me an email, I like them to really tag their music accordingly. So you put that subject or keyword within your email and then if I come across the film and they ask for that, then I type it in and then it pops up With Emerge with its AI capabilities. It's sort of similar to that keyword search and pop up. But if I type in Billie Eilish, it will also provide me with a huge web of other artists that sound alike and sound like Billie Eilish as well too, from all walks of labels all over the world. So I like AI for that, for having that know-how and that capability to quickly and efficiently find all the Billie Eilish sounding like songs basically available on the web. It's great.
The J Dilla Documentary
Speaker 3Ai in a sense of music production and AI in a sense of TV and film sync is dangerous. It's a conversation that we're having a lot right now. I don't know what's going to happen, like, how do you figure out who actually like who do I sign off a license to on a lot of songs? Right, because you're finding that a lot of artists now they're using AI tools to produce entire songs. Who's the owner of that song? Is it the person that used the AI? Is it the AI company and their software? So it gets really murky and it gets really tricky. Do I like where AI is going In some areas yes, when you're talking about the Emerge app, but in other areas actual music production it's scary.
Speaker 3I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know how we're going to stop it. I don't know if we can stop it. Do we just take this word for it? Like I created the song and that's it? And then there's also I brought up an example on the panel yesterday where we were working on a reggae documentary and this old, vintage, traditional reggae song. We needed an instrumental because there was some dialogue in the documentary and the director would say, hey, can you get the instrumental?
Speaker 3for this and I was like I don't think it exists. And then one of the producers come up and said, oh, you know, we have this AI software that could remove all the vocals for us. And then we're good. And I'm like, well, wait a minute. Like no, how am I going to clear that? Who we're going to clear that with? I can't clear it with the artists because they know there wasn't an instrumental ever made. So when wasn't an instrumental ever made? So when you start getting into those murky waters you have to be cautious of it. And yeah, it's, it's scary, but I am hopeful the music industry will find common ground and we'll figure it out. You know, some new ai entertainment lawyer will come across and be like I have the perfect license for this. We're gonna have to figure out a way because at this point it's unstoppable. So I just think as long as we could find and establish the legal parameters of it, we'll be fine.
Speaker 2The music industry is good at readjusting absolutely we're problem solvers at the end of the day. Right, we talked about David Heyman and it sounds like he was a bit of a hero, definitely a mentor, and helped you out a lot, but you've grown to become a mentor as well yourself. You said that that's something that you do a lot and enjoy. Your body of work is so impressive. You know that people are going to look up to you and want to emulate what you've achieved, and they can reach out to you and you can offer this help. Have you become really aware that that's important to you personally, but also for the entire industry?
Speaker 3I think the answer to that for me is that there's things that are apparent within my career right now that I'm emulating and I'm mimicking David Heyman, and I believe that was the legacy that he was trying to push forward, and now I'm trying to capture that and also trying to do the same thing Now that I think about it, because the mentorship, the leadership and just the overall, like I said, it wasn't easy for me to get into this music supervision stuff. I knocked on doors of music supervisors. They didn't answer. You know, I've reached out to people like, hey, can I meet with you? And they didn't answer.
Speaker 3As long as I could change that for the next aspiring music supervisor coming up, that is my role and that's the legacy that I'd like to leave. And that's the legacy that I'd like to leave and that's what Heyman was trying to do. So I'm just following in his footsteps, man. I try to keep his flame burning forward. He was just such a remarkable person. I mean, he left behind a team of music supervisors, right, and all of us are still here beating his drum, and I think it's really important and that's what I'd see as the legacy and what we're trying to leave behind the legacy and what we're trying to leave behind. I mean, if it wasn't for him, none of us would be in the positions that we are today, and all of those music supervisors are great music supervisors who are also doing what I'm doing as well too. So yeah, man, it's cool. We've got to keep that Heyman legacy kicking forward.
AI in Music Supervision
Speaker 2Very nice. Well, Everton, it's been lovely to meet you. Thanks a lot for talking to us. It's been really interesting.
Speaker 3Yeah, this has been great man to reflect within and just talk about these things. This is great stuff and thank you very much for having me on here man, you're more than welcome.
Speaker 2Thanks, thank you.
