As every great football manager knows, lifting that first trophy is vital when it comes to establishing a winning mentality in a club.
And, as it is in the beautiful game, so it is in the occasionally uglier business of music.
So, no wonder that, 10 months on from EGA Distro picking up the Independent Record Company award at the 2023 A&R Awards (now the Music Business UK Awards), Chairman and President Colin Batsa is still buzzing.
“It was amazing, just eight months after starting the company,” he grins. “My team turned into Man City after that – it was our first league title, and it gave everyone in this room super-confidence.”
To extend the football analogy, Batsa greets MBW in EGA’s Kensington High Street office (very deliberately situated in the old Universal building as a statement of intent) wearing a PSG tracksuit top and refers to himself as EGA’s “coach”.
And certainly, his company are now playing in the Champions League – looking to defend their title after huge 2024 hits from D-Block Europe (Rolling Stone giving the veteran duo their first No.1 album), Potter Payper, Skrapz and K-Trap.
“We’re not under the radar anymore and we’re seen as competition, but there’s enough room for everyone,” grins Batsa. “I feel honoured to be competing with some of the majors, that’s a dream come true for me…”
Batsa himself has come up through the leagues the hard way. He became obsessed with hip-hop aged 15, when a friend gave him a Notorious B.I.G. cassette, and soon formed his own rap group. But on a photoshoot one day, he was intrigued by the presence of a guy who wasn’t in a group, but seemed to be calling the shots.
“I asked him what he did and he said, ‘I’m a manager’,” says Batsa. “All the girls were around him and I was like, ‘Fuck rapping, I want to be him!’ I put down the mic and started reading every book I could…”
Batsa became his group’s manager, then worked at MOBO and UK Street Sounds, where he met EGA co-founder and director Victor Omos (“He gave me wings – I don’t know what he saw in me, but he used to tell everyone, ‘In five years, he’ll be the best executive in Black music’”).
They started managing the likes of Devlin, Ghetts and Griminal, while Batsa also took a job with the late Darren Platt at Channel U, then the leading platform for Black music. Devlin broke on the platform and EGA signed him to Island, also picking up the Meridian Dan record, German Whip, that became a key catalyst for grime’s next wave.
“I feel honoured to be competing with some of the majors, that’s a dream come true for me…”
Colin Batsa
Island gave EGA their own imprint, Batsa and Omos took on Charley Snook (now EGA MD and a partner in the business) and signed everyone from KSI to Oh Wonder (“I was a bit bored with rap so I signed an indie band – no one could believe it, but it felt good to be doing something out of my comfort zone”).
Batsa left Island soon after then-label president Darcus Beese went to America and, seeing the way the DIY wind was blowing, decided he wanted to move into distribution.
He first hooked up with Caroline International, and had a separate consultancy with Capitol, running his own EGA label but also bringing a string of hit artists into Universal’s orbit, including D-Block Europe, Aitch and Afrobeats sensation Rema (“I knew he would explode in the world”).
Eventually though, EGA decided to go it alone as what Batsa says is one of the few Black-owned, female-run music companies this side of the pond – with some minority investment from the US wing of the renamed Virgin Music Group, partly for their transatlantic clout and partly, Batsa quips, because the time difference means “they’ll leave me alone”.
He rebooted EGA Music Group as EGA Distro in 2023, establishing it as a hybrid company, capable of signing artists direct or doing services deals. Since then, he’s put the EGA into mEGAhit, and claims streaming has turned several of his roster “into millionaires”.
But Batsa himself remains Pep Guardiola chilled, as he sits down with MBW to talk signings, success and why UK rap will conquer the US one day…
What did EGA do to take the likes of D-Block Europe and Potter Payper (pictured inset) to new heights?
It was about continuity. With D-Block, I was with them at Virgin, I signed them when I was a striker and now I’m the coach, but they’re still playing for me.
The tactics haven’t changed – well, what changed a bit was I could specialise. It’s my team and my decisions. Even though Virgin were very supportive and always backed me, I was still only the striker, I didn’t have the final say.
Now I have the final say, artists are more confident coming to me. We went to No.1 with D-Block. That was our eighth try, and to have their first No.1 on EGA was telling.
Me being the coach and being able to make the right decisions benefitted them, because no one knows them better than me.
What made you want to leave Island?
At that point, I wasn’t in love with how the industry is. It was too rigid and I was telling people, ‘Entrepreneurs are coming. They are going to want to do things their way, they’re not going to sign the traditional deal’.
I had a meeting with [Sony chairman/CEO] Jason Iley and he asked, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to be in label services, because there’s no one like me there’. At that point, distribution was mainly rock, indie and dance, there wasn’t a Black music presence.
Half my friends thought I was crazy, taking a pay cut to go to distribution, where the margins are slim. But I was like, ‘Trust me, that’s the future’.
Where does that leave traditional labels?
I’ve got nuff respect for traditional labels because they do great things, but it wasn’t for me. I don’t know if I’m an A&R man, I’m more of an entrepreneur – but I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew the rules were too much for me.
People might argue with me, but I believe I made distribution sexy, so a lot of young artists and entrepreneurs took my lead. There was a time when nobody wanted to sign a record deal, they wanted to build their own business. But some artists need a record deal. Some don’t because they’re entrepreneurial, but you always have the option.
I needed to make a stand. Black music never had a company that was standalone and representing, like in America, where you’ve got Def Jam, Cash Money and Quality Control – and I felt I was the right person to do it.
Why hadn’t that happened before in the UK?
The market has been underground for a long time. The infrastructure wasn’t there.
Back then, a lot of artists would either sign straight to a major or straight to a distro, but now, in this day and age, people sign to people and there needed to be someone that could say, ‘Look, I’ve done all this, this is my thing, believe in me’. Hopefully this inspires other labels – NQ and 5K are phenomenal labels with young, Black executives who are amazing.
Before, we in England needed time to level-up our culture, because there were people rapping in American accents. Now, there’s nothing better than rapping in your own accent and hip-hop is quite localised in every territory.
UK rap traditionally struggles for success in America though: can that change?
It definitely will. The hottest rapper in the world right now is Central Cee, so there’s a start. Drake became the biggest rapper in the world and he’s from Canada, so another English-speaking country could definitely dominate. It’s just a matter of time.
We’ve been busy building our foundation here and now we have to expand. I’m confident a UK rapper could run the world one day.
What needs to happen to make that a reality?
We need somebody making global hits, making records that can travel around the world, not just work in the UK or in Europe.
Somebody needs to go over there and really tick the boxes. You need the boldness America had when they were building hip-hop.
Some of us still think we need to conquer the homeland first – it’s only now we’re getting the love and respect that we need with awards shows and stuff like that. But progressively, we’re there.
The biggest rap song in the world last year was [Dave & Central Cee’s] Sprinter. And that’s a very British record. The Americans probably haven’t got a clue understanding the lingo, but it sounds amazing to them, because it streamed more than any rap record in the world. We’re getting there, slowly but surely.
How about EGA – can you crack America?
I’m here to build the brand and conquer the UK, but definitely my future plan is to break America. The same way an artist has broken America, we need a [UK] company to do it too.
That’s the reason I did the deal [with Virgin Music Group US], to have a footprint. If my investors are from there, they can help me with connections and help push the brand over there.
Why do services-type deals work so well for UK rap?
The flexibility, the speed – a lot of us in that world are entrepreneurial because we’ve been brought up reading about Jay-Z, Birdman and Master P.
It allows us to learn from our own mistakes, build our own pathways. Don’t get me wrong, there are artists who signed to majors and are doing well. But the scene needed to grow a structure and it’s best to be in the independent space where everyone can build their own labels, their own catalogues. And a lot of us wanted to have ownership of it.
What do you look for in an artist?
I like people that have their own vision, people who are hungry and believe in themselves and are sure about who they are. I look for leaders in what they do, but I also look for special talent.
“I like people that have their own vision, people who are hungry and believe in themselves.”
And I also don’t like the normal, in that I like the ones that have a good cultural standpoint, not just a TikTok hit. Don’t get me wrong, if the hit was right, I’d sign it, but I look for people I can build a career with, rather than short-term quick fixes.
You recently signed Nines. Was that a competitive deal?
I was too quick and too hungry, I didn’t even see my competition. Other people didn’t even have a chance!
We have a great friendship so he came to me and gave me first dibs – I didn’t even give him a second to reconsider or talk to anyone else. He’s a bucketlist signing for me – one of the biggest signings in my career. It made me feel I could sign a superstar to my own company.
We started the year with a No.1 with D-Block Europe, and we want to end it with a No.1 with Nines. He deserves it and it’s his last album, so we definitely want to end on a high.
He’s really retiring?
100%. It’s not a Jay-Z retirement, he’s definitely going. He’s got some entrepreneurial ventures he wants to get into and he wants to retire on top, like Michael Jordan. Except Michael Jordan did come back, I’m not sure Nines will!
Who is EGA’s competition now?
Everyone that’s putting out music. I see business like a competitive sport; I enjoy the competition, it drives me on.
In my lane, there are great companies like 0207 Def Jam, NQ, 5K and Neighbourhood. But no one’s built like us; we’re a juggernaut.
The good thing about EGA Distro is, we are an independent label and we are a service company, so we compete with the Believes, AWALs, Empires and ADAs, but we’re also competing with Polydor, Dirty Hit and Island Records.
There’s such a broad choice of different music companies; there are even venture capitalists and banks putting out records! It’s a wild, wide category at the moment, but the flexibility of the indies works in the modern world.
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