On June 10, manager Mike “Heron” Herard got a mysterious phone call from the Grammy-winning production duo Cool & Dre. Two artists Heron manages, multi-instrumentalist Leon Michels and composer Beat Butcha, had landed placements on a top-secret project that the producers described only as “life-changing.” They just needed stems of the recordings that Heron had sent them… Read More The New Business of Hip-Hop Beats: How One Company Gets Musicians Paid For Creating Samples