Doctor Dre’s Fleshwound Media Company to sign multi-media deal with TRAX Records for upcoming music, movie, documentary, television and internet broadcasting projects.
TRAX Records is a legendary house music record label based in Chicago. It played a major part in the development of house music with records such as Jamie Principle & Frankie Knuckles’s “Your Love.”
One of the first artists signed by Trax Rachel Cain – known as Screamin Rachael became -the first house artist to have a major label deal when she signed to Teldec in Germany which was owned by Universal. Her continued belief and work with the Trax label through the years helped to promote and propel classics like “Can You Feel It” by Larry Heard, “Acid Tracks” by Phuture, “No Way Back” by Adonis, and “Move Your Body” by Marshall Jefferson. These tracks, and others such as My Main Man and Rock Me, by Cain herself helped to propel the revolution that is known as house music today.
Screamin Rachael was instrumental in helping spread the House sound to New York City and eventually to Europe. In 1987, she recorded “Fun with Bad Boys” with her friend and mentor, Bronx-born DJ/producer Afrika Bambaataa, who is widely regarded as the Godfather of Hip Hop. This track helped launch the “Hip House” sound.
Today, Rachael Cain has been dubbed “the Queen of House Music” and is the owner and President of Trax LTD. She also produces Movies and soundtracks with talented director Eric Rivas, which are distributed by Sony Orchard. You can currently see The Vamp Bikers Trilogy on most digital platforms. Since she took over the label in 2007, House Music has continued to thrive within the mainstream pop culture. Popular artists of today, such as Kanye and Drake, are using samples from Trax Records singles more regularly. MTV also used samples from Trax artists in their national TV commercials. And DJ/producer David Guetta, who caught major fire from House fans worldwide for being dubbed the “Godfather of House Music” admits that his favorite song and initial inspiration was “Love Can’t Turn Around” on Trax.
Rachael commented, “I’m not here to make fun of Guetta as some House fans do. I appreciate his passion for House and his promotion of it, and some of his own great music. Everyone can be House, as long as the originators like Frankie Knuckles, Jesse Saunders, Ron Hardy, Robert Owens, and others are recognized.”
Screamin Rachael removes all doubt about where House Music originated on her newly released track called “I am House”, a collaboration with legendary DJ producer Joe Smooth. Her single features lyrics Rachael wrote about the House Music lifestyle and what House means to its fans.
In the end, the Queen of House rules with compassion and gratitude for House fans. She says, “We at TRAX thank you and REALLY APPRECIATE your continued support.”
Long may she reign!
A celebrated hip-hop-oriented entertainer and educator, Andre “Doctor Dre” Brown long ago established himself as a savvy creator of popular culture. He has made his mark on radio and television, in the movies and in print, working successively as a DJ, composer, talent scout, program host, actor, author, and critic. Dre is likely best-known as the co-host with Ed Lover of “Yo! MTV Raps” (1989 -1995), the tv show that did more than any other to make rap music and hip-hop culture global phenomena.
A child of the New York City’s Long Island suburbs, Andre Brown adopted the name Doctor Dre when he began hosting “The Operating Room,” a pioneering rap radio show for Adelphi University’s WBAU in 1983. In July of that year he conducted the first-ever radio interview with a new group by the name of Run-DMC. Soon enough, Dre’s rap group, Original Concept, was signed to Def Jam, the record label co-founded by Run’s older brother, Russell Simmons. Original Concept released two influential singles and an album between 1986 and 1987. It was during this same period that Dre wrote “Proud to Be Black” for Run-DMC’s triple-platinum Raising Hell album, traveled the world as the DJ for the Beastie Boys on the “Raising Hell” and “Licensed to Ill” tours, and introduced Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons to the talents of Chuck D, an ambitious fellow DJ at WBAU who would go on to establish Public Enemy.
Dre has always possessed both a deep knowledge of music and a sparkling personality. It was this combination that led producers Peter Dougherty and Ted Demme to cast Dre alongside Ed Lover on “Yo! MTV Raps.” “Yo!” quickly became the highest-rated show on MTV. Indeed, the final measure of “Yo!”‘s success is that it put itself out of business. By 1995, MTV’s programming — which in its early years largely restricted itself to music videos featuring white rock musicians — was so integrated that there was no longer any need for a specialty show devoted to rap.
By then Dre and Ed had long since cemented their working relationship. Roger Ebert praised them for their “easy chemistry” in his review of “Who’s the Man,” the 1993 comedy in which the pair co-starred.
After “Yo!”, the duo funneled that chemistry into major market radio.
They held down the morning show on New York’s Hot 97 (1993-1998), then on L.A.’s The Beat (2000-2001), and finally on New York’s Power 105 (2003-2006). They also co-authored “Naked Under Our Clothes: Unzipped, Uncut, and Totally Unplugged” (Fireside 1996).
Eventually, Dre and Ed went their separate ways. On his own Dre hosted “Doctor Dre’s After Hours Spot” on Power 105 between 2005 and 2006, the most highly-rated radio show in that time slot. Dre then expanded his portfolio as a reviewer of movies and DVD’s for ESPN 2’s “Cold Pizza” (2006-2007), a gig that took advantage of his lifelong study of tv and the movies. The following year he teamed up with his old pal Chuck D as co-host of “On the Real” for the Air America radio network.
Dre is now in the midst of plans for a new tv series, a fast-moving talk-show centered around the national epidemic of Type 2 Diabetes, a disease with which Dre himself has been struggling for the last half-dozen years. The show’s format, according to its creator, will be “Doctor Oz meets Doctor Dre.”
Look for great things in the very near future with the collaboration of Doctor Dre’s Fleshwound media and Rachael Cain’s TRAX Records.
