What is all the hoopla about? It’s Hoopla Worldwide
Hoopla Worldwide is a record label based in Louisville, Kentucky, with representatives in Cocoa Beach, Florida, Los Angeles, California, Worcester, Massachusetts, Orlando, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, Houston, Texas, Clearwater, Florida, Evansville, Indiana, Mishawaka, Indiana, Bowling Green, KY, New York, NY, Montclair, New Jersey, Lake Charles, Louisiana, Toronto, Canada and Nottingham, England.
The Hoopla companies (Hoopla Worldwide and Hoopla Media Group) started with three members: Jonathan Hay, Chad Kiser and Sabrina Hale and now has over 25 representatives spread across the globe. With the company growing rapidly, Michael Bentley has been named Vice President and Louisville’s Eric Hall from the Howard Stern Show is the head of A&R, according to the website (
www.hooplaworldwide.com). Justin Melo, Jason Eisenmenger, DJ Fade and Patrick Solomon are also key figures within the company infrastructure. Top hip-hop media outlet HipHopDX has called Hoopla “a media mammoth”. Hoopla has a very unique footing in the music industry with separate distribution deals with both WIDEawake Death Row Records / eOne Music and Universal’s INgrooves Fontana.
With best-selling sales awards through the LRT / INgrooves Fontana umbrella for the last three years, Hoopla is already in position to reach new heights for 2013. To close out 2012, Hoopla is gearing up for the releases of the Audio Stepchild and Bigfoot & Bondz albums through the Universal Music Group distributed label. Audio Stepchild most recently got a song licensed with ESPN and has collaborated with Pill, MC Breed, Roc Raida, DMC of Run-DMC, Zara Phillips, Jayo Felony, Knoc-turn’al, Sir Jinx, The Dogg Pound and more. Audio Stepchild is a frequent collaborator with their hometown celebrity comrades Nappy Roots. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey of Parliament-Funkadelic will find his Bigfoot & Bondz release right in time for the holiday season. In the spirit of the Christmas Holiday, Hoopla has teamed up with Lisa Thomas and LRT Entertainment for a full-length Christmas album to hit major retail markets across the country.
The industry has been buzzing about the forthcoming releases from Buffalo Stille of the Multi-Platinum, Grammy-nominated Nappy Roots and New York’s very own Nyche. Nyche has been featured on all the top websites and blogs, with two successful internet records with label mate, Buffalo Stille called “One Of These Mornings” and “The Soup Kitchen” which also featured I-20 from Ludacris’ Disturbing The Peace record label (The Island Def Jam Music Group). Nyche also has singles with Cam’ron, Fred The Godson, Jadakiss and many more.
Singles and full album projects will be coming from Houston, Texas based producer Trakksounds who’s credits include Bun-B, 2 Chainz, A$AP Rocky, Wiz Khalifa, Killa Kyloen, Devin The Dude, Slim Thug, Chamillionaire, Paul Wall and many more. Once signed with D4L Records, Atlanta based recording artist named Jurrarri, who is known for his high-profile work with Shawty Lo, Gucci Mane and others had a rumored lengthy bidding war in the industry, but sources close to both parties have confirmed that he will indeed be with the Hoopla conglomerate. The Source Magazine and other urban major media outlets reported that Lil Eazy E would be doing a deal with Hoopla. Re-releases of legendary west coast artists Knoc-turn’al and Tha Chill of Compton’s Most Wanted are also expected to impact retail music stores. More west coast releases will find Multi-Platinum producers Ant Banks (Too Short, Spice 1, E-40, Snoop Dogg) and Mike Mosley (2Pac, Jay-Z) releasing their albums through this emerging elite brand in music.
Hay and Bentley have assigned Gary Meeks, the former co-manager of Multi-Platinum group Days of the New (Geffen / Interscope) to handle the business activities of an upcoming rock group from Evansville, Indiana called A Hero en Route. Meeks was in a recording studio in Nashville, Tennessee overseeing the group’s upcoming debut album. Buffalo Stille introduced Pop Star Music and Renzo Charlez from Louisville, Kentucky to the Hoopla family with their projects already in the works for mainstream impact.
Hoopla has crossed over into the book publishing world and helped spearhead the creation and promotion of the Kardashian Nanny book by Pam Behan, which has received millions of downloads and major mainstream worldwide media coverage. This same team will release the highly anticipated book by Jonathan Hay called Sleepless Since Seattle (which was once rumored to be titled “Publicity Stunt: The Art of Noise” years ago all throughout the media).
Up-and-coming artists such as King Gotti, Freshwadda Brooks, Stilmatic, Echo and 1st Blood will all be distributed through the WIDEawake Death Row / eOne Music division. The joint project with Lil Ernie and La Chat from Hypnotize Minds / Three 6 Mafia will be released through their LRT / INgrooves Fontana division along with other titles by Whiteboy Wasted and the first-ever RUNK release spearheaded by Sir Michael Barber. Hoopla partnered up with LRT to release the Zac Fresh project that features Kanye West’s G.O.O.D music artist, Cyhi The Prynce, World music artist Vahagni and the Nasim project that features Grammy award-winning artist Krayzie Bone from Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Kevin Skinner of John Houston Entertainment (Whitney Houston’s former management company) is part of the company’s advisory board.
