SameOldShawn: The third person other than Jared in the picture, I think is the one underground hip hop fans are often surprised to find out about. He is referred to - and you can tell me if this is accurate - as the one who bankrolled the operation, James Murdoch, Rupert's son
Brian Brater: I think the reality of it is that all three of us bankrolled the operation. So, initially Jared and I bankrolled the operation. And then James came in as the third founder investor, but it was moving forward before he formally got involved as an investor. But yes, he was absolutely critical because that was the thing about Rawkus. We didn't get into the game with... You know, we got into the game with funding. And the whole name of the game was to invest in this culture and invest in it aggressively. To this day, one of the things I'm most proud of doing in my life is just kind of taking something that was really art, that was really poetry, that really didn't have obvious commercial upside, and that we took it mainstream. We went gold, we went platinum, we had sold-out tours. You growing up in Boston were very familiar; my wife who was in high school when I released Lyricist Lounge Vol. 1 was a huge Rawkus fan. So there's no doubt that, you know, James Murdoch was a part of that. He was a very good friend of mine. We were obviously friendly when we were starting Rawkus. It's unfortunate that this a**ociation with all the other stuff that he's obviously been through the past three or four years, but I just remember him as being like a lot of my other friends. He was a cool cat; he was a good dude