Music

Since June 2020, the Black Music Action Coalition, or BMAC, has alchemized moments of tragedy and controversy into opportunities to improve the material conditions of artists and their communities, distributing a reported $4 million in direct relief. One of their latest efforts includes a newly launched guaranteed income and support program for Altadena, California residents affected by the fires that ravaged the historic Black haven outside of Los Angeles. BMAC will top the $400,000 in aid they’ve already distributed since January with a dedicated $500,000 towards their new efforts. “When the fires first erupted, I was watching like everyone else,” says Willie “Prophet” Stiggers, a BMAC co-founder who serves as president and CEO. “The beauty of that town, the creative energy that sort of moves through the streets of Altadena is really unmatched. When we watched the whole community get wiped out, my heart sunk and I couldn’t believe it. So we had a call with the team, I’m like, ‘We need to do something and something immediate.’”

This sort of rapid response has been a BMAC specialty. Formed in the shadow of the murder of George Floyd, the killing of Breonna Taylor, and the racial justice uprisings that followed, BMAC became a watchdog as corporations across the music industry made promises to improve conditions for workers of color to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2021 and 2022, they issued comprehensive “report cards” analyzing the reality of those commitments. After country star Morgan Wallen was caught on video hurling a racial slur in 2021, they released another report – this time, on how Black artists both forged and were deliberately pushed out of country music. “He got caught saying the N-word, and it was this big uproar, and a lot of people came to BMAC like, ‘What are you going to do about this?’” Stiggers remembers. “So for us, we thought that that spoke to a bigger issue within country.” 

On the heels of their report, BMAC then challenged Nashville to make a change, and the Academy of Country Music stepped up. Together, they created a program called OnRamp that supported 20 Black, aspiring country artists and executives with a guaranteed monthly income of $1,000 and access to work and mentorship from Music Row. BMAC created a similar program with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after the institution’s co-founder Jann Wenner claimed that Black and female artists hadn’t been “articulate” enough to be considered “masters” of the genre. (Wenner also co-founded Rolling Stone and led the magazine for most of its tenure.) Stiggers says BMAC’s guaranteed income programs are a hallmark of his vision. “At the end of the day, economics is the issue, right?” he says. “When you start removing the economic barriers that sometimes have prohibited artists in our community from thriving, what happens is so beautiful and so brilliant.” 

However, BMAC is not just about showing up when bad news breaks – in fact, much more of its programming is proactive, Stiggers explains. The industry relationships among its many members and supporters – who, at its inception, included Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X, Miley Cyrus, Travis Scott, Cardi B, Harry Styles, and Lady Gaga – has led to incubators with Live Nation to advance Black touring and events specialists, activations at Rolling Loud to promote their policy efforts against the use of rap lyrics in court (which predates the high-profile incarceration of Young Thug, Gunna, and other Young Stoner Life records affiliates in 2021), and more grants and guaranteed income programs with Atlanta rapper Gunna, R&B legends Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and budding superstar Victoria Monét. “She took it to another level,” Stiggers says. “She brought these young women into her life in a very real way – in studio, meeting with them, helping give them creative ideas and really pouring into them.” Their latest grant program honors late A&R Chubbie Baby who helped launch the careers of rap giants like the Diplomats and Future, with the winner, a recent Yale graduate named Maxx Shearod, just announced on Sep. 15. In a busy week, BMAC will also hold its annual gala on Sep. 15, honoring streamer Kai Cenat, singer John Legend, industry titan Irving Azoff, HarbourView Equity Partners founder Sherrese Clarke and publishing company Primary Wave Music. Country star Mickey Guyton and executive Kenny Burns will host. 

While Stiggers has spent over two decades as a music executive himself, heading management, consulting, and publishing company 50/50 Music Group out of Atlanta, he’s been a social justice worker for much longer, earning the nickname “Prophet” while in community with Reverend Al Sharpton as a kid in the Bronx. Around 13 years old, Stiggers was himself a victim of police violence, fueling his lifelong work in advocacy. “When I was attacked by the police in my neighborhood, up until that point, I just had a regular sort of life going on,” he says. “Black pride and Black history was always taught in the household, but I never really applied it or had to really speak to it, especially at that young age. But when I went through this police brutality scenario in my hood, my mom called everyone. She called all of the news, every activist you could think of. We had a rally outside the precinct. I didn’t want any of this, but they gave me the megaphone. Once I calmed my spirit down, I started to speak. This sort of energy – I guess some in the church would call it the Holy Spirit – took over me and I’ve been living in that.” 

Here, Stiggers explains how BMAC’s work is shaped by GLAAD’s, why white ally Irving Azoff is being celebrated at this year’s gala, and the Coalition’s international ambitions. 

What BMAC advocacy efforts have you been particularly proud of over the past five years? 
Just the idea of a beacon of accountability, the industry feeling and knowing that there is a body of people that took those public pledges that they made very seriously and are prepared to hold them extremely accountable to that. The work that we have done policy-wise – if you don’t change policy, nothing happens. BMAC led the working group that developed the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, also known as the RAP Act, the first federal bill to prohibit the use of lyrics to prosecute artists. That bill was able to have state implications. California was the first state to sign the bill that derived from [it] and there’s been three or four other states that have adopted similar measures. I chair an organization now called Free Our Art, which specifically is around state legislation prohibiting the use of lyrics weaponizing art and criminalizing artists. And then [BMAC’s] pipeline programs – we’ve been able to impact almost 6,000 young people in a very direct way over the last five years, create real opportunities for them. The barriers of entry sometimes in this industry for our people are tall. Unless you have the resources or go to the country clubs or have a parent or someone that’s been in the business, it’s very difficult to sort of penetrate this wall in front. [I’m proud of] our ability to put young people directly in the rooms that led to hundreds of jobs, paid internships, and the ability to deploy close to $4 million in direct relief to people, be it supporting artists, supporting emerging talent, supporting aspiring executives or the community at large.

What is the function of a gala, then, in the context of this work? 
It’s not a victory lap, our galas, but it’s our rallying point. It’s an opportunity for the music industry to come together and for once, not celebrate record sales, not celebrate streaming numbers, not celebrate those sort of accolades, but how people are using their platform to actually impact society in a meaningful way.

When we first started BMAC, it was imperative to me that we model the organization [after] organizations that have success. One of the issues with leadership is sometimes the wins are not visible and almost not even expected – we just allow people to sit in leadership positions without a real strategy of how to put W’s on the board. And so for me, I have watched [the LGBTQ+ community] take a social issue and create such a level of urgency around it that not only changed policy, [but it] changed public perception. So we sat down with GLAAD. When I was a child, you could say certain words, and now as an adult, you try, your whole career is over. How do we take that sort of urgency and implement that with the issues that face Black artists and Black creators and Black America as a whole?

Our report card came from those conversations with GLAAD. They issue a GLAAD report in which they measure LGBTQ+ representation front and behind the camera, and then they have the GLAAD Awards. [A GLAAD representative] said, “We have to put up the mirror so the public and people can see what this looks like. Let’s remove the veil and really look at it. But at the same time, we have to honor and celebrate those who are getting it right.” So we took those two strategies and implemented them with BMAC. 

I’ve watched leaders come and go and although there have been some real advances from the Civil Rights Act to various wins, I’ve also watched the movement sometimes get complacent. [There’s] a checks-and-balances system that I use for myself, that I use for the organization. If we don’t have solutions, if we don’t have anything to add to the conversation, then it’s time for us to step aside. I didn’t jump in this to have a career in BMAC. Actually, the goal is to not need to be here. The goal is to become obsolete at some point. That is why I think many people appreciate how active we are. If you look at our newsletters, there’s major movements that [are] going on monthly, consistently. It’s because that is the bar that we have set for ourselves. 

This year, Irving Azoff is being honored at the Gala. What has his partnership been like? That’s a huge figure in the industry, especially as a white ally. 
Irving was one of the founding advisory board members of Black Music Action Coalition. He actually was able to bring the late great Quincy Jones and the late great Clarence Avant to the table, and the three of them are our founding board advisory members. Even the Rock Hall of Fame [mentorship program], that came because [Rock Hall chairman] John Sykes and Irving sit on the board together. When John came to them asking, “What are some of the ideas?” Irving and Jeff Azoff immediately pointed him to me. I mean, we stood with Irv when we were challenging the seven-year statute with the Fair Act  three years ago, which we still haven’t got off the table. We didn’t get it passed, but that’s still on the table. I just think someone of that magnitude [advocating] for the artist community the way he has throughout his career is something that should be honored and should be modeled [after]. The way he has been an ally to issues that the Black Music Coalition has brought forth has been remarkable.

When I wrote about Gunna’s guaranteed income program, people were fascinated with the concept of universal basic income implemented by a rapper. Tell me about getting that off the ground in partnership with Gunna, especially because those beneficiaries aren’t in the music industry; they’re just folks in his community.
Ebonie Ward, who is Gunna’s manager, is on our executive leadership council. So she came to me right after Gunna was released, and I think they were very impressed with the work that we were doing around the RAP Act – which was prior to Gunna and Thug being arrested. So she came to me: “What can we do?” I was always impressed with what Gunna had already been doing in his community. To me, authenticity is the key, not posturing [some] sort of idea of solidarity. I watched him create Gunna’s Great Giveaway in South Fulton, I watched him create the pantries in schools for people to get food to eat, the Drip Closet where you can go get clothes to wear. The guy was already doing the work. We had success with our ACM program in Nashville, we had success with the Rock Hall program. My goal has always been to get artists to create [guaranteed income] programs. That’s the ultimate goal.

By the way, 90% of the money, a half-million-dollar program, he donated himself. He went on tour and created revenue and got partners and BMAC kicked in a very small amount. But we designed and ideated, and now I’m happy to say we are three months into the program right now. The lives that are being affected are so overwhelming. You would think $1,000 isn’t necessarily life-changing money, but for some people it’s a difference between their lights on and off, the difference between groceries in that refrigerator or not, gas in that car, the ability to pay for your daughter’s senior pictures. That pressure that exists in our neighborhoods, and sometimes our industry is removed from the understanding what “I’m down to my last five dollars” means.

Equally as important is the community that we build around them. There’s people who have legal issues that we are able to get lawyers to help them with. Mental health is a big thing, and we’re able to have therapists connecting with them. Financial empowerment. In our community, financial literacy is when your lights get cut off and you realize, “Shit, how do we budget to get this back on?” [Now] you’re able to sit down with someone that can help you work within what you have and develop a system that works for you, not just show the cookie-cutter idea of what financial empowerment looks like, but say, “Okay, listen, let’s take this thousand dollars and let’s figure out how we stretch this, how we move this here, how we prioritize this.” Just watching that transformation happen is extremely powerful and gratifying.

My parents are deeply philanthropic people, too, from a poor West African country. Even as a Black music journalist, at the center of my work is how all these structural issues impact our lives and the art that’s made. Congratulations on being able to marry the entertainment to real social impact.
I thank you for that. You triggered one thing I want to say before we hang up. As we look to expand our work, it is definitely global. In 2026, we’ll launch a lot of our global initiatives. So many of the programs that we have here in terms of our Music Maker grants, even BMAC Live, we’ll be doing in the UK and in parts of the continent. In addition to that, we have a serious focus on educating our artists and executives on the continent about IP protection. With the rise of Afrobeats and Amapiano music, if we don’t educate and wrap our arms around the creative community on the continent, the same cultural appropriation that happened with Black musicians and Black artists here since the 1920s [will] happen over there.

We have symposiums and we are partnered with many organizations where we are going to bring this information and really start bridging this gap between our people here and the people throughout the diaspora. What we’ve realized is that the same fights that we have here, the same issues that we have here and the ceiling that is put on Black executives happens globally.

So, we pool our resources, our energy, and our conversations to come up with strategies [that] could be effective across the globe.