Orlando, FL’s Fourth Quarter Entertainment signs Music Licensing deal with ESPN

ORLANDO, Fla. - March 11, 2014 - PRLog -- “Like a farmer, all you can do is plant good seeds, and while not all of them grow, as long as you continue doing the right things, you know the best ones will,” says Fourth Quarter Entertainment President, Bobby Davidowitz. So goes the story of the most recent achievement of one of Orlando’s top music licensing companies. Connecting the dots looking back, the licensing deal with one of ESPN’s top rated shows, “First Take,” started all the way back in 2007.

In 2007 Fourth Quarter Entertainment officially came on the scene by being the first company to bring a major urban music conference to Orlando, FL called Music Industry Seminar. For a city filled with talent but not enough spotlight, Fourth Quarter brought all the major record labels in the Music Industry to town; Universal, Def Jam, Atlantic, Bad Boy, and Shady Aftermath Records. Davidowitz and Fourth Quarter CEO, Mike Ramsey, were a bit taken aback by not only how much the labels were impressed by Orlando’s music community but also by how much the community was really craving an event like this. http://youtu.be/3wuI1Oo57u4



Another unexpected outcome of the event were the connections and bonds the company built with talent from all over the world. One of those connections was a young rapper who at the time went by the name Mark Dawg. He made a real impression on two labels in attendance after his performance; captivating them with his versatility from traditional to Jamaican rap. After the event Ramsey stayed in touch with Mark who later rebranded and called himself Umi.

Umi, having come by way of North Carolina spoke to Ramsey about a producer from back home named John McCall, who went by the name J-Mac. Ramsey who is known for having one of the best “ears” in the Hip Hop industry asked to hear J-Mac’s music and immediately called Davidowitz to tell him they might have stumbled upon something. They started by sending his music to labels and other music contacts and the reactions were the same; the talent was undeniable. The music licensing division was born. Fourth Quarter even decided to make The University of Florida their first music branding project and combined the talents of Umi and J-Mac. The song entitled “GatorSwag” quickly rose to over 100k views on youtube. Shortly after John “J-Mac” McCall was signed to Fourth Quarter Entertainment Inc.

Turns out the seed that led to the ESPN deal was planted even deeper. Before J-Mac joined forces with Fourth Quarter, he was a “band kid.” He was part of the drum line for NC State’s band.  After band practice, however, he would head over to a studio located on the campus of NC Central, a Historically Black College in Durham. A well known and respected music producer, 9th Wonder, taught a Hip Hop History class there and J-Mac would work with him at the studio. One day, a young aspiring artist named Rep was in the studio and heard J-Mac’s music. It took two days for Rep to come back to the studio with his manager and ask if he could buy 3 beats from him.  J-Mac grabbed a yellow piece of paper that was sitting on the desk and in pen wrote his first licensing contract.

Years passed after those beats were sold and so many things had changed. Rep had moved to New York, he had changed his name to Mark Steele, and J-Mac’s music had been featured on the albums of artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Bobby Capri, and Yung Berg as well as MTV and NBC networks. What hadn’t changed though was that Mark Steele needed music, and he knew just who to call. Steele spoke to Ramsey who officially manages J-Mac and he sent a folder with music to Steele.  Each instrumental track produced by Fourth Quarter has a story and from that story comes the name of the instrumental. It was fitting that the track Steele chose to make a hit song from was entitled, “Memory Lane.”

Mark Steele then brought his talent to the track by writing and performing a song entitled “Not Like Ya’ll” that expressed his desire to be a different type of rapper than the music industry is trying to promote. The accompanying video was simple and from the heart and as Steele’s publicist began to promote the song momentum built. A few months passed and sure enough the song came past a music director at ESPN and the phone call came. “We want to license “Not Like Ya’ll” for ESPN’s First Take in the month of March...”

Catch the song the entire month of March 2014 on ESPN2’s First Take, Monday thru Friday. In case you miss it CLICK HERE.   http://youtu.be/5B1j74jtcBw