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Kirk Harding likes things in their proper place. His Fort Greene, Brooklyn apartment, where he’s spending a muggy Friday afternoon with his two-year-old son, is a case in point: There are no grimy surfaces, no piles of out-of-date newspapers. The hand-towels in the bathroom are clean and folded neatly, shoes queue obediently at the door, and the few New Zealand tchotchkes – tapa cloths and prints – are shipshape. “I’m overly systematic,” Harding says sheepishly. “Everything’s completely in order.”
p?That hankering for propriety goes some way to explain why Harding is a Big Muck in the music biz; the senior vice president of international marketing for Universal Music’s Motown & Republic labels to be specific. His long-standing fancy for music helps too. It began when Harding was a small boy growing up in Mangere. “My father was a complete music-head – rock ‘n’ roll and blues. It all came from him really. He left when I was 11 and my own tastes developed around the same time. That’s when I stopped playing his records and started playing my own.”p?
By the time he was 16 Harding had left Mangere College. At 16 his mother and brother relocated to Australia, while he stayed and worked in a record shop in Manukau City. It was there that Harding’s first love – punk – was replaced with rap. “All of a sudden this whole urban window opened up,” he says. “I was exposed to the newest of the new coming through the door every day. It was changing really quickly. It was completely unstoppable. And we were right there.”
A job as a buyer at Marbecks Records followed, as did a promotions position at BMG, and one night, on a whim, Harding agreed to go and see a little-known band called Supergroove play in High Street. “It was like walking into a whole different world,” says Harding, who has a lovely, low voice and the soft patois that New Zealanders who stay away for years develop. “The place was jammed. Everyone was wearing Supergroove T-shirts. I knew I had to do something with them. I knew they would explode.”
Harding took the band on as his first BMG signing. There were “lots of mistakes and lessons learned. And also lots of flukishly good moves.” He worked incredibly long hours, sometimes starting his day at 3am. Supergroove’s success made Harding somewhat of a Boy Wonder at BMG and he was sent around the world to music conferences with hip-hop bigwigs like P-Diddy, Steve Rifkind (founder of Loud Records), and LA Reid (Current President of Dej Jam and past president aof Arista Records).
In1999 Harding was working part-time at BMG and studying law at Auckland University. “I didn’t have a clue what any of the contracts I was signing my artists to said. I’d have meetings with lawyers and I had no idea what they were talking about. And it involved people that I cared about,” he says. But fates had other plans: Harding received two calls within two days about jobs in the US. He promptly flew to Atlanta, Georgia to meet with LA Reid, and then to New York to see Steve Rifkind. Rifkind offered him a position as vice president at Loud Records, but there was a catch: Harding had to start immediately. So he stayed and moved his overnight bag in with some New Zealand friends, while a mate at home sold his belongings.
It became Harding’s job to get hip-hop artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Xzibit, Mobb Deep and Dead Prez to interviews and promotional events and concerts all over the world. “As soon as any of them stepped out of the country I was with them. It was fulltime babysitter,” he explains. “I travelled in a sub-culture, the sub-culture of hip-hop. People in every country I went to welcomed me with open arms. They immediately became awesome hosts to me, because of a logo on my business card. It was a lot of travelling, but it was really good actually.”
In 2001 Harding, whose arms are decorated with tattoos that creep out from the sleeves of his tee shirt, became the marketing director at Loud. When the label folded in 2003 he put his “feet up for three months and waited” for Rifkind to start a new label, then joined him at SRC Records. At the beginning of this year he took the job at Universal. “It was the first time I ever made a financial decision in my career. After seven years with Rifkind it was time to spread my wings a little more. Financially it was a lot better too. And it was also at the time I was getting divorced, so it enabled me to look after my son better.”
Harding now works with Prince, Chamillionaire, Erykah Badu, Nelly, Akon, Pharoahe Monch and India.Arie, among others. He oversees marketing teams around the world, and an office in London reports to him. He’s on the road about five days a month – “I like that time on the plane, that time to yourself,” he says.
“Everywhere I go, whether it’s Rio, Japan, London, I see a different side of cities to what most people see. I’ve definitely been to the wrong side of towns more often than I would if I was by myself – I’ve been shot at twice in London. I’m 38. I like to go sit in a lounge bar and drink a glass of wine, not do that stuff, but I still have to do it.” He may not get to New Zealand often, but Harding’s presence is still felt there. Over the last seven years he’s set up collaborations with US artists and producers for Savage, Mareko, DJ Sir-Vere, P Money, and Scribe. A year and a half ago he started a New Zealand record called Move the Crowd with comrades Justin Ferguson and Aaron Christie.
“I decided that rather than helping everybody, I could focus it into this one thing. We’ve signed some rappers from South Auckland & New Plymouth. We’ve got four or five albums in the can waiting to come out. It’s turning into quite a big deal. It’s good. And it’s really good to be working with my dudes from South Auckland because it feels like I’ve gone full circle.” "METRO MAGAZINE 2006"
MOVE THE CROWD [ Video's ]
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*JUSE "Tied Up" & TYREE "Ladies & Gentlemen"*
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