What's Up?
Wine and Hip-Hop is a critically acclaimed podcast that was created by Jermaine Stone (host), with the sole purpose of bringing wine and hip hop together through finding the similarities in both cultures.
It started five years ago to showcase the appreciation the hip-hop community has always had for fine wine, as well as to highlight the love the wine culture has always had for the hip-hop community. As we blend the finest of both cultures, our podcast has become the ultimate safe space for both worlds.
Life & Work
Bio:
A Bronx native, Cru Luv Wine's President and CEO Jermaine Stone was raised worlds away from wine country with plans to become a rapper. By age 19 he had already made appearances on XM Radio, BET and Hot 97, and had the attention of prominent figures in music including Chris Lighty and LL Cool J.
A temporary job packing boxes in the shipping department at Zachys Wine Auctions, though, persuaded him to make a career in fine wine. There, Jermaine would begin an accomplished 9-year career with them, learning the intricacies of fine wine warehousing and shipping, client service, and auctioneering.
He rose to the position of Logistics Manager, overseeing the inbound and outbound transport of $60 million worth of fine wine annually.
In 2013 Jermaine left Zachys to become one of the founding Directors of Wally’s Auctions, the New York-based subsidiary of a major Los Angeles wine retailer. At Wally’s, he used talents and expertise in auctioneering, operations, and business development to co-create and implement the full client experience, including the auction website and online bidding application; live simulcasted auction bidding; warehousing of collections for sale; and distribution and fulfillment of client purchases.
In addition to these major operational roles, he served as an auctioneer and public speaker at commercial and charity auctions and provided strategic advice to Wally’s President and Vice President.
After leaving Wallys, Jermaine founded Cru Luv Selections, a New York-based wine branding and marketing firm dedicated to blending the best elements of wine and hip hop culture.
Recommend Jermaine Stone in order to appear here. Click on the grey crosses visible when logged in. Your photo will appear, with a link back to your page:
These are pathways, originating in the sprawling cultural matrix of Brazil (Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazik, Arab, European, Asian...), integrating cultural matrixes worldwide.
Matrix ground zero is the Recôncavo of Bahia...virtually unknown center of gravity circumscribing Bahia's Bay of All Saints...end of voyage for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history...birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. Many countries are happier than Brazil, but none are more joyous.
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced (that's me below left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).