At its core, Love Renaissance (LVRN) is a storytelling platform, using the artistry of signees like Summer Walker, DVSN, 6LACK, DRAM, and others to connect with fans through music.
During the 2025 Blavity Fest, LVRN co-founder and Head of A&R Justice Baiden and the company’s EVP and GM Amber Grimes took to the Blavity Idea Exchange House to lead a panel about the anatomy of an album.
However, the pair used the moment to discuss how to control the narrative as a label, offering sound advice for a room filled with eager creatives with a story to tell. At one point, Grimes urged the crowd to always “keep their ideas tucked away,” because there’s always going to be a time when they resurface and work to your advantage.
With a roster of artists known for their creative marketing campaigns, LVRN is a leader in leveraging both nostalgia and current events that align with the fan bases of their respective artists.
How LVRN isn’t your average record label
For Baiden, being the best marketer—or the best at your job, period—is all about the research that you put in to bring stories to life.
“I think that really taking the time to, like, you know, research and go into spaces, or just go into different ideas that might not be on Instagram, maybe go to the library, watch the doc, just really research in different spaces, because obviously now the zeitgeists, we’re all seeing the same thing, and it feels like we’re all having the same ideas,” said Baiden. “So, personally, I like to go touch things and really talk to people and get different perspectives. Like, three days ago, I was in the strip club, and I got a billion-dollar idea from a stripper that didn’t know she was giving me a billion-dollar idea, but that’s life, right? You just never know.”
Grimes agreed that research is a significant part of both their jobs at LVRN, but wanted to focus on her responsibility to strategize.
“Again, that’s asking questions and knowing what you’re doing, why you’re doing [it], and how you’re going to do it,” she said. “I feel like we should jump into some Summer Walker. We do good work on her. With Summer, we have a bit of a different goal than DVSN, right? We’re not trying to popularize her, bring her to the market in a different way. The first with Summer, I feel like in this stage, she’s starting to evolve, and there’s other things that we want people to know about her. There’s things that are authentic to her, but y’all just don’t know yet. So, how are we going to bring these things out? And how do we preserve what you all do know about her? What does a Summer Walker fan love about her? We can’t change that. I think when we talk about research, a lot of my research happens on Instagram, because I feel like being tapped into the culture is very important, especially when you’re trying to connect the dots with an artist who also needs to feel tapped in. One of the things with Summer that we were worried about the most was making sure that as she grows as an artist, her family is growing too, and we need to go reconnect with Gen Z, because we can’t get too cocky.”
How Serena Page and Kordell Beckham became the stars of ‘Heart of a Woman’
After doing what she does best, Grimes’ research took her off the internet and to the television screen after discovering Love Island USA Season 6’s winners, Serena Page and Kordell Beckham, who have kept social media in a chokehold since they first appeared as OG Islanders on the show.
“You can’t just be on the internet and be like, ‘Oh, Serena and Kordell, they’re popping.’ No, you have to watch the show and know that they got into this huge argument where only the heart of a woman could save them, and that song, to me, sounded like a soundtrack for that scene,” Grimes said.
“I said, ‘Well, why don’t we just make this song the soundtrack to that scene. If we want Summer to feel very in the know, and on the zeitgeist, we want her video to feel young,” she continued. “And if she’s not going to be in it, somebody has to be in it that’s exciting, and that causes conversations, and we shot a visualizer with them.”
Going beyond just the song and visuals for “Heart of a Woman”
With it being nearly seven years since her debut album, Over It, Grimes stressed the importance of Walker growing with her fan base.
Songs like “Heart of a Woman” reflect the role that nostalgia plays in the sound that she has curated and is adored for.
“There’s a lot of nostalgia that plays into her music and how she writes,” Baiden explained. “It just took me back to those days when I was in the backseat. My mom’s driving, the radio’s on The Quiet Storm, and it might be a little rain, and an R&B song—obviously, I was young—that I didn’t want to hear, but it just took me back to those moments. And I was just like d**n, what if we can recreate that moment, create a mix with the rain in the back. Let’s have Doc Wynter, who was the original voice of The Quiet Storm, kind of just like do that version, and connect it. I think anybody that had the same experience that I had growing up, it connected with them.”
He added, “It was just a different, cool way to just do a different mix of these records, and just not the traditional sped up, slowed down, sped up. I just feel like we also have to flex our creativity, too, as A&Rs.”
The key takeaway
After using the last 10 minutes of their session to address questions from the crowd, Baiden wanted to leave attendees with one clear message: “People don’t care about what you’re selling them. People just care about how you make them feel.”
The 2025 Blavity Fest kicked off Day One with thought-provoking panels and workshops featuring speakers such as Karen Civil, Mattie James, Trell Thomas, and many others, along with hands-on learning, a marketplace for shopping Black, networking, and main stage performances from artists like Akeem Ali and 2 Chainz.
On Sunday, June 1, the festival will conclude with soulful and transformational experiences, culminating in a performance by Kirk Franklin. Stay tuned for more! Single-day tickets for Sunday are still on sale.
