Virginia-based rapper and entrepreneur Fam-Lay has been making waves with his RnB Block Party alongside business partner Antonio Dowe. Now the pair, along with their friend Pusha T, are expanding with Cousinz Festival, a one-day showcase on Aug. 31 at Norfolk’s historic Scope Arena, headlined by Erykah Badu. The festival has been in the works for about a year, and the guys tell Rolling Stone that they utilized their local connections to put everything together in a relatively short time frame.
Fam-Lay and Dowe worked with Norfolk city brass, while Pusha T was able to reach out to industry peers such as longtime music agent Cara Lewis, West Coast rapper Larry June, and R&B duo Lion Babe to make the festival more star-studded than the average first-year festival.
Fam-Lay is best known as a rapper previously signed to the Neptunes’ label, Star Trak; in the 2000s, he had solo songs like “Rock N Roll” as well as guest appearances like “FamLay Freestyle” on Clipse’s debut, Lord Willin‘. He’s since expanded into event organizing.
Dowe has been gaining experience of his own as a concert promoter, after starting off as a concert producer early in his career. “I handled lighting, sound, pulling into venues, dealing with the partners, that kind of stuff,” he says. Various members of his family grew up with Fam-Lay, and Dowe was eventually able to turn his know-how and familiarity into a business partnership that began with the RNB Block Party, where DJs play exclusively R&B records for increasingly large crowds at Scope. The party also made it to Vegas as a component of the Lovers and Friends festival.
“I feel like the RnB Block Party has created a name for itself,” Pusha says over a Zoom call. “Being the pre-game of Lovers and Friends, that’s like the biggest R&B show of the year, basically. And they had already secured that, they were already there.” Fam-Lay and Dowe have put on 14 iterations of the RnB Block Party so far.
Now it’ll be a piece of their Cousinz Festival, which will feature food trucks from national brands Slutty Vegan and Trill Burgers, as well as local vendors organized via a partnership with Norfolk State University. “Although we have two large national food trucks coming in, we did bring in six other local entrepreneur food trucks [from] local restaurants for people to choose from,” Dowe says. “Community has been our number one word from the beginning.” The festival also offered free tickets to public school teachers.
Cousinz Festival is vying to be a departure from large-scale, capitalistic festivals, emphasizing a neighborly atmosphere instead. “Nothing too cool,” Fam-Lay says. “We don’t have no velvet ropes or whatever. It’s all about the music, the energy, and having a good time.” Although they did bring in Adidas as a title sponsor, the group declined to partner with larger music-industry entities for the initial Cousinz Fest because they wanted to pace themselves.
“A lot of people were tugging at them like, ‘Hey man, we can take this and blow this up,’ or, ‘Come be a part of our big conglomerate agency. And let’s blow this thing out of the water,’” Pusha T recalls. “They came to me with the idea. And I’m big on, ‘I can win with my friends, I can lose with my friends.’ … It was a no-brainer.“
Pusha T, Fam-Lay, and Dowe talked to us about the Cousinz Festival and Virginia culture, including the region’s bustling music scene.
Fam-Lay and Antonio, how did y’all first connect?
Dowe: I had been working in entertainment production for a while after I got out of radio. And I was doing a lot of shows at home, just trying to find my way. Fam grew up with my uncles, and it was always kind of one of those nostalgia things to work with him. It was dope and I was always chasing him. One day I asked him to perform and he told me I had a better chance at hitting the devil with a snowball. And instead of me not replying to that text or getting frustrated, I caught him on the sidewalk one day downtown. He was like, “Man, what else you got going on?”
And we just started [talking] and we [never] looked back from then. I had a chance to explain to him that it wasn’t just about a concert for me, I sometimes see creative opportunities that people overlook. And that’s what we did with the RnB Block Party. That’s what we’re getting into with Cousinz, and Fam’s been the biggest reason that all of this stuff has come to fruition now, because he trusted it when people in different spaces didn’t know what to do with it.
Fam-Lay: Appreciate that, man.
Antonio, how are you feeling about the shift from concert promoting to festival promoting? This is a much bigger event.
Dowe: They’re kind of the same depending on how you look at it. I had an opportunity to work with a lot of majors before I got to where we are today, and [I saw] a lot of mistakes and different things. You’re able to see the strategies of the giants who are doing this 700 times a night, to only having to do it eight to 10 times a night in a tour aspect, or now only having to do it once every couple months with this block party, [and] once a year with the festival. If we broke down the mechanics of it, to be honest, there’s no real difference.
Push, how did you get involved in organizing the festival?
Pusha T: I got involved by looking for the best party in the city when I would come home from out of town. The RnB Block Party was the best party to me. People were having fun, actually dancing, actually singing along, actually having a good time. I’m out every night, I’m in the clubs, I’m next to the bottle poppers in the sections… I went to the block party and I was like, “Wait a minute, this is a way different energy.”
Fam is my brother for 20-plus years, and he came to me with this idea of being involved. And knowing he had a great idea, knowing him and Antonio had been successful… They had done 14 block parties. I’m probably there [when it was] 800 people; the last one is 7,500 people. I’m watching it grow.
Can you break down your thought process of passing on partnering with bigger entities and deciding to do it more so on your own?
Dowe: The bigger concert promotion companies, you know them. We took the RnB Block Party to Las Vegas for Lovers and Friends Festival, which is a Live Nation event. We work with a lot of them and we’ve been successful, and they’ve been great partners to us. But when it comes to partnering, one thing that we’ve learned is a lot of the bigger entities fail by jumping a gun and partnering before they’re able to build their base. This is still a first-year festival. It still has a base to build. So we didn’t want to jump out there. The RnB Block Party is signed to CAA. But with the festival, we’ve been trying to create something first before you talk about large partnerships.
Can you break down the history of the RnB Block Party?
Fam: When [Antonio and I] caught each other on the street, he was telling me about a few things that he wanted to do that we can collab on. And we [were] talking about the state of the city at that time. A lot of things were going on in the city as far as places to come and have a good time [for] people that look like us. It was getting scarce at the time. We were trying to figure out something that we can do to help in the area.
The venue that we decided to do the first RnB Block Party at [Scope Arena], he has a good relationship with it. It’s basically a historic monument from where we grew up. The opportunity to do something there was special.
Pusha T: We used to go see Ric Flair, WWE wrestling [laughs]. I seen Dusty Rhodes there, I seen [wrestlers] there live and in living color.
Fam: So to come from that and to have an opportunity to do this event there, we went for it and the rest is history.
Can you take me into the branding of the Cousinz Fest specifically? I’m assuming it’s a play on your name, Fam-Lay.
Fam: Yeah, sort of. We say “Cuz” a lot, me and my friends. My cousin, you know how that is in our community. Your friends, your next-door neighbor, your mom’s best friend’s kids is “your cousins.” So it was natural. The energy of the RnB Block Party was “We already a family” energy when it comes to having a good time, [and] fellowshipping with people you ain’t seen in a while.
Like you said, a lot of events that are thrown by Black people or that have proximity to hip-hop can face difficulties because of city officials, police, and things of that nature. How smooth was that process for you? Were there any obstacles in trying to put everything together?
Fam: It was definitely some obstacles, but I would say overall it was smooth because of the relationships that we have and the track record that we had around the city and the events that we did. We have an energy and standard to what we tolerate or demand from the people. So I would say it was easier than I expected.
Dowe: Yeah, I would say so too. On the city official side, it’s just dealing with the city of Norfolk where we are. They’re really big on supporting what has economic impact. It doesn’t matter what it is. If they see something that can affect their hotel sales, their food and beverage sales down one of our main streets here [like] Granby Street which leads directly to the Scope, they’ll lean in. So if it was any obstacle, it was probably just trying to pull the most resources that we could in the timeframe in when we launched. I know everybody’s seen this thing go up in June for an August festival, which isn’t the normal trajectory of a festival announcement to day of show. But we felt like with the size and capacity of what we’re doing in a smaller festival scale at 12,000, we didn’t have a big tug and pull. And the city played a major part in making sure that they opened the doors as quickly as possible.
What was the process of securing artists and talent for the festival given that it’s the first edition?
Fam: The RnB Block Party, like Antonio said, this was our fourteenth one before we was able to connect with my brother [Pusha T]. So it was a little different at that point because we didn’t have live entertainment. When we decided to have live entertainment of course it’s a different process, which Antonio really is great at that. But I just wanted to say that once I connected with Push and he came in, it really helped.
Dowe: It got easier.
Fam: Because he gave us a super booster.
Pusha: When it came to the performance aspect and the talent, it was utilizing some of my resources. Cara Lewis, she’s been my agent forever. She reached out to Erykah Badu. Larry June I had just seen in Tokyo, and I went to one of his shows just randomly. I admire what he does in an independent space. Out here in Norfolk, the fan base that he has out here is super serious. So it was just a call, reach out. Lion Babe has been on the festival circuit with me as a solo artist for the past maybe two years. I’ve been seeing them like Norway, Sweden, wherever we at. So the ask is just the ask, man.
What do y’all want the world to know about Virginia culture that you think they might overlook or don’t know?
Pusha: I think that the world sees the talent, but I don’t know that they know the adversity and how tough it is to accomplish some of the things that we’ve done. And not having to do with any one person in particular, but just having to do with just the geography alone, we’re so separated in so many different ways, that it’s really hard to galvanize everybody together and raise one flag. So many different parts of Virginia have their own identity. And I think that’s part of what’s attractive to Cousinz for me — it’s basically calling everybody family and understanding that even in the position that we’re in nationally, we’re trying to bring together this community, and we want to bring this community to the world, not just us singularly as artists.
What is the ultimate goal for the festival? Are you aiming for it to be one of those national festivals where transplants from all over the country come in? Or are you focused on having more of a hometown feel?
Fam: The transplant thing has been a topic for years. Whatever industry you in, we always felt like you had to leave and then come back, but like Push’s saying, hopefully this festival is a beginning of people being able to come here and realizing the opportunities and the talent here.
Virginia has a deep lineage of legendary artists. Where would y’all say the Virginia music scene is at now as far as more up-and-coming artists?
Pusha: When you think about it right now, two of the records in the Top 10 on Billboard right now are from Virginia. You got Shaboozey, you got Tommy Richman. And listen, that’s been going on damn near all summer long.
Fam: Pretty cool.
Pusha: I don’t know if people necessarily attribute that to Virginia, or is it just a hot record, you know? I don’t know if they attribute it to that, but I think we should … The goal is to give it a face, give Virginia the backing to back all of these artists and scream out loud, “Yeah, this is us.”
Which sets are you looking forward to the most?
Fam: Of course Erykah, man, but honestly, I want to see Larry June. I think we got a cool lineup, man. I’mma enjoy the whole festival, man. We got Envy, we got Jermaine Dupri closing outside. It’s going to be crazy.
Pusha: DJ Envy in the 757 is big… He went to Hampton [University], he was a DJ then. So we get that college nostalgia that we all were around for, and his expertise. You got Jermaine Dupri, whose R&B discography, it’s crazy. Just watching people enjoy the music and watching the experts at their craft really dial in and put on a show for the people musically is the win.
