Revisiting Steve Stoute’s ‘Men in Black’ Insight: How Sunglasses Sales Led Him to Leave Music and Thrive In Marketing

Marketing guru Steve Stoute said that he made the strategic decision to leave the music industry after realizing that the real money wasn’t in arguing over song splits, but in leveraging star power to sell higher-priced items. YouTube screenshot, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM0nEzw3s4s&list=PL3HBXH4B3cMYXsAnMJhOxzKh23VpuvLay&index=1 This insight wasn’t random. It stemmed from his experience working on Will Smith‘s 1997 “Men in Black” album, which dropped alongside the blockbuster movie. At the time, Stoute was an executive at Columbia Music, collaborating with Trackmasters and overseeing the project. His focus was on ensuring the album’s success in a market that had shifted significantly since Smith’s earlier days as a rapper known as The Fresh Prince. The album performed exceptionally well, with the lead track topping the Billboard Hot 100 and earning Smith a Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance in 1997. But it wasn’t just the music’s success that influenced Stoute’s career path. “We made ‘Men in Black’ and the song went crazy. It changed his music career,” Stoute said during an interview on Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” in March. Those Shades Changed It All For Steve Stoute “The album sold 10 million but the glasses sold more,” Stoute continued. “And we never got paid...