Music Week: Mass Appeal Records

“Passion exudes from every word of Peter Bittenbender, Annie Chen and Mike Lukowski, hip-hop fans who have tasked themselves to tell the stories the genre is missing. Midway through our interview, Chen receives a text from Ghostface Killah’s team about the final marketing touches to his new album, the sequel to his pioneering 2000 opus Supreme Clientele. The hustle never stops, which is just the way over at Mass Appeal Records, the rap juggernaut with the legendary Nas as its leader that has been pushing stellar albums and documentaries for over a decade. 

The record label is an arm of the broader Mass Appeal creative entity, first founded as a magazine in 1996 before being revived in 2013 by Nas, Bittenbender and the late journalist and filmmaker Sacha Jenkins. With Bittenbender as CEO, Chen as vice president of marketing and Lukowski as head of design, the label has become a home for Nas’ catalogue and released albums by Run The Jewels, J Dilla, DJ Shadow, Dave East and Rome Streetz. ”