The de facto home of New Jack Swing and Hip Hop Soul for the majority of its existence, Uptown Records was once a dominant force in Hip-Hop / Rap and R&B during the late 80's and early 90's, and MCA's biggest urban music label. Founded in 1986 by former rapper Andre "Dr. Jekyll" Harrell, the label would quickly set the tone for mainstream R&B and rap music for several years, with charter artists Heavy D, Father MC, Al B. Sure!, and Guy all having Gold-plus debuts on the charts between 1987 and 1990, and churning out several hit singles. By 1990, both R&B quartet Jodeci and soloist Mary J. Blige were signed to the label, first acting as backup singers for other artists on the label, before releasing their debuts in 1991 and 1992, respectively; both of their first albums sold over three million copies in the US alone. By then, Uptown had cemented itself as the urban record label, and had even secured a multimedia deal with MCA, leading to the creation of New York Undercover, which Harrell served as executive producer.
Also in 1990, Sean Combs got his first break in the industry through Uptown; first working as an intern, before quickly rising up the ranks, and becoming the director of the label's A&R, helping groom several of the label's artists, and executive producing albums for Blige and Jodeci. By 1992, Combs became the youngest vice president of A&R in the history of the music business. However, by 1993, it was clear that there were serious issues between Combs and Harrell, and the two frequently clashed, until Harrell kicked Combs off the label.note Combs promptly responded by founding Bad Boy Records almost immediately after his firing, and its very first artist turned out to be the very last one Combs had originally signed to Uptown: a supersized Brooklyn emcee by the name of Biggie Smalls. And the rest, they say, is history...
Almost immediately after Combs' firing, Uptown slowly began to suffer. Jodeci and Mary J. Blige, increasingly fed up with Harrell, both signed to Suge Knight's West Coast Management firm in an effort to get better contracts, with the former threatening to outright defect to Death Row Records. After a "meeting" with Knight (that reportedly consisted of Knight forcing Harrell to sign a contract at gunpoint), Harrell almost immediately doubled their royalty rates and back payments, and allowed the acts greater creative control. Harrell also briefly got dragged into the feud between Biggie and his friend-turned-rival Tupac Shakur (and by extension, the greater east-west coast feud) the very next year. Shakur claimed that Biggie, Combs and Harrell had prior knowledge of a robbery in the same recording studio that Biggie was in at the time of the incident that got Shakur shot five times, and robbed of thousands in jewellery. Though they all denied it, things only intensified when Shakur signed to Death Row in 1995; though his wrath would mainly be directed towards Combs and Biggie, with Harrell ultimately avoiding the worst of the feud.
That same year, Harrell departed Uptown to become the CEO of Motown. Heavy D, having been vice-president up to this point, took Harrell's place, but eventually vacated it by 1997, unofficially dismantling the label. By 1999, both Uptown and MCA were absorbed into the greater Universal Music Group, with many of its artists moving directly to MCA until its merger with Geffen Records in 2003. Uptown's last release was Heavy D's Heavy, released in 1999.
Today, Universal Music retains most of the Uptown catalogue (except for releases from Al B. Sure! and The Gyrlz, which were distributed by different labels), but the name remained inactive for the next 23 years. in 2019, it was revealed that all of Uptown's masters were torched in a 2008 fire that destroyed material from hundreds of current and former Universal musicians. Later that year, BET announced the development of a miniseries based on the label's history. On May 7, 2020, Andre Harrell, who had been dealing with heart issues, died from cardiovascular disease.
In 2022, Uptown was quietly relaunched by Universal as an imprint of Republic Records, with Ciara, Coi Leray, and the British girl group FLO as its first signings; though reissues and compilations from the label's legacy artists are mainly distributed through Geffen.
Artists with their own TV Tropes pages:
- Al B. Sure! (distributed by Warner (Bros.) Records)
- Ciara
- Guy
- Heavy D
- Jodeci
- Mary J. Blige
- The Notorious B.I.G. (moved to Bad Boy Records)
- Sean Combs (Formerly vice-president of Uptown's Artists & Repertoire)
