Lou Hill’s Ever-Evolving Artist and Entrepreneur Model
Lou Hill is a musician and music/media entrepreneur born and based in New Orleans. You may know him as the drummer, vocalist, and songwriter of the local Billboard-charting funk band Water Seed, his current and long-term project. A true multi-hyphenate artist-entrepreneur, Hill sustains his music career in roles of songwriter, performer, producer, tour manager, and has created opportunities for other musicians as well. Lou is also a lead presenter of The Ella Project’s Crescendo music business intensive program.
While in college at Xavier University, Lou formed his first band, Afrodeezifunk. He then created a production and writing group that evolved into Water Seed after placing a song with an artist. As Water Seed developed, he wanted to spend all his time writing and producing, retaining an outside entity to manage their business. Traditionally, New Orleans has been a source of great performers and songwriters but that does not necessarily translate into big album sales for many artists. Beyond the discipline needed to hone one’s craft, artists are faced with how to support and promote themselves.
Though Water Seed had management early on, Lou and the band were very aware of their collective brand and were active in decision-making. For inspiration, Lou looked to artist-business models created by Quincy Jones and Prince, and other artists like Rihanna and Donald Glover who work across multiple media projects. During meetings with a seasoned music executive and other mentors, Lou learned the importance of “mailbox money” (royalties) and finding people you can trust to get your music to the world. Lou Hill’s vision of a media, management, and production entity with the dual purpose as Water Seed’s label and source of financing would be realized in his Moonrise Entertainment company.
By the time covid-19 hit in early 2020, Water Seed was done with management and onto training their own model. They created “a village” for administrative and social media tasks, with interns and a tech team, establishing Lou as the booking and touring agent. Seeking “absolute freedom in their art”, all strategy, marketing, and creative direction is handled by Lou and the band. And as the pandemic crushed live performance, Lou became energized to support community. Moonrise Entertainment then produced the “Band Together” livestream performance telethon and pulled in 150K in one week to fund $500 grants to musicians, which were gone in the first 15 minutes of open applications.
Moonrise Entertainment has gone on to produce events for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Black Tech Fest at Essence Fest and other festivals, and is developing a music app and TV project called Geaux LiveTonight. Outside of Moonrise Entertainment and Water Seed, Lou Hill also partners with DJ-entrepreneur Raj Smoove on a music and entertainment company called GenRise Entertainment. Lou’s wide-ranging music industry prowess also caught the attention of The Ella Project for the Crescendo program. Crescendo is an eight-week comprehensive music business intensive for professional New Orleans musicians that covers revenue streams, record deals, royalties, contracts, and more. Lou was invited to sit on a panel to share his industry knowledge for Crescendo’s debut year and in the next year, he was one of the hosts for the panel. He continues to host and collaborate on programming with Bri Whetstone. Lou describes Crescendo as a “living and evolving model” and a “conversation of ideas” that invites participants’ questions and insights regarding innovations such as NFTs, sounds.com sampling, and the quickly moving technologies in and around the music industry. Lou Hill’s success as a New Orleans musician and entrepreneur speaks to his own tireless quest to learn, adapt, share, innovate, and stay focused on his brands.
