Asante Samuel is ready to hang up the helmet. The two-time Super Bowl champion and All-Pro cornerback says that he is done with football and ready to start the next chapter of his life, his Eighties Nation record label.
“You can’t play football forever,” Samuel says in an exclusive interview with HipHopDX.
Samuel launched Eighties Nation in June. This is not the cornerback’s first endeavor in the music industry. He started his first imprint, Deep Side Entertainment, a handful of years ago, but it was short-lived.
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“It was just a lot of trial and error,” Samuel says of Deep Side. “It was a lot of understanding the game, what it can and cannot do, what kind of artist you need to deal with. No matter how talented you are, your mind has to be right, your mentality has to be right, your hustle has to be right, so it’s just a lot of different stuff that I learned.”
Eighties Nation, based out of Davie, Florida, seeks to bring something different to the music industry. Samuel wants his label to be about leadership. Like most of his crew, Samuel was born in the 1980s and believes that people of that era serve as role models for the current generation.
“Everybody’s not perfect,” he says. “We will make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. The number one goal is to give jobs and opportunities for better leadership and not for people to be going in and out of jail.”
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Samuel says that one of his biggest inspirations is Tupac.
“We all listened to Tupac,” Samuel says. “Tupac was a great motivator, a great motivational speaker and had a lot of wisdom. Listening to him, there’s a lot to motivate you whether you’re a male or female. Just wanting to strive better, do better and make a change.”
One of the easiest ways to see this mission being played out is through one of Eighties Nation’s artists: Tee Stunna. Samuel has acted as a father-figure to the South Florida rapper.
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“I been knowing him since he was like 16,” Samuel says, “so I’ve kind of been a role model for him for a long time. His father passed away, so I was just in his life.”
Stunna was a part of Deep Side, but Samuel hopes that this new venture will put the rapper’s career on the right path. Stunna released Rejected on June 30 to tell his story and further the mission’s label.
“The movement of his brand is ‘rejected,'” Samuel says. “He was rejected his whole life now he’s on to success and he’s doing better. He understand what life is about and becoming a man.”
Eighties Nation & Tee Jay Celebrate “Paper Soldiers” Success
The Eighties Nation roster also includes Tee Jay, a rapper who just graduated high school. His single “Paper Soldiers” has more than 100,000 plays on SoundCloud.
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Samuel says that he is still looking to sign artists, but hopes to keep his roster small.
“Artists and people grow and grow older and move onto different things,” he says. “I always want to keep a roster of about five artists. I am currently looking for different artists in different areas and to movements big and to capture and bring out their talent.”
Samuel is inspired by independent labels such as Cash Money, which was independent until it signed a deal with Universal Records in 1998.
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“They had a great movement,” he says. “They had a great run as an independent label. That’s just what I am trying to capture. We stay in the independent lane and do our thang.”
Strange Music is another independent label that Samuel wants to emulate. Eighties Nation has a distribution deal with Fontana, the same company who handles distribution for the Kansas City powerhouse.
“I watched them and see the moves they make and try to learn,” Samuel says. “I would actually like to meet the CEO [Travis O’Guin] That’s definitely somebody to watch out for and learn from.”
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Samuel says that along with a new project from Tee Jay later this summer, fans can expect a Southeast regional tour in August.
“It’s definitely exciting,” he says of Eighties’ Nation’s future.
