Revitalizing Death Row Records

Preserving hip-hop heritage: Iron Mountain's role in safeguarding Death Row Records' legacy

Death Row Records is a historic American record label renowned for its pivotal role in the 1990s hip hop scene, releasing multi-platinum albums from legends like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and 2Pac. The label is focusing on revitalizing its extensive archive of rap content for new releases, re-releases, and multimedia projects, including a mini-series.

“Death Row Records has immense untapped potential with unforgettable audio and visual recordings that we are excited to bring to light for the public. Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services gets what we are trying to do and we are pleased with their expertise.”

— Michael Harris, Original label founder and current chief operating officer

Situation

Death Row Records and Nulane Entertainment enlisted Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services to help manage the immense wealth of rap content accumulated from the last three decades for future licensing in music and film. After a number of acquisitions, the label has come full circle, now owned by one of its first artists, Snoop Dogg (real name Calvin Broadis, Jr.). Day-to-day supervision and direction is led by Michael “Harry-O” Harris, original label founder and current chief operating officer.

Solution

Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services started by helping organize their music archive and has since provided content extraction from hard drives to our Smart Vault digital media preservation platform, making the files safe and accessible. The Media and Archive Services team digitized CDs of original, untitled and unreleased music from Death Row, as well as 107 assets from hip hop record producer Battlecat. For the label’s upcoming scripted, miniseries called, “The Chronic,” Iron Mountain also digitized interviews from their collection to be used.

Client Value

Death Row Records produced some of the most unforgettable music of the 1990s and Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services is proud to preserve and make accessible its legacy for future audiences. The revitalized label helps new artists produce music as well as uses content that has never before been released to the public for upcoming re-releases, docuseries and albums.