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00:00Jim and the entire Variety team, thank you very much, and whoever put this event on, you guys did a really nice job, so thank you.
00:09Firstly, we don't do well accepting awards, okay?
00:14Firstly, you will not find a more self-loathing group of people than the folks that work at Republic.
00:22But the other thing, and more importantly, and we say it's sort of the blessing and the curse of Republic,
00:30and that is we're never satisfied, and so we're always looking forward.
00:35In fact, and where's John Lova and the team, where are these, there we go.
00:40And our good friend Jelly Roll, I was at a show and he said, he was getting into it, and he said,
00:46there's a reason your windshield is bigger than, your front windshield's bigger than your rear view mirror,
00:52because what's in front of you is far more important than what's behind you.
00:58At any rate, so that's kind of the way we operate.
01:00However, this moment is not lost on me.
01:05And I just want to say on behalf of my brother Monty,
01:10Jim Rappo, who helped run the company with us, I'm really,
01:15really proud to and honored to accept the Variety Label of the Year Award.
01:23And I would just say this, a quick story that sort of summarizes everything about Republic.
01:27I guess it was earlier this year, there was an artist, an unsigned artist, the most highly sought after.
01:33We're the, Aaron, I know you met him too, the most highly sought after artist in the business.
01:39Everyone's trying to sign him, we have our meeting, we're doing our schtick, our spiel, and he's in there.
01:45And the kid goes, he said, in one word, how would you best describe your company?
01:52I was like, you know what, that's actually a pretty good question, I never had that before.
01:55So I'm like, ambition, focus, I'm like, man, what am I going to say?
02:00And my brother leaves the room and he comes back and he's holding this photograph.
02:05And we do this, every year we do this big group team photo.
02:09And he holds up the photograph and he holds it out and he says, family.
02:14And that's really it, we're family.
02:17And it's my cousin, my brother, myself, we started the company a long time ago.
02:22And for us, it's personal.
02:25And it's actually, I brought some folks up here because it's really important.
02:29I want you and I want them to be acknowledged because the work that gets done,
02:34the sacrifice, people leaving their kids, their spouses, travel, the late nights.
02:40These are the people that do that.
02:42And so it's not lost on us and we really appreciate everything they do.
02:46So we have Wendy Goldstein here, all right.
02:50So Wendy runs Republic Records with Donna Grin and Marlene Reyes, and they do a tremendous job.
02:58We have, you stole my line, thank you.
03:02Ben Adelson and Tyler Arnold, who run Mercury, are absolutely smashing them, so proud of those guys.
03:07But their secret weapon is Alex Kozlov, and he's right here.
03:11Justin Eshack and Emron Majid, it's funny.
03:20They were just in Jamaica with Chris Blackwell.
03:23And I'm trying to see if Chris has any idea of what's going on with his label.
03:26That's just the absolute hottest label in the business, and we're so proud of them.
03:32But their secret weapon is Jackie Winkler, right here.
03:37Newly appointed head of A&R.
03:43Also, Tunji and Tim Penthouse, who are leading the charge at Def Jam as well.
03:49So that's the collective, that's the core collective Avenue job.
03:53By the way, Aaron, I do want to, I'm looking, thank you.
03:55That was very nice.
03:56You should know, the room should know, labels typically try to knock each other out every day.
04:01But you guys are, and Tom, I like-
04:04He said it.
04:06Yeah.
04:07Where's Benson Boone?
04:08Is he here?
04:09I'm taking my jacket off, too, later.
04:11I'm going to come see you.
04:12The younger me, I would have been flexing.
04:17But lastly, it's the artists.
04:20We work with incredible, thank you, Joseph.
04:23I can't mention one.
04:24If I mention one, I'm going to get in trouble, because we have so many incredible artists.
04:27So I'm just going to say, all of them inspire us.
04:33What they do is something that we don't.
04:35We respect them.
04:36We revere them.
04:38But most importantly, we love them, because in addition to making great music,
04:44they are really helping to make the world a better place.
04:47And when you think about that, not too many people who live here on the Earth.
04:51And the gentleman before from the White House, I want to just acknowledge you.
04:55You guys are doing amazing work, and our artists are doing amazing work.
04:58So we love them.
04:59We couldn't be more proud of what they do, and I just want to wish everybody happy holidays.
05:05And again, thank you very much.