(l to r) Drink Sum Wtr CEO Nigil Mack, All Flowers Group senior director of A&R Alexandra Berenson, and Ghostly International founder and CEO Sam Valenti IV at the Secretly offices. Photo Credit: Ye Fan
Ghostly International and Secretly have officially announced the launch of a company called All Flowers Group, which will house Ghostly and a new hip-hop label.
Secretly, which absorbed New York City’s Ghostly International back in June of 2020, recently unveiled the launch of All Flowers Group. The overarching Secretly encompasses Bloomington, Indiana-based Secretly Group (which unionized last year and itself includes labels Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar, Saddest Factory Records, and Secretly Canadian), besides distribution and publishing divisions.
Now, the just-minted All Flowers Group is poised to serve as the parent of 23-year-old Ghostly International as well as “a culture brand and new company,” Drink Sum Wtr (stylized in lowercase).
Drink Sum Wtr, for its part, will also operate out of the Big Apple, focusing on “championing some of the most distinct voices in hip-hop, R&B and adjacent sounds,” per higher-ups, including by zeroing in “on artist development in an increasingly algorithm-driven landscape.”
The NYC-headquartered label’s first signing is Queens-based rapper Deem Spencer, and Drink Sum Wtr intends to kick off “a singles series” in June with releases from Shelley FKA DRAM, Sol Galeano, and Wahid.
On the personnel side, former Republic Records exec Nigil Mack is set to serve as CEO of Drink Sum Wtr, with former Vinyl Me, Please A&R head Alexandra Berenson as senior director of A&R for All Flowers and three-year mtheory veteran Kate Ebeling as North American MD, also for All Flowers.
Additionally, Believe vet and current Secretly Group VP of operations for UK and EU Chloé van Bergen, along with Secretly Group VP of operations for North and South America Kraegan Graves, “will oversee the operational growth of” All Flowers.
Addressing his role at Drink Sum Wtr in a statement, Nigil Mack emphasized the label’s commitment to artist development and plans to avoid pursuing success purely in terms of “trends and algorithms.”
“I’m very excited about the journey that I’m about to take with this new venture,” said Mack. “Working with a like-minded team of industry seasoned professionals who are all unified in making artist development the core focus of drink sum wtr, the artist’s vision will always be the priority. Never at drink sum wtr will we chase trends and algorithms. We’d rather chase legacy.”
Alexandra Berenson echoed the sentiment in a statement of her own, relaying: “I am incredibly excited to join Ghostly, drink sum wtr and the Secretly family for this new venture. What compelled me to be a part of All Flowers Group is an ‘art first’ approach, which I believe to be key in allowing artists the freedom to express their creativity with as few roadblocks as possible.
“It is our mission to foster a collaborative space, while refusing to chase trends in order to help uplift every artist we partner with,” she concluded.