“We Take the Stairs Not the Elevator”: The Independent Ingenuity of 510 Music Group

Vol. 6

(From left: JGreen, Doggz, Oz Sparx)

510 Music Group began with a falling out. Around 2016, Wabasso, Florida native JGreen was half-heartedly rapping in a group called YNW with his blood cousin Juvy and two other young Floridians who went by Sakchaser and Melly. They were already popular kids in Florida’s Indian River County suburbs, and their music quickly gained enough traction to grab the attention of Doggz, a former rapper turned industry playmaker who had already boosted the careers of Florida upstarts like Foolie and King Bucc. 

The YNW group’s foray into music brought them to Atlanta, where they would sometimes crash at Doggz’s house. Initially, it seemed clear that Melly was the group’s breakout star. “Melly was the rapper and JGreen was the street kid that used to come around,” Doggz tells me over the phone. “He really didn’t take the music that serious. When he did go in the booth, he made good music, and everybody was like ‘damn man, you need to be serious.’” 

After a dispute between Doggz and Sakchaser over stolen clothes coincided with a dispute between JGreen and Melly over what Green describes as “jitterbug shit, little kid shit”, Green and Doggz teamed up to start 510 Music Group. The duo quickly capitalized on the intrigue surrounding Green’s feud with his former groupmates by dropping Green’s debut single “Rugged” - a bone-deep survival anthem with a wistful interpolation of “Murder She Wrote” - on WorldStarHipHop’s YouTube channel. According to Doggz: “We dropped the ‘Rugged’ track and it went viral. They had the little beef, so when JGreen dropped the solo music, it was taken by the fans as him coming at Melly. So that’s kinda where the buzz came from, the people wanted to hear this diss track. From then, that’s how 510 started. It was just me and him.” JGreen serves as 510’s co-CEO, and Doggz tells me he “plays a major part in running the label. We are like Voltron together”. 

510 eventually squashed their beef with Melly, and Green joined Melly on the We All Shine tour in February of last year. When the tour arrived in Washington D.C., Melly had a warrant out for his arrest, and cops mistakenly apprehended Green at Union Stage, thinking he was the headliner.

YNW Melly and YNW affiliate Cortlen Henry - aka YNW Bortlen - later turned themselves in. Both young men were charged with the murders of YNW Sakchaser and YNW Juvy. According to Complex, Melly is “facing the death penalty or life without parole”. He maintains his innocence.

With “Rugged” taking off online, JGreen quickly delivered another viral hit with “Up Next”, an expertly crafted flip of Drake’s “I’m Upset” flow that hits about ten thousand times harder than its source material. Off the strength of those two singles, Green and Doggz inked a six-figure deal with Republic Records that turned sour almost as soon as it began. 

“There was a lot of miscommunication,” Doggz recalls. “They never took (‘Rugged’) to radio, the song didn’t get a remix or a press run...So they just kinda shelved us.” JGreen signed to Republic around the same time as New Jersey rapper Coi Leray, and according to Doggz the label prioritized Leray over Green due to a lack of artist development staff. 

Doggz, a shrewd negotiator who studied under hip-hop executives like Skane Dolla and Suge Knight, took matters into his own hands. Against the label’s wishes, he released JGreen’s debut EP Waiting to Exhale and his first proper mixtape Soul On Ice via the independent distribution service Distrokid. “We just started dropping our music, we dropped Soul On Ice and Waiting To Exhale on DistroKid, and they got mad (laughs).” Doggz tells me there’s no bad blood with Republic nowadays, and he maintains a good relationship with Republic’s Senior VP of A&R Amina Diop. “They let us go on good terms, no problem, and I’m grateful, because a lot of artists get stuck in their deals.”

Under Doggz’s guidance and with the help of producers like Jiggy Bangers, Yarico, Skillies, Cubscout, and CorMill, JGreen emerged as a fully-formed artist with an immersive, distinctive sound. Soul On Ice and Waiting To Exhale showcase Green’s emotionally wounded style over an understated backdrop of soft pianos and stirring strings.

On fan-favorite “Bonnie N Clyde”, Green spins a third-person narrative of outlaw romance that ends with an unplanned pregnancy and a pawned wedding ring. His poetic eye for detail renders the narrative three-dimensional (“He done lost his dad, he done lost his mom, he done lost his conscience / Jumped off the porch, bought him a torch, got on the fuck shit”). JGreen’s music is haunted by heartbreak, and his bluesy voice tinges even his most boastful lyrics with melancholy on tracks like “Bad Mon” and “Check”. 

Green and Doggz officially parted ways with Republic last August, and Green’s music has generated tens of millions of streams under the 510 imprint. This underdog success story wasn’t enough, and 510 would repeat the formula with their next signee - a Philadelphia teenager by the name of Oz Sparx.

Oz Sparx began his rap career under Philly artist and hometown hero AR-Ab. When AR-Ab and Sparx’s manager Bionickhaz caught an indictment for conspiracy and drug distribution in late 2018, Green and Doggz stepped in. “I been knew him, he was around,” Doggz says. “I was giving his manager beats for him, before I actually started managing him. So it wasn’t like - ‘hey, you’re a nice rapper, let me manage you’ - it was more organic”.

Unlike JGreen’s crestfallen melodicism, Sparx’s rapping is hyper-intricate and gleefully mischievous. He spits barrages of compound rhymes (“Imma shooter with my left hand / Bad bitch with a fat ass, go best friend / I don’t talk n***a, back back, no questions / Imma slime out, slatt slatt, should’ve checked in”) with such ease that you’d be forgiven for not noticing their complexity. 

The stylistic sophistication Sparx displays on recent mixtapes Juggin’ N Finnesin’ and Gunsmoke suggests he could have a lucrative side hustle ghostwriting for any number of A-listers in need of catchy cadences. He’s already earned the approval of Meek Mill - a coveted co-sign for any young artist coming out of Philly - and his breakout single “Fake” has notched over three million views on YouTube.  

On top of his precocious rap skills, Sparx is also a gifted producer with global reach. According to Doggz, Sparx is a fan of the Morrocan singer Hindi Zahra, and the admiration is mutual. On his latest single “Hindi”, Sparx pirouettes over a gorgeous sample of Zahra’s “Beautiful Tango” that he co-produced with her blessing. “She’s like his fan,” says Doggz. “They’re fans of each other. They’re always talking to each other and shit on the gram. So he asked her if he could sample one of her songs, and she said ‘go ahead’”. Zahra flooded Sparx’s comment section with heart emojis when he debuted the single on IG.

The other architect of Sparx’s sound is producer Jahdiddat, whose beats on Juggin N Finessin and Gunsmoke are so lush they’re practically dripping. 510’s reliance on talented in-house beatmakers gives their full-length tapes a coherence rarely seen at the major-label level, where profit margins incentivize chasing the latest trend.

(From left: Doggz, Frank Kastle, JGreen, Oz Sparx)

Since 2018, 510 Music Group has been cranking out high-quality rap music - most recently through a partnership with distribution company EMPIRE - and racking up streams at a healthy clip. Neither Green nor Sparx nor Doggz show any signs of creative stagnation. When I ask Doggz what he considers the biggest downside to operating as an independent label, he sounds unfazed: “The biggest disadvantage is we don’t have the safety net or the support system that some of the artists who have the big deals do. We didn’t get signed and get a big advance and go buy rollies and chains...We gotta make a decision to either pay the PR this month or buy jewelry (laughs), you know what I’m saying? Pay for some SayCheese posts or buy jewelry. Eventually, the jewelry will come if we keep investing in ourselves.”