Who are you and where are you from? Have your surroundings shaped you in a creative sense, and in what way(s)?
I am Siavash Aghaiepour My background is Persian, I grew up in Germany. I moved to the US in 2007, lived in Dubai for the past 5 years and recently relocated to Los Angeles. Definitely my surroundings shaped my creative or music sense, I grew up in Heidelberg/Germany which is influenced by the first HipHop movement/scene in Germany. Also the presence of the US Military in Germany brought a lot of HipHop Culture to the area. Myself playing basketball with the kids from the US and listening to their music influenced me a lot.
You have worked with some of the music industry’s hottest live acts throughout your career. Do you ever work with Independent artists or artists outside of Hip Hop?
To be honest a lot of the artists that we already worked with, the first time we done business with them, they were not superstars. We started the company in Germany and we worked with a lot of US Clubs there because of the US Military presence in Germany. So the artists we brought there were considered underground and not really mainstream. Starting from Lil Jon, Bone crusher, Mike Jones, Ying Yang Twins, David Banner. They were not mainstream artists at that time. Even Pitbull, we started working with him in 07/08. We were basically bringing artists who had a buzz or the DJs where playing the songs in the clubs. There was no airplay on MTV or Radio for these artists at that time. So we managed to bring them before they hit the mainstream and became superstars. Throughout the years we worked with Kylie Minoque, Bebi Rexha, Jamie Foxx, Nicole Scherzinger and of course a lot of DJs from the electronic scene. Once hip hop became mainstream there was a fusion between house and hip hop, so we worked with house DJs through our relationship with hip hop artists. For example collaborations between Afrojack and Pitbull, or Bob Sinclar and Pitbull. Plenty cross over productions.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting in the music industry? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Back at the time when this happened I was crying, meanwhile I can laugh about it. I was at the airport gate with an artist, ready for boarding when the artist said he wants to have Burger King before we get on the plane. The store was like slightly away from the gate, a 10-15 min walk – I agreed to take him there. Making a long story short we missed the
flight. He was trying to get all extras possible, no pickles no this no that and it took ages. We missed the flight over a Burger King sandwich.
You have three locations of HR Booking, which one was first and which one is your Headquarters?
The first office was located in Stuttgart/Germany which was together with 0711 Hip Hop back then, which is a big name in the German Hip Hop Scene. Then the office moved from Stuttgart to Mannheim where my brother Roozbeh Aghaie pour joined me. The next office was in New York, moved from New York to Miami in 2012. In 2014 we opened our Dubai office.
What did you start doing first, touring with artists or booking them?
I used to be a party promoter, I started to bring big mixtape and hot97 DJs for my parties to stand out from everyone else and was the first one to do so. Being in a relationship with DJs in an early stage helped me a lot because a lot of these DJs started to DJ for major artists. For example DJ Green Lantern who DJd for Emined or DJ Whoo Kid who DJd for 50 Cent. So back in 2000 when the Anger Mgmt Tour came to Europe I got a call from WhooKid and Green Lantern asking me to book the afterparties for Eminem and 50 Cent. So that’s how I got into the business with artists and to establish my relationship with artist managements. Everything started with DJs.
Where do you see yourself and your company in the next five years?
A. In future I see myself getting more involved in Film and TV and being able to be able to do stuff in territories where I wasn’t doing much before. Being more involved domestically in the US and Latin America. Also expanding in Asia.
For more info Check out www.hrbooking.com and follow www.instagram.com/overseasia to stay updated.