Rob Stone obit

Rob Stone, Co-Founder of Cornerstone Agency and the Fader Magazine, Dies at 55

 

He was not on the list.

Rob Stone, who co-founded the influential music marketing company Cornerstone Agency and the magazine the Fader, died Monday after a battle with cancer, according to social media posts from his family and his longtime friend and co-CEO Jon Cohen. He was 55.

“It is with a heavy heart and sadness we share the news of the passing of Rob Stone,” his family wrote. “Rob bravely fought cancer over the past year. He chose to keep his diagnosis private in order to focus on his family. He was a truly amazing person who lived an incredible life.”

The agency, which Stone launched with Loud Records founder Steve Rifkind in 1996 — who stepped aside for Cohen the following year — became a pioneering force in music marketing, incorporating the tactics of hip-hop street marketing teams and ushering dozens of major brands into the music space, including Sprite, Bushmills, Converse, Coca-Cola, Nike, Diageo, Reebok, Johnnie Walker and others, even the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks.

The pair founded the Fader — a heavy paper stock, photo-filled magazine with a sharp eye for up-and-coming artists — in 1999 as a companion to the marketing company, and used both to create a template that was quickly followed by Vice, Complex and Conde Nast, among others. Based in New York and with offices in Los Angeles, London and Sao Paulo, Cornerstone/ Fader grew into a mini-empire of more than 100 employees and more than $100 million in annual revenue. It later expanded into film with Fader Films, which Stone focused on later in his career. The company released several projects, including an expansive and well-received documentary on the late rapper XXXTentacion called “Look at Me” in 2022.

Cornerstone/ Fader’s presence at festivals such as SXSW via its “Fader Fort,” which featured showcases from dozens of up-and-coming and major acts, became a staple of the 2000s and 2010s, growing to the size of several city blocks filled with stages, food and drink tents, and product display areas.  

Both natives of Nassau County on New York’s Long Island (and born nine days apart), Stone and Cohen met and became close friends as seventh graders and attended high school together. “We discovered hip-hop together — I’ll never forget listening to Run-D.M.C. for the first time in Rob’s car,” Cohen told this writer in a 2015 interview with the pair. The two began working together at SBK Records, a start-up major label co-founded by industry titans Charles Koppelman and Martin Bandier famed for launching the careers of Vanilla Ice, Technotronic, Jesus Jones and others, after graduating in the early 1990s.

“[Cornerstone] really started in that first year at SBK, because we would talk about our frustrations with major labels, like, ‘Why don’t we have our own company? We could do this,’” Stone said. After rising to VP of promotion, he left SBK to take a similar post at Clive Davis’ Arista Records, where he played a major role in the crossover success of the Notorious B.I.G. and other hip-hop artists. A framed poster hanging in Stone’s Cornerstone office was autographed by the rapper, calling him “#1 cool white man.”

Stone left Arista to launch Cornerstone with Rifkind as an independent promotion company in 1996. The following year, Rifkind stepped back to focus on Loud and Cohen joined as Stone’s partner. The pair had learned their marketing and negotiating chops at the major labels and soon brought those skills to bear on brands, just as hip-hop was breaking into the mainstream during the late 1990s.

“We were working [several labels’] projects to radio, so we had all these indie and alternative acts and this hip-hop roster,” Stone said. “We started talking: ‘How do we grow the business?’ And we stumbled upon music and brands with Sprite. The lightbulb went off: There was a lot of marketing that could be done around music and brands.”

The company and the Fader grew rapidly into powerhouses. Brands lined up for its sleek, street-savvy approach to marketing products, which expanded in size and impact with remarkable speed: For example, within a few years, a simple promotional compilation CD had expanded into a monthly multi-disc package stuffed with a DVD, a booklet and multiple small advertising flyers; the company threw splashy parties with DJs and performances for brands such as Bushmills that attracted young hipsters by the score.

On a parallel track, the Fader — which effectively defined its profile in 2000 with the cover stars of its third issue, with R&B icon D’Angelo and alternative-music star Beck together on the front, and rapper Mos Def on the back — promoted hundreds of new artists, adventurously giving many of them their first covers, in a high-production-value magazine, no less. In a message celebrating its 100th issue, the founders listed Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, M.I.A., the Strokes, the White Stripes, Drake, Nicki Minaj, Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean, Phoenix, Miguel and Rick Ross as artists who had their “magical first covers” with the Fader.

The Fader Fort had a stacked lineup at SXSW each year: In the mid-2000s, West brought much of the roster of his label G.O.O.D. Records, and artists from Gorillaz to Lil Yachty performed there over the years. In association with Converse, it launched the Rubber Tracks recording studio and venue in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood in 2010, which hosted dozens of intimate performances by artists ranging from Mary J. Blige to Rae Sremmurd.

Stone was also a member of the board of directors for the salad chain Sweetgreen, and played a key role in the creation of its annual Sweetlife Festival concert, and sat on the board for the Children’s Cancer Association’s MyMusicRx, a music-related initiative for critically ill young people in the United States and Canada.

While Cornerstone’s impact eventually became overshadowed by companies it had influenced — notably Vice and Complex — it has remained a strong force in the industry, with Stone and Cohen occasionally sparring but always remaining a unit. As the company reached its 28th anniversary just last week, Stone shared several posts featuring photos from its early days and shouting out Cohen and early colleagues Andy Cohn and Anthony Holland, among others.

“What a ride it’s been,” he wrote. “The good the bad the highs the lows, the wins the learnings. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Stone is survived by his wife, Lauren, and their three children.