There’s a reason so many of the biggest names in music and Hip Hop have trusted the same man to sit across the table from record labels, studios, and estates for the past three decades. Today, The Source celebrates the birthday of L. Londell McMillan, owner of this very publication, longtime steward of Prince’s legacy, and one of the sharpest business and legal minds entertainment has ever produced.
Born in the Tompkins project houses in Bedford Stuyvesant Brooklyn, McMillan played sports, learned the piano the attended Cornell University before entering the NYU School of Law, graduating in 1990, and within a few years he was breaking barriers at the corporate law firm or LeBoeuf Lamb Leiby & MaCrae, the later Gold Farrell Marks, becoming the firm’s first Black lawyer in 1993.
From there he built his own law practice and business advisory firm, NorthStar, one that would go on to represent Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Chaka Khan, Spike Lee, and Kanye West, before stepping back into a partner role at LeBoeuf as co-head of the International Global Media and Entertainment sector.
Ask anyone in the industry about his signature moment and they’ll point to Prince. McMillan freed the icon from a suffocating Warner Bros. contract when Prince was just 30 years old, a win that still gets cited as one of the boldest artist-rights victories in music history. Others may talk about how he had the Hip Hop and R&B industries on lock with more legendary and star clients than most record labels.
His client list reads like a map of Hip Hop itself: Run DMC, LL Cool J, Nas, Scarface, Ice Cube, Snoop, DMX, the Lox, Lil Kim, and the BIG estate.
He co-founded the Artist Empowerment Coalition and the Minority Roundtable while still in law school, planting seeds for economic justice and diversity that are still growing today. The legends were Stevie, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Chaka Khan, Isaac Hayes, and younger soulful artists like D’Angelo, Zhane and Dru Hill among many more.
For twenty years now, he’s owned The Source, keeping the culture’s heartbeat alive while pushing it forward.
Happy birthday, Londell. The culture owes you more than it knows. We can’t wait for that book to arrive (or maybe the documentary) !!!
