Leroy McMath spent most of his childhood summers in the town of Sunflower.
That’s where the Power Entertainment record producer and author was born, and that is where he lived until he was 3 years old.
His mother eventually settled in St. Louis, but Sunflower County was always a second home to McMath.
He gained a reputation on the basketball court, and as he and his cousins got older, they started to get interested in music.
“My plans were actually to play in the NBA,” McMath told The Enterprise-Tocsin during a recent event at Historic Club Ebony.
McMath brought Cherrelle and Klay Redd to the club in early May for a Friday night show.
McMath was plenty good enough for professional basketball, he said, but by the time he was a teenager, he had already started to gravitate toward the music industry.
“I saw two concerts,” he said. “One was B.B. King, Bobby Bland and Little Milton. They were on a tour, and we were too young to get into the concert. We snuck around the back, and they had these tour buses, and they looked like spaceships. When they walked out, they were so clean, with the suits on, and they just looked like something we had never seen.”
The second concert was George Clinton.
“We snuck into that one too,” McMath said. “My life was changed. I said, ‘This is what I want to do.’”
When McMath was a young man, he would see that a lot of musicians played in the local clubs in the Delta, but it wasn’t until later in life that he realized what a following they had.
“I didn’t understand how popular they were,” he said of the likes of B.B. King and Little Milton. “I didn’t understand that they were worldwide-known artists until later on… When I was small around here, I didn’t understand the music business. I just knew that I liked what I was seeing, and I wanted to hear it, and that was about it. As I grew older, when I got into high school and college, I started hearing other music and I said they’re from Mississippi.”
Now based in Atlanta, McMath’s Power Entertainment was founded in Michigan, where he got his start promoting local acts, some of whom won competitions and joined larger tours.
McMath would found The Scene, a club that helped to premier artists like Ready for the World and B.A.D.
By the ‘90s, McMath had signed the likes of MC Breed, DFC, Gangsta Pat, S’kool Girlz and Candy Fresh.
Power Records’ distribution deal with Ichiban Records produced MC Breed’s Ain’t No Future in Yo Frontin’, which sold over 1 million copies.
“We toured for a year and a half,” McMath said, joining the likes of Will Smith, Ghetto Boys and Queen Latifa, he said. “They established Breed as an artist.”
McMath would later produce the hit record Da Dip with Freak Nasty.
“That was one of the biggest records of the ‘90s,” he said.
The song was later licensed for the movie Booty Call.
“That put (this) country boy in a whole new arena,” he said.
McMath said that Michael Jackson was a fan of Da Dip and even worked out to the record. He said the King of Pop actually approached him at one point for a joint venture.
The deal was never made, however.
“We couldn’t agree on the points,” McMath said.
Around three decades later, McMath is still producing records, producing movies and documentaries, and he’s writing books.
He’s also introducing to Mississippi as many of his artists as he can.
That includes Klay Redd and Cherrelle.
He and Klay Redd even wrote a song together called I Love Mississippi.
“Everyone that I’ve brought here just falls in love with Mississippi,” McMath said. “It’s different. It’s very warm.”
McMath said that he hopes to bring more acts to Historic Club Ebony in the future, perhaps even hosting a talent show here in the Delta.
“I used to love this place,” McMath said of the club. “There were so many great memories visiting in the summer.”
McMath said that most of his biographies say that he is from Los Angeles or Atlanta, but he would like the world to know that he is from Mississippi. Sunflower, Mississippi to be specific.
That’s where he was born, and that is where he first connected with the music that he has built his life and career around.
