E-40: Building an Empire from the Hillside
Near Vallejo, California
Earl Stevens grew up in Vallejo, where his divorced mother worked three jobs. He grew up watching what the neighborhood produced and decided, at some point in his teenage years, to produce something different, or at least to own whatever he produced.
He released his first recording in nineteen ninety as part of a family group called the Click. By nineteen ninety-three, the Click had an underground following across the Bay Area built almost entirely through independent distribution, Stevens pressing records himself, selling them out of the trunk of a car. He signed to Jive Records and released In a Major Way in nineteen ninety-five, going platinum. The albums that followed, Tha Hall of Game, The Element of Surprise, My Ghetto Report Card, each went gold or better, released on a schedule that the rest of the industry could not match.
What distinguished Earl Stevens as a cultural figure was not just the music but the business model. He operated his own label, Sick Wid It Records, from Vallejo. He invested early in technology startups, Clubhouse and others, before those companies were household names. He built a wine label. He negotiated licensing deals. He did this from a city that the national music industry had never particularly focused on, and he did it over three decades without relocating.
Vallejo, where he built all of it, remains his home base.
