DJ Amir was the only Black person I remember on Fat Beats’ executive staff. Great guy, very knowledgeable and easygoing.
Today, he needs help getting back on his feet after an overseas work experience went bad. In his fundraiser, Amir describes months without pay, housing uncertainty, and struggling to afford basic needs.
Here is his GoFundMe:
gofundme.com/f/help-dj-amir-…
Please donate if you can. Share it if you can’t. He’s also open to DJ bookings, lectures, curation, and other work.
Amir was a Fat Beats OG who spent almost a decade there, including serving as head of A&R and vice president of sales. His work helped build an institution in independent hip-hop.
In 2024, Benjy Grinberg’s company, Rostrum Pacific, acquired Fat Beats. In December 2025, Rostrum announced $150 million in financing from Crayhill Capital Management to acquire and grow music catalogs.
Investment firms love Black culture.
The Black PEOPLE who actually built it? not so much
That $150 million raises a question worth asking: as money flows into businesses built around hip-hop, what support reaches the people who helped build them?
For context, Black founded startups receive about 0.4% of venture $. Access to capital is everything beloved.
oh and to the capitalist coons who will be defending white men clad in ALD in my comments: spare me the “Why does it always have to be about race?”:
Because this is America, where HipHop is a BLACK art form traded as a commodity,
White men get funded and own the HipHop catalogs while Black OGs are crowdfunding basic needs.