Big stars of pop music coming to Albuquerque Aug. 30

By Dan Mayfield

Journal Staff Writer
For years it seemed New Mexico missed out on the biggest concerts.
Sure, we’d see some popular country stars and heavy metal bands, but until recently we never saw the greatest stars of hip-hop and R&B. While Clint Black and Megadeth were selling out Tingley Coliseum and the Journal Pavilion, the most popular musicians on the charts and in car stereos cruising Montgomery and West Central just weren’t coming here to perform. Where was Dr. Dré? Why, for years, was Albuquerque passed up by pop phenoms?
Two local guys, Damian Barth and Julio Ruiz, started Fusion Promotions several years ago to bring some of the biggest stars of MTV, radio and the Billboard charts to New Mexico.
At West Mesa High School in the early 1990s, the pair would listen to and buy rap records and only dream of going to concerts by their heroes. But the shows simply never came.
“We wondered why those big concerts missed us,” Barth said.
Now, the company is gearing up for its New Mexico Takeover IV, a show that’s scheduled to bring some of the biggest stars of pop music, including Busta Rhymes, Pitbull and Flo Rida on Aug. 30 at the Journal Pavilion.
“Albuquerque is our hometown. Everybody else got those shows out there. We didn’t,” Barth said.
With his business partner, Ruiz, the pair has managed over the last five years to bring some of the biggest names in rap, hip-hop and R&B to Albuquerque and stages around the country, from T.I. and Run DMC to Ludacris and Slick Rick.
Like yin and yang, the two complement each other. Ruiz, known as Julio G. on 106.3 FM Power 106, and Barth started working in radio in Albuquerque in the early 2000s as DJs.  Barth is the production and business guy, Ruiz has an outsized personality and connections. Together, the mix works, with each keeping the other in check. The pair moved up quickly in the radio world, hosting hip-hop morning shows in bigger markets like Phoenix and Tampa Bay, Fla.
In Tampa, the pair started Fusion Promotions to do radio commercials for concert promoters.
“It wasn’t ever intended to do concerts,” Barth said. “It was radio production.”
But they caught the bug from promoters they were working with. Really, they figured, how hard could it be to put on a big concert?
A lot more difficult, it turned out.
The pair moved back to Albuquerque, a market they knew well, to start bringing the shows they knew they could sell.
“Our very first show that we did on our own was in 2004,” Barth said. “But it was at the wrong time.”
The show, featuring 1980s rap star Grandmaster Flash, was scheduled at the Sunshine Theater Downtown on a Wednesday. But just five days before the show, a young concert fan was murdered at the Downtown theater.
“We couldn’t give tickets away,” Ruiz said. “There  was maybe 200 people. It was nowhere near what we should have had. We had to jump like Carl Lewis to make it.”
But, he said, they knew from the moment the concert was done they were going to make careers of promoting shows.
“There was an energy and a vibe Damian and me could feel,” Ruiz said. “To look out and see your dream realized, it was epic. We are hosting our own show for our own people and we loved it.”
Over the years the pair has booked dozens of major shows, but its flagship events have been the New Mexico Takeover series, which feature top stars from today and some old-school greats from the 1980s and early 1990s.  The shows, usually around the time the fall semester of school starts, have sold out the Journal Pavilion since 2006.
As careers go, though, the pair said concert promotions is probably one of the toughest ways to make a living. Musicians, and especially hip-hop stars, can be some of the most difficult to deal with.
“Year two, our (Takeover) show was scheduled for a Wednesday,” Ruiz said. “It was Saturday, and Damian gives me a call. He said ‘Turn on CNN.’”
The headliner for the 2007 show, the huge rap star T.I. was in jail. He’d been busted on federal gun charges and wasn’t going to make the show.
“We didn’t sleep all weekend,” Barth said.
“We were glued to Court TV,” Ruiz said. “We didn’t know if he was going to make it. We watched Court TV to see if he’d make bail.”
Finally, at 1 p.m. Monday, T.I.’s agent called and said he’d booked rapper Fabolous to fill the void.
“We sold out the Santa Ana Star Center with that show,” Barth said. “When that happened, we thought, ‘Here we go again.’”
The bad luck continued in 2008, when the day before a big show in Albuquerque, rapper David Banner was hospitalized and couldn’t make the show.
And when in 2007 headliner Busta Rhymes was arrested on Fifth Avenue in New York City carrying a machete.
But the headaches are worth it to bring some of the stars Albuquerque never did get see in their prime, like C.L. Smooth or Warren G., the pair said.
“I remember leaving Luda (Ludacris) back stage to go check out C.L. Smooth,” Barth said. “A lot of those kids didn’t know who he was, but those that did were standing on the chairs and screaming.”
For Ruiz, though, he knew the pair had made it when in 2007 the original rap group Sugar Hill Gang from the late 1970s played a Takeover show.
“All four (original members) were here. It was pretty amazing,” Ruiz said. “That was monumental for us and Albuquerque. It brought a tear to my eye. We did it, dog.”