Before Scooter Braun would represent some of the worlds biggest talent including Justin
Bieber, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Psy, Black Eyed Peas, Lil Dicky and more...
Before Scooter would make Time's list of 100 most influential people in the world at the
age of 33 back in 2013.
Before Scooter would clock in over 3 million followers on Instagram and almost 4 Million
on Twitter at the time of this recording.
I know right out the gate a lot of you kids will overlook this video cause Scooter Braun
is more of a man behind the scenes but when you think about it this dude has been one
of the most poweful and successful dudes in the music industry over the past decade.
Love him ( cough, cough ) Justin Beiber or hate him ( cough, cough ) Taylor Swift...
you gotta give the man his dues.
A white / jewish kid with dreams of basketball stardom landed himself in Atlanta Georgia
and worked his way into the world of hip hop.
It probably helps that he grew up with two brothers adopted from Africa... just my guess.
Like a lot of people we cover on this channel, Scooter was quick to see the opportunities
that lied on the internet and picked up his first two acts off of MySpace and YouTube.
When the hell is someone gonna watch me and give me a bigger gig?
I've been going to the gym and everything....
What's going on guys?
It's your boy Michael McCrudden hitting you with a Before They Were Famous on music mogul
Scooter Braun.
We've dropped a few videos recently on some of Scooter's artists including Lil Dicky and
an Epic on Ariana Grande but we need you to let us know who is next.
There are a ton of his artists we've never touched on including Karlie Kloss, Martin
Garixx.
You guys gotta keep your suggestions coming in.
Aright, let's jump into this video...
Scooter Braun was born Scott Braun on June 18, 1981 in New York City, New York to conservative
Jewish parents, his father Ervin a dentist and his mother Susan an orthodontist.
His parents met in Budapest, Hungary, his dad Ervin Braun was the son of Holocaust survivors
who both spent time in concentration camps.
Scooter recently shared an IG post of him as a little kid with the caption that read:
My grandma sent me this on my bday.
What happened to this kid?
The journey his life took him on was and is wild.
He had no idea.
Big dreamer right there
He grew up in smalltown Cobs Cobs, Connecticut population 6K with his four siblings Liza,
Cornelio, Sam and Adam two are his biological brother and sister while two were adopted
from Africa.
Braun's first fist-fight as a kid came after being called an anti-semitic slur,
it was also around this age that he earned the nickname of Scooter.
At a first grade birthday party there was a balloon animal entertainer named Scooter
and Scott openly shared his displeasure with the clowns name.
His brother decided to start calling him Scooter to tease him and as the years passed this
became common practice.
So much so that when Scott was playing high school basketball his brother was able to
get the entire crowd to chant Scooter and nick name stuck.
Even when he was elected class president at Greenwich High School he was presented to
the class as Scott 'Scooter' Braun.
Dude was a stud I mean we even found his old prom picture.
His dad was the coach and with his two adopted bro's from Africa well I guess they were a
pretty dominant force.
Like the Ball bros of Connecticut, Scooter even had dreams of making it to the NBA but
when he started playing AU he realized that he didn't have the god given talent to go
all the way.
He's played plenty of one on one againt the Beibs and it appears he's still got some game.
Scooter also showed signs of his artistic sige, he produced a 10 minute short film while
in high school called The Hungarian Conflict which his grandmother sent to Steven Speilberg.
He in return wrote Braun a letter in response, which now hangs framed in his Hollywood home.
At 18 it was time for College but he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life, he
just new he wanted a change and moved to at Emory University in Atlanta where he played
college basketball in 2002.
It was there he adopted the name Scooter full time.
There he became a party promoter in Atlanta and at the time the clubs were heavily segregate.
The whites were listening to Techno and attending their own clubs.
White kids weren't exactly showing up at the hip hop clubs and Scooter saw a gap in the
market.
Atlanta was rough and tough and Scooter had to watch his back, there were no contracts
and everything was based off of reputation and networking.
His access to the college kids soon got him promoting parties for acts including Ludacris
and Eminem for the Anger Management Tour . From there, producer Jermaine Dupri offered him
a marketing position at So So Def Records, promoting Braun to the executive director
for marketing the following year.
He was just 20 at the time.
Around this time Scooter was also said to have been offered a number of reality star
gigs for his growing reputation as a party boy but he didn't want that reputation effecting
his future plans.
By now he was no longer attending classes but feared telling his parents that he was
considering dropping out of school.
He met with an academic career councillor who told Scooter about another Emory University
Alumni Robert Woodruff.
A
confrontation with Jermaine's mom of all people led to Scooter loosing his gig with So So
Def and from there he was on his own.
He got to work on his own marketing business, record label and artist representation and
gave himself 13 months before he would be all out of money.
His first client was Asher Rother who he discovered on MySpace and 4 months later he'd made a
pretty remarkable discovery at the time this video had just 60K views and Justin was 12.
Today that video has close to 9 Million views.
Scooter was looking for the next Michael Jackson and saw all the potential in the world with
the small town Canadian kid.
Scooter called up Justin's mom Patti and flew the pair out to Atlanta.
He would soon convince them to move there full time.
All of a sudden he had Asher Roth and Justin Beiber living in rentals and was burning through
all of his cash hoping to make one of these two acts into a star.
It was Asher who first his it big with his hit I love College which is now a decade old.
We could make an After or where are they now video on Asher... let me know if that's something
you would wanna see in the comments down below.
It wasn't until Justin was 15 that Scooter finally worked out a deal with L.A. Reid using
Usher as a co-sign and the pair got to work.
We all know what happened from there, Beiber-mania took the world by storm and Scooter had the
worlds biggest pop act on his hands.
There were lots of records broken, millions made and Scooter made Time's list for most
influential people.
But there was also a time where Scooter feared Justin was gonna loss it all... at his lowest
point the Beibs reached out to Scooter and the two have remained close through it all.
At the time of this recording there is some online beef between Scooter and Taylor Swift.
Scooters media empire SB Projects continued to blossom with new ventures including Schoolboy
Records, Sheba Publishing, Silent Labs and television and film production.
Justin's bio pic never say never grossed 100 million at the box office so for the past
decade Scooters been eating good.
The opportunity came up for him to pick up acquire Big Machine Label Group owened by
Scott Borchetta, amongst a number of stars the biggest by far is Taylor Swift whom they
signed when she was just a teenager.
In this video I've said some pretty positive things about Scooter but Taylor, well she
had this to say.
"Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter.
Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was
when I was either crying or trying not to."
Looks like Taylor is gonna be making her next album about the owner of her record label
– that could be awkward.
I guess we will have to wait and see how this plays out because this is Before They Were
Famous.
My name