RIDENOUR'S ANCHOR DROPS A FLEET OF URBAN HITS

Lionel Ridenour's Anchor Promotions is celebrating a Top 5 Urban airplay marketshare ranking, per Mediabase's mid-year report. In 2021 so far, Anchor's team has secured four #1s, with tracks from Rod Wave, CJ, SpotemGottem and Yung Bleu.

Anchor also launched eight other records from emerging artists into the Top 50 of MB's Urban Mainstream chart.

“This is an important benchmark,” said Anchor founder and CEO Lionel Ridenour. “It demonstrates that my team is effective in creating an even playing field for smaller labels and independent artists to get their records played on Urban radio. We work seamlessly with major labels while being fiercely competitive on behalf of labels that do not have full radio staffs.”

“Anchor has been a great partner to us since the start of Alamo and has helped us take Lil Durk, Rod Wave and the rest of the roster from the artist-development stage to platinum status,” said Alamo founder/CEO Todd Moscowitz.

Warner promo EVP Mike Chester added, "I look at Anchor as an extension of our team. Lionel is really involved in the promotion strategy from beginning to end and his team puts tremendous thought and follow-up into their execution.”

Since Ridenour launched Anchor in 2013, it's handled Urban radio promotion for such artists as Chance the Rapper, Daniel Caesar, Tyga, Wale, Erica Banks, SAINt JHN, Lil Pump and NLE Choppa.

Anchor Promotions has the distinction of being one of the only Black-owned fully staffed radio and marketing companies in the business. “This type of service and approach has been available in Pop and Rhythmic formats for years. It’s overdue for hip-hop and R&B artists to have access to ‘major label’ Urban radio promotional services,” said Ridenour, who established himself working with global superstars like Whitney Houston, the Notorious B.I.G., TLC, Usher, P!nk and OutKast.

While Anchor celebrates its big first half, HITS is still trying to figure out what "Whoopty" and "Buss It" mean.