The Guy Who Signed Slick Rick and Jay Z Is Still Killing It

“Does anybody need anything?” asks Lyor Cohen. “A martini?” On a private plane flying from Newark to Kansas City, Mo., Cohen, one of America’s best-known record company executives, isn’t serving drinks. But the flight attendants are ready to take orders—even though it’s early afternoon and nobody’s ready for cocktails just yet. 300 Entertainment, a startup record label that Cohen co-founded almost two years ago, is flying a group of executives, journalists, and assorted hangers-on to see its biggest act, Fetty Wap, an amiable rapper whose effervescent hit, Trap Queen, a drug dealer’s ode to his girlfriend, broke out this summer. In a few hours, Fetty Wap will open for R&B star Chris Brown. Cohen wants to be there, along with everybody he can fit on the plane.

Cohen, who is 6-foot-5 and looks as if he were born to play an assassin in a Hollywood thriller, is also trying to show that 300 is for real. In November 2013 he announced that he and his partners were creating a new kind of record company, one that would challenge its larger rivals by melding the talent-scouting skills of industry veterans with technology that mines the Internet for undiscovered acts. They raised $15 million, including $5 million from Google, as reported by Billboard. Once a highly paid executive at Warner Music Group, Cohen says he’s content to sit in a cubicle in a small office and use the same bathroom as his employees. “I know this doesn’t look like we adjusted the cost structure,” he concedes, glancing around at the jet’s white-leather interior. “But if I told you how much I got this plane for, you would be very impressed.”