Outside of the music industry, nobody really cares about what goes on behind the scenes—all the average consumer is concerned about is how good the product is. But to have a good finished product, you need an equally if not better machine behind it.When you see an artist winning a Grammy, American Music Award, or a Billboard Award, of course they’re going to give thanks to God, their families, and friends—but then they start thanking the people that you have no clue of who they are.

Those are the “quote-un-quote” “behind the scenes” people that keep everything up and running for those artists to have that opportunity to thank everyone under the sun before the award show producers cut them off by zooming the cameras out, turning on the music, and going to commercial. And big time music executive Wendy Goldstein is one of those known/unknowns who makes sure the wheels stay greased.

If you’re skeptical about her credentials or creditability, then you can check her resume and you’ll find out that she’s behind the names of such acts like The Roots, Common, Mos Def, Chingy, and other artists while she sharpened her developmental skills at Capitol Records, EastWest Records, and Geffen Records. When you first take a look at the middle-aged music madam, your first assumption might be that she’s only involved with pop and alt-rock acts, but the Brooklyn-born former DJ has an urban music history that would make other people envious. She was the driving force behind Chingy’s debut album, Jackpot (which still is his biggest release to date) which sold over three million copies, and made the proper choices for The Roots’ song “You Got Me” that ended up guiding them to their first Grammy Award.

Now with all the knowledge and experience she’s acquired from “the biz,” she sets forth to help the careers of the next generation of artists with her company, the Omerta Management Group (in association with her Vista Music Group). With a roster that includes Stank Ya Boy, and the Grammy-nominated production team known as The Underdogs, who’ve had placements on projects by Chris Brown, Beyoncé, and Aretha Franklin, she can easily be the number one candidate on why a women’s work is never done.

How have you been lately?

I’ve been real busy…

Well busy is good…

Yeah, busy is good…

So when did you first start off in the music industry? Did you start off as a fan? Or was being an executive something you always wanted to do?

Yeah I started off as fan, and then I got a DJ gig when I was in college. And then I started DJ’ing some clubs at night, and through that I met some record executives because they used to come to the clubs. And I became really friendly with one of them, and back you actually had to start off as an assistant, but we were called secretaries then. So he called one time and said his secretary quit—I would never advocate anyone leaving college, but he asked if I wanted to work at Epic Records. I think I was either around 18-19 when I started as a secretary and an A&R, and I basically worked my way up from there. 

What exactly are the functions of your job?

Well now I have a lot of different things going on, I have a management company. And we manage a bunch of artists and producers. And with the artists and producer management, I like it because coming from an A&R department, that’s kind of what we did anyway. So I manage the underdogs into being top line producers.  

Is that your passion? Managing the under dogs?

Um, my passion is to just make good music. I have a label deal through Universal, and we have one artist signed, Stank [Ya Boy]. You know, I just like music—I just like guiding people’s careers.

What are the three best skills you need to succeed in your field of work?

I think you have to have great vision and great passion to really be able to help the artist bring things to market. I feel that’s really missing right now. And you have to gain the artists respect. Right now you see so many of these young A&R people, and back in the days you had these great resumes. And unfortunately now the music business isn’t allowing people to grow into great executives. Because now it’s all about getting a hit ring tone, and they’ve dumbed it down so much that now the kids can’t even do their jobs right.     

You talk about getting a hit ring tone and stuff like that. But as for yourself, you’ve had a hand in developing a lot of the big conscious acts. Does that reflect on your own personal taste of Hip-Hop?

Yeah definitely. When I was DJ’ing back in the day, I play a lot of Hip-Hop. I play a lot of funk and soul classics. We were spinning so many different kinds of records, but when we signed The Roots, I was really just a fan. When I saw them in Philly play, I was like, “Oh my God!” That was on some next sh*t! No one in Hip-Hop had a band as part of the real act, people would be like, “Oh lets just get a band.” But we were allowed to develop things back then, and now it’s only about it being a hit ring tone. 

Speaking of signing acts, what do you look for when discovering new talent?

It’s always different. I think that every artist that I’ve ever been attracted to has always had different qualities. At the time where The Roots, Common, and Mos Def were around, there were a lot of right-minded people hanging out in New York, and it all came to me. Like I signed The Roots, and Ahmir [Thompson] was like, “Oh man, you should sign Common!” Then one of the guys from De La [Soul] was like, “Oh my God!” “There’s this kid named Mos Def, you should sign him!” It was a great moment to be in Hip-Hop back then, and now it’s so random. And that makes it really difficult, because things aren’t growing naturally. 

Do you only work with urban artists?

Well I like rhythmic-based music, because I was a DJ anyway. So me signing a rock band would be really out of my turf, and I don’t want to go to Universal and I like, “Okay I’m doing this now” when I spent 20 years focusing on something else. Obviously I wouldn’t mind finding a good pop act, but that would be a natural progression from what I’ve done.

What are some of the things artists do wrong when trying to get discovered?

I think that it’s hard, because the script has changed a lot. Like now you can really do a big Internet push on yourself, and you can really do your Myspace page up and get a lot of fans, and you can try and get a record deal that way. But I think what a lot of them do wrong is that they don’t think about what they’re signing so much. It’s like they just sign to the first person that puts that piece of paper in front of them with a check, and they don’t really do their research. Like who would be the best fit for them. Back in the day a lot of Hip-Hop artists came in and interviewed you at the label. Now I think it’s lost a little bit of that. Now it’s like the artist will do something and create a buzz for themselves, and go to the first place that will take them.    

Do you feel as if you had to work harder being a woman in this industry? Or do you feel like the playing field is leveled?

I mean now that I’m really super-established and I’ve gotten to this point in my career, no. I think on the come-up, absolutely. I started off in a time where it was like, “Women shouldn’t be A&R people, they should be cooking in the kitchen.” I’ve heard it all, especially when I was an assistant. It was a male-dominated industry and women had to grow thicker skin. But I’m from Brooklyn, so I was always up for the challenge.   

I was watching an episode of MTV’s Making The Band, and Danity Kane were complaining about how it didn’t seem like execs were seeing their vision. How do you deal with situations like that?

Well you really try to do the best work you can, and you really try to make the artist feel like there is no hidden agenda, and when you’re picking the songs you want to make them feel like its perfect for them. But you do have to compromise a little bit, because it is their record, and they’re going to walk around branded with that for life. So I’ve always been very respectful of that. I think my most famous battle publicly was with The Roots. It was when I made [them] put Erykah Badu on “You Got Me” even though Jill Scott had written it. But at that time, Jill Scott wasn’t “Jill Scott” and they really needed a huge hit record. I chose to go with the Erykah Badu version, and they were really upset. But in the end it didn’t matter because they won a Grammy, and everyone was happy. [Laughs]

But at the time it was a Catch-22 because I knew that she [Erykah] had the name we really needed to get it going at radio. And I was like, “Guys you have to trust me on this one.” It was a lot of controversy, they thought Jill’s version was better, but in the end I just wanted them to have a hit. At that point in their career, they had just been kicking around for so long selling really decently, but without really going to the next level. And without getting something on the radio, there was only so far that they were going to sell. So in the end you hope that the artists trust you enough.