Bryan-Michael Cox

Advisory Board, 100 Urban Entrepreneurs

To say that Bryan-Michael Cox has had some success in the cutthroat music industry is to understate the case significantly: A classically trained musician turned superproducer, Cox has to his credit 19 chart-topping hits and has won six Grammy Awards, Billboard’s Songwriter of the Year award and the SESAC Songwriter of the Year award a remarkable six times in a row.

Cox, 32, got his start in Houston, where he attended the High School of the Performing Arts alongside Beyoncé Knowles. “The first demo tape I produced was for Beyoncé in high school,” he says. “Ironically, it was [Beyoncé’s father] Mathew Knowles who, after listening to the demo, encouraged me to keep producing.”

Several years later, during his freshman year at Clark Atlanta University, Cox secured an internship at Noontime Records, a boutique label home to such artists and producers as Ashanti, Jazzy Pha and Polow Da Don. He fine-tuned his production skills while there and, crucially, made the acquaintance of music-industry mogul Jermaine Dupri. “Jermaine taught me the beauty of simplicity,” Cox says. “Until that point, I was so excited to be in the studio that I would use every sound I could put my hands on.”

Within a year, Cox scored his first No. 1 hit, Ideal’s “Get Gone.” Together with Dupri, he produced blockbuster tracks for Usher (“You Got It Bad,” “Burn,” “Confessions”) and Mariah Carey (“Shake It Off,” “Don’t Forget About Us.” Behind the platinum doors of the major record labels, Cox had become a household name.

More recently, he was tapped by Starwood Hotels to serve as the official host of W WonderLust Live, an exclusive series of performances held at W Hotels across the country. A 2009 inductee into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, Cox was also named by Billboard magazine as one of the top 10 producers of the past decade.