The Cramps

Big Beat Records is an East Coast hip hop and dance-music record label that operates as a subsidiary of Atlantic Records. Founded as an indie label in 1987 by 22-year-old New York deejay Craig Kallman, the company initially operated out of Kallman's parents' apartment. After achieving some... notoriety on the underground dance music circuit, Doug Morris — then head of Atlantic Records — brought Kallman and Big Beat into the Atlantic stable in 1991. Atlantic purchased the label outright in 1992. Although the label originally focused on house music, being entrenched in the often cutting-edge New York music scene inevitably led Big Beat to embrace the growing hip hop genre as the 1990s progressed. It also had a sub-label named Turnstyle. In 1998, Kallman was promoted to Vice President of Atlantic. Following his promotion, Big Beat was subsequently absorbed into its parent company. Big Beat's artists included Lil Kim , Po'Broke&Lonely, Skillz, Changing Faces, Robin S., Junior Mafia, Jomanda, Double X Posse, Jody Watley, The Bucketheads, Jay Williams, David D'Or, and Quad City DJs.
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I.R.S. Records is a record label, launched in the United States in 1979 by Miles Copeland III along with Jay Boberg and Carl Grasso. Miles was also the manager of Wishbone Ash, The Police, and later, Sting, as well as other bands. I.R.S. was the sister label of Copeland's Illegal Records . I.R.S.... releases were distributed by A&M Records until 1985, by MCA Records until 1990, and finally by EMI until the label folded in 1996. In 2011, EMI revived the label; currently, the label has Chiddy Bang and Foxy Shazam on its roster. In 1985, Copeland brokered a deal to switch the label's distributor to MCA Records. Under the agreement, A&M continued to release the label's pre-1985 catalog, much of which still can be found under the A&M banner. In 1990, the band Green Day included a letter from then-I.R.S. college radio rep Lori Blumenthal in one of their last cassette releases for Lookout Records. The letter expressed IRS' interest in signing the band to the label. A reply letter from Lookout, also included in the cassette artwork, deemed I.R.S. a "cheesy" and "washed up" record label, and they expressed their loyalty to Lookout! Records.
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