Brooklyn native James Cruz got his start as an intern at Mercury Records over a decade ago and has since become one of the most influential executives in entertainment and marketing today. Cruz served as National Promotions Director at Bad Boy Entertainment before spending a 7 year tenure at Violator Management, where he was instrumental in the careers of 50 Cent, Busta Rhymes, Sean "Diddy" Combs and Missy Elliott. Cruz was also responsible for the launch of Violator Marketing Group, where he helped secure endorsement deals for 50 Cent with Pontiac, Vitamin Water and Reebok; Missy Elliot with Adidas; and Busta Rhymes with Mountain Dew and Courvoisier. He currently oversees brand management, marketing execution and content creation for SRC's corporate clients and SRC/Universal Records artists including Akon and Tami Chynn. In addition to serving as head of marketing at SRC, Cruz is CEO of his own Cruz Control Entertainment (CCE) which has an exclusive consulting deal with Monami Entertainment (Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliott, Brit & Alex) and Unique Auto Sports.

Value Appreciate and Embrace All the Positive Blessings You Receive Everyday
And the negative ones, because you’re being taught a lesson. I read the book The Alchemist, which I encourage everybody to read. It’s about finding your personal treasure inside and identifying the signs that are being shown to you so you don’t continue to make the same mistakes and you move forward to the next step in life. You have to embrace the positive and the negative because everything in life happens for a reason. There’s no such thing as coincidence. Everything in this world is for a reason. And when you start embracing and acknowledging that and seeing these signs, you start to move on in life. You start to grow as an executive, as a person, as a professional and as an individual. The world is about growth. Once you have that balance and you’re able to accept and embrace all these different messages, whether positive and negative you’ll start to grow. Negative things happen for a reason, learn from them. I would love to advise everyone to read The Alchemist.

Greatest Moments in James Cruz History:

Another great moment in hip-hop for me was the day Busta cut his dreads off. I was sitting right there with him and just watching that energy come off of him. After years of being his manager, his fan and his friend that was a special moment. Being there with him, the first person he handed his dreads off to was me. You know what those locks mean right? That was special to me.