Josh Brochhausen and Adam Podrat, as partners in The Resource, wrote commercial music for the ads of several companies. They were innovators in the recording studio, and their music appealed to young consumers.
Josh and Adam also had become involved in producing records for hip hop artists. They undertook a project called Deaf in the Family, which was a full length album featuring artists from the hip hop underground. The record was well received among music critics from the underground press, but the project made no money because Josh and Adam did not have the financing to secure the appropriate clearances for the right to use samples from existing songs.
Their problem centered on the uncertainty of financial success in producing hip hop records, which was their passion, and deciding whether to devote energy and resources toward it, and away from making commercial music, which was their livelihood.
