With the rise of self-promotion, social media, and more independent labels, the mainstream music industry foundation has started to crack. Artists don’t need major labels to make it big anymore, not when they can get discovered on Instagram or TikTok.
That’s its own separate conversation, but the point is that independent labels are coming back in a big way. And this return to a more artist-first approach to releasing music might be stirring up a lot of memories for longtime bands who were signed to major labels.
In the 2000s, being a rock band with a record deal meant you made it. Punk was dead, rock music was on its way out, guitar bands just weren’t that interesting anymore. Depending on who you were talking to, of course. But for some, rock music’s decline was abundantly clear. So, AFI frontman Davey Havok’s recollection of working with a major label in the 2000s begs the question: did record labels ever have any useful advice?
In a 2026 print interview with Metal Hammer, Havok recalled the turbulent mid-2000s, when AFI was working on their seventh album Decemberunderground. It was released on Interscope Records, but only after bizarre attempts to convince the label boss that rock wasn’t dead yet.
Absurd Advice From AFI’s Record Label May Have Been a Desperate Effort To Help the Band Survive a Label Merger
“The writing of Decemberunderground was a miserable period,” said Davey Havok, per Guitar.com. “We had signed to DreamWorks, but they sold it to Interscope.”
He continued, “Our A&R guy [Luke Wood] was hellbent on trying to get [Interscope boss] Jimmy Iovine—who had expressly claimed in the press that rock is dead—to pay attention to AFI, and so it was suggested that we collab with Jimmy’s great love at the time, which was 50 Cent.”
Havok added, “I have nothing against 50 Cent, but what does that even mean?”
To be fair, the mid- to late-2000s were an interesting time for crossovers. Rappers and rock bands were making some of the most unexpected collaborations. For example, Timbaland featured Fall Out Boy, The Hives, and She Wants Revenge on his 2007 album Shock Value. In 2010, Hayley Williams and Rivers Cuomo featured on two B.o.B. tracks.
So, suggesting an AFI and 50 Cent collab may not have been too out there in theory. But in practice, it made no sense. The bad advice didn’t stop there, according to Havok. In fact, it got worse.
“Even worse than this was the era when ringtones were the new technology craze,” said Havok. “I love [Luke Wood], and I still see him once a month at the least, but this motherf***er says to me, ‘What if you were to be the first band to write a ringtone album?’”
According to Wood, during an appearance on the CD Burners podcast, DreamWorks folding into Interscope was much more dire for the band than initially reported. So, the advice definitely seems absurd. But it was most likely a desperate effort to keep AFI afloat during a turbulent time.
Photo by Jason Kempin/FilmMagic
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