Renee Weeks
WARNER MUSIC & BLACK HISTORY MONTH
“Redefining (Black) excellence as a life well-lived”
Renee Weeks is a Finance Manager at Warner Music UK. As a child of high-achieving Liberian immigrants to the UK, Renee’s upbringing was shaped by a narrative of excellence, mainly of the academic kind. These pressures were compounded by her keen awareness that society’s standards of excellence were higher for her as a Black girl/woman. A love of music allowed her to retain the view that there is more to life than academics, and Renee was intentional in her choice of industry in order to satisfy her creative inclinations (more on these below!). She also shares insights into the importance of Black role models and mentors, how she defines and practices self-care, and of course, her desert island playlist.
For Renee Weeks, one imagines that going into a so-called ‘academic’ profession was a fait accompli; what with two academically-focused parents who firmly pushed that agenda, and even a wider family circle eager to catalogue and shout out achievements for all to hear at their family reunions (‘Harvard!’ ‘World Bank!’ and surely ‘Warner!’). In the pursuit of that academic achievement, and with her teachers’ encouragement, she transferred from the comprehensive school she had been attending to a grammar school for sixth form – a move that was not without challenges. “I found it quite difficult to be fair, going from somewhere that was quite relaxed and quite mixed to a very kind of upper class school with very privileged people who had their own perceptions of what a comprehensive school was, and what Blackness was,” Renee recalls. Despite the at-times difficult dynamics, Renee successfully completed her studies and went on to pursue Accounting and Finance at Sheffield University, where she found like-minded people and solidified her long-held love of music.
“My parents used to say, if only you could learn your Bible verses as well as you learn the song lyrics,” she laughingly remembers, and so even though she started off her career working at an accounting firm (Grant Thornton), she knew her goal was to work in a creative industry. There’s definitely an element of finding balance in music for Renee - she mentions writing a music blog while working at Grant Thornton and pursuing her ACA qualifications. “It was a way for me to get that interest and passion in music and put it out there, because at the time I was working purely in financial services and nothing around me was creative at all,” she explains. Unsurprisingly then, once she completed her accounting studies she intentionally sought out opportunities within creative industries, first moving to a role at a media company and then more recently coming across to Warner – the latter unfortunately coinciding with the events surrounding George Floyd’s death.
"As I get older I’m recognising more and more that I have to look after myself and I don’t have to be strong all the time. So I talk to my friends and my husband about how I’m feeling, and I can be open about that with them"
For Renee, one thing that these events highlighted was the importance of having a Black manager (and a female one to boot); “Take for instance the death of George Floyd – it was something that was on my mind, obviously it was on everyone’s mind, but [my manager] recognised how she was feeling as a Black woman and said to me ‘Are you ok? How are you doing?’, and being able to relate to someone on that level is really important,” she explains. So Renee notes that on the one hand, having representation at all levels is critical so that your goals are demonstrably achievable, but on the other hand being able to have a role model in a senior position with whom you can discuss shared experiences is also invaluable. During her life she has also benefited from mentoring at different junctures and credits those mentors with helping her make critical academic and career decisions, from degree choices to tips on navigating the world of finance to advice on professional accounting qualifications.
When it comes to excellence and achievement, perhaps her best exemplars were her parents whom she describes as ‘very high-achieving’, her Dad being a Howard University graduate. Her parents also successfully made a life for themselves in the UK after having fled Liberia in the 1990s – particularly after initially expecting to be able to return home in short order. Now some thirty years after leaving Liberia, her Father took early retirement in the UK and now spends time there on a six-month basis, initially working with international economic development firm IBI, and now there creating his own initiatives in an effort to re-invest in the country, something which is echoed within her wider family circle as well. “I have cousins who are moving back after having grown up in the US, and aunts and uncles who have lived abroad for 10-20 years are also moving back,” she explains. Renee describes Liberia as a country she has always loved and been aware of, but notes that she does experience some duality in terms of her identity. “I definitely feel like I have two sides to myself – I’m very British, I was born here and lived here my whole life but I’ve also got this Liberian side which is quite a big part of my culture and identity,” she says.
That discussion of identity brings us back to the topic of the racial and social injustices which have been receiving renewed global attention – and how that focus has been both a good, and a tiring thing. “As Black people we know there’s racism and there are microaggressions – we’ve experienced them – I’ve experienced them – regularly. It’s just putting it in the spotlight and with George Floyd it was extremely said and draining,” she notes. While she recognises the benefit of opening up the discussion outside of Black and ethnic minority spaces and encouraging people to recognise their own biases, she also highlights the burden of having to educate people as to why something is racist, or why something is a microaggression. She points to the weariness born out of growing up always being aware of racism and knowing that [as a Black woman] she would have to work twice as hard to succeed. “You want change, and change will only come about through conversations and actions, but sometimes you just don’t want to have that conversation, you just want to be able to live,” she asserts, a feeling which is eminently relatable.
“I feel like Lauryn Hill is a bit of a genius, and the things she was talking about at that time still resonate today. Miseducation is probably my number one album of all time”
Her way of decompressing is to engage in a different type of conversation where she can unburden herself to people that she trusts. “As I get older I’m recognising more and more that I have to look after myself and I don’t have to be strong all the time. So I talk to my friends and my husband about how I’m feeling, and I can be open about that with them,” she says. That is not always an easy feat for Renee, who naturally is someone who wants to push through, do her best and make people proud. However she notes that she is getting better at recognising when she needs rest and headspace, and highlights the importance of having people who more than anything will just listen to how she is feeling. Music is of course another important part of her self-care, and in fact she reveals that she has been trying to learn DJing, something she describes having always been interested in. (Her other, more finance-related interest is in flipping and selling houses – but for obvious reasons we’re fans of Renee the DJ). We were keen to hear her picks for her desert island albums and she did not disappoint, starting off with the ever popular Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
“I feel like Lauryn Hill is a bit of a genius, and the things she was talking about at that time still resonate today. Miseducation is probably my number one album of all time,” she explains. Second up on Renee’s list is Watch the Throne by Kanye West and Jay-Z, which she loves for the feel-good tracks which it features. She follows with Burna Boy’s African Giant, acknowledging that although it was quite recent, for her it represented the breakthrough of Afrobeats into the mainstream and to a much wider audience. ”I can listen to it on repeat, and I appreciate the way he resonates with and connects with people across different spaces,” she says. Another favourite is Solange’s A Seat at the Table which for Renee speaks to the Black experience and especially the feelings of a Black woman. She finishes off with Chance the Rapper’s mixtape Coloring Book, which demonstrated how rap and gospel could successfully be fused together. We have no objections to the playlist Renee curated here, and would be excited to see what she would bring to the table (yes there’s a pun there) as a DJ.