Nicole Cooke-Johnson, the granddaughter of the late soul music icon Sam Cooke, is speaking out and sharing new insight on what it’s like being the handler of his estate. In particular, she’s getting transparent about why they don’t approve certain opportunities and difficult managing and maintaining Cooke’s legacy can be.
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For context, Nicole became the manager of Sam’s estate in 2021 through Royalty Firm LLC. She founded that organization in 2008 alongside her grandmother Barbara at the time, in an effort to “manage the singer’s publishing interests and amplify his brand,” per PEOPLE. After Barbara passed away in 2021 (the same year that Sam would’ve turned 90), Nicole became the head of his estate and has been wading through those waters ever since.
Now, in a new interview for Syndicate X Books’ “Books That Changed My Life” series released on Thursday, Nicole is being candid about exactly why she won’t approve just anything when it comes to different projects involving her grandfather’s music and likeness.
Explaining that the role “can be difficult” at time, Nicole explained: “I tell people, ‘We say ‘yes’ very rarely,’ because we’re so tied to the spirit and the history of the legacy he left, and we don’t have any room for error, because a posthumous estate is something that you can’t make a lot of mistakes on. We’re held to a certain level of accountability.”
She went on to explain that when considering opportunities, she runs it through a litmus test that assesses whether or not things feel organic to who Sam was, what he stood for and the legacy that she wants to uphold. If it doesn’t, then she has no problem passing up on the project.
“Something that I nurtured through these times [is] the ethos that if something is inorganic for us, if it doesn’t…[cross] all the right X’s and dots the I’s, then it might not be for us,” Nicole said. “And we can be OK with that. So, it’s just kind of rooted in the whole idea that we’re here to do things that feel good, that make people happy, that pay homage to this legacy, and everything else may not be for us.”
Sam Cooke, who was just 33 when he died in Los Angeles, is best known for his 1964 hit “A Change Is Gonna Come.” In addition to his music, Cooke was adamant about Black ownership, creative control and was an influential figure when it came to activism in his community and pioneering the soul and pop music genre.
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