The Residency hands musicians the keys to a hotel for a weekend

The Residency puts an artist in charge of a hotel rather than a stage. SPIN reported on the program, developed by entrepreneur and former professional basketball player Marcus Damas with the brand and experience company Fueled by Culture, which brings artists into properties across the US and gives them the keys for a few days.

The artist in charge curates the guest experience: the soundtrack, the food and drink menus, and one-off performances on site over the course of a weekend.

The first one ran on the last weekend of July, with Wyclef Jean at Gurney's Montauk Resort & Seawater Spa, a beachside property in the Hamptons marking its centennial year. On Friday, July 24 an invite-only dinner for 25 guests served a seafood-led menu drawn from Jean's tastes and his Haitian roots, taking in shrimp cocktail, tuna tartare, Atlantic halibut and a rigatoni dish.

Saturday brought a beach party open to guests and the public, with playlists from DJs Jean picked himself, and Sunday closed with a performance at the property's Firepit lounge. A one-day merch drop and engraved bottles of tequila from Clase Azul México went with it. M&T Bank was a financial partner on the first event.

"Nobody had ever offered me a property. This wasn't a booking, it was a composition," Jean said in a supplied statement. Michael Nenner, president and chief operating officer of Gurney's Resorts, said talent had always arrived and departed, and that for one weekend the property itself became the work.

Damas told SPIN the idea grew out of nine years of work at Fueled by Culture, which made content and experiences with figures including Quincy Jones, Daymond John and Wolfgang Puck, and with brands including HBO, JPMorgan Chase and LVMH. That hospitality work had been more transactional, he said, and the company wanted to build something it owned.

He pointed to Elvis Presley's Las Vegas run as the early version of the idea, which he said progressed into DJs and lobby soundtracks before properties began looking for the creative's actual influence on a space. From the Vegas model he took the framework: a hotel gains through food and beverage minimums, association and press, while the artist gets a platform that is not a show. The word residency in music usually means the other thing, a long run in one room, like Harry Styles' 30 nights at Madison Square Garden or Shakira's stand in Madrid.

Damas played professionally for the Towson Tigers and the Solna Vikings in Sweden before retiring early to go into business. He is not a musician, he said, and business is his own creative outlet. He would not name what is coming next, saying only that inbound requests have arrived from a number of properties and that the next creative will have "eyebrows raised."