FOR A PLACE WITH A POPULATION under 10,000 people, the village of Amityville, N.Y., carries an outsize reputation. For some, it’s The Amityville Horror, the book and film from the 1970s; for others, it’s the wave of crime in the 1980s that turned it into a microcosm of the drug war tearing apart the country. For music attorney Julian Petty, Amityville was the breeding ground of a hip-hop scene that was both sanctuary and a way out, and which shaped the decisions that would take him to the highest reaches of the music industry.
“I remember hearing De La Soul’s first single, ‘Plug Tunin’,’ as a demo,” says Petty, 40, now a partner at Los Angeles-based law firm Nixon Peabody representing the likes of Childish Gambino, A Tribe Called Quest,…
