 I've never been anti-major label either is Russ. We've just always been anti-exploitation and anti-bad deals. Your neighbor could try to sign you to a bad deal. You know what I'm saying? Your neighborhood weed man could try to start a record label. He could have a bad deal for you. So I'm not, I'm not, I'm not against. I'm not against majors. I'm against bad deals. I don't care where they come from. We can come from the weed man next door, trying to sign you and start his label up or it can come from the CEO of Universal or whatever. If it's a bad deal, it's a bad deal. What's up? What's up? What's up? I'm Brand Man Shot. And I'm Corey. And we are back with another episode of No Labels, Necessary Pie-Cas here at the intersection of creativity and currency with a special guest. We have Bugus, an artist, producer. What's up? What's up? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me, let me give him, give him the action. Producer, artist, screenwriter, co-founder of Diamond Record Label along with Russ. Y'all have signed artists successfully and stuff we're going to get into. You've been in the game for a minute, a good minute and been successful for a good minute. So, like, this is why we have you, bruh. Now y'all can re-interrupt me, but not for real, for real. Bugus, appreciate having you on, man. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. And, like, the place I want to start with you, bruh, is, like, your music is, like, there's a lot about money in your music. Is there really? I was listening through, like, just, like, a rehash because I thought about what I heard just here and there over the years and I was, like, let me go do a deeper dive. Right, right, right. And, but you also, you know, have a good about women as well. Got you. So, just as an artist, right, just starting there because that's the root of all this, right, from what I'm aware and getting into this space. Like, what's your inspiration as an artist or creative in general? Me personally, I would say just to make great music. That's one of my main inspirations. But, obviously, we live in the real world. You need to make money. You need to have money, life without, me and my brother was talking about this the other day. The world is a very rough place for an unsuccessful man. You know what I'm saying? So, you have to be successful as a man. You have to have money. So, to dance around that and act like it's not real is just, it's not being in reality, bruh. You need to make money out here. Simply put. That's a beautiful place, man, to kick things off because as an artist, that's what artists struggle so much with in general, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's, I feel like, I saw a Jay-Z interview one time he was talking about it and I feel the same way. I feel like the mindset that like you being money-minded means you're less of an artist or any of that stuff. That's just some gas to hit you with so you don't think like you should be money-minded as a man in America or on this planet, period. So, if you're not a money-minded man, good luck. You know what I mean? Unless you're just blessed, maybe you just come from like a very, very wealthy family. You don't have to be money-minded, but not out of 10 people. You need to have some type of financial awareness and financial responsibility and money's important. When did you get this mentality? Was it a pre-artist mentality or was there a moment in your career where it just kind of clicked? No, I've always been into money. I've always been like that. Since I was a kid, anything I wanted, I would see how expensive it was and then try to reverse engineer how I can get that. How can I get that? I remember just some of my earliest memories of wanting a go-kart as a kid. You see him in the store at Walmart or whatever. Back then, this is like the late 90s, early 2000s. They're like 1800 for a four-wheeler, stuff like that. So, since then, I've always wanted to just make money and have my own money for the simple route of just being able to buy what I want. So, I've been like that since I was a kid to answer your question, yeah. So, you know, I'm sure you've been around a lot of artists, right? What are the conversations that you have with the, let's say the peers' artists, right? Because I feel like that's kind of, you were alluding to, like it's a weird divide in music where, and we've talked about it before, where sometimes it's like, struggle side of it is so, like, so glamorized. Yeah. There are artists who sometimes were just, what's the best word? Like, I'm most resentful of the other side of artists that look like they have resources that maybe build something. Yup, yeah. And they don't get things moving. So, I'm sure you've come across artists like that, what are the conversations, what are those conversations like? So, you mean in terms of like, what, somebody just being jealous of you or? Just the idea, right, of having this conversation of you can be both. Yeah. Like, and you should be both. And it doesn't, one does not kill off the other. You should be both. I feel like the best artists in the world are, maybe not centrally focused on money, but are money-minded at some level. You know, Michael Jackson bought the Beatles catalog for a reason. Yup. That was a financially aware decision. You know what I mean? He was looking at how much money he had. He understood assets and liabilities and was like, this is an asset. If I can, he bought, I think he bought like half of Sony ATV, half of the publishing company and the Beatles catalog fell under that. Yup. So, that's a money move. So, he clearly understood money. You know what I mean? Like, he understood the importance of money. I feel like, I feel like this idea of just being like this idiot savant, you know what I mean? Like, you know how they just want artists to just be like, oh, all he can do is paint. He can't even fucking tie his shoes. Like... That's how they take your shit from you. Exactly. So, this idea of just being like an idiot savant and just this one trick pony who could only do one thing and can't chew gum and walk at the same time. I don't think that serves an artist well and I don't think the best artists are those kind of... So, let me take that back. Go ahead. You can make great R&B like that. I don't think you're going to have the best career without having some type of financial awareness. Okay, so actually... You could be a great public Picasso artist, but... So, all right, let's stop there for a second actually. I was going to go ahead and do something else, but that just made me think, right? Why... If you want a career, you have to think about money and you have to think about people, right? Like, the fans have to come in to play at some point because they become a customer at the end of the day. You can create music and just leave it in the house. If you just say, I'll just care about the art, I feel like it's dishonest to even desire this career, desire all these fans, right? It's either dishonest or entitled to say I want all this, but also, yeah, I don't want to create music for anybody but myself and only think about myself. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Exactly, and like you said, your stuff can just stay on your laptop, stay in your basement, but the second you put it out into the world, if you want to do this for a living, you need to be thinking about money. If you want to do it for a living, if you want it to be a hobby, then yeah, it doesn't matter what it does when it drops. It doesn't matter if it sells well or streams well and you don't ever have to think about money. Just keep it as a hobby. But the second you're trying to live off of what you just recorded, you need to have some type of money mindset because it's going to cost you money to make the song and then you also need to think about how you're going to make at least the money you spent recording back. For sure. At least, unless like I said, you're in just a unique situation where money's not an object. Because we're in this label, I mean, not this label like money area, I do want to just skip to the label stuff for a second because at one point, no, not one point. Your very first artist that you signed was LaRussell, which he's definitely about the money, not about the artist. Well, of course, but he understands his value and that's like front end of his conversation at all times, right? And you had a quote in an article and I had to make sure I took this because you're an artist saying this to other artists, right? You said that we don't want to have to chase you around and beg you to come to the studio. We want the kind of artists that we need to pull out of the studio and be like, all right, bro, you've done five songs, take a break. Right. Where does that quote even come from? Like there had to be something that made you say that you might have been seeing. Yeah, because I've seen a lot of talent go to waste just because somebody's talented. It doesn't mean they're going to like actually work at it because I guess sometimes if you're very talented or very gifted, let's say you're just born with a beautiful voice, you kind of feel as if sometimes you feel as if you don't have to work at it because it was given to you. You're just born with this voice. But I've realized that like the hunger is easily probably, I won't say it's more important than talent, but right after being talented, you need to be hungry. You need to want it. You need to have desire and you need to want it simply because what you're trying to accomplish is challenging enough that if you don't have a real drive and a real burning desire for achieving it, the journey is so obstacle filled that if you don't have a burning desire to get it, you're going to just stop because there's so many obstacles in between point A and point Z that the only thing that can get you through that obstacle course is a burning desire, not talent. I want to drop a quick note for anybody who has a fan problem and not just any old fan problem, but the type of fan problem that we encountered after helping a lot of artists go viral, have a lot of success, get a lot of streams, but still not being able to know who exactly are my fans? How do I reach them? How do I actually leverage that to excel merch? Go to a show because that's where Spotify leaves us without knowing who our real people are. Same for social media. If you've had this problem, I'll tell you how we've been solving it and our agency for a while now in the pro version is just now being released to be accessible to any artist or manager out there. I'm talking about forever fan. A lot of the campaigns and successes that y'all have heard us talk about on this channel have been powered by that software that's made finding and understanding your true fans simple so they support you with their pockets because we all need a little money in this music thing. And now they're making it available to our audience for only one dollar at foreverfanmusic.com slash no labels, no labels with an S at the end and you got to put in the code, no labels, zero two. All right. Now look the DSPs, the social media platforms, I think they've shown us how much they care about artists for a while now. So at this point we can all play naive or actually do something about it. Bet on yourself at foreverfanmusic.com slash no labels. And again, put in the code, no labels, zero two to get initial access for only one dollar. Let's get back to this episode. The way you form at it, your label, I read, like I think y'all say y'all participate in profit sharing but you don't do anything from the touring. They own their masters. They own their publishing. And after I read through everything, it was just like, why not just from a sense of fairness but I'm thinking about you're still pretty young. Yeah. All right. You rarely see artists start a label this early in their career, let alone have some success to go along with it. But like, and then also someone who is currently successful, like do something that's in some sense altruistic, right? Yeah, like y'all are giving away a lot of game. Y'all are giving away like very fair deals and becoming a resource. Like why do that so early in the game versus like wait to later on? As far as start the label or be fair with the label or both? Both. Both? Okay. So as far as starting a label, I tell artists all the time, you need to strike when the iron's hot. Like while you have attention, while you have eyeballs, show us what you got. Like don't wait to start your liquor company 12 years after your last album. That's just not going to sell as well. This is common sense. So step one, you start, we started it because the iron's hot. This is the best time to strike. You don't strike when you're six seasons out of the league and you're not trying to talk to people. It's like, no. You see NBA players have podcasts now? Yeah. They're going to be hot right now because they're currently hot. If they wait till retirement year seven and then they try to start it, it's like, eh, I'd rather watch, eh man, I'd rather watch Anthony Edwards. You know what I'm saying? It's like, if he has a podcast, I'd rather watch it, you're washed. So it's like, start it while you're hot. And then just like, you know, artists writing books, if you want to write a book and you wait too long in your career to write it, it looks like a, you're done with music kind of move. But if you put out that book right after your first album, it's clear that like 50 cents, you know what I mean? Like he put out his book from pieces to wait and he put out his movie. He put out his video game. He put out all this stuff right after get what you die trying was going crazy. So it feels about, it feels like it's making the success bigger versus I'm trying to find another way because I'm on the way down. Exactly. Exactly. So you strike when the iron's hot and they're all simply going to sell better because you're hot. You know, you, you try to sell shit when your code is not going to fly as much. So you sell it when you're hot is going to sell better. So that's step one. And then two, the reason to be fair is because one, it's just the right thing to do. That's one reason to, you know, do fair business and two, you know, we just believe in the fairness, but also it's like, we don't want to be those people that we dislike. You know what I mean? Like you don't want to turn around. You like you don't want to turn around and be like you're only mad at slavery because you can't have slaves. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you don't want to be that person who was like, you're only mad at it because you're not doing it. And as soon as you, as soon as you could do it, you do the same thing that the oppressor did. You know what I mean? So it's like, we don't want to be the very same people that we talk about in a negative way. So with an artist like LaRussell being one of the first signees, did you guys feel pressure to sign an artist with that type of mentality? You know, the ones that are looking to be outside of the more traditional industry box, like, do you guys feel that pressure from a brand perspective? No, so with LaRussell, Russ showed me LaRussell and he was, he's the one who brought it like in and everything. So I saw it and it's good. LaRussell's mindset is great, but every artist doesn't necessarily have to have that mindset. He's just advanced in his own thinking and he's a great artist on top of that. So now I don't feel a pressure to like only sign people who have that kind of mindset. If you could have a very traditional mindset with things, as long as your music is great, which is step one and you have some motion, it's like, yeah, we could, we could definitely work together. So it's just more about providing resources in a fair way from wherever they are and whatever their game plan is. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, if you want to do things in an unorthodox method like LaRussell, you're more than free to, but if you want to do things in a very traditional sense, you're more than welcome to as well. It's just more so we're looking just for like people who make great music, step one, and then people who have that hunger attached to it too. Like Caitlyn, Caitlyn had over a million followers on TikTok already. You know, so there was a proof of concept already there. It was clear that like this girl's, you go down, she's like a relatively attractive girl. You know, most girls her age are like showing you their looks on their page, but you go down her, we went down her TikTok. Every TikTok is this girl rapping, like every TikTok, every row, all the way down for like a year is 300 TikToks of this girl rapping. So it's like, oh, she's hungry. She wants this. I say it all the time. You know, I know Russ feels the same way. We kind of, we want to work with people who it's clear this kid's going to make it with or without us. Like that's where that quote came from. I don't want to, I don't want to work with somebody who I got to be like, hey, bro, all right, man, it's Thursday. I haven't been in the studio since month or since like last week, I'd rather work with the kind of person who I see has motion. They're already going after their dreams. They're not waiting on anybody. They're going to get there with or without us. That's why I'd rather work with. I'm just so glad you said that because I feel like that mentality, at least a lot of times in the indie community is demonized because it seems like an industry or the industry mentality, right? I know labels have been accused of let's say major label not developing artists. They're normally already picking up people who we already see moving. You're someone that's not, you know, not only at the forefront of the indie wave, but also has success with other artists who are doing things in an indie way or using certain indie concept and other non-traditional ways. And even you're saying like, no, yeah, it's good to see proof of concept. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Have some motion because in this era, there's no excuse to not have like this. Even if you don't have the numbers to back it up, we should see the effort. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, if you tell me you've been rapping for five years, I go on your Spotify. You have six songs. No, thanks, bro. I'm not interested. The effort is not there. You know, like, if you've been rapping for five years and you have 200 songs but they all have under 5,000 plays, okay, your numbers aren't great, but you have, you're putting up shots. You're working. It's a matter of time till you get, you're going to strike because you keep swinging. It's a matter of time till you hit a home run. You know, so I'd rather work with somebody who I see is making the efforts. They might not be getting the big numbers, but this kid is trying. You know what I mean? I don't want to, I don't want to deal with somebody who is like just sitting on their hands waiting on Ryan Seacrest to knock on their door. It's not going to happen. Yeah, cause as he said, they demonized that but I always think about it as a person. Just like you said, being money-minded as a man, all right, like, why would you not be that outside of music? Yeah. All right. As a person, why would I want to work with somebody who's lazy or why would I want to work with somebody who isn't putting in that effort where a lot of people, so on the artist side, you'll, people will complain, well, I could have made it without you, right? That's what they will say. But it's like, well, yeah, that's part of why I'm working together on and they look at that as like maybe leaching. But from someone who's already successful, I look at it as I want to keep my momentum, right? Right. All right. And then there's this other side of it though where there are people who are afraid of working with people who could be successful at them. And that takes a whole another type of mindset which says a lot to me about you. Like, to even say that is like, all right, I want you to be successful without me because one, that means you value your time. And then two, that means you got to be confident in what you can still provide. Even though I'm going to be successful without you, you still got the confidence that you can provide value. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And to go back to what you're saying about artist development, the reason why, and I'm not saying labels are right for not working on it anymore. But at the same time, there is a level of development that because of the way the landscape of the game is now and it's a free market, the audience is right there. All you got to do is press a button on your phone to access them. So you should be doing a certain amount of development on your own if you're active. Like if you're putting things out, you're seeing what's working. You're seeing what's not working. You're, there should be a level. You're booking. You're like, you're trying to get on stage. You're trying to get, you know, your reps in in terms of performances. Like due to the market now, you should be doing a certain level of development on your own because before there was so many barriers as to why the label had to do all the development. You know, back in the day, if the studio time is 250 an hour, that right there is a reason why you're not even getting your hours in. But now it's like laptop mic. You should be developing in your bedroom. Now you can hit up different, you know, local people around you to get on stage, different venues to get on stage. You know, you can, you know, one thing I used to always do, I used to look at whatever tours were coming to the Tabernacle, whatever tours were coming to, these are all like Atlanta venues, like the Masquerade, Tabernacle, Vinyl, what's that other one? The loft. I used to look at like to see what are all these different acts coming in this week or this month and then hit them up, hit their team up, hit their management up, hit the venue up just to see if I can get an opening slot. It didn't work all the time, but a couple of times it did work. But what I'm saying is that like, I was taking the necessary steps to get my reps in like, I knew I needed stage time. I knew like the first time I, the first time I performed in front of 10,000 people, I had already performed in front of 10 people a hundred times. You know what I'm saying? So I was ready for that big stage because I'd already gotten so many reps in on the stage. So I say, I'm not, I'm not trying to like give the labels a pass for not developing artists anymore. But I will say that from their perspective and just from surveying the way things are today, you should be developing on your own. There's a certain amount of development that you have access to these days. You know, you should, there's a certain amount of developing that you don't need anybody to do for you. And if you're waiting for them to do it for you then, you'll be waiting a long time probably. Even when I hear that I never think it's a super fair critique because like you said, it's the access that's the big part. Artists in yester year, they couldn't find the people. Artists today can go, man, I wish I was better at marketing and go on YouTube and type in marketing and find Sean, right? Reach out to Sean and Sean might become a mentor and help develop the aspect of it. And so it was just so much easier to get the people. And now, you know, nowadays and based on the stories that we hear about the whole industry, it feels like, you know, a lot more of the industry today and artists are helpful. You know what I'm saying? Like they're a lot more willing to share resources. So now, yeah, I definitely feel like it's a super unfair critique. It's, what's the word I'm looking for? It's like, it's relinquishing the artists of responsibility that they have. As an artist, you have a certain responsibility that you should be doing. You like, you don't need to wait on a record label to develop you. You need to like be making your own effort and through trial and error and doing things and correcting your errors. That's development in itself. Yeah. Like that's development because you're at least you're trying. You're seeing what's going right. You're seeing what's going wrong. And as you make corrections, all the corrections you make, that's development. If you make 12 corrections this year, that's development. You do that for five years. That's 60 corrections. You know what I'm saying? That's development. So it's like, if as an artist, there's a certain amount of development that you could be doing on your own and there's no excuse to not do it. What were you like growing up, man? Sports. I loved playing sports. That was my whole life before music was sports. Every year I played basketball and football. I would say pretty much K through like 11th grade and then school and sports. And yeah, that's pretty much my life. Basketball, football every year, every. Every season. Same entirely into everything because I can hear a lot of that the way you talk. Yeah, I think the main things I took from sports into this was just understanding the value of a team and teamwork and also I'll say this. I didn't go to the levels in sports I could have gone to because I wasn't doing the work. Got to how J. Cole realized it. It's like back then I didn't I didn't realize what it took to make it to the next level in sports because nobody was like showing you that. But then I understood that when I was like, oh, okay, well, I didn't make it in that. So I took that mindset and I realized, okay, there's all this work that needs to be done. I'm going to get it right in music. I'm going to do it better this time. That's dope that you even recognize that because you were still really young when you made that switch. Yeah, I was like 16. Dang. Yeah. And you mentioned when you were younger, there'll be stuff that you wanted to buy and then you reverse engineer like how to get it. Like, did you always find yourself just like wanting stuff greater and then like going through that process? Did you actually ever get it by you? Some stuff, a lot of the go-karts know, but some of the cheaper stuff. Yes, like sneakers, you know, clothes, sneakers, the stuff that was more tangible or just closer within reach, I got. But you know, when I was looking at like a $2,500 Yamaha 4-wheeler, I never got that shit. Yeah, but like the sneakers, clothes, stuff like that that I wanted, yeah, like my parents were never going to buy me a $500 belt. That just was not going to, whether they could afford it or not, they weren't going to do it because they just don't believe that a belt should be worth $500. So if I wanted the $500 belt, I had to just go buy it. What'd you do to get it? I had, I worked at Outback Steakhouse. I worked at Kroger. And those were the two like main jobs I had pretty much my whole life. Also, you just went straight to job and then just well before I could even work jobs. I worked, my uncle, I worked like a summer for my uncle. He had like a car wash. I worked there, he had a car wash at like a hospital. I don't think it was Emory or Grady. I think it was like Northside Hospital, Pima Hospital, one of those hospitals, but he had like a car wash outside the hospital, like attached to the hospital and all the doctors, he'd wash all their cars. So I worked with him for like a summer. And then just like hustling around with my friends, just little stuff here and there. How do you go from that position, not being able to get to Yamaha, right? Not doing what you wanted to in sports. Focusing in on music, finding success, but then when labels start to surround, you know what I mean? Not falling prey to, well, let me just stop being indie period. And you're cashing in. So for me, for instance, so me and Russ were doing music for like six, seven years out of my house. Every night, every day, probably five, six times a week were in the studio. So we did that for six, seven years. And then Russ caught a hit song, what they want blew up. So I saw, then he got signed up. He partnered up and everything. So I saw, I had an inside, I had like front row seats at the game type thing. I saw from the inside perspective what it is to be on a major label and what it's like. And I saw all the inner workings of a major label and there was parallels with sports. You know, so the main reason I stopped playing sports was because of the politics. I didn't like, I didn't like the fact that like, yeah, I could do two a day workouts. Like you do the workout at six a.m. before school and then you do the workout. Then you have real practice after school and then come game day, he plays his son. The coach plays his son or the coach plays the kid whose dad just donated to the booster club. So I saw all these, I saw politics being played and I realized that I don't want to do anything where my future is going to be the hands of another man. Like if like, I can't get to the next level in college sports. If I don't get the playing time I need now in high school. So I didn't want us to, I saw that, oh my God, this dude, my future is in this man's hands and he doesn't like me and I don't like him. So how the fuck is this about to work? So I realized, I was like, yeah, you know what? But then I saw the same thing in the major label system. Politics, like you could have enemies, you can have people who don't like you on your team. Like if, let's just say for instance, the product man at your label doesn't fucking like you, the product manager, the guy who's supposed to be in charge of how many of your CDs go on the shelves and he's called like your product manager or your CEO or the guy who runs the whole company, the CEO or your own A&R, you know, because everybody doesn't necessarily bring you in. It could be only a few one guy brings you in and then he's your main cheerleader in the building and he's trying to convince the rest of them to fuck with you and for any instance, you walk in there and they perceive you to be arrogant. You might not, you might just be being yourself. You might not even be arrogant, but they perceive you as arrogant. Now you've turned off people who are supposed to be your allies. So now, you know, you're going to war and you got Judas, like you got seven Judas's in your squad and it's just you're thinking they're riding with you. They're not. They're delivering your music late. They're fucking delivering your music unmixed. They're doing things to like fuck you up because they don't like you. So I saw that. So part of the reason why I never went the major label route and honestly to be really honest about it too was I just haven't been offered a deal I would take. I would work with the major label under I've never been anti major label either is Russ. We've just always been anti exploitation and anti bad deals. Like why would like if you can sign a good situation, why not like like Birdman would be an idiot and not take the deal he took because he got a good deal. You know, 21 Savage has a good deal. SZA has a good deal. They got 70 30 splits. They own their masters. It's just about getting a good deal. So I've never been anti label. No, I'm not anti label. I'm anti bad deal like your neighbor could try to sign you to a bad deal. You know, I'm saying your neighborhood weed man could try to start a record label. He could have a bad deal for you. So I'm not I'm not I'm not against I'm not against majors. I'm against bad deals. I don't care where they come from. He can come from the weed man next door trying to sign you and start his label up or it can come from the CEO of Universal or whatever. If it's a bad deal, it's a bad deal. So I've never been against majors. I'm just against shitty deals. Man, I love to hear you say that because yeah, it's not it's yeah, it's not a war against the major labels. It's no, it's just bad deals are bad deals regardless of where they come from. That's literally our ethos here that tends to name like and like I always like to stress whenever this topic comes up in this way like the whole point is to think for yourself and to be able to analyze best right based on your position. Right. And if you just say never signed to a label now you cut off what could be the better option. If you say, oh, I got a sign to get on you cut off what could be the better right exactly. So you're not analyzing the whole field. Exactly. You have to you have to analyze everything and make a good decision and ultimately I don't think you can become too successful if you allow good opportunities to just come across your desk. You don't capitalize on them. You know what I mean? So if a good opportunity comes across my desk, I don't care where it came from. It's a good opportunity. I'm going to take it. So really I just haven't been presented a deal that I wanted or that I felt was you know something I would take for myself personally. Bro, you had I had to get this one down to you had one of my favorite quotes with a kind of labels. I don't know if you're the originator of this. Okay, but you said labels don't make albums platinum customers do. It's the fans who literally are in charge and they're the ones who run everything. So we just want to help artists leave that mindset of all of all the powers in the labels hands when it's really in the audience's hands. All right. Right. This is where the sauce comes right here. Okay. And an artist and an artist isn't in the whole of you reverse this and an artist is a lemon and the label is a lemonade stand. Lemon still have value without a lemonade stand, but a lemonade stand has no value without the limit. That's an original. I can't put that. Yeah, that's an it's the truth though. Yeah, it's like perfect example. Look at Kanye West right now. He's independent. Hmm. Number one. So it's like perfect example. La Russell. Yeah. You know, like he doesn't have a traditional record label, but he's still making money and he still has value because at the end of the day, like I said, the artists are the lemons. The lemonade stand is just the place to sell and and the reality is that a lemon has value whether or not I said a lemonade stand or it's not a lemon has value. You see it on a tree. You pluck it. It's a lemon. So you can be signed if you want, but major labels can exist without artists. Artists can exist without major labels. Like we can exist without major labels. They cannot exist without us though. What's what's Republic without Justin Bieber Post Malone Ariana Grande? You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, what's the label without its artists? Nothing. What's an artist without a label and artists? It's straight up. It's the truth. Yeah, straight up, man. Man. Yeah, I love that. And I'm glad to know that's an original to this. That's a crazy one. Oh, yeah, legit. One of my favorite. Yeah, legit. One of my favorites. I want to switch to the music. Okay. Your song branches at the end. I believe it's Lewis Farrakhan. Yeah. All right. Yeah, that I thought I recognized his voice. He has this quote about a fruit that doesn't know their roots. Right. Right. First of all, like just you had to choose, right? For that to be there. Yeah, that meant it resonated with you somehow some way. Yeah. What about that? Like meant something to you. Oh, I mean, it was just the fact of what first of all, what I was talking about in the song. So on the song branches, I'm talking about being disconnected from your roots and that being a cause of a lot of the issues and a lot of the stuff we see is manifesting because of that issue. You know what I'm saying? Like not not not looking at another black person as your brother, not looking at another. You walk across another black guy instead of us mugging each other. All that shit stems from us not understanding that we are the same. We come from the same place. We have the same roots. So a lot of the violence and a lot of the stuff you see, yeah, you can blame a lot of environmental and circumstantial circumstances on stuff. But at the end of the day, the government can't make you kill your friend. You know what I'm saying? Like you could blame a lot of things all you want, but ultimately it boils down to you. And you've the more you value yourself, the more you value the next man and all that stems from self knowledge, having knowledge of self that starts from knowing having knowledge of origin. You can't know yourself if you don't know where you're from. You can't know where you're going. If you don't know where you're from. So, you know, the more you get to know yourself, the more you know your roots, the more connected you are and you realize, you know what? And I'm not harming him. It's harming me. If I harm you, I'm harming myself. So with that song, the piece of content I put out with that song was a montage of chaos and there's it's a montage of chaos for a reason because a lot of that stuff is a manifestation of being disconnected from our roots. As people and our roots as Africans, like our roots as African people, a lot of people talk about, oh, I'm not from Africa. Yes, you are, bro. If you're black, you are from Africa. Hate to break it to you. You are African from the cater break. What you mean? Right. But it's the roots. You know what I'm saying? It's like our roots. Like we all come from somewhere. America is America is a it's a melting pot. You know, but everybody from here came from somewhere. You know, from the most part, the natives are the some people believe that black people were in America before the slavery and all that. I don't necessarily believe in that. You know, but I don't know. I wasn't around back then, so I can't tell you. I don't know for sure. But what I do know is that, you know, everybody comes to America from somewhere, whether it's willingly or unwillingly. This is a melting pot. We all came from somewhere. And if you notice like look at Asian Americans, look at all these other communities like because they have that bond. Anywhere you go in America, there's Chinatown. Any city, any major city you go to in America, there's a Chinatown. There's a little China. There's a little this little that anywhere you go and in those communities, there's a little bit more warmth and love within each other because there's that understanding is that we are all the same here and we are all one. So there's a way that they handle each other or even if you walk through certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn, you see that it's like predominantly Jewish or predominant, you know, I'm saying like certain areas in New York and on those streets, you can feel a little bit more love because every everybody is the same and everybody has this sense of community, you know, and when you have that sense of community, there's just you're a little bit less likely to harm the man next to you when you relate to him a little bit more. But if you look at him like a complete stranger. Yeah, it's like, fuck him. Well said. Well said, man. There's something. Was there like an inflection point in your life where like that clicked for you in that way? Um, yes and no. Because my family's from Nigeria originally. So I was always going back to Nigeria as a kid. You know, when I was born within the first 60 days, I went to Nigeria to see my dad. So I've been going to Nigeria. My dad lived in Nigeria my whole life. So I've been going to Nigeria pretty much annually to visit him. So I've always I've always been aware of that level of because because you because even like even in Nigeria, you could walk the streets of Nigeria and you can feel there's like there's there's a certain feeling of community. Obviously everywhere has its good sides and bad sides or certain places that you're not going to walk anywhere because it's just not a safe area. But for the most part, there is a feeling of community everywhere you go because everybody kind of relates to each other in that way. Or even when you go visit Jamaica or you go visit certain countries, there's a way that everybody relates to each other and it's from that cultural. It's like that unit that not unilateral is not the word. It's just having that one thing that ties us all together and it's that culture. It's like you're less likely to just while out on people because you look at that person as a brother. You look at him as an extension of self. So you're a little bit more connected to that person. You know, the person looks like you sounds like you. You look at their last name. It has a couple of the same syllables as yours. You know what I'm saying? It's like you're not like this guy might be a little like this. You're a little like that. So it's like right, right? You see, okay, you can see yourself in this man. So you're just less likely to just while out on him. That makes me think about the Nipsey quote where he was talking about going to the other side of town looking for yourself. But it wasn't a negative way to violent. Right. Right. I'm a gang member looking for another gang member. I'm a walk away. I'm a walk away from the white guy. I'm not looking for him. I'm not going to look at the guy that looked more like a square, but the guy who dressed like me got the same swag. Right. I'm actually looking to kill him. So you're looking to kill yourself. Exactly. Now that's some crazy shit when you think about it. It was. It was. It was my mind when he said that. Yeah. Well, I definitely want to before we get out of here, just talk a little bit about the single you mentioned is to come. All right. We just talked about the mindset around branches and where you are. What mental space where you in for this next song? Okay. So this next one is called believe and the mindset I was in was just about having endurance and resilience because a lot of people to me from my experience, I've realized that success is more so about endurance and speed. It's not about how fast can you run? It's about how long can you run like it's not about like how quick you can do something or how fast it's about how long can you keep resilience is toughness and endurance is duration. So success is about how long can you be tough? It's not about can you be tough for three months? Can you be tough for three years? Can you be tough for 13 years? Can you be, you know, resilient for that long amount of time? So the song is just touching on those kind of topics and it's touching on the fact that like you have to be able to endure for a long time. You know, my cousin used to say because she should be like she used to be like because you have a long suffering. I should be like, what's long suffering mean? She's like, well, you haven't heard it. He's like, it's a Christian term. It means you can suffer for a long time. Like you're able to be like you're able to be uncomfortable. You're able to endure a lot of pain, discomfort, disappointment and stuff for a long time. You know, it's about never surrendering and never throwing in the towel. So, you know, you can a lot of people start things, but very few people finish and endurance and resilience are the two qualities that help you finish. So that's that's what the song touches touches on. And it just lets people know that you need to be able to go the distance. You know, like Nipsey said, it's a marathon. It's not about, you know, being optimistic for six months. Six months optimism does not build great things. Try six years, try 16 years. There's a quote that says, you know, some people are enthusiastic for three months. Some are enthusiastic for three years, but it's enthusiasm for 30 years that makes people successful. And that's how I live. I've even my own experiences taught me that I started our label in 2010. This is year 15. And I've realized and we're having our, you know, we signed LaRussell in what year 12, you know, we certain things happened. First of all, we didn't even get our foot into the major label door till year seven. You know what I'm saying? Now we're on year 15. So it's like, I started off doing music with a lot of other people. They all stopped me and Russ were the only people who kept going. Like my house was an open, open door policy. Like my house was like a straight up incubator type shit. Like if you wrapped and you live nearby, I didn't charge for studio time. You could come to my house and lay music down. I would let I would let people come through rappers, singers, whatever. If you if you loved music and I thought you a relatively cool guy, like I could trust you in my house. Yeah. Then I let you come over at one point. It was five, six, seven of us. Years past. There's only two men standing. You know what I'm saying? And Russ and I were the only two that stuck with it, you know, and that's why we're the only two that surfaced to the mainstream world or to the internet or whatever. It's because we just never gave up. So I realized that like it's all just about how long you can do something. It's not about people look at a career like this. A career is like this. It's about how can you how long can you run? How long can you stretch this out? That's what I've realized. Damn, I love that man. You talk my talk because it's people think longevity like how do you be longevity? I'm not talking about longevity yet, but I can even witness for myself, but I can see what longevity is just by watching people who have longevity is just consistent. It's longevity is just effort. It's continual effort. That's longevity. If you look at most rappers who fell off, the common thread is they also stop putting out music. Yeah, usually like a lot of the guys who just kept going, yeah, there's going to be ups and downs, but just if you just keep going and keep doing your thing, that's how you create longevity. You'll never stop those years when we weren't hearing about that artist. You'll think, oh man, I'm glad he finally dropped something again. He hasn't dropped something in two, three years. It's like, no, that other stuff just wasn't working. He was dropping. He was dropping, right? It just in surface. Yeah, now it is surfaced. Yeah, I see exactly what you like. Um, I think K camp was a good example of that. Like K camp K camp had a hit. Perfect example. Yeah, he had a hit or even rich the kid rich the kid recently like rich the kid. Um, he had his hits 2018 when he came out and then not as many hits and then boom, he has the biggest song in the world right now carnival. Yeah, I just ran into rich the kid in Paris. So like, yeah, I congratulate him on that. I was like, congratulations on sticking with it because a lot of people would, um, you know, kind of throw in the towel when things start to look like they're slowing down. And that's the funny thing about the industry, bro. People think that's what I've learned to like, you can't take things personal. A lot of artists take it personal when their phone stops ringing. It's a temperature based business. So when you're hot, the phone rings. When you're cold, it doesn't. It's not personal, bro. It's just business. Like, you know, it's not personal. It's like when you're hot, you're going to have missed calls. You're going to have your phone just blowing up. You'll be able to answer everybody. But you cool off. The phone stops ringing. The mistake artists make is taking that personal, but just understanding it's not personal. It's just business because I, I, I, because I, I guess you think, oh man, they like me. They fuck with me. No, they fuck with success. Success is extremely attractive and success has a million fathers, but failure is an orphan. Nobody wants to be around a failure. Nobody wants to, nobody wants to be around a failure associate with the failure. They don't want that shit to rub off on them. But when you're hot, they want some of that heat to rub off on them. Yeah. They want to be associated with your success. And it's just how it goes, bro. It's not personal. It's just how the game goes. Man, I think people are going to get so much value from that right there, man. Everything you just said and then coming from an artist, I think it's even more important. Yeah. Definitely. I appreciate you sharing that, man. Absolutely. Well, yo, everybody, this is yet another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. I'm Brandon Shawn. And I'm Kory. Boogus. Are we out? Yes, sir. Appreciate you for watching. If you like content like this, you'll love seeing our music marketing strategies that we use as an agency to actually blow up artists to millions and even billions of streams that are available for free at nolabelsnecessary.com. And the cool part about it that's going to really make you love it is we don't have to be all entertaining and add all this fluff just to get some use that we do on YouTube. We get straight to the information. There's play by play in courses that give you a breakdown of every step that you should do to get success. And you have the ability to have communication with us. We get on live talks, a lot of cool things for members and it's free just to hop in. So check it out right now at nolabelsnecessary.com.