 We really like making music. Like we don't care about being influencers, but we know like it's the name of the game. Yeah, even though we were assigned to a JV at that time, there's like almost nothing that JV can do to actually get your music out there. We realized that quickly we were like, everything was on our backs. Yeah, we gotta do this somehow. So we posted every day for two years and... Now it's big viral. Yeah. What's up, what's up, what's up? It's Brand Man Sean. Cory. And we are back with another episode of No Label's Necessary Podcast. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on YouTube's Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you stream your podcast here at the intersection of creativity and currency. And as you guys know, we like to bring you people who represent just that, especially heavy on that creativity side. And we have some beautiful folks here today, like Anna Boss, excited to have y'all on. What's up? Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Let's just start here. Where did you guys meet? Because you guys are having this amazing moment, but of course you gotta get back to the origin. We met in music school in Hollywood. I'm from Detroit, she's from Dallas, and we just met in school in Hollywood. And we always admired each other, but it took a slow burn for us to start music together. And then once we did, everything took off. Yeah, it was like fire. It was like, wow, why didn't we do this our whole lives? But yeah, we're both like very introverted. So it took like some time for us to like even reach out and like hang out as friends solo. Let alone like make music together. Yeah. So who broke the ice bar? So who came up with the who bar? She showed me some of her songs, and I was like, these are really, really good. But we were both like making music, but not knowing how to. Like what to do. Yeah, like whatever it was, we didn't know how to do it. So I was like, we should try to do this together. And I got on one knee and I proposed, and she said, yeah, it's yours. What have you actually done before? Yeah. I mean, it's crazy because, I mean, y'all have been doing this for a while now, right? You wish is creating this massive moment, going on a super viral. It's funny because me and Jacory like joke about the fact that like he first had reached out before then like for this particular talk, but then since then like you guys just like took off like crazy. And I remember when he first showed you guys to me, it was like, it was just instant. I don't like, cause y'all didn't even have this song yet. But you could instantly see like, there's something here. You guys is energy, right? The chemistry, the bars, right? It's all just fun. But I feel like mostly the best way to think of it is like, you guys just represent a certain energy that's absent. And you didn't know it was absent until we found you. You know what I'm saying? How do you, where do y'all feel like that comes from? It's just us. Yeah, like together we're like really dope. I mean, I'm gonna say separately are really dope but together we're like even better. So yeah, I don't know, it's just us being true to ourselves like we hold each other accountable to be like authentic to ourselves and to each other. So I just think it works. But yeah, from the moment we started making music together, we were like, this is it, like this is fire. Yeah, it speaks to a part of our weird black girl selves that was untapped. And so we're like, let's do it. Yeah. What was it like when y'all first start catching all these super viral tracks again and again and again? Wow. Well, we went baby viral first, that's what we call it. Yeah, so that was bubbling. Yeah, it was like another baby viral moment. And then you wish just like blew everything out the water. Every day we're like, wow, wow, wow. We can't stop saying wow. Like it's a new thing, like every day we're surprised. What's been the coolest thing that's happened since the viral moment? Like something that just stands up. Probably Missy Elliott just like casually defending us on Twitter to people that don't understand that you got to put yourself out there every day. And y'all didn't know Missy at all, that she has never even reached out at that moment? No, it started off as her tweeting, someone else reposted our video on Twitter and she just said, fun. And we were like so excited. I was running around the house like, ah, Missy Elliott. Yeah, yeah. And then from there, she like defended us. She commented. Or we DM'd her and she replied back. Yeah, and then she like commented that she followed us. And then, yeah, she just started defending us to this guy on Twitter. That was really cool. Dang, I saw that interaction too. And I thought that was so crazy. And she like educated at the same time too. It was so classy. Yeah, she did it so well. Yeah, exactly. Now, what caused y'all? A lot of times when someone blows up with any type of video, they're like, all right, how can I get super creative and I need to create something else, a completely different concept that y'all actually stayed in that bag. We're gonna keep running. We're gonna change the locations up, but we're gonna keep running. Did y'all ever feel like y'all needed to switch it up or like when people start commenting, y'all started feeling like, oh, we need to switch it up now? Or was it just? Not the running, no. No, we were like, let's do it again. Because the first one did so well. We're like, let's keep burning. Even now, we're like, let's keep burning. They keep getting a million views each video on TikTok so long we stop. And now we did a cool thing where we're interacting with our fans. They're telling us like where we should go next. They're like, go run at Chipotle, go run at Costco. So now it's like become a whole system of them letting us know what they want and us actually delivering it to them. Which is a crazy experience, amazing. So we're gonna keep running. Wow. Yeah, we will. Oh, that brings me to a question. You know the question? We'll go on my ass. No, go for it. About the videos. Oh, okay. This has been sub-arguments. I don't know if y'all have been aware. People are trying to figure out how are y'all even doing those videos? Oh, yeah. How's the videographer? Like, is there a guy just running with the camera? Is he on the scooter? I've seen all kinds of theories. You guys have any theories? Yeah, what's y'all's theory? I think that somebody is dangling a GoPro in front of y'all and just booking really fast, you know what I'm saying? Okay, just dangling. My theory is like there's somebody who's like holding the camera and they're just running and watching out wherever they go and then y'all just have to follow them wherever they go. So you're right. Yeah. It's exactly that. Yeah, he has his camera. Let's go. He's this agile dude. Yeah, his name's Evan Blum. He's so creative. I love him. He just gets us so weird. Yeah. Wow. But yeah, he's just, he's never run into anyone. But he's like looking at us, looking in front of us. He doesn't have a spotter or anything. He's just running. Yeah, most of the videos are just the three of us, just running random places. Yeah, and one time Bobby like yelled at him like, run, run. Wow, and I shouldn't have did that. I was like faster, Evan, faster. And ever since then. On my take, he's like, fast, like every time he's faster and faster, it's my turn. I'm just like, yeah. Yeah, and people think we're not running that fast. We're actually running as fast as we possibly can. But we're actually like, we're, we're sprinting. It is getting faster every time. So it's getting faster? Yeah. Okay. Start off like a little sprint. I gotta watch out for that. Artists pause for a second because if you want to grow, you have to understand how to show your music to the right people. But also, you gotta have a track to capture those folks, right? You want to create fans. You wanna create stands and you want to have those fans forever, right? Well, to do that, you need to have a system in place. We have multiple growth systems that have been used to take artists to the Billboard charts, to take artists to the TikTok viral charts, the Spotify viral charts with their music. And if you want to check them out, they're free on nolabelsnecessary.com. Check out nolabelsnecessary.com. If you want to get access to them, wow, the network is still free. Hop in. Yeah. All right. What's it like around y'all? Like, you know, you see people looking at y'all in the videos and things like that? Have y'all had or seen some funny reactions or things like that? Every single time we go run, at least three people come up to us. We're like, how about you run right now? We're like, yeah, you wanna go in the video? You going to the back? Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. Well, beyond this song, because y'all are so much more than this song. Like, I think, again, before this song, even it was like instantly, I could see like clearly like, oh yeah, Chacour, you write about these, these songs, right? I know. Yeah. But then a song like, is it Black Men Don't Cheat or Black Boys Don't Cheat? That's not even the name of the song. I want a black man that don't cheat. Exactly. Fondue, yeah. Look, man, you already know him bad with song names, man. I say this again and again. So it's documented, very well documented. Yeah, the song's called Fondue. Yeah, Fondue. So where does that song come from? We wrote that song when we first started. Like, I think even before we had managers, like we wrote it to like a tight beat. Yeah. And one day, we decided to actually put it out. We met a producer named Pierre and he made the beat. We were like, oh, this is like the first one. Yeah, we were like, this goes with Fondue. Yeah. So then we started rapping it over it and then our producer, Marky Style, added some extra sauce to it. And then we released it like a couple months ago. And then she just randomly put this part of her verse. Yeah, both that line was like, saying Black Men Don't Cheat, Black Men Don't Cheat. So I wrote this line like years ago. I was like, oh, that's hard. I want a black man that don't cheat. And she just randomly did a small section of it, put it on like Instagram or something. And everybody was like, I hope every black man she dates cheats on her. Wow, they were really good. They were like, oh, but you have 10 baby daddies. Wow. Where are you getting this information from? The comments were crazy. And that was a little baby viral moment too. Yeah, it was. Comments were wild and happy. I didn't know it was such an exciting line like that. Like I didn't know it was that controversial. Someone was like, y'all need to stop being desperate. Those black men don't want you. Like, yeah, wow, there were some black women like, black men don't want you to stop going after them. And it was literally just one bar. They didn't even listen to the whole song. This is my personal preference. Yeah. There's a black man that doesn't cheat out. They're out there, they're out there. So what is y'all's favorites on the show I've created? Like, what would you say is your top? Favorite, like, we've kind of changed favorites. I think we're always like listening to, I think be more than any other artists right now we listen to ourselves. Right now it's You Wish for Me, but before that it was Nunu. We had a song called Nunu. They're just really embodying it. It might still be Nunu for me too. I try not to listen to You Wish so it still feels fresh to me every time I hear it. And every time I hear it fully, I'm like, this is it. All right, all right, all right. So the inspiration for y'all's music, does it usually come from subject matter out in the world or y'all just like in the studio having like a conversation and it just comes out of that? In the studio, our producer will put on a beat and then we just like yell crazy things at each other. Yeah, if we both think it's hard, we write it down. Yeah, it goes in this song. Yeah, conceptually I feel like most of the time we're like just kind of boastful, fun, playful. Yeah, every now and then we have a concept like we want to talk about colorism or identity politics. Yeah, a lot of the time we're just being ourselves, I'm thinking of who do you. That's like a good politics to me. That song's not out, anyway. Does the content ideation work in the same way? Because I noticed that even before y'all linked with Evan to get, I guess, the hard quality feel, like y'all have always been really good at content. Yeah, it was like a nice gradual growth. Yeah, because once Evan came to the picture, just the quality went up. Yeah, it just took everything up a few notches. But the creativity was always there. I think even y'all, I guess, lower quality videos, if I go back and look at them, I'm just entertaining. You know, it's just true. I think so, too. We're entertaining. But yeah, no, we're like, I used to pick up from work and we would just go on Fairfax and make TikToks, like almost every day on our phones. Was that, like, did you feel like that was out of necessity to get the music out there? Were y'all just genuinely having fun with it? A little bit of both, but mostly necessity, I think, because nowadays we really like making music. We don't care about being influencers, but we know it's the name of the game. You have to be on social media to get your music heard. Yeah, even though we were assigned to a JV at that time, there's almost nothing that JV can do to actually get your music out there. So we realized that quickly. It was all us. Everything was on our backs. Yeah, we got to do this somehow. So we posted every day for two years. Now it's big viral. Every day, for real? Every single day. We might have missed a couple here and there, but we were very strict about it. Or you wish you were like multiple times a day. Yeah, maybe three times a day or so. Sometimes four times on TikTok a day. How much time does that take out of your week? Is it, like, batched in one day? We batched a lot, yeah. But in general, it was like a lot of time, but also not a lot of time because we both work regular jobs. We were bud tenders at a dispensary. So we would go to work, film after work. I've never heard that term before. I'm sorry. A bud tender? That's hard. That's just an LA thing. Indicates maybe. Oh wait, I don't have dispensaries. Oh, right, right. Yeah, so we have bud tenders out here. Yeah, we were bud tenders. We were that. So Tiva Indicates. Yeah. Maybe a hybrid. But yeah, we just found time to put it in between our regular lives. Yeah, because we both were working 40 hours. Up until January? Yeah. February, yeah. February, yeah. That's crazy. So, I mean, what was the, y'all, thank you. Like, how do you keep yourself motivated in that process? Like you're saying, like, we want to be, we would much rather be artists. We would much rather, I'm sure y'all would much rather be in the studio making music all day. So, like, I guess, yeah, how were you guys keeping yourself motivated to keep putting out that much content for that long? Because we had so many little moments. I think that kept us, like, OK. Yeah, we knew something was coming. Yeah, we were like, OK, first time we got 10K on the video, we were like, OK, we can get 20. And the next time we got 20, we were like, OK, let's go for 100. Next time, next time, next time. Yeah, we knew what we had was good. And that it was going to work eventually, that we just had to keep chucking away. Yeah. Yeah. Also, we hold each other accountable. I think being in a duo, that helps. Yeah. Because I think if I was by myself, I probably would be less motivated to, like, post and make TikToks, but, like, having an accountability partner, like, her dreams are on my back. My dreams are on hers. Like, we don't want to let our friend down. Yeah, yeah. What was it? Was it a little big miss, Mothi? Y'all first viral moment? Oh, a little miss? That was the first one that went that far. Yeah. Like, you got, like, a half a million in, like, a week, which was a lot for us at the time. Yeah. That was fun. That was, like, our most viewed video for a while. And we were just in the car rapping. And then once it went off on TikTok, we, like, recorded a version and put it on SoundCloud. Yeah, OK, OK. So, like you said, y'all had these minutely viral moments, these baby viral moments. Do you feel like what you guys learned and those prepared you for the viral moment that y'all are having now? But do y'all feel well-equipped to go through it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel so too. Yeah, it was gradual. Yeah, it wasn't, like, overnight. So I do feel like we're much more grounded than we would have been if it happened, like, before. For sure. Like, or out of nowhere. Yeah, like, one video, we got, like, a lot of hate comments on one of our baby viral moments. And that was a huge lesson for us to not care about the hate comments now, because it's at a way grander scale. Like, on Twitter, it's getting 40 million views, just one video. And there's a lot of hate on Twitter. A lot of hate on Twitter. So much hate on Twitter. But it's part of the course. Yeah, because we're glad we went through those other moments, because maybe we wouldn't have taken it as, like, smoothly as we are now if we didn't have those other baby viral moments that taught us little things here and there. Yeah, that's what I say when I came in. I was like, y'all look like y'all are handling it well. Because, you know, from the marketing agency standpoint, we see a lot of our clients go viral. And there's always a mix of those that kind of just, like, for lack of better terms, like, break at it. You know what I'm saying? Like, they can't handle that much attention that fast. And then there are those who take it, run with it, kill it, and then they go on to do, you know, great things. And it looks like y'all are handling it like. Yeah, we love attention. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And it feels like, yeah, this is the beginning of a whole new chapter. Yeah. So this isn't even the top for us, nowhere near. OK, got you, got you. So what is next? Like, what can people expect from you guys? And we're seeing this song move. I'm sure a lot of people are going to introduce to y'all catalog. The song I thought was going to go viral from y'all wasn't the song that went viral, which I think is crazy. You know what I'm saying? I'd like to think of myself as a great A&R. You know what I'm saying? But, like, I thought it was going to be Trash Boyd. Oh. Because y'all posted a video to Trash Boyd before y'all posted that, and that video was doing well. And I was like, oh, this is going to be the one. And then y'all posted that. And then it was like, OK, come on, it's this one. What can I say? We got hit. Yeah. They're all good. Yes, I mean, just in general, what can people expect to see from you guys now? Don't get tired of us running, because we're going to keep running. We're going to run until we can't run anymore. Yeah, we want people to fly us out to Japan and shit to run. OK. It's a great wall of China. Yeah, we're working on a remix. We don't know what the logistics of it is. There's names we have in our head, but we don't know what's going to happen with that. OK. An official music video, and then just more of Flying Aboss as a world's contour. Now, you just mentioned world. The world of Flying Aboss, you guys are obviously hyper creative. What do you see yourselves doing beyond just, all right, we've done these TikTok videos. Are we talking, I don't know, movies or short film version? Or have you guys thought about the stage production? What does the Flying Aboss world look like to y'all? It's all being painted right now, even as we speak. But we're both interested in film, TV. Yeah, like we're full on entertainers, so big hand. Yeah, we want to make a show that's like Broad City, Atlanta, and Dave's, like, hybrid. Autobiographical, written. Yeah, scripted TV show. Yeah, scripted TV show. We want to be in movies, lunch boxes, serial boxes. Yeah, we want to be the biggest duo in the world. Yeah, and we want our live show to really feel like a real show, a show, like a theater kind of show. Production, I can say that. Yeah, like a whole production. The way kind of Tyler, the creator, does his stuff is amazing to us. We really look up to him for his visual aspects, so we want to go more towards that way of just avant-garde weird things that people don't remember to do. Do y'all have a theater background? I used to do theater. Yeah, I used to do theater in high school. I get that vibe. Yeah. I get that vibe. So all right, creating TV shows, all that, to me, it all makes sense. You guys, y'all present as like characters, you know what I mean? So I can see you on lunch boxes, which is hard. But when it comes to creating where y'all are now, music is still number one, right? So what do you, I guess, there's a better way of saying it. Who inspires y'all? We get inspired by like everything. Every black woman we've ever met. We get inspired by each other. Yeah, our families, like nature, like literally everything, like the sound of the washing machine, like anything inspires us, everything that brings us joy or makes us feel something. So you know how some people talk about, hey, I feel my art. There's some people who see things in pictures. But like synesthesia? Yeah, synesthesia, that's the word. All right, do y'all have any of that going on? I think we both do. I think so. Yeah, like some songs are like definitely certain colors, or like certain vibes, or textures. Yeah, for sure. I don't know the real thing. You know, I don't know the real thing. For some people, it's strong. It's really strong. Yeah, I feel like ours isn't as strong as some, but you definitely have it. No, I don't know. So before y'all individually came together, I would love to hear just you musically. How did you see your career going? Were you like, hey, I'm trying to get out of this college thing in general? Or did you not even know that you were sure everyone do music for real? It was just a fun thing that you were doing. And then of course, I would like to hear you as well. I always wanted this my whole life. But I am introverted, so I didn't know how I could like have the balls to do it by myself. But I always wanted to be a big pop star, like ever since I was a little kid. I wanted to be a boom bop rapper. And I wanted to sing jazz music. And I wanted to wear a robe on stage with a glass of wine and sing classic jazz. I'm so serious. I'm singing classic jazz songs. But now I'm just a pop star. A pop star. But I'll take it. You'll settle. Yeah, I'll settle. You can still do that. Yeah, eventually. I think in my 40s, yeah, I'll be like a fabulous little jazzy. How do you think about fashion? We don't. Yeah, people access this. We just wear whatever we feel. We grew up poor, like broke. We never really like got into it like that before. Yeah, but we just went like, she's always been fly to me, though, ever since I knew her in school. Like she used to like dress so cool. My mom is like a fairy. Yeah. So she never wears regular clothes. You would never see her in jeans or a t-shirt ever. No, she looks like she's going to a parade every single day of her life. So that's probably where I get that from. Yeah, but we just decorate ourselves. Yeah. We don't think like, oh, this is Givenchy. Yeah, yeah. We like know nothing about fashion. No, I know. Like our manager told us to make a brand, make a list of brands that we would work with. We put Forever 21 on there. And he was like, Forever 21. Forever 21, aren't you sure? We're like, yeah, we love Forever 21. I don't know. I think people feel that at the end of the day, though, right? Like the fact that you, I mean, you got, you obviously care how you look. And you dress how you feel. And I think there's appreciation that it's not this default towards I just have to throw on whatever brand everybody else is doing. Yeah, yeah. And that's a part of why y'all are connecting, to be honest. Yeah, we don't care about labels, no labels. Unless they want to, unless they want to, unless they want to, yeah, yeah. Unless there's a bag attack. Yeah, I know you some free clothes. Yeah, but people will name these companies or brands and we're like, what is that? Or like a certain car. We're like, yeah, in general, that's how we are about like, pretty much everything. Yeah. Big producers with big, whatever's. We're like, do we vibe with them? I don't know. Yeah, does it make sense? Yeah, does it feel natural? Is it authentic? Yeah. That's like with everything for us. What's y'all's favorite TV shows? Right now, I just started One Piece from the very beginning. I'm not going to take out the filler episode. I know I have like 500 episodes, but that's my favorite right now. I just finished The Bear. Do y'all know this show? I don't know that show. It's a Hulu FX show. That was the best thing I watched recently, but also like Dave finished that. I like watch TV though. Yeah, sure. Also Swarm was really good. I like binge stuff like in a couple days, then on to the next. Oh man. It gives me a headache sometimes. I try not to binge. You get too addictive. I feel like I'm being strung along. You can feel that. I'm like string me along. What's going to happen next? Have y'all seen a new Spider-Man movie? Y'all going to see that? Y'all feel like y'all? I would like to see it. We haven't had time to go yet. Everybody keeps telling me that it's hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what made me think about it. Let's take a quick second to talk about the elephant in the room. If you're an artist trying to grow, we already know what your goal is. A thousand true fans. Everybody talks about it. But how do you actually make that happen? How do you get those fans? It's not just about getting views. You got to push people further down the funnel. So let's talk about it. Number one, do you have these people's data? Do you have the ability to text and build highly engaging relationships with these people? Can you boost your Spotify plays to actually have engaged users, not those surface level play listing plays? Well, guess what? Feather Fan is a platform that allows you to do all of those things in one. So it's not overwhelming. You don't have to switch and have all these different logins and switch all your LinkedIn bios. You have even a LinkedIn bio tool that you can do. So everything is done in one place. So not only do you grow your fans, you do it for less work. How about that? Check out foreverfanmusic.com because we know it's not about views for the day. It's about getting fans who will be there forever. Foreverfanmusic.com. Let's get back to this video. So one question that I definitely want to make sure I get from you all before we leave is music aside, it doesn't have to be music industry based, but what do you think when you hear the term no labels? Authenticity. Yeah, we don't believe in labels in general. We don't like to be boxed in. So that's what no label is giving me. Like being yourself, not even holding yourself down to a specific standard, but letting your freak flag fly. Exactly. What about y'all? What did the name come about for? It came about from an eight hour session of struggling to come up with podcast names. And then he had it here. I suck at naming stuff. I'll let him do it. Yeah, I'm huge on an idea of like that finally, because you come up with names, but then that doesn't mean you stick with it. So thinking about what it meant to me was more so. I believe in using labels, but not letting labels define you. All right, so when I say using labels, if I have to describe, maybe my name or let's say I'm a marketer, right? So just to communicate to people, right? But that doesn't mean I have to still stay in that box. Like I know, like I remember my mom, like when she felt like she became a mother, she had to be a specific way that was already defined by the world. I don't think you have to let those boxes define you, but you can use them. Yeah, I like that. I say, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. All right, so one last question. Who is your dream collaboration at the moment? Right now, all we can think about is Miss Elliot. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let me follow. I love her, actually. Yeah. I mean, not to try to put this weight on y'all, but it does feel like y'all, again, represent that for the generation who never got to experience Miss Elliot. And it's done in a way that's completely y'all not like a copycat, which is probably why she like saw and resonated with it. Like it's really cool, cause that was a missing energy. Like y'all, y'all, I don't have to go off on Missy. Y'all already know Missy. Like I'm not gonna do that, but yeah. Appreciate y'all stopping by and y'all busy schedule. Y'all are lit right now. And y'all are gonna continue to be lit on the stage. With me, you know, that became a whole another moment. You know what I'm saying? That became a whole another moment. Wow. It was not planned, by the way. She did not know who we were. So I did not, as an industry person, my initial was, I just assumed. I know. And not when I heard it wasn't planned. I was like, yo. Yeah, no, we were just in the front. We were like giving her energy, cause we love Meg. Yeah, like we performed at the after party the day before and then we were like, we're going to the concert. Meg is performing. We're like, we're be standing. Yeah, we're fan girls. Yeah, we stood in the middle. Giving her energy and then she was like, the fairy girl right here with the ears. I was like, no, no. She's like, why not? She was like, we have to go together. So we went up together. I love that. Man, that's how you know the gates are just opening up for you right now. The universe wants it. I love it. I love it. This is yet another episode of No Labels and That's Necessary Podcast. I'm Brandon Shawn. And I'm Cory. And we're flying the bus. And we're flying the bus. And this is yet another like that. He's supposed to say peace, right? I would say that. Peace.