 Wow what's up everybody once again is brand man Sean and as you see once again I got a special guest for you guys none other than Johnny two phones now this guy is an artist he's he's had a lot of success in a short period of time but I'm not saying he has major success he has a long way that he wants to go but I've watched this guy rise from you know dropping some early music and being in college and now having a legitimate fan base not just a little bit of a buzz so I definitely would want to let you guys get some of the insight from what he's done and how he got to his point early on and then maybe some of the just some some tips some hacks we'll figure out some other questions as we go so let's hop into it yo Johnny what when you dropped your very first song like online or had a video was that not the oh was that the oh it wasn't my very first one but that was part of a rebrand I did so I was probably the first serious song I got the video but so before we get into the rebrand just to give people some early knowledge how did you use your college right you went to what's the name of the school again right so you went there and you were able to use your fan base your college as a launch pad and I know a lot of people in college want to do that there's so many people who are rapping in college the song you made was essentially like an anthem for your school right oh you got low again man all right you sound a little bit better you got to raise your voice all right but yeah um you're basically asking how I did that right yeah talk to how you did you do was a strategic or yeah um so going into college like I was kind of I'm I'm gonna be a rapper and it's gonna work out great but I also played basketball so I was recruited to play basketball here so that off the rip gave me like a lot of friends I mean I knew all the athletes and we're the most popular people in school so before I even went to college I was like I'm gonna use this as a as a launchpad and I'm gonna make an anthem and I knew how it was gonna work out so soon as I got to college first day everybody's number with the most phone I was the most popular kid I was the most talkative person and I I hate being like that I'm not a talker like now it's like they it's like what happens to this kid so everybody's number I saved it like with a special emoji next to it so I knew when my song dropped that I was gonna text it and then basketball season came around so I had that working for me so I basically just became a popular person in the school and when my song dropped I went around school and posted posters and I was in like our quad handing out flyers and everything and like nobody's ever seen something like that here or anywhere really so like that just stuck out to people and when the song like finally dropped people were like just naturally drawn to like what is this crazy kid like have the offer so that's kind of how that draw happened and then once they got a little bit of traction after the drop it started to show people from back home that he's a serious person like oh my god like these people for that I've never seen before accepting him so now I'm accepting so it's just a mind-blowing that and then after that I just every bar I went to I talked to DJ got his number and it was like oh play this play this play this and then it just snowballed and snowballed and it just kind of off from there now when did you do the video because you got a video for it has probably but with like 60k views on YouTube right now we did we dropped a video on this song at the same time just to just because it was my first music video and just the song I felt like it needed a video just just it because it's a part it's a party you're in college people want to see you party people want to see you having fun and especially back home like the song worked great and only on it but it worked even better for people back home because they saw like this kid who just went away to play basketball was like having this spectacular time at college so yeah okay so what was your stuff from there then once you started to get that traction you saw our we had this one song was the very next thought of your mind as far as how you can keep pushing this forward next thought was alright um how are we gonna you know how am I gonna continue this how are we gonna do this so from there I started looking in my Instagram started popping up so I was like we're gonna do three posts out like three posts a week we're gonna make sure we're gonna keep people engaged whatever I have to do to keep people engaged is what we're gonna do and then up like a month later I dropped go-to phones and with them with a music video again and that went up and that kind of um that it got it was the same treatment so and that was the first point I looked into like Twitter promotion and I hit up my boy Glock Rivers he's a he's a big deal in like New York he gets a he like he had a role in like young mods blow up and able he's well so I was like you'll throw my video up there and that got like two thousand retweets and favorites so that helped out that so it's just like constant just growth but trying out new things as I went and kind of figuring out a route of how I'm gonna do things that you know what I mean so yeah got you got you now this phone thing man where does Johnny two phones come from um it just just came about from when I was younger it's not like it's really just because like I'm always like at first I wanted to be a manager too so I actually managed a hundred G beats too so with Joe yard so it's kind of just like the bit the fact that I'm a businessman with it got you but then I see you have Johnny boy as well so it's an attempt are eventually are we just gonna be hearing Johnny boy and not Johnny two phones or is there any training taking place that started off as a rebrand way way before the oh and it kind of just stuck around so now it's kind of like champagne boppy and Drake it's just more of like a just a second hand term that people can see you as or you know what I mean just something to play with good people to think about another like kind of not a gimmick because I really like gimmicks but just something to like get people's attention again right it's like a personality that you have yeah cool all right so when we look at the my back to the oh all right so you have this one song that's that's touching your entire college and you said it's actually helping people back home look at you in a certain light and I love that idea right that that you were in tune with the actual perspective that people had and how it made you look huge to people where you just left but at the same time to always limit it from being one college so other colleges aren't necessarily gonna love love it in the same way yeah so we have this thing in our shooting like schools this is like at least 100 senior schools in New York so we have this like page probe like uh student chronicles so um I hit them up and uh they posted the video and that's how it kind of grew to the other colleges and just the fact that I was getting like the plays and like the fans from it like they were obviously like they're gonna fuck with it because it has attention it's bringing attention to their page also so that's kind of how it traveled to the other colleges and for a while I was kind of stuck in this cliche college rapper you know what I mean like in that little niche and I knew that wasn't gonna last for me one that's not really who I am and two that just it's not 2011 anymore so I just had to figure out a way like how am I like how am I gonna get out of this how am I gonna get out of this so then probably August I dropped the bank account remix with um Swabadon and that kind of just took over it like that I would did the oh and like I think it has like a hundred and like 10,000 plays on SoundCloud right now so that helped me and then from there I just kept pushing away from like the college and kind of used it as like another not like not a complete rebrand but minorly like rebrand like we're not really you know we grew out of the oh so we got fans in other places and continue to drop music but not party music yeah so this is legitimate evolve and then show yourself a series as an artist exactly yeah people like people at first I was just like oh he did the oh and now it's like oh he's like he can actually rap like we the next song after the oh I dropped to go two phones and it was like one of the most lyrical songs I ever did like it just showed up it showcased my bars so like it got respect you know I mean people like no matter what you hear about mumbo rap people love bars at the end of the day rap is rap people want to see you can rap and that's why like I think juice world is the biggest juice world is because the freestyle down an hour he freestyle for an hour on the radio and people who don't even like juice world's music are like he freestyle for an hour like it's juice where like what you know what I mean so rap like I rap like I just stopped making party music for a little bit and I wrapped and now I met up with my producer 100 g and we're kind of making our own sound right now so that's what I'm talking about okay but so what I hear is you just kept this simple man in terms of rebranding and instead of really thinking of it too much as a rebrand you evolve by and you have this one piece of content people know you for it a lot of artists in college kind of do get stuck in that little that space that zone hey you're the you're the college rapper and it becomes kind of corny after a second right so all you did to over come it was create better content exactly we evolved yeah that's what I'd say we evolved and we just pushed past it like it got thrown at us a couple times but we just took it on the channel just like all right well we're gonna make better music next and every song I try to make has to be better than the last and we just go we see what people like from our music we see what we like from our music and then we release it you know what I mean yep at the end of the day if we don't like it we don't drop it that's a good strategy all right so when we talk about well all right you got quite a few songs out there right now though um and I know that you said you have a manager yeah when did this happen did you have it when you dropped the O or when did the habit getting a manager coming to the play right now like I have a manager but I'm still the one who's in control of everything nobody's really like I wanted to say a manager more like I'd say a manager it's just rough I'm not home they're manageable but it's like we're kind of at the same we're working the same we're working the same right now like nobody's really like oh I'm Johnny two phones managers like no we work with Johnny so my advice on that is always being charged always always have control over everything like the show we did I headlined um at the upstate concert hall this summer and the piece of paper I got from them says Johnny two phones sold 703 tickets um and they wrote like reviews just so I could show it to other venues when I go to them like hey like this guy's about his business he handles everything like from top to bottom I was in charge of that show radio promotion flyers all that like and like it was the most annoying thing I ever did have I ever had to deal with like I had to deal with all the artists I had to deal with all the BS all the bullshit but at the end of the day I learned how to run a show I learned how to book my own show I learned how much I need to be paid I learned how much I'm worth and nobody like I got taken advantage and I didn't know but now I know from that mistake like okay well next time I'm not doing that we're doing it this way because I know the way now now why do you say you got taken advantage of what do you mean what happened we sold 700 I sold 703 tickets like all of us together but for the most part it was like uh I was ahead behind the show I was like you know it's my show so it was me inside the down show I'm sorry but we sold the 703 tickets and only I got paid about 1.2k so it was like we didn't get completely taken advantage but 700 tickets at $20 a little bit more than 1.3k so it's like the money situation so now when I go to a venue I'm renting it out I'm not going through promoters and no we're we're going through us guys so you went with some promoters the promoters bought the venue and they brought you in and let you do all the marketing basically yeah okay yeah very familiar with that we're having this one artist it's not the artist fault because in our area we are very so scared to book rap that they like took advantage of us because they know they knew that there was no other way to do it so but now I have that piece that says I sold 703 tickets I performed at the palace theater in front of 3000 people like I can I kind of got a little leeway in my you know I got some people behind me that are like no he's fine his fans are good they're not fighting like do you know what I mean like if you're trying to book a rap show you can't bring like everybody wants to be gangsta but you can't bring that like they're not no venue really wants that like six nine isn't booking the same places as like a colleague like a calendar like you know what I mean like it's not it's not how that way six nine is losing out on so much money because all that bsc you bring yeah I mean you got a lot of people don't realize this but you don't have to have like some insurance when you bring those kind of problems are like serious things yep and then they use that means they have to have a higher insurance it's a lot of reasons why they don't want those problems so I think that's great that you actually got that piece of paper man like that's dope that you actually did this you handle it not only did you understand ins and out but now you have this proof to handle yourself on a business side and you go to new venues with that approach now do you plan on or have you actually booked out a venue yourself and did a show since then um not yet but we're gonna run it back this summer again we're gonna do like the same show maybe in a different location but uh we're gonna run it all through us and especially right now because I just um I just partnered up with a little booking agency so now it's like a promoter but that promoter is that promoter is like we're like you know you're real close to there's nothing no funny business going on with me a little looking to see where we're gonna come down to an agreement we both agree on and we both find like suitable now how'd you get on with the booking agency did they reach out to you did you reach out to them um so after that show like we kind of so this is a year after the oh so this is just this past summer like the oh came big account came then I dropped this EP that was really experimental and I was kind of just finding myself as an artist and then I dropped then I linked up with Hunter G and we dropped um gelato here for in stock which are my three biggest songs and they were all in a row so like and we did we did things differently around that time like we marketed differently we could talk about that in a second and then to cap the summer off we're like okay before I go back to school we'll do the show so we did that and then like we just had all this buzz going around like um we had so we had buzz we had my buzz we had swap down buzz and these are like three with the three biggest up-and-coming artists right now like so we had just did a show in LA and sold like 300 tickets themselves so we just had like our areas is gonna be like it's gonna be the next Atlanta in my eyes it's gonna be the next Atlanta it's gonna be the next hit spot so we have all this buzz going around so you know I mean people are gonna come to you and you have to weave out who's really for you and who you really like and a DJ hooked us up with a little booking agency and we sat down and talked to him and I really liked what they had to offer I didn't feel like they were on any funny shit and I felt like it was a good fit for me but so the DJ just said hey yo y'all should get hooked up with a booking agency or you kind of wanted to do that yourself um I saw Russ's video on like you should look for a booking agent so I was like I look for a booking agent and then that's kind of how that went I kept asking around asking around and I just this uh DJ should rock his name he's like uh he's kept showing my music to the guys he's like yeah yeah yeah I fuck with it I fuck with it and then he finally sat us down and like I think he just picked up on the fact that I wasn't a bullshitter so he kind of picked me up as an artist and we've kind of just been going around pushing around different uh areas there it is so that's what I really wanted to get to because I mean me you kind of talked about hey no bullshit right you and you've you've been doing your stuff you got this relationship with this DJ that you built and you're asking around so there's no better way to do it honestly with for what an artist that's ground up and when we're talking about advice at scale I just got to say hey if you're out there you ask around if you're putting shows in like you were doing and you're booking out some shows that's and you and you show people this and then they see that you're serious you're not bullshitting and you continue to keep working like you don't just ask them beg and wait for an hot you just keep working then eventually people want to say hey you know what all right I got something here something and it's up to then I mean it's up to you at that point just decide if it's legit or not and you know all that other stuff but I'm a firm believer of whatever you put out of it in the universe you work for it's gonna come to yep I woke up every day and I was like all right this is gonna happen it's gonna happen it's gonna happen but at the same time I was hustling my head down yep like that shit like I write everything like you can sit like my little board over there has all my goals and legitimately the first column of bulls is like all checked off like and like you just wake up the first thing on your mind has to be that brush your teeth on your mind you know what I mean you're in the shower on your mind and that shit like really it's like I don't know I think it's a book called the secret that talked about it but that it's really that like I don't really like that all that weird stuff like oh the universe that no that's a hundred percent real hey man I don't see how like people can people can make that shit more mystical than it is and that's the part that loses me but hey just apply to sports man you can't tell me you're not going to be able to make 10 shots in a row if you don't if you practice right if you practice eventually you can make 10 three pointers in a row you know what I'm saying like it's simple as that you put in a work and eventually you get there some things are aren't that straightforward but you still do like you think it to existence you put in the work to get there and eventually is there I don't like it's straight logic in my mind it is logic and like a big thing that I got caught up like early on everyone I was like really I'm like 17 is like oh guys like little pump like no way they're working as hard as me like why is it working faster for them like you can't get caught up in that yeah one it all depends on your area two it just it's just life like people some people have to work a little bit less like that's okay because at the end of the day nobody in this fucking world can tell me I'm not gonna make it it's gonna happen but it might take two months it might take two days it might take two years but it's gonna happen yep I mean I'm with it I mean me seeing the work that you have done in progress you've made um you've made since I've known you know you I got faith that like I you're gonna do something I don't know you know when you get a certain threshold like a certain level of celebrity or something like that that's there's other factors that come into play but I have no doubt that you'll be a certain level of success for sure like now to get word more specific in your men in terms of manager again what at what period did the manager come into play um I'd say around the time probably like a year ago probably a year now so that was like right when you dropped the old right after um it was a couple probably like six months after I decided like because I go to school too so that's that's why my situation is a little different with the manager because my manager I don't have a manager just to like do things I'm still looking for I want personally like my manager right now is like um I want uh I think what I'm missing is an experienced manager somebody who can come in and be like oh no no we're gonna take you this we're gonna do that but for my manager my job for him is really right now like take care of this stuff at home in the 518 that I can't really take care of right now because I have a stats test tomorrow or like because I have to write these songs we're 100 gd we have to focus on this right now you take care of that like we're a real team kind of we're really mesh together like we don't really have a certain specific job like oh he's manager or he's promoted we have like no you this shit has to get taken care of us take care of it why don't take care of this but yeah I mean that's not necessarily a typical man a lot of people have a day-to-day manager and then they have the manager that's that's what a little booking agency like we have a day-to-day manager and then a little booking agency is kind of like our booking agent our manager kind of guy we go to like hey we want to do this uh can you help us out with it yeah you will run you over here let's do that okay but you had anything that came through with the booking agency yet or the relationship a little bit more new um it's still new but they're the ones who got us the show for uh we uh got to open up for a juice world and um we get to open up for a little oozie in december so it's like they're getting a sign like they're getting us they're doing ways through a booking agent they're doing things oh the way a booking agency would do things so we're getting booked on shows but they're impressed because we did we did a show in front of the juice world and played gelato and cut the music and the whole sound the whole crowd sung a song that was three thousand people of course like if you do things like this people aren't drawn to you know what I mean but yeah yeah but that's what happened because like we hustled with our head down and woke up every morning like this is what's gonna happen this is what's gonna happen yeah yeah I saw that clip man that was wow and that's the kind of stuff that's going make people remember all right yeah we could do a little bit more with this artist yeah I'm trying if I need to try them out in in front of I don't know some other show we might be able to book them in another city all that stuff yeah that's exactly what happened okay so when you talk about gelato man let's go ahead and get to gelato because like I said that's that's my favorite song of yours right now um it's been that way for a few months so how did that song come about and then what was the push behind that song to get it to like 700k on Spotify now you said uh Spotify is 200k Apple music is like 500 and then SoundCloud is about 100 so with that that was um so I dropped after the bank account remixed I dropped this little EP and that was kind of like the down part of my career that was like a learning experience for me that was my learning failure for me um and even with that being said I don't really think that the music was a failure um I just think I put too much I banked on it too much I thought I was gonna drop that and become famous and then obviously I'm not famous but um uh so I met 100g um he's a producer um check this out but uh 100g beats um so I was like hey um he just played me as he played my roommate a song and he DMed me and I wasn't really paying attention to it I was like I was like whatever but then my roommate played me a song like who the fuck is this like I need I need this guy's beats so we linked up that day and I told him I was like yo fuck with me and like I laid out the plan for him I was like we're gonna drop three songs uh they're gonna go crazy we're gonna do these two shows with a boogie it's gonna go up and then we're gonna have a whole different fucking um a whole bunch of window of opportunity and like at first he was like what are you talking about but then we made the songs we made the songs and I saw how slowly had kind of dropped little previews before he dropped the songs he dropped like previews and snippets of the songs those would go up then he dropped the song and it would like directly correlate so my whole way of like releasing music kind of changed because I like I copied it but I like molded it to me so I like so what I do is like I'll drop a preview a couple days before I drop the song then I'll drop the cover art and then I'll drop the song like and like that really worked out for gelato because on um the preview had like I think like 2000 retweets on twitter and like then the the uh the instagram video had like a couple thousand likes so it's just like that overall general buzz just made it the first day go crazy and then the next weekend we had two shows with a boogie in two different places so like people hear this crazy good song and then they see you with a boogie and then next thing you know your song is like the biggest one so it's like kind of crazy how it just all worked out dope dope man that um like all those things is funny even like when you got the quality then the perception actually helps if you yeah a lot of times people work on that reception before they got a quality that's moving by itself but I mean because I could tell you me I didn't get I think when I listen when I watched a gelato video like that video clip that you had with the crowd um like doing all the words you cut the music off all that stuff that reminded me of when my sister used to come back from college and she would be introducing me to all these songs like I was in like eighth ninth grade and there were like songs like it was like little boozy and stuff back then because she went to like Mississippi go to school but she would be like playing the songs and then telling me experiences at the parties and like everybody loved and it'll go out so I have all these pictures in my head you're watching that video it was a real life picture so I could feel like the excitement I feel like that shit probably made me like the song even more than I might have that quicker exactly yeah I gave people something to attach to I did like an experience like a song is an experience you know what I mean like people like you hear you see it on movies all the time um like oh that's our song like that one that's one this song is gonna bring me back to this part of my life forever yeah like I don't even though I'm not the biggest artist in the world like I'm decent sized artist but like I think it's cool that someday somebody's gonna be talking to the kid and be like oh yeah like I was in school like this was our song like this is me and your mom's song or yeah it's all it takes me back to when I was like 18 so just like matching up experiences with music is you know what I mean it's part of it and that's something I learned and just shit like stuff we're doing right now like I've watched tons and tons and tons of videos of like Travis Scott performing and I'm just like all right how's how's he making this memorable yeah how does that make his performance is memorable like you have to be a real student of the game if you want success like do you know what I mean like none of this is just randomness like this is all like it's you learn it it's learned behavior I want to hear more about that from you man because for an artist really your job is to create moments like it's a series of moments you look at anybody's career it's like bam they have one moment and then that moment might get them to this level of artists and then you know they're killing there they're establishing and curated nurturing that fan base then bam they have another moment that might take them to another level right and everybody's getting these micro moments who already know you but every other moment like every other big moment will introduce you to another fan base like how do you look to create moments um there's like I just there's like different ways to do it but the main thing is I'm a planner and like like I said I wake up and I'm like this is gonna happen there's no possible way this does not happen so like I'll plan out all my stuff and then one of them might not work out the way you want it to work out but the next one did because we dropped stock first and I was like no no no stock's going crazy it's gonna get a hundred thousand dollars move my first one a hundred thousand and then like we dropped it and it went iffy and then we dropped gelato and it went up and like I thought stock was gonna be the one but gelato would be the one but we were prepared what was with what like for what was next like you have to be prepared for what's next that's like the best advice I could give because like you see a lot of guys like no dirt on anybody's name like I think Rob Stone's an amazing artist but like you come in with the show building and then there was no real follow-up so I think the biggest part like building on moments and like getting everything you can get out of it is follow-up following up like it doesn't maybe you just drop the song follow it up with a visual maybe you just you know what I mean follow it up with uh Instagram live like how are you gonna interact with your fans differently now how are you gonna make some how are you gonna keep their attention and then you know what I mean how are you gonna make them fans like you know what I mean you're not I hate to talk about it like it's a product like myself is a product that's what I am and I like how are you gonna sell yourself to these people you know what I mean and I do it in a genuine way because I'm not this I'm gonna make my I'm not changing any myself for anybody so people fuck with that but it's all just plan it out follow it up and if it doesn't work whatever keep pushing like we're going we're on to the next we're on to the next like and sometimes that shit just randomly happens like when Mac Miller passed Guy rest his soul um that was one of my biggest influences and out of nowhere I was like I'm gonna do a little freestyle video for him because he's the reason I rap so I think it's like fair that I do this so I dropped it and next thing you know um James Charles little brother Ian Charles posted on his story it was already going up crazy and like the video has like 20,000 views and like 10 doubt like 7,000 likes on my Instagram and like that that wasn't planned out that just happened and I didn't even want that to happen because I'm not going to do something like that for cloud but it's just the way that happened people were drawn to the fact that we were all going through that similar experience of morning Mac Miller and that song made the like an experience for them it connected them to that like we all grew up on Mac Miller like you know what I mean so yeah that's why that meant so much to me and then meant so much to other people I like the fact that you're able to separate and realize which moments happen organically whether you try or not and then you can plan for some and that shit might not go how you thought it was and just keep moving it is what it is that's yeah that's the best way to say like just keep moving don't get caught up because that's that's why I refer to that little EP I dropped as like the biggest failure I ever had because like after that I was like damn I'm done like I don't know what to do now like nobody likes me anymore but I'm over my career is over and then four months later after a lot of it's the biggest thing I've ever done it shadowed like the oh is like nothing else too lot of yes okay well that being said man what do you got planned next you have anything you feel like Mike yeah yeah I think I have like two or three right now I think my next two or three are going to go crazy right now um I've been like showcasing it like now so like now I'm like all right it's been a little while people are like hitting me hitting me hitting me but I just had that Mac Miller thing I had the juice world show like these are all big things that happen so everybody's like I wanted people to wait like what's next what's next so um I've been like previewing stuff on my Instagram live and I've never done that before but people are really fucking with it so now I'm going on Instagram live every Sunday at eight so I'm gonna drop the song soon and everybody's kind of already knows it because it's like the catchy song and they've heard it on my Instagram live so much that people are like saying it to me and they don't even know like they never even heard like you know what I mean they've never had it by themselves they've only heard it during Instagram live and all these shows I've been doing I've been playing it there so it's just a new type of promotion I'm gonna try out and like I think it's gonna work and I'm gonna follow it up with a music video and see how that run does and if we don't if it doesn't do what we want it to do we have another one to follow it up with got you so do you feel like there any promotional methods that you just hold on to as you keep getting to new levels in your career or do you pretty much say oh I'm at this level now and then you find some new things and kind of get rid of the old promotional methods all together are you adding on or are you eliminating and just restart from ground zero I've changed over the year like we said like we've evolved but the one thing I do hold on to is like um just that drop pattern of snippet cover art uh link and then we and then usually what I do is like hey I'll post it on my Snapchat and I'll be like post this on your Snapchat story or post this on your Instagram story and that's what this is like nothing new like everybody does this but it's just what works for me and works for my fans and like I said that's how I built kind of my like quote following because like organic like I build up organically like I didn't really pay for any promotion ever like we kind of just use people like use fans as promoters and like they're not bothered by it because they want to see like you know what I mean like I treat my fans as like if we're a team like they're a part of the team like they are like you know what I mean they want to see you bigger than what you are they want to see you next to Drake like in some people's eyes you are next to Drake so they want to like make you get there so never like be afraid to like ask your fans for help because they're like the only people who genuinely want to help with music in return music is the only thing you have to give in return yeah that's real man and what's really big is when it comes to promotion and building your own system it doesn't have to be super complicated it doesn't have to be anything super genius like obviously because of you know the things I talk about people ask me all kind of questions looking for the most genius thing in the world um sometimes a lot of times but when you talk about that simple drop schedule preview album cover drop song right like there's still like what you want within your system it's some stuff that you don't have to think about like you might change this when it comes to this song because it has its own creative or you're doing this but you need those things that are a part of your system that are going to get a certain level of results that you just do and you know it's not too much thought put into it so I'm glad you got a few of those 100% and even like over there like all these artists that I met up with um after a while I talked to them it's kind of just like there's no like they don't have just like I talked to you like they don't have any there's no secret thoughts like there's no secret formula there's no we prayed to the bible seven times and then it happened like there's none of that it's just hustle you gotta grind like you gotta be ready to grind and you gotta figure out what works for you what works for your area what works for your college like you have to like trial and error it and there's unless you have sheet codes like you said like the connections the managers that are already experienced like all the people who already figured it out like yeah I came up and like upstate New York like you've never heard of a rapper from there like I'm the big like me so we had so I have the biggest ones from there um we made our own lane but we figured it out and now we're on like radio stations we're doing all this but we've been doing it for a while we've been doing it since 1760 and now we're like 20 and we're in our 20s but you're still in college right now um I know you said you're gonna you're gonna be done with it I was that's because you're graduating or you just line up to drop out you can take advantage it finally got to a point where it's like this is gonna be my job forever yeah you know like I was like this is this is it um and I've got all the success and like all this stuff but I've never given it a hundred percent and I think that's like not fair to like my fans are not fair to like just this overall just you know what I mean the culture like how are you how are you gonna get this far and you need me to give it a hundred percent yeah like what like what go give it a hundred percent see what the fuck can happen like you know what I mean like I've given it a hundred percent but like I've always had I used to play basketball or I'm going to school still like so it's like you know what I mean I cut basketball out of my life and then all this other shit happened so like cut school out like and like I'm not dropping out of school on a whim like we have legitimate plans I watched a logic interview that said don't drop out of school just to become a soundtrack rapper like drop out if you have a plan and you're like you know what I mean you're established like if you're in school right now and you're like oh man like I did like a hundred plays on my soundcloud my mother just dropped out no don't if you can make the people like don't do that because that's a bad plan like get a solid plan make the people around you love your music because if the people around you could love your music like I came up in the 518 like it's the most hateful fucking place in the planet but after I prove to them that they like dangling if they can fuck with me like LA could fuck with me you know what I mean yeah yeah now I think I like that advice that's some of the best advice I've here I've heard when it comes to just being in college like wait till you have results yeah real results that you matter of fact wait till you have repeatable results if possible all right maybe if you have I'm known um for people that they had like a management deal or something like like but you have to have something that's a lot more tangible than a few plays and just dream I mean you can do it that way but you make it so much easier and better on yourself if you wait till you have something and like you have to think of college is like it's a perfect market it's a group of people from all different places that legitimately have to be in a circle for an extended period of time like make those people your fans like go out and get yourself out there if you have to change yourself as a person I had to change myself as a person I had to like develop social skills like I don't like to talk to people I don't like talking and I'm one of the most talkative talkative talkative people I know like I learned how to network you know what I mean and it's not not fake it's not clout chasing I don't I don't do any that weird shit I just like it's network I'm a businessman like you know what I mean like you gotta take care of business when it's time to take care of business is what it is man I agree because I mean I'm the same way and like people who some people will be like I you're dick riding no you're fucking you're doing your job like you know what I mean like as an artist your job is not just to make music you got to take care of the business side of it too so like everything comes into play you know what I mean and it takes time like I'm like I'm talking like I'm like made it like no I didn't like I'm still waking up struggling every day well we've had we've had a lot of success so it comes and it goes and you just gotta learn from your mistakes cool cool and hey people don't forget you graduate if you don't have uh if you're not blowing up yet you can get a certain type of job and at least be able to fund your career and be your own investor all right as opposed to dropping out having a job that's not gonna give you enough money to to push your money your stuff forward like J Cole he graduated he said I remember I used to be a heavy J Cole fan like he thought he was gonna go to college go to in New York and get fine in one week that man looked up he was graduated yeah exactly and like sometimes you just look at like you can't don't get caught up in looking at other artists because a lot of my friends come up to me and like like little pump will be a point at the party I'll be like does that piss you off and I'll be like no why why why would another person's success piss me off like that is the weirdest mentality I've ever heard of just because it happened for him the way it happened for him yeah like doesn't take away from my grind doesn't take away from my success at all you know what I mean um and it's just a different experience like life like it's like like people like people have problems with life like people have life problems that like kind of come off as like haters like no why why are you worried about little pump like why is mumble wrap so like do their art worry about what you're doing hey man that's I mean that's a win mentality man not like I fuck with you for that man like that's the only way like people who don't think that way I don't understand like you look and you see somebody else's success you envy I don't even want to be around that type of mindset because if I become successful and they happen to be taking along they're gonna be throwing the same way about me so I don't even care about that I like I don't feel anybody like what are you gonna do to me nothing like not a problem with that that's the difference but uh it's like if you're so focused on somebody else you're not focused on what we got going on you know what I mean you're that's taking away from our hustle that's taking away mind space right now and that's like something we can't afford you know what I mean we don't have the luxury of take like focusing on how to shape you have focused on what we're doing sure man 100 I'll make you lay the sins of a blueprint um and this interview for people like if you have you're a high schooler and you're gonna go to college this is I mean this is something that you can basically do right like all the steps that you've taken like you because you came into the college with the mindset that I'm going to rap you already knew I didn't wish I didn't know that before as you knew or I'm gonna rap I thought you were on the basketball team and just said yo let's play around let's rap and then next you know start moving he said oh shit I'm gonna go this way but you came in start networking from day one like built that audience build over relationships then dropped right they'll come in build your relationships drop your music and then once you get a buzz from there you know it'll be slightly different from people from there but how do you follow up like keep on following up so I like the fact that that blueprint's there because a lot of people in high school who are going to be going to college these days still know they want to be a rapper and they don't really want to get a college at all but with all that being said the first thing I made sure I could do was rap like that's a lot of people's problem like like a lot of people you have to make sure you have to be your hardest critique you have to treat yourself a hardest you have to make sure what you're putting out there is like good and like don't be afraid to fail like you know what I mean like I that's kind of what my high school years were doing I was experimenting with different sounds I was making beats I was figuring out who I was as an artist and I'm still doing that to this day you know what I mean like Jake Holtz still switches music Ken Schmar still switching music Drake switches music every other day like you know what I mean like they're still growing like the growth never stops but before you put yourself out to the world make sure you're like you're okay with it like you know what I mean and don't just be passive bad don't be like ah that's pretty good no like if it's not right if it's not a grade work don't put it out don't put it out make sure it's good enough because hate is bad they will get you in those comment sections that's a bad place to be oh yeah they don't get you right man for sure but also listen to those people in the comment sections if they're like your flow is charitable work on your flow you know what I mean that was my that's what I did in high school like they used to be like tons of tons of haters but I listened to it like you know what I mean don't take it personal but sometimes those hating people are like have genuinely good points like your music sucks like maybe it does suck like maybe I should work on it like you know what I mean like you know but don't take that like you know what I mean like there's people who think Kendrick Mark music sucks he at that point he's done listening to people I'm talking about if you're coming up you're just starting like listen to what people have to say like people are like the only only resource on this planet that like you know what I mean that one that will always be there people are resources I think that's a dope way to end the interview man um you guys can follow Johnny at Johnny two phones well just go ahead and shout out all your social media and where you might specifically want them to follow you because I don't know if there's a certain place you want to direct people uh follow me on like uh follow me on um instagram johnny two phones underscore honestly twitter johnny two phones anywhere any social media is johnny two phones um and then Spotify and Apple music are johnny two phones and follow me subscribe to me on youtube i'm trying to build that up from the process of doing that that's something I have not mastered so oh man definitely that's me on youtube that's me do all that man follow follow my guy this is johnny two the number two phones yeah don't don't don't go don't go looking up t 00 or t w o um and hey as always if you like this video go ahead hit that like button if you like it might as well share it and if you're not subscribed you know what to do hit that subscribe but