 What's up? What's up? What's up? I'm brand man Sean and I'm Corey and we are back with episode number 14 of No Labels Necessary Podcasts. You can catch us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you listen to your podcast. Check us every Tuesday and Thursday. If you don't know us, me and Corey are co-founders of Contra brand agency, multiple of other entrepreneurial endeavors. But here we are here to talk about content, music, business, things that we just love to talk about. So that's exactly what we're going to do. Now appreciate y'all for returning. If y'all have listened already, if this your first time, appreciate you as well. Welcome, welcome, welcome. And before we get into today's pie, we got a lot of interesting topics for you. Want to make quick, quick little announcement, right? Now we've been hit up about this on the back end before. Like remember we talked about the music, us having a music agency and a lot of people hit us with some inquiries. And now we're open to talk about it a little bit more. An opportunity that that we got coming in this next year. And we want to present it to y'all who are interested. So I'll just say this, if you need a marketing team, we are willing to find the right partner or maybe partners and be their marketing team. Now this is not for an individual artist, individual artists, just listen, we love y'all. But just listen, we're talking about a label or management team who wants a team to focus on their artists day in, day out, go in depth, handle their entire roster and be there. Right. Now, Shakur, you want to add anything else to that? Oh, no, you had pretty much the point, the nail in the head, right? This isn't for necessarily the artists looking for individual marketing services. That's, that's pretty much, you know, a norm at this point with the agency. But this is for that, like you said, that label head, that, that management company, you know, maybe even that, that distro company that has this roster of 510, 15 artists that need to get shit moving, but they don't feel like they have the time to put the people in place to help them move in, right? So we have the infrastructure to handle that mean the artists, we have the system built in place to get things moving. And like you said, we've been asked about a lot, you know, like a lot more than we even thought it would come up. So we figured they must be looking for it, right? Like, got to be other labels and management companies looking for it. So many keep coming to us asking about it. So all right, that's what you feel like you need. Link them in the description, right? We're gonna have to do it. Have to do it. The contraband link is down there. Right, right, right. Yeah, we'll we'll figure out and label it well, make sure probably prioritize it at the top. But exactly what you Corey just said, and you know, maybe you are somebody who are starting a label or something, and you're looking for a partner from ground up, right? The right situation, that might be a thing where we're actually partnered up in a company or something. But either way, it goes if you need a full marketing team to handle a roster day in, day out, and really build up, we are here for you now. Without further ado, let's get into this episode. And as y'all know, we we start off with advice, these episodes. And in last time, we actually introduced a new way of handling handling it, which is rate the advice. We want to know y'all's opinions on the advice that we present, right? Now, the advice that we got here is from none other than Dave Peters. Now, if y'all know Dave Peters, he's Mike Dimes, his manager. We actually got a chance to chop it out, chop it up with Dave. Shout out to you at the writers camp for since the 80s last week. A lot of dope conversations happened there. But he talked about something that he does for artists or the approach that he takes when it comes to his artist. And that approach, because the advice I get ready for it is simply using the term rising artist. When you get on blog pages, let's just say with say cheese, our generation music underground sound, all those pages, right? You get on Instagram and they're talking about you. Now, why is he using the term rising artist? Well, he talked about the fact that look, you got this random artist coming out of nowhere, and you just try to present them like there's somebody. Why are people going to care? Why should they care that? Why should they care that something's happening to you or for you? Or are they going to believe it? Say that again? Or will they believe it? Or will they believe it? Right? I think that's one of the biggest ones. And the reality is they won't. We already know they will not. And as a result, you get hate thrown at you. Just hate, hate, hate, hate, right? Like just all this is God. It's everywhere. Who is this God? They talking about you. They turned up, but you disarm them. If you say rising artist, just present a little truth, right? So if you say there, if you say you're rising or your artist is rising in the presentation, people don't expect to know about you, right? So it doesn't come off as pushy as an ad. It doesn't come off as if you're trying to present yourself as someone you're not. That's it. Like that's the simple advice. It's small, but I think that tweak when I heard it personally, right? I thought that that was great advice. What would you think? Yeah, I mean, I was I was conflicted on it at first. Okay. I'll say why in a sec. But I think is the bigger good advice is be caught in the people on the other side of the post, right? Yes, how they're going to take it. Because what I always tell clients is we have to think about the people paying attention to these pages. This is my favorite music blog page. I see this shit every day, eight, 10 times a day. Now when this random person that shows up on my timeline that mind you, I've never seen before. But once again, I pay attention to this page every day. I'm immediately going to have my doubts, my concerns, maybe even some negative thoughts, you know what I'm saying? It's brewing up just itching to come out my fingers, you know what I'm saying? But like I said, it turns out to us like, okay, well, this person is rising. Well, I don't need to have the same expectations of them and I might have a Travis Scott or something right or now I know I might not I might not am supposed to know who this person is because they are rising, right? And this platform is highlighting them for X, Y, Z reasons. So I do think it does a good job, but there's so many people there. The part of it I would kind of argue against is that I do think sometimes it can be detrimental for that exact reason, right? Because you immediately are paying yourself to this community as like, I guess the struggling artist per se, right? Well, maybe as someone who doesn't already have momentum or motion or should be paying attention to, I don't have to explain it, but I can see the double side of it because I've had posts before where I've looked at on those pages where it says like exactly that like rising rapper from Atlanta drops new video. And the first thing that comes in my head is like, oh, this is a probably a small to new artist because if they weren't small, the new they would have never used that language, right? So I do think there are certain specific scenarios where it can be detrimental. Probably like once you start creeping out of that, I will argue like that 50 to 100k consistent like monthly listener point, probably when you want to start like slowly leaving it behind, you know what I'm saying? But I do think up until that point, like 100% correct. Like it's a very, very great way to describe people. That's a great point, because it's all the stuff is strategic, right? It's not yet one size fits all. And if you have numbers to show for it on another platform, like Spotify, like you basically like you reference, then don't use that because yeah, people might say who is this? I don't know who this is, but they can always go down a rabbit hole and find out, oh, somebody's fucking with this person already, right? And figure that out. But if they're brand new, and I think it's also depends on what you're saying as well. Right? Like if you're like, yo, this person's project's coming out this Friday, why the fuck do I care? Who is this? Right? If you say, I don't know, a little oozy is dropping a project this Friday, then I'm going to care just off of the strength that is a little oozy, right? You have to establish a relationship for something that basic to be. So you need to also be in front of them for a reason that's that's worth it to the general public, right? Yeah. And then the quality of your music or whatever that post is about. But like if it has your music in it, that's also going to push people one way or another. Upcoming artists. OK, I think he's small, but I listen. OK, this shit hard though. And all that goes out the out the window is trash. I'd say if it's trash, it does help because it's at least you say, all right, there's an upcoming artist. I understand why. You know, I understand why it's bad. I still might say it's trash and not support and be like me. But it's not going to be the same level as if they lied, tried to lie to me and present. Yeah, right? I'm just thinking from a fan standpoint, who's just watching, that's that's where it's going to come. So it helps in that way. But I think the overall is what you said. Just be cognizant of who you're speaking through each of these pages and how you're presenting yourself. Because even that you can present yourself as, let's say, rising or upcoming, right? But you don't have to do that for eternity, right? You might do that three or four times on a page or a few pages, run those rounds. And then like after three months, you don't ever use that term again, because now they at least they're aware of you. That community specifically, right? That community specifically. So I think, yes, of course, the advice is a one size fits all, but I think the sentiment and the real advice. So this is the part that you all should be rating more than anything is what your Corey said, which is just be aware who you're talking to and how that impacts them based on the words you're using. So again, rate that advice, people, you know, give it a one to 10. Let me know. Let us know. Put it in the comment section, you know what I mean, and like and comment while I'm talking about commenting, because, you know, those comments and those likes, they give love to the video and make sure I get seen by other people. And if it ain't seen by enough people, we ain't going to keep doing these things, man. We ain't doing it for not far out of health. All right. Now, speaking of the Writers Camp, as we said, it was since the 80s Writers Camp, really the Writers Camp. If y'all don't know the roster of of since the 80s, they have a lot of artists. Obviously, Jib is a J.I.B. Irv gang. Mike Dom's. I always forget what I was saying, man, and just Zoma NJZOMA. Yeah, I've never actually said it out loud. So. Yeah. So, Fago, you know what I'm saying? Probably the most known, but probably J.I.B. Irv gang. So, Fago. Yep. Yep. So then, right? It was all last week. We were up there a few different times and occasions, and that was one of the conversations that happened while we were there just on the side. And there's a couple of other ones that we want to touch on. A couple of other ones. A lot of great conversations. A lot of great conversations. This one here is do you have to be crazy to be an artist? Once you stop and think about that for a second, and then we're going to go into detail in terms of like the kind of crazy that was presented. But overall. It came out of. You have to be crazy to be a superstar. A superstar. Yeah, that was the cover. It was like, well, I mean, I still do think you have to be kind of crazy to be like at least a little bit crazy to be an artist. Because you got to be crazy, even want to attack everything that's about to come from the moment you hit upload. You know what I'm saying? And what might come from that a bit? If shit. I always tell us, bro, like there are a lot of artists I think get into the game romanticizing what it's like to be a popular artist because you don't know anything yet. And then you get into you like oh, this should a lot of work. Yeah, this should is stressful. Oh, it's a thousand people trying to talk to me at all times. You know what I'm saying? I just want to know everything I'm doing. It's like, damn, this shit sucks. And it's like, yeah, bro, you know, man, then you in it to see. So, you know, that's our thing. Like you got to be kind of crazy to be one of your artists. But the point I was making about being a celebrity, wanting to be a celebrity like a superstar, you have to really be insane to be want to be a celebrity or superstar. That's true. That's true. One of the quotes was came down to this. You have to be crazy to think that everybody fucks with you. Yeah, exactly. Because of you. Yeah. That's what it came down to. All right. And then narcissism was a word that got used. What do you think about that? No, I agree, bro. Like, like think about the type of person like that was saying that just walks around and sounds like you like it. You like it. You don't like it. And if that over everybody over that just heard it, they will also like it. You know, they don't get me if they don't like me. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I don't think there are too many art forms that I like that outside of music. Like, I don't think I've ever heard any of my like art friends, like painting visual art friends ever like expect everyone in the gallery to like their piece necessarily. Right. I've never expected my dance friends to expect everybody to want to show up to the dance recitals. Music artists, bro. Are my music artist friends? Now, they're expecting everybody to play that shit for the fuck with it. Yeah, that's your heart, right? That's your heart, right? I could get with that. I could get with that, especially when you talk about the celebrity level. And I think once you talk about celebrity level, it actually goes beyond music because you can be a celebrity politician, celebrity actor, right? There's all those levels. Once you hit that celebrity level, there is definitely a sense of thinking completely differently. And I'm not talking about in that cool, marketed, think different type shit. No, we're not talking about Apple. We're just talking about, you know, your rocker is a different rocker. Yeah, Brian really wild a little bit. You might not be off your rocker. Your rocker just might be a different color. You know what I'm saying? So it, you know, we can always go to the extreme where there's Kanye, like that's an example, right? But I don't think there's anything to gain from that conversation. I think the game comes from. The in-betweens like who doesn't present themselves in this way that's so brash and obviously shaking the table in some kind of way. But. Still is a narcissist, quote, in some form or fashion. Like people love Rihanna. You know what I'm saying? And everything about her image is like down to earth, but I'm still that bitch at the same time, right? Is she crazy? Well, see, I was going to say, that's what makes it them crazier is when they're right because there are certain groups of artists that are right, Brian, like everyone that comes across it for whatever reason, loves it. Like a Rihanna, Rihanna's a great example. I haven't I won't say everyone I know is a mega Rihanna fan, but I've never met anyone that like hated Rihanna's music or thought it was bad or whatever. You might not have your you might not like all her music, but all of us got a favorite Rihanna song. You know what I'm saying? Like all of us can think of one Rihanna song we fuck with heavy. OK. And if you say you don't, you're lying. No, no, no, no, I would never. I'm not even you specifically. I'm just going to have the comments. You know what I'm saying? You say you don't rely on somebody in the comments that says something like that. But hey, reveal yourself if you are one of these folks who don't have one Rihanna song. And I think there's a qualifier because you don't have to just like people's music and don't like Rihanna. Yeah. OK. Right. Because that's another thing just brand-wise. I personally haven't met anybody that like hates Rihanna. Then you know, like they find her to be likeable. They might not be, you know, super stand following her. But like, oh, yeah, she's cool, especially in contrast to other celebrities, right? She's one of those brands. So that's why I feel like that conversation is more interesting, somebody that you can't point to all these stereotypical things and be like, oh, they're crazy. I'm like, all right, to be Rihanna, do you have to be crazy? Jay-Z, you hear people say all these things like he's a narcissist. So like, you can go off the strength of like what other people say about them if, you know, if you want to just do that. But the way he carries well, I know a lot of people say his business moves are, you know, they try to say narcissistic or for itself, but generally his effect in how he presents himself in a room. I wouldn't find him. I wouldn't say that, oh, you're just this narcissist. Maybe because of my personality, because that's one of them personalities where some people feel like, oh, you're being condescending. But the way I think of myself is hard to find someone talking to me condescending because you can't be talking to me that way. You know what I mean? Like, like, so I don't it's not like, I don't know. I think. Yeah, Jay-Z, I don't hear enough about him again. This is obviously not knowing him, but a lot of people feel that way about him. But yeah, I really don't have. Do you get that vibe, though, just from hearing him talk like his regular personality? Yes. In what way? I would love to hear it. Like, I think Jay-Z's had enough business success where in his head, he can't really do too much wrong. Like, I don't think he thinks he's completely immune to. Ah, OK, that's different. That's different. You know, I don't think he thinks he's immune to bad. He has one of those, like, every couple of years. But it's like, it's like, if I swung 20 times and like 13 of them have been out the park, bro, it's only so much you can say to me. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, it's only it's only it's only so much I'm going to listen to people telling me this ain't going to happen. You know what I'm saying? Because it kind of goes back to that conversation we had about the influences that make music, right? Well, I was saying that if you have this person that is sold chicken nuggets and hats and socks and shit to people like, what's going to make them think they can't sell music, right? So I look at Jay-Z the same way. But I was so alcohol, I was so clothing, I was so music, I was so businesses, so art, so land. What is there out there to make me believe that I can't do whatever the fuck I want to do? And like, where's the line between narcissism and confidence in that? I don't think there is a line in between that. I think narcissists have a lot of confidence. I don't to do confident people have narcissism, probably. See, I think it's safe to say yes, this is where we have to look up the definition of narcissism, because I actually remember seeing Gary V one time say that he always thought that he was a narcissist. Like he would say that like own it based off of the general understanding. But then he looked at the definition and stuff one day and was like, wait, no, I don't identify with that. So a person who has an excessive interest or admiration of themselves, that's the shorthand, right? And, you know, excessive is what is it? It's subjective. Oh, that's artist, bro. Yeah, not all right. Not all right. How about narcissists traits? I think that's probably where he kind of like didn't have as much of a gap. I'm a look at this. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's all right. Have an unreasonably high sense of self-importance and require excessive admiration. OK, feel that they deserve privileges and special treatment. Expect to be recognized as superior even without interest with achievements. Oh, well, that's Google page. Spin. Oh, OK, OK. Now, you got a real last one. The last one is important, too. Make achievements and talents seem bigger than they are. Give me an example. That's all of them, bro. That's every artist, bro. That now take it back. It's not even a successful artist anymore, the narcissist. All artists at this point. Oh, man. Who knew we were going down this rabbit hole today? Well, yeah, we got to we got to keep going. I would do you see be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate. And it's interesting, the perfect mate. Come in, believe they are superior to others and can only spend time with or be understood by equally special people. That's what I'm saying, bro. That's what I'm saying, bro. All of them, bro. I love I love it. That's hilarious. Every single one of them. OK, OK. So you you can you you can give your time to the peasants. Jacquory, King, jacquory. A hundred percent. I'm always down for the people. Come on, King, man. You don't want to waste your time on these people, King. But sometimes you got to walk through the lands, you know what I'm saying, see what's going on, bro. Surveyor landscape. That's where I have a problem with that, right, right? Because you could spend that time, right? And you could be looking at it like that. Well, yeah, I'm granted these people with my presence today. But that. All right. Now we want to go to Jay Z. Then he said my presence is a present. So I guess that does fall under that category of how a narcissist might think. Exactly, right? You look to even be around me. Yeah, I think he said him and Obama. He Jay Z has had maybe one or two kayak eskin allergies that he didn't get kind of push back for. Like comparing himself to somebody or the way he like talked about something. I will. I will say that. And that's somebody who really, really loves Jay Z's music. That's because his comparisons usually like make sense. If you like, like, you can, you can draw the line between A and B pretty quickly. And that it makes sense. What's the problem, right? What's the problem? But, you know, all right. So let's let's see what else we got. Behave in an arrogant way, brag a lot. I mean, that's rappers. Well, a lot of rappers, right? And come across as conceited. Hello, rappers. Be envious of others and believe others envy them. That's rap. That's that's rap foundation one on one. That is that is facts, man. Everybody opts. All right, invest in having the best of everything, for instance, the best car or office. It's funny how detailed this is getting, but it is describing at the same time people with narcissistic personality disorder disorder have trouble handling anything they view as criticism. They can become impatient or angry when they don't receive special recognition or treatment. Yeah, we're getting in there. Have major problems interacting with others and and easily feel slighted. And that's kind of so the fool is that he do be like this whenever someone doesn't agree, he be going straight to like offended. How dare you question my views react with rage or contempt? This one talk and try to belittle other people who make themselves appear as superior. You can't be a superior to me have difficulty managing their emotions and behavior experience. See, what about that? Somebody like Jay-Z. All right, let's go back to that category, the way he's had to move and get to where he is. He's had to do a lot of emotional management. I mean, you got to be shown a hundred. Yeah, I should. I mean, I'll be shown a hundred. You know, it might be a B level. Narcissists, A-bra. Narcissists will take a fix to that. I'm not the best narcissist. What you mean? Experienced major problems dealing with stress and adapting to change. That's interesting. I don't even know how to unpack that one. Let's see. Withdraw from or avoid situations in which they might fail. I call that smart to a certain extent. You know what I mean? I don't know. Like after they say this about especially like competitive people are just especially as you get older and they invest less in things that they can lose. Yeah. Because it's just like why do it? Yeah, why take the risk? Yeah, to me, that's pretty logical. I mean, nobody's saying Narcissist was stupid. Yeah, right. Right, right, right. But I guess maybe the reason, right, they're not going to invest in something they might fail because of the look of it. Yeah, exactly. That's probably. A bit of chip in the armor. Yeah, yeah. A bit of chip in the armor. Which I got with that being said, Andrew Schultz had a very clean way of describing Kanye and what he's going through today. Now, whether you disagree or not, folks who are listening, that's besides the point. But I love the analogy. He talked about how Kanye has, you know, blown up with his sampling, right, as a producer, taking all these sounds from different places and sampling them and then making magic, right? Yeah. And he said, what Kanye is finding that he's not as good as sampling people's thoughts as he is as sampling people's music and sounds and putting them together and presenting them. Wow. I thought that was a good ass metaphor analogy, bro. Hey, whether you agree or not, whatever, but no, that shit was beautiful. He's sampling these people's thoughts and is not being communicated and hitting the same as his music. He's not making hits. Yeah. Like that that's very fair. And hey, look. People who are you that dough? I say this all the time. That kind of says several times he don't read. So he has to be getting thoughts from somewhere must be people. So that is in line with that analogy, whether you like the outcome of his his sampling or not, or his new production. He is getting his thoughts from other people. But anyway, besides the point, let's read these last two. With draw, no, feel depressed or and moody because they fail short. They feel depressed and moody because they fall short of perfection. Yep. Check. Have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, humiliation and fear of being exposed as a failure. Check all of them. This ain't even to be this. Like this, this ain't even anymore about the superstar. Then this is this is just artists who are T at this point. Oh, man. So now it's like you already, you know what I'm saying? Kind of a little little off just for one of your artists. And then now you want to be a superstar artist. But you want you want four year olds to walk by and recognize you and you want like grandparents in the supermarket, you that guy from the right. You're like, that's what you want. But if you want your day to day life, most people seek peace and to not stand out. But artists already inherently stick to stand out. Superstar artists stick to stand out from everybody. You know what I'm saying? Like not even just other artists, just like everything. Yes. And that's a little, it's a little insanity. You know what I'm saying that I can see that you touched on something. Most people seek peace. Yeah. All right. And there's an idea that the reason most people seek peace, right? And most people don't seek to stand out is because standing out brings the opposite of peace. It causes trouble. Right. You go back to nature. You stand out. You're a lick, right? Now you are praying. There's a risk that comes with that. However, the reward is if you're able to stand out and survive that. Damn, by golly, you the king of the jungle. You know what I'm saying? Like, golly. So that's what those people are seeking. But it takes a lot that comes with it. I think that was the that might have been the zebra analogy, if I remember. It will remember I talked to you about that. Yeah. So, yeah, for those of y'all who who don't know the zebra comparison or analogy, they say, you know, zebras have these stripes, all right? And then you look at zebras and you look at this ahead and you say, well, what the hell kind of camouflage is this? Because that only makes them stand out. But it's not about the context of the zebra with the environment it's in. It's more of the context of the zebras versus zebras, right? Because zebras move in packs. I don't know they call them packs, but, you know, packs, schools, whatever you want to call it, all right? They move together and because of that, when lions are chasing them, they blend in, all right? All of the zebras blend in together. So they can't say, yo, bro, like I want that one because they're all moving. And like, I'm like, yo, jacquory, we're going to get that one. Jacquory, like what one, bro? Which we talked about, like that one, like not, bro. You talk about that one and they moving. We can't keep up. However, when they get injured, all of a sudden they stand out from the rest of the zebras, right? So now I say the one that's hobbling, bro, right there. Jacquory is like, I got you, dog. Run it down. Hit a lit, right? So them moving their camouflage again is them. But once something stands out, even in nature, it it it means you're in dangerous position. And when you relate that back to the artist and you hear this narcissism thing. Oh, man, it means the only reason that you would stand you. So does that mean only a narcissist would want to stand out? Is that what that means? I don't think so. No, I think I don't know, man. I think everyone has a little piece of them that wants to stand out. I think every person kind of is one way or another. We've all in our life felt overlooked. You know what I'm saying? It felt like maybe not enough people were. Yes, paying attention to us or giving us our due respects for the things that we do. I feel like artists are not the only ones because I would throw artists and entrepreneurial people in kind of like the same boat, you know what I'm saying? People are looking to like build and build around, like build something and then build something around it. Like artists, entrepreneurs, you know what I'm saying? And it's like people in that box are the goose of people who, like you said, are willing to fight through the primal instinct not to do that shit and figure it out, even though we know that at the other end of it, you are now a lick to all these people that you don't even see. Yeah, which is the craziest part about being any, not even just a celebrity, just anyone with an audience, but like there are really tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions of people out there who know everything about you. They know what you like to eat, your favorite snacks, what shirts you like to wear on your live stream. I love potatoes. It's like, I know all this shit about you and you don't know anything about them. Well, how many times have people walked out of you and been like, oh, bro, like the last week or two months ago, you was talking about this in this live stream. And what did you mean by that? You're like, bro, you mean that live stream from months ago, bro, like you just watched last night that I was, you know what I'm saying? I love what you get that, bro. It's like, it takes a special type of person to want more of that. Yes. You know what I'm saying? All right, so in that case. Yes, I knew you were about to ask, bro. I knew you were about to say. Narcissism being a good thing? I don't think it's the worst. I don't know. It sounds like narcissism equates to bravery. That's what that sounds like. No, but I get it. That's that is very interesting that there's that double-edged swore in that case. Of course, I think you could want to stand out for purposes too, right? If you look at Martin Luther King, he was put in that position. He wasn't necessarily like, yo, I'm about to be the dude to save the world. I got the best perspective, you know, like on some kind of stuff. It was more like, hey, we're training you, breathing you and like take this position because we see the talents in you. So, you know, maybe the purpose also can fuel that. But if we go back to insecurity, because I was going to say what you said, you said people have had this feeling of being overlooked. Everybody's experienced that in some way, for the most part, right? But if I'm operating from that place, that goes under the definition of insecurity, right? And now I'm trying to be seen. I'm trying to make sure people understand what I want to say because I've been misunderstood. I've been overlooked. So it doesn't sound like, well, I mean, I think that this is obvious, right? It's like, oh, it's a real, real deep conclusion in Revelation, Sean. But I'm just like, I wanted to be willing to explore, like, could this be a good thing in some ways, right? What are the redeeming qualities of narcissism? Ultimately, of course, it's a bad thing. It's a sickness. But then ultimately, at the end of it all, it sounds like there's a spectrum. And I'm almost with, if you don't have any bit, if this is the pure definition, maybe we just call it something else because, you know, narcissism has this rightfully so bad stigma. You need to have a little bit of it in you. Yeah, that's what I said. Like, I don't think you got to be bad in 100, you know what I'm saying? And I don't know, man, like, my mom was like a child, so I called her. So like, there's a lot of these terms and things. I'm just used to reading like her books and shit. And like, that's how she would break it down. Like, it's a spectrum. Like, it's more about the intent of, like, the behavior. Like, the behavior itself doesn't make you good or bad. It's about, like, what you do with it, right? Like, some narcissists just want to open, you know, the best charity foundation for whatever cause they believe in. It's not inherently bad, right? Versus there's a narcissist that maybe wants to climb to the top of the corporate ranks and he willing to burn the whole fucking building down on the way up there, you know what I'm saying? That, now that person, you make some arguments for it, you know what I'm saying? Make some arguments about it. So, it's a spectrum. That's why I don't think it's inherently good or bad. I don't think artists even feel like that artists might be insane. For one, the chaser thing is good or bad. I just need you to know where you stand, bro. You're not, you're not normal, but you're an artist, so you already knew that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that is true. At this point, you should know that you're not normal. You know what I'm saying? That is true. No, not to this shit. We fall in the same boat, bro, you know? Think about how crazy we got to be to wake up and be like, I'm gonna give some advice and somebody gonna listen to it. Somebody gonna do it and it's gonna work out. That is fair enough. That is, somebody gonna work out. I can get with that. You know, definitely we have a different apprehension though towards people pulling up to us on the street and everything, than most people. So there's that. But okay, touche, touche. So, hey, we understand y'all then, definitely. We get y'all. Y'all might be a little bit wilder, but we get y'all. We're all in the same boat, riding towards the same shore, you know what I'm saying? I mean, me, I'm a competitive person, so does that, this competition, the reason for wanting to win have to be narcissism or could you just wanna be number one just because you like to be number one? I don't know, that sounds narcissistic. Yeah, man. Many gotta unpack it like, why do you wanna be number one? Where did it start? That's that shit, I'm not ready for it. No, man, bro, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Next. That's when we need a better help or sponsorship, you know what I'm saying? To push us to, is that what they call it? Better help. It is better help. Better help, bro. We should do a whole live pod session, bro. Better helping on, they haven't done that, man, they won't. They haven't, bro. I ain't seen nobody, yeah. A live therapy session. I can't say that. There was a conference one time I remember saying I'm gonna be the sponsor, like a music conference. I can't say that. Well, no, I'm not saying like better help sponsoring this kind of space. I mean, like. Oh, that type of content. If we recorded an episode and we had our therapy session actually streamed on the episode, that might be interesting, you know what I'm saying? Wow. That would be good. I would love to watch that. I don't know, man. We might need to do that. I'm trying to think of who I know that got some clear surface level issues that need to be talked about. I watched that for probably Drake or something. Well, if you think about it, that's what the Yonah Fix My Life series is about. People watching people's therapy sessions. Yeah, yeah. Right, yeah. Cause I think Waka Faka was on there, like all these type of people. Like Chief Keepers, I'm sure. Yeah. And then there was like that other series that was like a relationship camp that Soldier Boy and Waka were on, you know. So people. I ain't seen that one. That content is out of it. Yeah, it was a whole, probably VH1 or one of those kind of channels. But it was a whole series where it was like all these couples that were like hip hop couples and some relationship. Yeah, bro. I watched people get their lives together. I hope I get some free advice in there. So I ain't gotta, you know what I'm saying? Pay for it. Yeah, man. You can go to watch other people's problems. That sound like me. I could learn something from this episode. But, yeah, I think, I don't know. So it's already been done. The marketplace is already valid. We just need to actually reach out for the sponsorship. If anybody knows, I view a therapist for better help or one of their competitors, you know what I'm saying? We don't have any side we pick. We pick that money, whichever one y'all got. We will do that as well. Now, part of the interruption, I have to take this quick commercial break to let you know that we are sponsored by me because I signed myself. We signed ourselves. It's this brand-man network. That's why we're called No Labels Necessary because no label, nobody else is necessary for us to get the train moving. So if you could just subscribe to show appreciation, we'd really appreciate that. Back to the program. Last subject from the writer's camp. I think we're gonna be short on, I don't know. Maybe you got a, you could have some unpacking to do. But that question of digital marketing doesn't matter. Hmm. That was a legit question at this camp. Talking to the digital markers, arguing that digital market, you know, I didn't know how to take that for a second. So are you want me to argue my position? Is that what it is? Or, you know what I mean? Do you genuinely believe this as a digital marketing? It doesn't matter. I didn't know how to take that one. So I was actually asking questions to see truly what he thought. I didn't really care to argue and say it matter. I just, I really just wanted to understand the mindset of someone who might actually could genuinely oppose digital marketing. And it was definitely a learning experience. I always appreciate that. But what do you think about that conversation? I could see where they were coming from. Cause I think the argument was digital marketing doesn't work for the average small artists because the average small artist doesn't have the things in place to make digital marketing work. Which is, I don't know if you remember, that's where I looked back to it. He was saying like, it doesn't work because you need the content and you need the branding to a degree. You need, you know, even sometimes the image can play a part in it. Things that an artist at a certain level may not have figured out to which we then argue is that the digital marketing that doesn't work then, or is it just the artist? Right. The point I would still make. But I do get, right? Cause I think about how many campaigns we've had with smaller artists that maybe were missing two of the three things. And we would see it not work to the degree of the artist that we saw shit have all of the three things put in place or maybe even have long been established within those different things. Right. They already happened to like, you know, pretty much what we always say, like in artists with the fan base, like a good fan base, those are the easiest marketing campaigns. You know what I'm saying? Like easy, like brothers, you set some buttons up shit to start growing. You know what I'm saying? It should start working out because they have so many of the boxes already ticked off. And artists that doesn't have those boxes ticked off, we can set those same things up exact same strategies. Shit, don't start moving from day one. Now we're more or so trying to figure out what in the pipeline is stopping you from having the same results as this person over here. Maybe it is your image, maybe it is your content quality. Maybe the song is trash, you know what I'm saying? But those are still things that like I said, I will argue it's not the digital marketing doesn't work. It's like a car, bro. Like I can have the fastest car in the world. But that shit could go zero to 250 in 1.5 seconds. If I put fucking milk in that car, that shit ain't going nowhere. You know what I'm saying? Like if I put a water in the tank, that shit ain't going nowhere, bro. Like a bright vehicle, bright structure to get me from why I need to go break fast, but I'm feeding it the wrong materials. That's how I look at it. Dang man. That was a great analogy. I want you all to know that came off the top of the head. That was a beautiful one, bro. Thank you. Thank you, appreciate that. I'm just gonna start calling people with bad music, milk, man. I'm like, hey, bro, it's some milk. Just to be real with you. And they gonna have to figure it out. What does that mean? What does that mean? Like, bro, the Ferrari guy stuck, bro. Like we were ready to go, bro. You just put milk in that bitch, bro. I can't take you. I can't take you to the other side, so. Nah, I'm with that, bro. Why'd you resist it? I think, I can't really add much to that. All I'll say is, if you're a ground zero artist, I still think marketing, digital marketing can work for you. It's just a perspective that you take on what digital marketing is. Cause most people think digital marketing has to cause money, which it doesn't. So you can build relationships, you can hop in collaboration videos. Of course, for some people, y'all might not have those relationships. So you can't get access to that. But that's still categorized as digital marketing. Creating TikToks to get my initial awareness, that's digital marketing and that's free. So it does work. You can't say awareness doesn't work. To say digital marketing doesn't work is to say marketing doesn't work to me. Because all it is is awareness at the awareness level. Then when you get to the consideration level, all it is is consideration, right? It's just that function. But in the same way, in the old school, you can put flyers up and then. Nobody show up? No one show up, right? You can blast your shit on the block and nobody care to hear it, right? So it all comes down to the milk. Yeah, yeah, and I think you made a point too of like, the different expectations of every level, right? So with the artists that complete Ground Zero, of course we wanna see results, right? Like we wanna see things grow, but I'm not expecting shit to just start taking off from day one. A Ground Zero artist, I think it's more about understanding who are the people that could potentially like you. And it might take us a lot to get to that point, right? So like your $1,000 might not go as far as as other artists' $1,000, because their audience is figured out, right? Like we already know exactly what to dial in and what needs to be done to possibly scale. Yup. You, we still figuring out, right? Or the second artist, they could have been on a five, six month campaign and they're ready to start scaling things up. Versus you on week one, bro, you're not ready to get to the point to what they ask. So I do think like, will artists even trying to gauge is digital marketing like worth it for them in their career? I think it's important to understand like what you're looking for. Are you trying to understand your audience? Well, you're gonna have to understand that it's gonna be a lot of data that you bring it in that might not be as valuable because you just trying to sift through it and figure out who likes you, right? Or are you an artist that already has an audience and you understand that you're trying to find more people like them, right? Cool, your campaign might look a little bit different. Are you an artist that's already mega established and audience ain't even what you're looking for. Like we talked about on one episode about like Drake and he probably don't care about streaming numbers at this point, right? We would do a campaign for Drake. I would assume he would have much different expectations on the other end of it. Then if we were doing an artist for little who the fuck, whatever that just dropped their first song today. They're gonna be looking for two completely different measures to success, points of success. So I think that to me is what it comes down with digital marketing. I think a lot of artists, even teams, tend to go into it with like the same, looking for the same response on the other side of it. Or looking for that same impact on the other side of it which with marketing, we know that very rarely happens. Like marketing campaigns are like snowflakes, you know what I'm saying? It's very rare, two of them look alike. And produce the same results. But then even that they should be even judged the same way. Right? Like I said, I could look at three different campaigns with the exact same budget spend across three different tiers of artist levels. And I have different measures to success for each of them. You know, artists with no fans, you know the fact that you went from zero monthly listeners to 800 monthly listeners is amazing. You got the 800% plus increase, you know what I'm saying? Versus like if RSC with 100,000 monthly listeners or a million monthly listeners only got 800 monthly listeners the increase would be different over there, right? But I was like, this shit was a drop. You know what I'm saying? Like this shit just. So I think that's what to me hurts that argument a lot. We have to first in every artist house to look in the mirror and look at your campaign and go like, did this campaign not work? Because this medium I chose and truly doesn't work. But did I not do everything on my end? I could do to make it work as best as it possibly can. Cause those are two different things, right? Or did I do the right shit, period? Yeah, exactly. Or even had I picked the right shit to start with. Exactly, because you mentioned Drake. We wouldn't even recommend the same stuff for Drake as we would for little nobody, right? So Drake will probably be very PR and narrative driven because we know streams are gonna come for Drake, right? But if Drake get streams without a moment that doesn't feel like a win for Drake, right? Cause you have to maintain cultural relevance. That's a part of where he is in a game. But you have some artists that can just do 100 million streams and man, they are elated top of the world, right? So of course Drake does want to have the streams but that's like a prerequisite. Like that's a part of it. That's not the conversation. You should know we need to hit these streams. We need to figure out how we can make a conversation off of whatever I'm doing. So you have that and then the last thing goes down to those expectations for the amount of money specifically spent. And I think that's a huge part of why people will say it's not worth it. But that's why I go back to everything doesn't even take money and time. Everything is, it doesn't take a lot of time but then also some things will take more time. So I think the time and money thing is the biggest part that comes down to why people say it's not worth it. Yeah, definitely time too. Cause I mean, like we always say bro, like most of our most successful campaigns take like three months plus to really work. Like it's been very ready. We've had a campaign that in month one, you know what I'm saying? Unless the budget was crazy, you just have produced like crazy results. Typically it's like we were setting them up to where a month, two, three months later, shit is really snowballing and taking off, right? And so I think a lot of people just don't even have the patience to run a good digital marketing campaign. All right, especially when you're small. Yeah, exactly. You can't make sure it happened in a week when you're small. Yeah, bro, you make it happen in six to nine months you're lucky, you know what I'm saying? And then even I kind of always understand too the people who are already in the label system making that argument because the label system in my head is a bunch of people that have seen anomalies. You know what I'm saying? Like we've all at that stage, you've seen some things that didn't make sense. But I had a guy telling me a couple of months ago about a artist he helped pop off for like a thousand dollars but an hour went stupid off that one. And I was like, oh, that's cool. Like, you know, that doesn't happen a lot, right? Like you found a golden lottery ticket, you know what I'm saying? Like clean to that motherfucker and make sure it keeps going. Cause you might not be seeing that again. You know what I'm saying? No time soon. We've had campaigns like that, like on paper, it's like, damn, this shit does not make sense. But hey, this shit's still going. We're going to keep riding it. So I think that crowd of people specifically has a different viewpoint on it because unlike, let's say maybe us, no, not us, we've seen more, but let's say unlike the average artist, I mean, you see like one anomaly in your whole lifetime. Right, if I'm a label exec, I'm a marketing person, if I'm an A&R, I've seen anomalies enough times to know that they're possible. So what am I looking for? I'm looking for the anomaly, you know what I'm saying? Like I'm searching for that artist that I can put a thousand dollars into and get a hundred X return, not the artist that said I could put a thousand or two and get a 20% return, right? That'd be great, right? That's not, that's good, but it's not the motherfucker that gave me back a thousand X, you know what I'm saying? That's what I think people at that level are looking for, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, cause we've done both, right? And I think that's what allows us to maintain that patience. But like you said, yeah, we've seen and been the spearhead for many anomalies, right? And you look at their level, people don't even get to some of these people's level unless you're an anomaly. And that's the problem. And once you have that, I'ma call it anomalytic event. Right, now you're in the game, you have a brand or something that can now be used to create more attention, right? Cause you did something that got attention just like we talk about Drake is Drake, right? Of course you don't have to be at that level to now be known enough to now do things for free that bring attention and maintain. So you're not used to spinning from ground up and getting that ball rolling. And by nature, the first units of energy are gonna be the hardest, right? It's gonna bring the lowest return cause you're just trying to get it to the point that it's going downhill, but people are already running downhill by the time they get to many of these people. And even the people who have a better understanding that, okay, you have to break an artist. I feel like they struggle with that in between still. Like, all right, how much is it? How do I know it's worth it? Cause I only know it's worth it if this shit is popping. I only know it's worth it if, you know, I'm getting a certain amount of views, streams are moving crazy. Everything else in between feels like I'm probably not doing something right where we see it day to day. I'm like, okay, this person's on path, right? And it might take six more months but we know that moving in the right direction. So since we're clear on that, we don't mind continuing to move the ball down a field in that direction versus, oh, this ain't working. We know it worked and it worked as much as we wanted to but it did work. So yeah, I think that, of course, I don't think, I know digital marketing works, right? Like we basically built our entire career off of digital. It's gonna work, we won't be here. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, like we would not be here if it didn't work. We've done too much, made so much pop. I mean, we got digital marketing on both sides. Our presence, ourselves as a company and faces, right? And our clients, right? So it works, right? And our bank accounts, right? All sides have happened because of the digital environment. So 100% it works. But hey, if y'all have some beef with digital marketing alternative thoughts, we've already seen plenty of them. But go ahead and throw them in the comment section below, of course, we're all with it. And if you're just listening to the pod, just think, just fight us in your mind, debate us in your mind, scream it. I know some people just like, cause I've done it before, you need debating somebody like, bro, no, it's a lie, but you can't say anything to him. Like, he's so wrong. Just channel that energy to something positive and thank us for it later. Let me take a quick second to say, if you're an artist trying to blow your music up, or if you're a manager, a music professional in general, trying to help an artist blow their music up, I have something that's a game changer for you and it's completely free. As you may know, we've helped multiple artists go from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams. We've helped multiple artists go from hundreds of thousands to millions of streams, chart on Billboard, GoViral, all of that stuff. And we've now made the way we've branded multiple artists and helped them go viral completely free step-by-step in Brandman Network. All you have to do is check out brandmannetwork.com. You apply, it's completely free, but the thing is, we're not gonna let everybody in forever. So the faster you apply, the better your chance of getting accepted. Brandmannetwork.com, check it out. Back to the video. Now, the next thing we wanna touch on is Gucci Man, drop the 80 song album. But what's the best part about this? I'm gonna skip to what I think the best part about this. Is this part right here? Oh, I'm on the wrong screen. The fact that it's longer than the Titanic and they're marketing that. That is fucking marketing, bro. That's marketing. Y'all don't understand how big that detail matters. It's something that people can reference. A lot of people know culturally that it's a long ass movie and it's a picture in your head. 80 songs, that's a big number and it's meaningful in itself just cause most people aren't used to hearing 80 songs. I know Chris Brown did like 30 or 40 a couple years ago, but you lose the steam on that really quickly cause the number is a number. People have to feel it or relate to it emotionally. So to say it's longer than the Titanic and to make sure that's pushed out there, you better believe that shit is intentional and somebody smart is the one behind making that analogy. So shout out to whoever did that and y'all keep that same thing in mind as well. A great example of this as well is Apple. They would do the same thing when they came out with the iPods, rest in peace. Rest in peace or what? Rest in peace or the iPod. They would be like, instead of just talking about there's however many terabytes or megabytes, whatever their measurement was at the time, they understood that most people who can't relate to that, right? They don't speak the technical language. So to just say a thousand songs in your pocket, right? It clicks. I can have a thousand songs in my pocket and I'm used to CDs, right? Cause we were still on the education curve at that point where people weren't used to having non-physical product to mark it as a whole. So like that type of language communication, creating that picture. Man, it goes a very, very, very long way. Longer than the Titanic is in that similar space. So always keep that type of thing in mind when you want people to actually remember something about whatever you're marketing and pushing. Those are my initial thoughts on that. What you got, Jacuri? My initial thoughts was like, man, that's shit long as hell. I didn't have a lot to do. I was even thinking about the imagery aspect cause now that makes me wish that he had a longer campaign around that. Maybe like here are, I can see an IGPR campaign being here are all the things that this album is longer than, you know what I'm saying? I don't know, the space landing. Bro, you right. The Titanic, you know what I'm saying? It's still like that, but I really lean into the narrative. Exactly. Because, I mean, when I think if you're a Gucci fan, this isn't abnormal of him. He just hasn't done this in a while, but this is like 20 or 2000. How long has Gucci been around? So like 07, 06 or some shit like that? Maybe somewhere around there. Maybe let's, I feel like something between like maybe 05 or 09, probably. This will be five. Yeah. Yeah, probably. Maybe, you know, I'm sure there's some people like are you 2004, three, whatever, whatever? We're not talking about the bottom bottom, you know, the level one of the streets. But yeah, you can at least get into 2005. So Icy was probably like 2005. Yeah, I just don't know. Amen. Around that time, I was still in the country like Sean just said, we asked you to use that dance that Gucci had not yet made it to my parts of the foreign land. 2005, I just looked it up. So Icy came out 2005. Yeah, so this is old school him, right? He's very well known for dropping a lot of music. So going back to that, hey, let me take a old business model and bring it to a better time. I don't personally like that because I think there's a reason that those many, those type of projects died off. I think there was us as consumers very, very clearly saying like, bro, I'm not trying to listen to 80 songs in a row. And I was like, no, I'll be real with you, bro. Like sometimes I'd be struggling with like an hour or 15 album, but I was like, damn man, we don't mean it 42, but this shit got six more songs ago. Like that's crazy. Like I like the other stuff I heard. So I don't know, I think it's an interesting call back to his roots. But a little unnecessary, you know what I'm saying? Unless there's some like underlying game to it that we're not thinking about. I mean, the headline itself, right? The amount of songs itself and that being a thing might get us talked about more than if it was just a regular project from him. No, I agree with that. Yeah, like when you made the Titanic point, that's when it clicked for me. Like, oh, you're right. The narrative is more of the pusher than probably the actual music is. Cause it is exciting in its own because nobody's doing that. Like I said, other than Chris Brown with 40 songs, bro's like, okay, they probably be like, if we wanted that to be the narrative, we have to top the last person to make that narrative. Chris Brown, 40 songs, still makes me feel like I could have got it with 50. You know what I'm saying? They have an 80. But I get it. Let's double it, go big or go home. You know what I'm saying? Like he did 40. Yeah. Not even needed that much to be longer than the Titanic, man. I don't know. That was a, you know, a prior narrative. Hey, let's throw on a couple more or something that was clicked afterwards. But like you said, it can definitely be a campaign where you do more objects and it could be become a meme, right? Like, I don't know, sitting here listening to Gucci project and then I don't know, two days pass, right? Or you compare it to, or like you make, you roasting or something like, Gucci project longer than, I don't even wanna throw in immediate things that came in my mind actually. But like, you could have a billion different things that you go through with a campaign like that and just make that as meme. Cause I don't think people are gonna listen to 80 for real to your point. That's not something people want today. But I think it's not that people never wanted it, right? I think before it actually fulfilled a need or a space that couldn't be done in the same way because the streaming platforms didn't exist. The internet didn't exist. And it wasn't as accessible. Like iPads, iPods, right? Going back to that conversation, they were just hitting the market. iPod probably hitting like 2001, 2002. It was still like, yo, you got an iPod, bro. I'm about to steal that shit from you cause this shit's worth money. But it was still in that type of time. So a lot of people didn't have access to a lot of music, which means if I flooded at that time, you can become my whole life. You know what I'm saying? Now I got all these options. So not only are you competing with other people in general, I'm going to critique your music at probably a higher level too. You know what I'm saying? Before I'm just gonna take whatever I want. They say a lot of the masterpiece music wasn't all that good in some ways. He got his hitch, but he was able to flood the streets, flood people's lifestyle. So now I'm only looking forward to what he's putting out and building the anticipation. He was able to monopolize people's attention in their world. So I could definitely see the benefit of it back then. Today, I think that one change, the digital landscape, DSPs and us having so much accessibility to content in general, us having those options takes away the willingness and intention span to even give to that type of project for sure. Yeah exactly, like I can understand the benefit of it from an algorithmic standpoint. There's 80 different chances for something to hit. That's another thing, algorithm. So something to pick it up, move it off. Now this one shoot over there, this shoot over here. We all shoot up in 80 different directions and it all comes back. That I get, that I get, but to me it ignores the core fan experience with it. And this is like, now you're harassing me for the sake of gaming the algorithm. You know what I'm saying? Well not me, I'm not the craziest Gucci fan, but me is a me hypothetical fan, but it's like don't abuse me to get your industry narrative out there, bro. Don't do that to me. Because that is not the same thing to be clear, right? Gaming the algorithm, like getting algorithmic favor and actually getting streams is not the same as having fans and making a moment out of it. That's, I mean that's just a real thing and I feel like that's lost on artists sometimes because they're so focused on thinking about the algorithm, obviously the artists who are trying to come up, like I'm trying to get these streams, you can have plenty of those streams and it could be real streams and not relate to fans or not add to the fan experience at all, right? That's just an outcome. Yeah, or there might be things that you do to favor it that your core doesn't like. Right. And then it becomes a ball of who's the most important in the moment? Is it more important that I activate my core fans and XYZ there? Or is it more important that I do these things to get these other entities fucking with me, move me in a certain position, right? Like that's always gonna be the balance. I think you have to find as an artist is when you go left, when you go right. This to me is the moment where he went a little left, you know what I'm saying? You went a little left. Yeah, it's hard to see. I mean, I don't know Gucci's business but I wonder what the benefit would be other than him just doing his old school stuff but if it was like from an industry standpoint what benefit is it for him? Shit, you might be trying to go to hell with this leak situation. This leak situation. I've been hitting motherfuckers with the leak situation, right? Oh. Like I'm not gonna give you all the chance to put out 80 songs. I'm gonna put out 80 songs. Hey, okay, okay. I was thinking you're about to say somebody, Gucci had like a threat that somebody was gonna leak his shit but no, yeah, you talking about the general leak, yeah. Yeah. Or. I mean, they got a nudie. They got a lot of apparently they're attacking Atlanta, bro, they coming for it. I didn't know they got nudie. Yeah, bro, nudie got hit like last week like 160 songs or something crazy. Dang. Exactly. Dang. So, okay, well, let's consider this though too. That's tough, that's real tough. The artist in the fan relationship is a relationship all about curation when you think about it, right? I like you because I like the music you make but you've selected the music that you allowed me to hear, right? Selected or the production, right? That's all selection. The way you dress, the way you talk, all these things are things you have selected and you are an individual taste maker, all right? So me as a fan, I appreciate that. And then once you do this, I feel like you're violating cause you're no longer taste making, you just throwing shit out there. It's almost like how we talk about advertising some bad music on my playlist because I'm just taking money from it. That's that similar space that you're feeling is being violated and that agreement. It's like, yo man, you are taking advantage of the love that I've committed to you. You knew I was gonna invest and now you're putting me through the ringer. It's abuse actually, it's fan abuse. It is abuse, exactly bro. It's actually fan abuse. And, you know, maybe this is the fan parts, it's fans that love this and want this from them. I'm not one of those people who want that from anybody that I like. Period, you know what I mean? I'm cool with just watching them. Even those fans will say they want it lying. You say what? They lying, the ones that say they want it lying. They be the same ones don't make it past the fifth track when the album come out. But I wish you dropped 40 songs. It's like, no you don't, shut up. These fans don't know what they want, bro. No, oh, that's a fact. That's a fact, you just gotta give it to them and see how they act. I want 80 songs like, no you don't, you want 15. Here you go. Yep, yep, exactly. So I mean, you know, look, more power to Gucci. Hopefully the project does whatever he needs it to do. Yeah, I'm sure he got some box on him, man. It is, it is a good walk, bro. You gotta find him though. Yeah, exactly. Go ahead, get that shovel so you can dig and find them. Should have searched, bro. It's gonna take me the whole week to listen to it. Yeah, that's the thing. It's just time, it's the time. Okay, this is where a problem comes with that too. Let's talk about time. Gucci's fan base has aged up. Yes. Right, he has a lot of cultural respect for the younger people, the people, like we're probably the youngest of his main fan base, right? Like our age range, everybody else's older. So think about the time that they actually have for real cause they got kids, they got work, they got just other shit, taxes, hobbies, you know, Christmas time, especially around Christmas time, you know what I'm saying? So their ability to consume in that way is not even there in the same. So yeah, I don't know, I would love to hear the thought process around it outside of just narrative. And I'm sure that he's gonna find the ones that hit the most. Like nobody, nobody is dropping 80 songs and all 80 of them hit. It doesn't even mean that all of them aren't like good to a certain quality. We're just talking about the shit that's gonna make culture move, you know what I mean? Nobody's doing that. So I would love to see if something gets pulled out of it and they look to push it further though. Eight songs, bro, at least three. At least three, gotta be eight planning numbers, man. On the Gary Vee shit, I guess. We only expect one from a 15 to 20 song project. I need at least three, at least three. That's fair, see, now you're judging. You're right, now you're right. You gotta have a hit, you're hitting right. I'm a picky fan, bro. I put my boot to my arse, you know what I'm saying? Next one, that kind of shit, bro. Now I need the best from you. All the time. Oh, man, well, Ayla, we got another topic for you guys. And this one I actually love, man. Put out by One Track. I thought it used to have another letter on it. I did too, bro. I thought I was tripping. I wasn't gonna say nothing, man, you didn't bring it up. Dang, he just threw us all off. It used to be like One Track M or something, I don't know, whatever. All right, but Josh Wexler, man, like shout out to you. I don't know if you put your government out there, but he's already out there now. Shout out to you and the One Track page. Y'all go ahead and check it out because they have a lot of dope posts. Definitely support. But this is the advice that he actually gave. I should have put this in the advice column. So rate this as advice as well. I wanna know what y'all think. Why every artist should market their marketing? I'm gonna read what he said. All right, marketing is an art form itself. And sometimes the creativity of one's marketing has more potential for a viral moment than the music itself. What this means is that in those cases where your marketing efforts to promote the music stand out to a significant degree, you should advertise those attention-grabbing marketing attempts rather than the music in order to build your social profiles and repeat listeners. All right, you wrote a lot. So I'm not gonna go through all this before we stop. For Baby Tron's most recent album rollout, his marketing team had an incredibly detailed 3D billboard put up in Times Square, which can be seen on the next slide. And they use footage of it to make their hype, make the hype he had in New York viral on the internet because it was good content about a big artist. Okay, because it was good content about a big artist, I imagined that they received free marketing from this as well because posting it could likely lead to growth for any platform. All right, Bet, he's hitting on all the points. All the points are being not touched on right here. Let me see if I can go to this next slide so people can actually see what the Baby Tron posts of the billboard look like. Check this out, folks. Oh yeah, that shit was hard. I'm understand that. Yeah, beautiful. Listeners, y'all come to the episode so y'all can see. But, yo, marketing to marketing is the thing. It's the truth. It's what we talk about all the time. We never explicitly say it in that way, but that's what we're telling people to do all the time. Even when we just talked about literally the Gucci project, we just said the narrative can go bigger than the project, the songs itself, right? Marketing your marketing, as he said, is an art form itself. I'm gonna go ahead and say this is top tier advice. I'm gonna give it 10 out of 10. And not only that, if we allude to the conversation about two chains, we had probably like six episodes ago, your marketing, if you market well, you always have great creativity and presentation and packaging in relation to your brand. That now becomes something that not only fans appreciate in experience, but other brands appreciate experience. Just like two chains became the head of marketing or I forgot the actual position, but he was head of that advertisement campaign for Crystal, right? They say, oh, I appreciate this person's mind, their perspective, they can add some creative value to my campaigns or to my fashion brand if people appreciate the packaging of how you dress. You always have a certain sense of style. Everything you do should be marketed individually and has its own potential to blow, right? Your fashion can be a brand or a thing of itself. Your music is a thing of itself. As an artist, every bit of you is something that you should be looking to monetize and market as its own level of greatness. So not only does he hit the nail with the marketing aspect of it, you should market everything that you do in its own way. Of course, that becomes easier as you get bigger. But as he said, especially for a large artist, literally you just sharing that you did this, right? Become something that can move virally because Page is already wanna talk about it because it's something that creates conversation and creates growth for themselves. And that's the one of the like go-to tricks. I call it like a marketing one-on-one trick at this point to me. Literally create a billboard. You only need one of them and then share it with the internet. People say billboards aren't valuable, but billboards still have the value just because it's something in the physical world. And when you share that something happened in the physical world, in the digital world, it feels more real. It feels more cool. So you can think far beyond just billboards, but all you need is one. You can pretend like you did it in the whole city. Honestly, I've had people to do when I did this with companies like when it wasn't even, like before I was even in music, you could just Photoshop a billboard and just say you did the shit. Because nobody knows, man. You know what I mean? Nobody knows where it is. If anything that creates commentary, well, where is it? Hey, that's engagement on this post. Let them views go up. So, no, no, I love this marketing, your marketing comment. And you know, you're getting your love on this. The next 10 times I say it, at some point I might forget to cite you, but know that you got it this one time right here. Josh, so, you know what I mean? The love has already been exchanged. What you think, Corey? Yeah, but I just like the love to the art form that is marketing, bro. You know what I'm saying? Because I feel like it doesn't get enough credit for being an art form the way it is. Like brown stringing together, just copying this content, bro. It's like, come on, man. But no, I think you already hit a lot of main points, but there are going to be times where I think it's the artist you have to accept that your music might not be the most interesting focal point of the campaign. It's great when it is. It makes everybody's job so much easier when it is. But there are times when realistically it's not, you know what I'm saying? So then that kind of is when it comes down to how savvy is your marketer or you as a marketer to be able to create a conversation point out of what might be mid, you know what I'm saying? Like to be real with you, you know what I'm saying? Cause good marketing is going to elevate a mid song, you know what I'm saying? Like good marketing is going to take an amazing song and get it out of here, right? But either way it's going to level up the situation if you win it. So I think that's just what it is, bro. Like you said, I like that he framed it with big artists. I think big artists are the ones who get the leverage to be able to step outside of the music for the narrative a lot of the time. When you're a smart artist and you're building your audience, now we, a lot of times I want to hear about none of that other shit, you know what I'm saying? Unless the music is good, that's a touch of, like the Eam tripling situation, right? Like it's like narrative leads back to good music, you know, or at least, you know, good to okay music depending on how you're looking at it. So we cool with here, right? Versus that led back to some trash, what they have been and talked about as it was. And I'm glad you brought his situation up because there's a nuance to the market, your marketing as well, right? This is blatant marketing of clear marketing, right? So Billboard, which we know is marketing, something you do for that type of effort, or you could have a flyer for your concert and it's super dope or whatever, or you covered up a whole establishment, you know what I mean? And you've marked it that, but people know that that's marketing. You look at the Eam tripling situation, that too was marketing, they contrived some events and then they marketed that, right? But that itself was marketing and beyond the music. So that, it's a top down analogy where you have the very clear, but there's nuances in between where, look, just market yourself doing stuff. That's what it comes down to, of course it's like, you know, why and what you're doing matters, but just market yourself doing stuff other than the music. Yeah, that's a good point too, because now even if we take it outside of, and you already kind of touched on it, but if we take it outside of just fan perspective when we go back to industry, your peers, people you're networking with, but they wanna see proof that you out here doing things and taking things as seriously as you want them to believe you are. And I mean, one of the most well-respected things across the music industry in every circle is how the marketing is executed, bro. Everybody in every genre, every entity, everywhere, respects a good marketing plan that was put together and worked out, you know what I'm saying? And so a lot of times your marketing can be the way that you convince these people that you feel like a power player, that you want your corner to take you seriously. Because you know, that's the part, everybody knows that marketing is one of the hardest parts of building the artist up, I would say. Like it's easily top three, one of the most expensive parts. Could be RU top five or top 10 is one of the harder things to do, you know what I'm saying? Depending on who you are, if you're us, you know what I'm saying? If you're everybody else, I can get why you might rank it while you rank it, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, everyone in the industry respects a great, well-executed marketing campaign. Everyone from the A&R at the label to the goddamn show promoter, you know what I'm saying? At the concerts you're pulling up to. We nerd out on that shit, man. Yeah, exactly, bro, like they love it. So it's like, here's your way to show your fans, hey, I make real world moves, right? Or things in real life happen around me. Because that's essentially what you're doing about marketing and marketing. Showing them like, hey, things happen around me in real life. So if you to show your industry peers like, hey, I am making things happen around me in real life, whether organically or through me executing some elaborate marketing plan I put together, either way it's win-win, bro. I'm showing my fans that I do shit in real life, which like you said, fans love it when they feel like their internet person is making moves in the real world. Like, we all love that, you know what I'm saying? And people in the industry love to see that your internet celebrityism is translating to some real world shit. Hey, this looks like a safe investment. It's gonna be equate to more than just streams and views, you know what I'm saying? So marketing, your marketing is a win-win across the board. And like I said, it puts more respect on the name of the market, bro, you know what I'm saying? Way more, way more. People gotta respect our paintbrush, you know what I'm saying? Our paint, you know? And I start running down these KPIs and these target results, bro, you know what I'm saying? It's magic happening. See, that's the thing. People don't care about the numbers like that. People want the numbers, but people don't care about the technical aspect of the marketing, right? They don't care about the science of it. They care about the art where they appreciate the art. It's hard for them to truly appreciate the science of it. But of course, that's what I've always loved about marketing, that it is art and science. And the best ones can be creative, be artful, but it impacts the science, right? Moves the numbers. It's not just, oh, you're doing some cool creative looking shit, but it doesn't impact anything, right? And that's what people get lost. They're either over there or they're your super number focus and you're moving a needle, but you can't get those exponential results from just doing the technical shit either. You're just kicking the ball down the field. It's like watching football and they keep doing the short passes. You could get there eventually, but it's never gonna be that sexy entertaining thing that people are playing the highlights. And it goes through the roof, shared on every channel. People are talking about it. So when you wanna go big, you're still gonna need the long ball and Randy Moss to catch that bitch with one hand over three niggas. You know what I'm saying? Like you need to have some art, something that's beautiful, cool that can be worth having a conversation about. But that's that balance. And I feel like most people not only struggle with it, most people don't know that that's what they're struggling with when it comes to marketing. Yeah, yeah. You just said it too. I think it's the language barrier. They don't know how to communicate that and things outside of the number. So like an artist might be saying, hey, I want 10 million views on my video, but what they're really saying is I want an impactful moment that seems larger than life, right? 10 million views is just the way they know how to quantify or express it through what they understand comes from digital marketing. Hey, the last artist I saw get 10 million views, you had a larger moment life. So that's what I want. 10 million views, right? It's like, you really want the moment. That moment could come before that point, right? Yes. Or there might be a lot more that needs to be done to make you have the potential to get that type of moment. But yeah, I think it's just a language barrier. You know what I'm saying? We got people who speak the language of marketers and marketing like very loosely, because what you see in there, you see numbers being talked about, KPIs, cost per clicks, cost per weather. Like that's what gets talked about in terms of marketing a lot of the time. Or you see like these bigger, larger in life marketing moments that are very inaccessible to you. And so you think that either marketing is either all clicks and likes or it's all these big, larger in life moments that happen all the time. It's like, there's a middle ground between both of those, you know what I'm saying? And you know why marketing is so disrespected, right? Because they're right for what they can do, bro. That's the course out there. Course around every corner, bro. Everybody feels like they can do it because it's one of those few fields that people can do it by mistake and reap the benefits. And because they reap the benefits, they think they're good. But you can't keep repeating it because you don't know why. You can't break it down. So sometimes, you know, you can explain what someone did and they'd be like, well no, I wasn't thinking about all that. That's cool that you weren't thinking about all that and it's just happening for you. Yeah, exactly, that might even be why it worked because you were able to do it so authentically. And you'd have to worry about acting it out. But that doesn't mean that it didn't work because of the principles that are true. Then you apply that across the board, right? For an actual marketer and in true marketing strategies, you're able to do it again and again, apply it to these multiple situations in a way that feels authentic. That's what marketing really is, right? But yeah, again, so many people blow up, go viral, all these different things without even understanding why. And they think they're a marketer. They think they know better. They do it on one platform and understand that you learn how to hack a platform which means you might have some marketing talent in you. But that doesn't mean you not apply it to multiple platforms. It landscape completely changes. You can figure it out real quick. That's what a true marketer will be able to make happen. So look, I know artists y'all feel disrespected, but we feel for you in our own ways because we feel disrespected multiple times over. Yeah, one more person tell me they know how to market because they can set up a Facebook app, bro, I'ma lose it. Raise my shit. Hey, exactly, exactly. Bro, did you just square up? Did you put your finger? Hey, put it there, put them there. Oh man, that's hilarious. Jacore, he got them paused for y'all. He got them paused for y'all. Sorry, bro. They got some more added. He added another example. So let's put this back up. Metro booming, see, I feel weird for saying the GM booming because I was thinking about something else. Example two, I was trying to stop myself. Example two, Metro boomers project, heroes and villains had more of a market the concept approach. The concept of the album was that of a sequel to his not all heroes wear capes from 2018. The idea is that all of the features and producers on the project fall into the category of either a hero or a villain. This created a conversation about the album separate of the music which resulted in tons of free marketing as well. All right, next slide. Some features that I think, okay, he's showing a slide example of someone. I think it said, let's see what it's supposed to say. Some features that I think we can see on Metro boomers, new heroes and villains. All right, he's just talking about some of the conversation that came from Metro boomers post, all right, in that. So if you think you took any value from this, shout out to Josh at One Track. Go ahead and follow him. If y'all got value from that post or find him, you know what I mean? Now, going back to Metro boomers, project, that was something that was very clear. I mean, we kind of talked about it, right? It's a project that was more about the experience, right? The production of itself as almost a mini movie is not a project that's built on singles that are supposed to go crazy. Yeah, he built the album soundtrack to his own movie. Yes, he built the soundtrack to his own movie, right? And there were some moments that, like I said, I wish like the weekend track I feel like could have really been something if they really leaned into it. It should have been an all weekend type of track, but I was trying to make it hit. I feel like that could be a weekend hit. And I don't think you need a rapper on this song as much as I love 21. And that's the first song I ever felt like, and I could have went without 21 on that in terms of like a feature collab. What was another song off of that project that could have been a hit single if maybe it wasn't in the scope of that project that wasn't seeking for hit singles in that way? I have to look at the track list. That's a deep question. That's a deep question. That's a deep question. Like could have been a hit without the, if it wasn't in the context of the rest of it. Right, because it was intentional about being a hit, right? Not even just the context of it, but just because of the context they didn't seek to make it a hit. So they added production, you know, all these production things that took away from that is a different approach. Like, oh no, we're building this for a soundtrack. We're going to add a separate feature here or we're going to change the production up here to mimic a change of scenery or mood versus we're just trying to produce an earworm worm and see this thing playing on a radio so people are bumping in the clubs or their cars. It wasn't about that. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, let me whip out my old Spotify real quick. All right. Cause I mean, my first instinct is the only time the intro song. That one, I don't know if I could have seen that one being a hit. That one was one of my favorite ones. No, the second half of it bro, without the. Oh. Never had the first half, yeah. The second half of it. See, that's, you're proving my point. That's what I'm saying. Right, there are like points of the song. If you think about, and this is what producers do today all the time, right? Once sampling became a thing, right? They were literally take these old ass songs, right? And just take that one part that could have been a hit and then make a hit out of that one bit of the song. Like if you listen to, you know, Shawty Lowe, what's the official name of that song? They know. They know, there we go. If you listen to Shawty Lowe, they know and find the song that it was made from is one of man drill songs, right? And that's like an old group. Literally that song sounds nothing like that except for that five seconds of the song. And they literally took that five seconds of the song and just played it the whole song. The rest of it is so detached. If you think about like how different the beginning of that song that you're referencing of Metro Vulmans sounds in the second one. I mean, you're talking about hearing flutes, church bells, it's stupid different, bro. So I think what you're talking about right here, like, yeah, if y'all just leaned into that second half of the song, it could have been a hit. But that was, which was it called again? On Time. But I get it though, bro, because like that intro song is probably one of the best intro songs in a long time, especially when you talk about the narrative aspect. I told you like my interpretation of it. You know what I'm saying? And just kind of what I was getting from it where it's like, yo, this first half sounds like the superhero showing up to say it the day. Like, oh, shit about to be good. We okay, like Superman showed up and then you have the beat drop. And that to me sounds like the part of the show where it's like, you know, the superhero goes and punches the villain and they realize it doesn't hurt. And then it's like, oh, shit, like this nigga about to fuck us up. Like, no, the day is not safe. We actually just realized it got much worse because the person that can't save us can't do anything. You know what I'm saying? That's what that to me is what that transition from John Legend to that future sound like. I was like, yo, this shit is beautiful. This shit is crazy, bro. Like he just walked me there. So I get it. I get why they had to do it that way. See that right there goes back to the importance of marketing, your marketing, making sure the concept is clear and clean because now you went into it with that type of ear and perspective. Yeah, looking for that. And you have these visuals going through your head throughout the project. Yeah, that's true. That's a beautiful thing. That movie definitely set up for it, but it's like, if you haven't seen the short movie he dropped with it, it does beautifully set it up. I would tear up if I was a part of that project. And you gave that description right there. He gets it. Like, bro, there's a beautiful moment right there, bro. You just brought that shit all together, bro. It's like, it's not like making something creative. And then people get it. Yeah, that's true, bro. And from song one, like it didn't take me five, six songs to get into it. Like song while I was out, I'm right where he wants me to be at, bro. I'm here, bro. I'm here for the heroes in the villa. Hey, talk about marketing and marketing. Remember when I said, right to the two James, you market your shit, people respect your eye and the way you approach things and now they'll hire you for other stuff. If I'm a movie supervisor, music supervisor, hey man, this dude can do all my soundtracks. And I know it's a soundtrack check out there. So he might not be marketing to the charts in that bag, but hey, this is a catalog, right? I always say, artist, well, I always say since the last three weeks, artist, your career is your catalog. And he just put out a catalog that shows that he can very well be a music supervisor or he can produce the soundtrack, right? For a scary movie, a superhero movie and any other category that applies. Yeah, right, right. This shit is beautiful right here. This shit is beautiful. Now let's switch to a whole another direction because Bryson, man, Bryson, man, you represent something right now. Look, I never really watched a Bryson Tiller interview. Probably because Bryson Tiller was never doing interviews. Of course, yeah, he was doing a lot. Okay, so I never looked at him close. He don't look LeBron-ish, do you? I can see why you're saying that. I was like, this dude look LeBron-ish, man. I never knew. No one ever told me he looked like LeBron a little bit. Like, I don't think 100% of the way, but I can see where you going with it. I think it's the beard. That's why I said ish, you know what I'm saying? LeBron-ish, okay, okay. All right, let's get into this. I don't know, you need an answer right now or here. Would you say yeah? Hell yeah. Hell yeah, absolutely. Well, I don't know, some people are just like, is it so it would only be Rihanna that would have to give you an offer to perform or is it like Super Bowl is on the list of like bucket? All right, so I'm gonna clarify. She's asking him, right, about the Super Bowl. Is he hype about performance for the Super Bowl or is he doing it because Rihanna acts? Actually, it's not confirmed that he's doing it, but they were just talking about the possibility because Rihanna's actually about doing the Super Bowl. So let me clarify that because I probably started at a weird place. Get list items. For me, no, I don't necessarily care about performing like that, like especially not the Super Bowl. I mean, that'd be cool. I mean, who knows one day, maybe. Yeah, I'm trying to get on the man's singer. You know anybody? Huh? That's all I wanted to play. They're right there, they're right there. And this is why the old folks be getting upset with these young folks. I don't really care about performing, all right? He don't care about performing. And then he said, especially the Super Bowl, which is funny. And I might even comment from like a, I'm an old head being upset with it, but I could just see it. He like, damn, you know, and cause he said it like without any energy as I'm saying something polarizing or I'm not, I'm not even saying like, I hate like all the old school or how they, I don't want to do all that. It's just like a, it was pure in spirit. I don't really care about that. You're like, what do you mean? You don't care about performing. It's a, I just think it's such an interesting space that we're in musically, that there are so many artists that share this sentiment. And there are so many artists, we go back to the narcissism conversation that actually don't want to be seen, but they do want to get the music and they actually want to try to figure out how do I get both my and an enemy? An enemy, I hate that word. And my success in music, right? Like how do I remain anonymous while I get that success? And they genuinely want that. So I think it's definitely a new type of artist that's able to find success. But on the other side, I kind of hate the fact that there are so many artists that don't appreciate performing and still perform, right? Cause that's the other part. Like, I also don't want to see you on stage, you know what I mean? If you don't even care to perform. I mean, probably no choice. Yeah, maybe in some situations. I mean, cause that's how you get a bag, right? A certain level of bag. So I mean, it's not the only way you get a bag. Sometimes you be owing bags. You said you what? Sometimes you be owing bags. So yeah, many do, many definitely owe some bags. But it's just like, yo, if you got that out there that you don't like performing, me has asked someone who really does truly appreciate a good performance. It's like, man, all right, well, I'm not gonna go to your show. It's already bad enough if you're just not good at it. It's like, oh yeah, you don't even care to do it. Now, again, like this is nothing to give Bryson. I think he's very, actually very congruent in his old image and how he's presented himself the whole time through. So it's not like he out there like just acting or like trying to do a whole bunch of shows and running it up in that way either, right? But man, it's interesting that this even exists these days and you got a lot of artists who either, not only do they not care to do it, let alone like the, hey, I don't care about the Super Bowl. This thing that's big to you, right? And it's not big to me, right? That's just a natural of the changing of ties. But many of them are scared to perform, right? Or, you know, the anxiety, they don't like the experience that comes along with. And I think that's that other conversation where some of them might just say I don't like and I think, well, I don't care about, but it's more from a standpoint of, you know, mental health type things that come along with it that they can't really get with. Yeah, a hundred percent. Like it's a little bit of fear in there, but I do get it, you know? We gotta think about, they're also paying attention to the internet landscape. I see my influence on homies making a hundred katers, man. All he did was live stream a couple of times, you know what I'm saying? And put some t-shirts out, right? Like, oh, I see, you know, my other creative endeavor and homie just putting out some shirts and he's only doing shit that he ain't got to jump around on stage for 40 minutes, you know what I'm saying? To make this money. So I get it, bro. Jump around on stage, you said that. Like, I mean, a performance monkey thing, like we're on some menstrual shows types of stuff right there. I mean, basically, man. So it depends on how you look at it. You know, for the ones that love to do it, they probably don't sit away for the ones that don't like to do it at 100% sit away. You know, like, oh, you're just making me jump around on stage. But these people don't even really like it like that. So I get it. I think the music landscape is opened up enough to where those artists can even constantly think that, you know what I'm saying? Like you said, about 10, 20 years ago, this one even been a conversation. Get on stage, bro. Quit playing with me. Today he's like, you know what? Let's talk about it seriously. There may be a pathway to you being a successful artist without having to do that. But then to me, that also requires a certain level of honesty from the artists about like, how big do they really want to be? Cause there's no way you becoming a super, super star artist without a good performance cadence. No way. 100% not, you know what I'm saying? But you can be arguably a successful artist without ever touching the stage. You know what I'm saying? And I guess it's very possible to be in a good space and not have to do some of the traditional things that you would have to do to excel yourself to like that level of an artist. So I get it. If you are an artist that doesn't wanna be in this upper tier and you don't like performing, should I be trying to figure out how to make money without performing? You know what I'm saying? Boy, I ain't gotta leave the house. And 20K hit the count this month. But that'll be beautiful. And there's too many ways to do it. So many ways, bro. Like I said, man, it's a very, very possible thing. I mean, and so many are doing it. I mean, that's just the same as us in many cases. Like, yo, man, like go into work, what you mean? Yeah, exactly, bro, leave my house. It's like, man, I'm making all this money from the crib. And you want me to leave the crib and make the less or maybe just the same amount or maybe just a little more. I don't know, I lost that. I lost that in peace of mind in my travel to get there. Exactly, bro. I lost that drive a man to go, but leave the house. Yeah, so no, I definitely get that. I mean, I think a lot of, we relate to perform performing in its own way to showing up for work, because that is their showing up for work, right? Going into the office. I think that's a pre-relatable analogy. So like, yeah, I say this for the snippet's sake of it. Gotta be aware. Artists showing up for their performance today is equivalent to regular job, nine of fivers showing up to work. Many people just don't want to do it. And you can get away with actually not doing it in the way the internet is set up today. Zoom exists for a reason. Zoom exists for, hey, bro, that'd be wild. Somebody try to do a performance. A Zoom performance? Yeah. I watch that. At least one, depending on who it was. Yeah, I mean, there's no difference in a live stream, right? Yeah, exactly. Quality might be a little off. At least I can show that screen. True, true. Okay, so yeah, even that, the proof of concept is down there there. Proof of concept down there. All right, but so let's get here. We got this one last thing. Gotta play and discuss. All right, go here, because Rich Homie, your boy Rich Homie Kwan says he couldn't drop music for two years. I want to talk about the impact of that. Uh-oh, let's go. So during that time, yes, of course, I'm looking at music. What does that do to your creative process? Oh, man, it slowed me down. You probably got some hits in your headphones. Just making stuff for himself. Oh, man. Yeah, I was definitely still recording, but it was almost like, should I record? Should I continue to record when I'm going through a litigation? I can't drop any music. I see my peers taking off. So it was depressing a little bit. Right, is it hard to see your peers taking off when you know you're like, damn, I'm going to sit down? Oh, it's just more so hard to see. Yes, it was hard to see my peers take off because I was going to sit down. And the reason I had to sit down. Right, yeah, yeah. It wasn't like you said I'm going to... I want to sit down, but for a little game of lawyer, hey, look, man, you can't drop any music. You haven't even been paid for your regular stuff yet. So we had to put some money, you know. What about when we got smooth, like quarantine and pandemic? Were you creating then or does that take you down even more of a slope? No, our pandemic definitely helped my creative process. Around our pandemic, to be honest, was the time like I started feeling myself again. I started getting my mojo back. He was going through a litigation with TRG, so I couldn't... All right. Oh, man. So there's a couple of levels of things that I want to talk about. I'm going to give you the context of this interview and when you brought it up and why you brought it up. But first, we could just address the two years of not being able to drop music. It's very interesting to me. I think you talked about this beforehand or you just mentioned, he didn't really make it known that he was in that period. Yeah, he was going through this. He was going through this. And then I was like, yeah, because you actually do need to be like, yo, bro, I can't drop music. You got to get that attention because you can't drop music. People, if you are not top of mind and people aren't hearing new music from you to judge, then a lot of people are just going to assume you fell off. They're going to assume you tucked away and things ain't going good for you, you down bad. If you say I can't drop music, one, you get the attention to explain why you're not dropping music. Two, you have the ability to win people's hearts because you're going through a situation. So you get some empathy from people, right? And you build the story because when you come back, people want the story. They will remember that. Now you're giving them an episode of this story. Oh, he was going through it. Talk about a hero, right? Heroes and villains with Metro Boomer Ship. People want to hear that story so now they can watch you rise from those ashes or at least see if you're going to be able to come back from it, right? So you miss out on all that when you go through stuff like that and you don't mention it. It's the equivalent of like somebody going to jail and not letting people know they're going to jail. Not having to free meet campaign or something like that. Free X, right? X as in whoever. Put it in there. So like, cause obviously you can't win on everything else. So at least lean into the narrative but it might be an Atlanta thing at that time because if you really look at the climate, he didn't mention it and you know the Migos went through that too, right? They're not being able to drop music. And I honestly, you know, I wasn't necessarily as much in the music industry at the time as well. So maybe I would have known if I was like doing what I do today. But I didn't really know that they were in a thing where they couldn't drop music and go into litigation until they were aft out of it and they were talking about it in like a complex interview or something. Yeah. Right? Were you aware like when that they couldn't because of that specifically? Now I think the complex interview might have been when I learned about it too. And though it is why I give them a little bit in for the doubt. My guess is the lawyer probably told them not to talk about it as much, right? And if we think back to that time specifically, like social media wasn't looked at as like the place to add your grievances like it is. Yes, that is true. You know what I'm saying? Like rich homie coin today probably would do that. Yeah. Rich homie coin back then, there was no blueprint for people really doing it like that. You know what I'm saying? To think of it that way. I don't know if we had live streams back then like that, right? The culture for it was in there. Yeah. So I give them the benefit of the doubt in that. You know, maybe even it was a situation where I don't want to speculate like too much, but I do give it some benefit of the doubt. It might have been some entity saying like don't talk about it in that way. And with that being said, we are not legally vice. We are just talking strictly from marketing standpoint and what we see there. So if you are down bad legally referred to your lawyer first and foremost, whatever we say. And then come back and like and subscribe. Exactly. And then make your way right back up here. So I do give them that benefit of the doubt. Like maybe someone's telling you not to do it, right? I didn't know I could do it. But other than that, y'all agree with you, bro. If I was an artist today going through that, bro, I'm talking about it. Unless there is some crazy legal repercussion on my side. Like you said, talk to the lawyer because it might be. If it ain't, I'm talking about it. If it is, I'ma shut up. I'ma find, this is when you start leaking shit through fans, you know what I'm saying? Yep. Yep. But like these academic, I got some sauce for you. You just can't tell nobody got it from me. That's true. That's when I already started dipping the shit like that. Here's an example, right? Cause you do and you never know what could happen. Remember I told you that I was talking to somebody. I actually don't remember who specifically this was, but we were running a campaign for him. No, they inquired about running a campaign, but the caveat was he didn't have social media. Oh yeah. I remember. Right? And he couldn't be online at all, like, hey, bro, nah, we can't do it. Yeah, that's the whole thing, bro. How did this come about? He was in some kind of beef with some other person. I don't even know if the other person was a rapper too, but he was in a beef, right? I guess he stole their chain, bragged about it on the internet. And that caused more conflict down the road, da, da, da, da. As it would. Of course, of course it would. So the judge was like, hey, bro, you can't use social media, right? At all. It's cut off. So then of course that's even worse than not talking about the fact I'm in this case. I can't even at least create awareness with my post outside of my music, you know what I'm saying? Like, and just do normal people stuff and let people be a part of my day-to-day life or my dating or whatever your brand is, you know, however you move. So, you know, there are cases where, you know, depending on what the reason that you're in a situation is, it might make sense not to talk about the situation, right? So, again, speak to the lawyers. Now on the other side, the rest of the situation, the context of what he asked is, Big Boy was talking about the splitting of Kwan and Doug. Oh, yeah. Get emotional thinking about it. So, Tom. That really, that was one of the most meaningful points in my life, man. There was a, you know how there's like these the best rapper of all time rankings and the best projects of all times. And then you have your, I don't really give a fuck about that shit. This shit has impacted me more than any of those other things. So, I'm not in the race trying to say it's better than X, Y, and Z. You want to get objective cool, but the impact that shit had on me and the point of my life and where it caught me and how I was moving the way I was moving and I'm not moving that way no more, it was perfect. It was perfect, man. So, I have so much affection and affinity for that project right there. And then they split. And in asking about the split, Big Boy asked, does, how do you feel about like Doug taking off? I think, ironically, we mentioned Amigos. I think Amigos was one of the other peers, but specifically he was asking, you know, Doug, and was he in a space of like jealousy, hatred? How did that whole situation go? And that's when Kwan brings up. Well, the thing that hurt was I wasn't even able to drop music at that time, right? You broke? So, you think about the perception. It's like, a lot of the perception is like, yo, Doug just left that man like in his dust. He didn't need, like he didn't need Kwan, right? But Kwan must have needed Doug, just because Kwan kind of, you know, quote unquote disappeared for a bit. And again, I didn't know that Kwan was in the case. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know that like Doug and Birdman was more of the relationship and Kwan wasn't a part of that as much as Doug bringing him over. So I knew he had probably some support that might have helped Doug even more. But I think that that's that type of thing that changes to, that changes how you see stuff, but fans a lot of times aren't privy to, which frustrates me sometimes about fan opinion. Cause like you don't know what's actually happening or not, you know, another reason why it would have been nice to have that out there. Because, you know, of course, I think that him and Doug both could have had fruitful careers separately. Of course I would have loved to see them again, but also the way that shit hit me, it's hard to even repeat that. So maybe it's one of those things to like, you know, that's better left just as one in terms of that project. But, but yet it's all these factors, man. There's so many factors in terms of the artist's perception and what they're able to do and how the team moves around it. And this Doug, not just Doug, this Quan situation is yet another example of it. It's like, yeah, you split, that's tough, right? And he said, interestingly enough, that a lot of the beef was more so between their squads and not him and Doug, right? And I've heard that between a lot of different people where it's like, it's more squads and not keeping them together than it is us ourselves. I think Birdman and Master P has had like a similar story where, you know, they come from certain places, too much real life and blood has been shed. There's no way to truly bring it together and it's just best to do your own thing. So it sucks to say that, but I also don't know if Doug would agree. Doug might be like, no, I think it was you. You know what I'm saying? Like to each his own, but it's like you have that type of situation that creates some kind of split. And then now, like what's gonna happen next? And in that period where people are like, what happens next, you have some real life gone, like that. I don't know, man, like outside of marketing, you're the fact that you're in it, right? Outside of not considering the legal situation, right? We don't know. Outside of just saying, hey, I can't drop music and trying to keep a conversation around yourself in that way. What else would you have done? See, if we go back to that time, I honestly don't have an answer for that time because it was so different. I think that was happening today. If it was an artist at that level, I'd be like, bro, go stream, like go be a Twitch streamer, go keep yourself in the conversation through other things. Like, who's a great example? He's like T-Grizzly. When T-Grizzly was kind of out recently for making more money off of streaming, video games, and he did other music. That was a great narrative for him in my opinion, right? Because it put him back in the conversation. He coincided with the music conversation. And it was a way for him to stay relevant and not saying he has a similar situation, but if he wasn't in that type of situation, it's like we still think about him because he has this other thing going on. Or I think about someone like Snoop, right? Snoop is super relevant when he's not dropping music because he does so much shit to keep his face out there. He's doing shows with GQ and like Sports Center and shit like that, right? Like putting his face out there and other media entity. So I don't know if the resources in the doors were open for 2013, 2014, Rishon Mekwan to have been able to do that. So that person, I genuinely don't have an answer for. It was like whatever year it was, 2015, 20, whatever year it was, I don't know, you know what I'm saying? Because the landscape was different. But I think what artists today can learn from that is that you are in a different situation. Someone telling you that you can't make music isn't the career killer like it was shit, even like five years ago, you know what I'm saying? A couple of years ago, because you can find something else to follow the attention to. So that's the only thing I can think of, bro. I would have made a show, bro. Actually, they had YouTube back then, bro. I would have been on YouTube, vlogging, grinding it out every day, bro. Like, fuck it, y'all can't hear me through the music. Y'all gonna hear me through this content shit, you know what I'm saying? And these vlogs and I'm gonna get my grievances or whatever I'm thinking out through this since I can't give it to you through the music. That's what I would have did. That's what I think it comes down to. Create awareness some other way. You already have enough attention on you. So you'll find another outlet to keep your name out there and you can go with that. Yeah, bro. Y'all go do like a publicity stunt or something. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, a publicity stunt. And just don't reference the music. If you can't talk about it or whatever, so just let people ask and let even those conversations that come from it come because people might like why isn't this person dropping music, all right? Let that happen. You never answered, all right? Or he's just, he keeps gaming. You know, it's gonna be in the comments. Like, when are you gonna come out with your next shot? Like people were doing Orianna, right? Like, were you gonna drop some more music? And it's been like, how long now? Like you said nine years or? Two got down long. Crazy, crazy long. And then they get their answer when that answer comes. Like you can connect the dots, but as long connected dots, because as long as that energy's out there in the universe, you can now make a connection with that energy, but if you just absent. Yeah, like we talked about maintaining it. If you can maintain the attention, you can always flip it back to the music. Can always. You always flip it back. But if you lose the attention, then you better just start from ground zero. And that's the hard thing to do. Yeah, even if you're a bigger artist, like you might not be starting from complete ground zero, but in their eyes, you be back at ground zero. Yep. I ain't seen from you. I ain't heard from you. You ain't seen no gifts, you ain't put no bangers out. You ain't featured on nobody's shit. Nah, bro, you gotta work your way back up. Hey, you know how it is, man. You can't, just like any other relationship, you can't just disappear, then come back and act like it's all good, you know what I'm saying? You think I ain't listening to no other artists? I think I ain't out here in these East streets downloading albums, listening to singles, bro, come on. Hey, hey. So I think that was a very well stated approach. And any artist going through something today, y'all can take just that approach. Your thing might be different. You might not be a streamer. You might not be a YouTuber, whatever that looks like. You might get on TikTok, whatever that looks like. If you go into one, because even if you're between tracks, I think that still applies, right? It's not even about can you drop music because you're down bad. And that way it's not time to drop music again. So if you're somebody who actually would like to be, or doesn't mind to be out there in front of people because you're not going for the I don't wanna be seen or bothered type of route, then these are the best ways to do it, right? Some other interests that is adjacent to the music or just you got, it's a hobby of yours and let people, you find a new fan base in that way too. Because you're doing this new hobby, you do basketball, next thing you know, people are like, oh man, like you like basketball and people like you for a whole other reason. So if your career or your music don't go like how you need it to. Now you're up there doing basketball tournaments or streaming around basketball or they know that you like sneakers and you're showing up at sneaker con and shit like that, like Wale was doing and being involved and doing sneaker collabs. So if anything, it's insurance at the very least. Now with that said, that was our last topic today. This is episode number 14, check us out Tuesdays. Check us out Thursdays. We're here, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube. Amazon, Amazon, you know, probably Deezer and any obscure, you know, I don't know. But if they do, we're on there. If Audio Mac does podcast, we're on there. They probably don't. But if we would be Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm Brad Manshine. I'm Kobe. And we out.