 Wow, what's up everybody? Once again, it's Brand Man Sean and today I got one question. Where in the world is Metro Boomin? In year 2017, Metro Boomin was on top of his game. He was number one in the Billboard 100 of songwriters and total single sales for a hip hop producer. He was number one again. He had 22 million sales. The next best sales for a producer was at 8.6 million. Metro just wasn't at the top of the game. He was on top of the top of the top of the game. Still with all this success in April of 2018, Metro Boomin announced his on Instagram that he is retired from rap. That's what he wrote in his Instagram bio, retired from rap. He got rid of all his IG pictures, just gone. But a few days later or a few hours later, actually changed from retired from rap to retired record producer slash DJ. Now, my only thoughts for this change is maybe it started to be interpreted in ways he might not have thought or expected it to be because when you say retired from rap, that might cause people to say, hey, are you gonna be a record producer for techno or something like that? Are you gonna produce other genres and no longer do rap? Are you leaving the culture that got you there? Maybe that is what he meant. Who knows what he meant but he changed it up maybe just to take some of the pressure off and to get rid of some of those things that he might not have even meant in what he wrote. But pretty true to his words, he has been gone since then except for one small little video with Gucci Mane saying he was gonna bring Metro back. He was gonna give him a million dollars to come back to the game. The only place online that you can find Metro Boomin being active is on Twitter. Now the question is, why would he be gone? Why did he retire at this time? Now one thing that I could use is like a little hypothesis is when you have as much success as Metro Boomin did, there is nowhere else to go. He wasn't at the top. He was at the top of the top of the top. He had a record breaking year. What else could you do for this guy? There was a lot of exposure. Of course there was more that he could have milked out of the game but if you use the 50 cent theory before ourselves destruct, why don't you decide to pull out the game before other people get tired of you? That way you are in control of your brand. You are in control of what you're doing, all of your moves. You don't have to start reacting to what the public is thinking. Because once again, when you're at the top like that, there is nowhere else to go. Even LeBron has to ride the bench every once in a while and observe the game to figure out what he's gonna do when he gets back on. There's an off season. You gotta take those breaks because there's a lot of value in just pulling out the game. We have that rebranding strategy that I went over in part one of the rebranding series, the pull out strategy, which is where you just step back. When you step back from the game, what that allows you to do is control your narrative even more. Once you get a certain level of resources and you don't even have to be at the level of Metro Boomin, once you get to one level, right? It might be here, it might be here, here. Once you get to new levels, introduce yourself to new resources and other people get to know you, you have this new set of tools that you didn't really get to utilize strategically because you were so busy grinding and getting to where you are now. Taking a step back allows you to give yourself more thought and time into what you want to do, how you want to evolve being strategic and intentional about your next moves because when you think about Metro Boomin, this guy started to move into fashion in a lot of ways that other producers on his level had not done before. When you think about the fact that he was in GQ about two to three times, GQ is not really on game like that, like that. That means there was some attentionality to them getting with GQ and getting featured in GQ. He showed a lot of interest in the fashion industry and he has started to plant some of those seeds to possibly become a fashion influencer on a higher level and be truly recognized for his fashion outside of just the street influence that he already had because of his natural fan base. That might be something he wants to go into even harder when he comes back. There's a lot of different things that buddy probably wants to consider, but the point is when you do the pullout method and now you just kind of go zero dark 30, it gives you a level of control of your brand that you've never had before because now that all eyes are on you or you have access to people's attention, you can really be in control of what they see, how they interpret the way you introduce yourself back to the world. We need a little bit more detail on the rebranding pullout method. I did a video on it. It was the very first of my rebranding series videos. I'll put it in the description below, pop it up in this video, all that good stuff. But again, where exactly is Metro Boomin? I don't know, but he's somewhere cheffing up in the kitchen somewhere, probably absorbing life, absorbing inspiration in the studio, but overall giving himself time to figure out how he's going to reintroduce himself to the world or maybe he already has it figured out and is just waiting for the right time. I'm extremely interested to see what he does because, hey, just like all artists, when you take some time off, you get to experience some more of the world. Artists need that input because it gives them more inspiration and allows them to see things in different ways, connect new dots. He might come back with a whole new sound on us. I would like to know what you guys thoughts, not only on Metro Boomin, but the pullout method in general and other stars that you've seen leave and come back. What stories do you like? And before I go, don't forget, if you want any questions answered, you can follow me on Instagram at brandmanshine. I'm answering questions every Sunday for the rest of 2018. Other than that, if you liked this video, go ahead and hit that like button if you like it. You might as well share it and if you're not subscribed, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe.