 When I get attacked, I become stronger. Like that monster in the movie. Every time you attack it, cause you're doing the wrong thing. All of a sudden they get stronger. Every punch it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what an anti-fan can do for your fan base and make them love you more than they already do. Because they don't have any reason to defend you, but once I get forced to choose a side, now I gotta mentally pick. What's up, what's up, what's up? I'm Brand Man Sean. And I'm Corey. And we are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, wherever you stream your podcast. Chopping it up here at the intersection of commerce and creativity. Creatives get that bag. And hey, if you bought that bag already, don't let people block your creativity. We are about no labels. And today we got, we got some topics for y'all. We got some, definitely got some topics. We're talking about building the anti-fan. Every artist should have anti-fans, maybe on different levels, but we're gonna tell you exactly what an anti-fan is. And we're gonna break down four, four artists who have used anti-fans significantly as a part of their rise. Starting with the old school. It's funny I'm calling this man old school. Stay tuned to see who that is and get into the new school. But first, what the hell is an anti-fan? Well, y'all know what a fan is, right? We don't gotta talk about that. An anti-fan is someone who feels just as strongly as a fan about you, except they're on the other side of the fence. They hate your ass. That is an anti-fan. Or really dislike. They really dislike. Or really strong as like. Strong as like. Yeah, it's like that test you take strongly agree. Or just disagree, like, oh yeah, yeah, that whole thing. That's what you wanna build. You wanna build some of these anti-fans. Now, how are they beneficial? Why are they beneficial? Well, let's get into the examples and then we're gonna give some deep information on like how scientific this is in between. But let's start with this guy, Drake. Aubrey? Aubrey. Going to the old school, man. Back in the day. When Drake was on the rise and he was this, you know, fresh off the TV show, you know, freshly signed to Young Money. Having this music and people were like, yo, this dude is soft. Who is this rapper? He doesn't represent the gangster rap that is still popular and meaningful where people were in a culture, still thinking that rappers, especially to be taken seriously and be considered a part of that goat conversation in many ways. And he wasn't even there yet, he was just starting. Hey, they felt like, yo, he didn't represent. He wasn't hard enough to listen to. Especially not because he wasn't like, you know, not like he was Andre or even Kanye where they weren't necessarily talking hood shit or gangster rap, but he was singing. People didn't like the fact this man was singing. And he was singing about his feelings. Right. And nobody had ever really taken a singing rapper super seriously, not Drake level of singing. Cause we know what y'all rule did it, right? We know what y'all rule did it. And then 50 made fun of him and then did it himself. Right? So that kind of created even partially the ground space to be able to make fun of him for that. But, and we know back in the day, we had people like New Edition who were also rapping on their songs or whatever, but they weren't trying to be a serious rapper. And it was just a different environment at that moment. Right? It was just like cool to do. Yeah, it was like a cool thing to do cause rap was like a new novel thing. Yeah. Yeah. Drake though. Now this man's trying to make us take him seriously as like one of them dudes. We don't like that. All right. We got a clip of one of the goats making some comments. What about Drake? You like Drake? No. My man. He didn't even say a little bit. That's my guy right there. That's why X is necessary in the game right there. Now why don't you like Drake? I don't like anything about Drake. My man. I don't like his voice. I don't like nothing he talks about. I don't, I don't. I be trying to tell his face. I don't like anything. He walks like nothing. I don't like anything. I might just, let me shut up. I'm gonna stop right there. Damn it, man. No, but listen, that's why You know why? Because you got these legendary, this is why the game has gotten so wack. You got legendary hip hop figures. Who just get these guys passes? Yeah. Who don't say anything? Who don't say it's okay? No dudes, nothing. It's okay to say yo, this dude is wack. I think he's wack. It's okay to say that. It's too much politics. It's too much politics. You don't gotta act like you like something. What? Yeah. So that's a clean and clear example of how a lot of older people felt about Drake. And he was one of the first artists that I felt like a lot of old people went hard on in that way, like collectively they gathered around him. Like it was usually like old generation versus the young generation. I don't like a lot of what that do. Y'all are doing the trap but it was like a lot of people specifically came at Drake. The name kept coming up, right? Maybe cause it was prompted, whatever. But like he became a Drake differently again cause it's not like DMX just brought him up out of nowhere but it did create what the hate on the older side. It had some hate on the younger side too. There was a lot of younger people who were like, yo, this guy is soft. But then there were people who were like, I like this guy. And the hate from the older people and the younger people that didn't like Drake or Approve him created more love that people that already loved him. And that's the beauty of an anti-fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was one of them. You were one of those people? Not anti-fan, the fans that were like Super fan of Drake. Yeah, fighting on either way. Hey, like, Zach mentioned that he had a homie. That everybody call him soft cause he liked Drake. I had a homie that everybody called gay because he liked Drake and he like leaned into it or whatever. It was a thing with Drake. That was a very clear thing, but the anti-fan is real. So let's even get into the concept of it all. So I'm gonna pull up a definition cause what this basically is using is anti-fragility as a concept. So anti-fragility, that's anti-fragile. What's the definition of anti-fragile? Wikipedia says, you know, the Bible of everything. Anti-fragility is a property of systems in which they increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults. I'm gonna repeat that increase in capability to thrive. To clarify that, I'm gonna say that even simpler. Anti-fragility goes beyond robustness. It means that something does not merely withstand a shock but actually improves because of it. So what does that mean? When I get attacked, I become stronger. Like that monster in the movie, every time you attack it cause you're doing the wrong thing all of a sudden it gets stronger. Every punch it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. That's exactly what an anti-fan can do for your fan base and make them love you more than they already do. Because they don't have any reason to defend you but once I get forced to choose a side, now I gotta mentally pick. Yeah, and you gotta think deeper than you might have thought about cause the hate or love is the way you gotta come prepared. Why do I like this person that much? Why do I care what put me in the position that I wanna try to defend them and in that process they're convincing themselves of every single thing that you can't even do cause you can't go that deep. That's what an anti-fan can do for yourself. Drake wasn't trying to make that happen. He was just doing something really different and the public trying to get rid of him which often happens, right? When media tries to get rid of something and they attack it, they give attention to it and then all of a sudden they have the opposite effect. Right? Yeah. Another example, matter of fact before we even get into that, we have a study from the Harvard Business Review that talks about miracle with mayonnaise. Basically using this concept, mayonnaise. Never thought we'd be talking about mayonnaise when it comes to artists. And it reads, make the most of a polarizing brand. Now, I would just read this snippet from the article. As conversation starters go, what do you think of Miracle Whip? Probably seems unlikely. You wouldn't think many people have stronger opinions about the slightly sweeter than mayonnaise sandwich spread but when marketers at Kraft begin researching shoppers' attitudes toward the dressing, they found surprisingly deep emotions. It turns out that a substantial number of people love Miracle Whip and many others detest it. They ain't messing with it. In 2011, Kraft launched ads that sought to make virtue of the schism. All right, so they're like, yo, we found out people loving hate this thing. We didn't know people felt this bad about our brand. Who knew people cared so much about mayonnaise? Who knew people care and that's all you need to look. You care, and you hate me, you care, right? That's a version of care. How can we use this? So what did they do? The campaign used love them or hate them celebrities, including Pauly D from Jersey Shore and political pundit James Carville. Some people in the ads praised Miracle Whip's yummies, but no yumminess, okay? I was like, what's a yummy? But one other, but one character said he'd break up with his girlfriend if he learned that she liked the dressing. This is in your own ad. Why would you push this type of image out there? You're creating a conversation. This is similar to that conversation that I've seen a lot of people talk about. I never quite understood these conversations or where it is, but there's like a big thing like, do you put pineapple on your pizza or not? Do you put pineapple on your pizza? See, people do that whenever that shit comes up. I'm just curious, man. Bro, I just buy pizza, bro. I just with pepperoni, first of all. That's, I'm pretty like, very basic. If you give me pepperoni, I'm good. So no, I don't think to it. I've had it before. I worked at Pizza Hut at one point in my life. I didn't hate it, but it's not something I would. So I don't hate it. I'm the person that you don't want to use in this polarization, because I'm right in the middle. I just don't think about it. That's crazy. Are you a pineapple pizza person? Yeah, I love it. You love it? It's something about hot fruit and meat, you know what I'm saying? It's... What is it about it, Jacuri? What is it? I don't know, man. I don't have the words to describe it. The way I like to describe it. I'm not advanced enough for that, but you know what I'm saying? It just... All right, we'll hire it, bro. To break it down. All right, let's continue on with this article. Another said, I'd rather lick your shoe than try Miracle Whip. Miracle Whip is a polarizing product. The brand director, Sarah Braun, explained at the time, we're trying to own up to this fact. They want to own the polarity. That's exactly what you do. When people feel strongly, you want to own that position, lean into it, and make them feel something. Because if they don't feel shit, then you ain't thought of at all. And get lost in the sauce of all these feelings for other people and things that they understandably hate or understandably love. Those are the things that we think about and react to the most. That's it. Politicians use it all the time. I remember early on, I saw Grant Cardone say this like in like 2014 or 15 or something. Like this is before all, the point is it's like two or three years before Trump like ran for the election. But Grant Cardone would always say, if I can get half of the country that hate me, then I could be the president of the United States. Because it's holding was just like people should lean in and like market yourself. Who cares if like people already know he died. And then it was funny because he would say it all the time. And then one day like Trump came and like really wasn't a case thing for that. I was like, dang, I see what he means, right? So the polarity is something that definitely could be used to your advantage. So some artists and managers are just waiting for lucky moments when the ones who are killing it have systems to consistently take artists to another level over and over again. And if you want to see what that looks like, we just did a collab where we not only show the system that we use that's resulted in Billboard hit some of the biggest viral moments on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. But also we got J.R. McKee to break down how he took an artist from zero to one of the biggest hit songs of 2022 and getting a Grammy in January of 2023. This is recent stuff, not old tactics. If you want to check it out, go to www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. Don't forget the www or it won't work because J.R. gets into the details of looking at the data, decisions that got made, how much content got created and how they adjusted the content over time for different parts of the campaign. This is real behind the curtains type of stuff. So again, go to www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. If you want to check this out and apply it to yourself, back to the video. Now, we went from Drake. Let's fast forward into the future a little bit more to somebody else representative in that demographic. Wish, where am I done? Fuck Chief Keith, fuck Lil Reese. You hear me? I'm not gonna play this whole video, but this is 6ix9ine playing the, well it's a compilation of 6ix9ine, talking to all these rappers and basically like, call them out cursing at them, FM, da, da, da, they not ish, all that type of stuff. And these are like popular rappers, particularly in like the street rap category, right? Trying to call them out, tell them that they not hard, you know, for everything they love, et cetera. And that's obviously what someone wouldn't expect anyone to do to quote unquote, stand up against those people or go against those people. And he creates hate for himself. A lot of hate for himself. A lot of hate for himself. That was just one thing he did, right? The other things he did would be just the trolling he would do to make people feel one way about him. And comments on social media. The comments on social media about certain groups. And he was pretty targeted, man. He was pretty, it was weird. He was using like street gang culture to push himself up from a like positive standpoint. Like I'm using this to support me. Like these people are repping me. And they had the same time he was attacking other street people. So it was like he was using it on both sides, right? Like I'm gonna go hard on this demographic and make somebody and make them feel a certain way about me. Yeah. I mean, he basically made himself like the joke of that demographic, right? Like I'm a caricature of it. And I'm gonna do these things certain way and I'm gonna make a joke of it. I always thought that was the longer play. You know what I'm saying? Like, hey, I'm gonna make this whole thing look bad. You know what I'm saying? Cause I don't give a fucking weight. You know what I'm saying? I'm really in this shit. You know what I'm saying? I'm looking at it from his perspective, but. But that's what made his shit interesting, man. Like, cause six nines really early, like you caught him early. He was kind of like a hardcore screamo underground. I remember that. Like he had like a bunch of viral memes about him. You know what I'm saying? Way before the street shit. I remember the first time I ever heard about him was back when I was managing that rapper. And we went to New York and we were at a house party. And I was talking to this girl and I was like, yo, put me onto some New York rappers. And she was like, oh, this is dude here, nine, six, nine. And I remember when she played him for me and I went and looked at his Instagram. He had like 42,000 followers on Instagram. Three days later, I went back home to Atlanta and by that point, he had like 180,000. He was just like growing like fast as fuck. You know what I'm saying? It was crazy. And then so I was there from the beginning to see like that brand that he was kind of putting out there. And then the brand that he started put out that started making him pop and go mainstream. Cause it was when he put out, was it Gummo? One of the first songs, one of the first songs where he is like, he had the trippy red shit. He started kind of being a little ganged up. But he came out with that first video that was just like, damn, like this is what he about to run with now. You know what I'm saying? And then it's like shit just kind of took from there. And I remember just thinking, man, it's like, if you look at like a lot of six, nine, like really early stuff. I mean, he was appealing to like Eastern European rap fans and like, you know, like the kids in Russia that like to listen to American rap, you know what I'm saying? That was his demographic. And like he was doing good at appealing to them without that shit. And then once he had that shit, it's like just all the mainstream started paying attention to him. You know what I'm saying? He kind of became what he was. So to, you know, going back to the theme of the episode, whole anti-fan thing, we could argue. And I've seen a lot of people make the argument about six, nine is if we had stopped hating him early on, where he had become as big as he did. If we had just all, we had just all been like, Hey, bro, we're going to ignore him. And all look over here. You can't get enough people to shut the fuck up. Yeah, right. It's true. It's hard to get a lot of people to shut the fuck up. All these issues when people really say they want to cancel somebody or whatever, usually just ignore. Yeah. Ignore, you ignore that indifference. That's what kills people. The energy that you give, love or hate, that's going to keep feeling that fire and make the monster bigger, bro. Yeah, bro, love or hate is just the same energy opposite of affection. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but I mean, but you can tell he knew that, you know what I'm saying? Like to your point, you know, and he doesn't do it as much now, which I think is good, but kind of a lot of years of his, I guess the big point in his career, you could tell that he would just do shit, you know what I'm saying? Just to rile back up, hey, bro. It's like, man, when people really like me or feeling different about me, nothing's happening for me. When people hate me, like I get the whole world in my hands, you know what I'm saying? Like everything goes the way I need to go. So, you know, you look at the angle at which way you're going for. I'm going for the hate, you know what I'm saying? And I sent you this video of him the other day. Remember the video I sent you the other day? It's just crazy to look at now. Right? Yes. Yeah. 6ix9ine got beat up at the LA Fitness like a couple weeks ago. And he used that time to make a music video while he was in Mexico of him. It was almost like Spanish God's plan. It was kind of like the vibe I got from the video. You ever seen the God's plan video? Okay, for the actual video? Yes, okay. Not the song. Yeah, not the song. The video, yeah. The video was like Spanish God's plan, bro, like God's plan in Mexico. You know what I'm saying? And just 6ix9ine being charitable, giving back to people, you know what I'm saying? He's like a really nice guy. And I sent it to Sean because I was like, Sean, look at the comments. And in the comments, there's a bunch of people in Spanish talking about how great of a God 6ix9ine is and how amazing he is. And hey, you did that shit to them Americans. You didn't do that shit to us, you know what I'm saying? So you being cool to us and we're gonna rock with it. I'm like, man, this is why they do it, bro. Like they can just flip into it. It's like, he's seen both sides of that. It's something like, I mean, the American audience is like 90% hate, 10% probably love, right? Spanish audiences is like the complete opposite. It's like 90% love, 10%, you know what I'm saying? Hate. And so then I even think about someone from his viewpoint is like, man, maybe that's the strategy, bro. I build my hate fire over here. You know what I'm saying? Fan that shit. I use that attention to fuel my love fire over here. You know what I'm saying? Fan that shit. And the result is that I'm still hot and nobody really understands why, you know what I'm saying? I'm still. That's it, bro. That's exactly what it is, though. I say it all the time, man. You have to, like, you have to build on both sides. You want to take advantage of it. You can't just have one side angry or one side loving you. And that's it. Yeah, it might have to defend you at that point. It has to be two sides. Cause they then like passively grow you through their anger and arguments around you, right? So then you don't have to do anything. You just, is that a, where they throw that stone and hide your hands behind your back and dip like that type of thing. So like the perfect example I always use, why I did like this PR video series early on and like our first like iteration of brand man network courses, right? And it was using one of the examples was the Superbowl Beyonce Bruno Mars and Coldplay. Great performance. I loved it. And then, you know, you go on, you know, watch finish, finish the game, you know, go to sleep next day. Oh, so many people think it's dope. So many people think it's dope. Couple of days later, it was just undercurrent started. People are mad at Beyonce. I don't think mad at Beyonce for her Superbowl performance. They mad at her for good. Like, we're like, we're confused. Next thing you know, they talk about her outfit and her doing the fist and Black Panthers. Still, I kind of referenced this on that other episode. My unknown stuff, like I still just don't reference it and think of it that way because I don't think of that stuff negatively, you know, because my background, I'm still like a little confused. Like, okay, people are mad at Beyonce. Oh, Black Panther stuff. I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, I forgot that a lot of people look at the Black Panthers as terrorists and all that stuff. Okay, cool. So, and it's like, I think mostly in that case it was like right wing, it wasn't even just right wing. I just, let's just say white people in that particular case. The way things were polarized between races around that subject matter. Now, why do I draw the line that way? Cause now I'm observing and I'm seeing some conversation. I see some hate comments, you know, about Beyonce. But of course they go beyond Beyonce and start talking about the whole race and people. And it's like, dang, bro, hold up. Now I'm starting to feel something. I'm not going to engage on line. But I'm like, this is crazy. And now I'm paying attention. I'm aware. What's the point? I'm somebody who saw the performance, enjoyed it, cool, keep moving. To the point, I'm not overthinking it. Think of the berets or any of our outfit. You know, if I'm really paying attention, I might, oh yeah, that's a nod to such and such. But, you know, other than that, just keep moving. But once you have these other people who hate, they're feeling some things in their bag. But that's not enough for them just to hate, right? And be in their little echo chamber. You have to connect the dice and let the people who love find out about the people who hate. And now you got war. Now we can get this shit popping. And the conversation goes from, oh yeah, I love this. I love that. To this massive conversation that gets way more media, free media and attention then it would have gotten by itself without any type of polarization. So, always try to remind people, you need to strategically make sure the sides meet at some point. You know, you can fake hateful comments. And then, you know, we really wanna get to how some of this shit really works. Sometimes people will fake, like, hate and create fake comments and things like that. And then show it to the side that loves them, right? Or sometimes people will show something that is, that people that would hate something but it didn't happen for them to be aware or they'll just create that and make sure that those people that hate it see it, right? And fan that flame. Because when you think about it, yeah, things are free, access is everywhere, things get millions of views, but we're so segmented today. This thing could happen. We're in our own bubbles. The people who hate it, it's not for them, it's never gonna algorithmically get to them in a lot of cases. Unless someone manually connects the dots. So that's how you saying that hate is bringing us together? In a weird way. I don't think that's the point of it. It's bringing us together to create more hate. You know what I mean? But yeah, shit. It brings the two sides of the audience together. No, 1,000%. 1,000%, it brings both sides together and you have to have that to create the conversation which becomes your marketing campaign. If you're using this strategy, right? And it's a scary strategy for many people to use. I was like, even if you're not, I think we're using extremes, you know what I'm saying? To illustrate the example. We're gonna get into softer examples though. You're right, I'm gonna step back. Especially our last one. Our last one's gonna be a pretty soft example of this. But this third one ain't that weird. It's not really that soft. Lil Nas X. Oh, okay. He had moments of soft. A tough example, yeah. To be fair, he had moments, right? Because so Lil Nas X, example number one, people don't even think about this part as much these days. You referenced it, right? The country music. Came out polarizing. Came out polarizing. Because is this song gonna be placed on the country charts or not? Does it really validate as a true country song? That's a pretty like soft like polarization in terms of the spectrum of things and belief systems and all these other things they get played around with. And the energy. Because remember what made it a big deal was the way the country music industry was reacting to it, right? It's almost like they made such a big deal about it. People who weren't paying attention to the country were like, oh no, what's going on over here? You know what I'm saying? We gotta mobilize for this young man and help him get past this big bad country giant. Exactly. So it's like, that's a big boss to come out to have to mobilize your fan base of the feet from the first single. You know what I'm saying? They created fun fan base. Yeah, no, hundreds of them. Like actually, so we talk about the anti-fan strategy in terms of the fan of the artist, but at that moment it was just the song down there. Yeah, you're right. And then create extra attention to then create fans for him. So you had the song that's moving. Ooh, nice hit popping on TikTok and online, Twitter, all that. Next thing you know, it's moving. But Old Town Road could have very well just been another really good high performing online song, right? And then there's strategic things. I don't know all of the strategic things that happened in terms of like, of course he got signed pretty early on. I think it was Columbia, but like a huge part of the media fire conversation was the country conversation. And then we unfortunately know in our country, shit gets really polarizing, especially around race. So the country conversation doesn't just go, oh, is this especially a country song or not? It starts there, which I don't know. Like I'm not a country person. So I'm not gonna like, which I'm like, I should be the person who can validate whether it is or not. But it creates that argument. Then you start having people see what country is the mostly white genre. And then here's this black guy. He has some hip hop intertwined in this. So then you have a lot of the hip hop and just black community saying like, they're being unfair. So that becomes like the narrative, right? Like they're not letting them in because it's black and it's more beyond, more beyond the song. And both sides are kind of reacting back to that, back and forth, right? Cause then you do have some white people that are like, whoa, these black people trying to ruin our genre or get into that. We don't wanna bring none of that over there. That media fire creates another storm that takes it to another level and generates more energy. Then you have Billy Ray Cyrus, right? Step in from the countryside to connect and show love, which creates another storm around it. And it just goes and goes apparently when Billy Ray Cyrus did Aiki Breaky Heart, that wasn't accepted. He was basically Drake apparently. Yeah, the time, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so like he kind of showed him some love out of that spirit or whatever. So like that constant hate or in constant polarization literally took levels cause each conversation might take you to another level but it might not take you over the top. That one literally had three, maybe four or even five like polarizations as it went. Like, oh, even another one was because the catchiness and simplicity at some point it was played a lot in schools. Oh yeah, people thought it was a kid's song. Exactly, damn people were like, yo, this ain't no kid's song. Don't be playing this stuff, da-da-da. So like conversation after conversation hitting different community after different community like pausing right there before we even get into the other side of Lil Nas X's polarization. But there was always go back to the this rock artist named Alice and his manager telling a story about how they leaned into and hate from parents. They actually like created the hate from parents and created stories about parents hating the group and thinking their kids shouldn't listen to them, et cetera. So then the kids will listen to them and pay attention. Yeah, cause the parents want me to do it so fuck it, I'm gonna go. Now I wanna try it out and see what's going on. It's smart. It's smart, right? It's all the anti-fan strategy and you can do it from different ways. And again, that's a little bit safer in some ways than this other stuff. Cause we know a lot of times the older folks aren't gonna necessarily understand what the younger folks are doing at first anyway. Right, a lot of kids are always gonna find something to rebel against and just say, oh, I'm gonna do the opposite just because. So leaning to that, that's what I got thought of from like the little kids. But I mean, that shit was like bumping into like kindergarten and stuff. I remember it was crazy. And when Bill and Ray South did get on that jump, it was hard. I was like, dang, this kind of goes. Knock on a lot. But then Lil Nas takes it to the next level when he starts leaning into the anti-fan against the Christian community. And Christian community is a very strong specific community. That's where the country community was a strong specific community. That's the thing. It's very hard to just make, to get benefit from getting hate from a community that doesn't have enough power to mobilize against you. Like in some level of voice. Like cool, you get the hate but it's not as strong of an anti-fan, right? Drake with the hip hop, right? Having this old guard who has a media microphone to speak and say, I hate Drake or I wanna continuously like discredit him and create that narrative. That works because it's out there. But so the Christian community is very specific. Has a very, very strong voice in this country. But we're talking about a down period where less and less people are for Christianity, for religion and things like that. So they're not at the height of their powers. They still got the brand awareness but not at the height of their power. And we just look at it strictly from that standpoint. So it's a good time to attack, right? And he's not the first person to do that but damn near every time it happens like clockwork reaction, everything goes the same way. He went extreme with the devil stuff. And then he did the blood in the shoes. Anti-fan, anti-fan, anti-fan, right? And was beautiful in terms of how an anti-fan strategy can work. Let's be honest, Lil Nas X was in a very, very difficult position when Old Town Road blew up because I mean, you wanna talk about one hit wonder. Like you're talking about that. I think it was the most weeks and number one of all time. It broke that kind of record. 17 or something stupid or whatever. So like you're talking about stupid one hit wonder, possibly. You know, everybody's a one hit wonder until they become a two hit wonder and then things keep going. So he's facing this mountain decline and it's from a pop perspective. It's hard to even get to that level without something that even hits on a pop perspective. So it's not a specific audience at that time. Like who is Lil Nas's fan base because of Old Town Road? It's too many people. It's too spread out. It's a great song. There's nobody who identifies with him. So the anti-fan strategy begin is a way that he started to get people to be fans of him specifically that weren't from a specific genre or community, but it was on a pop level of love and hate. You know what I'm saying? And it's something that's beneficial for like people who are popular on a certain level, especially musically and you're trying to figure out, oh shoot, I don't have my fan base and you're never gonna go into a super drama specific niche sonically. It's like, well, I gotta at least figure out community that will love me for a different reason. I hate me for a different reason, right? It's beneficial. So he definitely benefited from that strategically or not but it was a beautiful thing. And then last person we're gonna get into which he referenced multiple examples is Larusso. Larusso with the anti-fan strategy. Larusso's anti-fan strategy is what? Anti-industry. Anti-industry. Yep. Anti-industry. It's just a good narrative to take as the last, like what, since the dawn of Russel, like since 2017? The dawn of, yeah, Russ definitely was somebody who leaned heavy into that. Yeah, so, I mean, but his whole narrative is basically that we're like, I am this artist that is outside but around the industry, making industry moves doing it my way, doing it my way essentially, right? Which, like I said, it is interesting to see because like I said, that narrative isn't like new but it's always interesting to see who people would take to with that messaging, you know what I'm saying? Like what types of people they wanna hear that from because it does seem to be the same type of person, right? Like we like to hear it from Russ. We didn't like hearing it that much from Chance the Rapper, right? We like hearing it from people at LaRussel. You know what I'm saying? I'm trying to think of who else kind of got burnt about it. And people that's really been burnt about it but it's like the message seems to like hit harder from like different types of people. It's the brand, it's the brand, yeah, an approach. Chance had a more commercial nice guy approach and he did like lean into it from an encouraging standpoint but like Chance and LaRussel have like the Rebel Rouser I'm gonna fuck shit up type approach. People love that idea of it. And they're like more boisterous and they're like the way they talk, et cetera. Like with Chance wasn't doing that. He would say that like a little bit of hair and there he would catch its bag and pat himself on the back but that just wasn't his brand. He was family friendly, KitKat commercials, still playing especially a lot of like pretty industry stuff too. Exactly. And that's what I think it is. It's like Russ LaRussel, their messaging is kind of like, oh I'm indie and fuck the industry, right? The message that a lot of ours can get behind. Chance's messaging to me was just like, oh I'm indie. Yeah, exactly. Cause fuck anybody wouldn't be his brand. Exactly, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so it's like, okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's just too clean to come that hard. So it's still not, Paul, it's just like good job for you type of thing. Versus like Russ LaRussel kind of paint. There's like, hey, my success is almost, an antithesis, there we go, God damn. To what the industry is trying to do. My game is another like, L for them. L for them, another KitKat Denise chopping them down. But when they win, they're coming at me. These people, these things, that's abstract. You can't find necessarily the person in a lot of cases like they will, they will find specific things to bring up. But you can't find, the industry is, there's a lot of people who've made a lot of different. So it helps to have that thing to go against because it clarifies how and why you're rooting for these people, right? Cause everybody wants to see the story, the underdog story. I always go back to Gary V, bro. Like the genius of being the underdog when you already rich as fuck, by saying I want to get the Jets one day, and I'm not there. I'm rich, but I'm not rich rich. Well, actually I'm rich rich, but I'm not rich rich rich, you know what I'm saying? I got some more, 100 millions I can make. What does Kanye do again and again? Like find a way to say, oh, these people are holding me back. I'm trying to get in that ceiling. They won't let me in the store. They won't let me be a part of their manufacturing or whatever, whatever, like, they won't let me be on the board, right? And always finding something as typically as people that other people don't necessarily even know in terms of the fans he's talking to. Like, so he, Kanye plays that strategy, that anti-establishment, like that's their anti-fan strategy, all the people we just touched on. It's anti-establishment and the establishment, the beauty of it is, again, a lot of times you're talking to fans about people they don't know, so the fans are just gonna be on your side. Cause I don't even know who these other people in these corporate offices, right? Artists lean on that stuff a lot when they talk about their managers or label it people. Sometimes it's not even a label, it's a false thought or whatever. But it works and it works well cause there's also like, why am I gonna jump off the roof, right? It's like, hey, you just say, I don't know, let's just say we got a label and it's me, you, and I don't know, 20 other of us or whatever. Oh, that's still too small. A little bit too more communal. Let's just say the industry, but it's a whole of a huge amount of us and you're just saying labels, labels are the industry. Like, well, why am I just gonna jump off the roof and then put myself in the line of fire and make it seem like that person's talking about me. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not gonna get in that fire. I don't know who he was talking about. Is he talking about Corey? Was that about me? Like, it doesn't make sense. Now, the Russell talked about rocknason, nation, Jay-Z. That whole situation. Bo, yo, the industry's trying to mess me up. Why would you give me that type of deal based on the type of shit that I'm doing and what I've already achieved, that doesn't make sense. I'm just here trying to do good business. That's the narrative right there. I'm trying to do good business. Like, I'm just trying to do good business, good business, good business. Well, all the Russell's trying to do is do good business. Like, why would you not wanna do good business? That's the political, like, hey, he might not be doing it strategically. It might just be natural for him, you know what I mean? Cause he does have a natural level of gift of gab that you can tell where things just hit, but it's the same thing as like progressive, progressive. Well, who doesn't wanna be progressive? You know what I mean? Pro-life, pro-life. Who doesn't wanna be pro-life? Who doesn't wanna be pro-choice? Like, the things that just sound good and then you apply the other side doesn't want that. Dang, they don't wanna do good business. Why wouldn't they wanna do good business? All right, so creating that perspective and that thing to go again, so as we already said again and again, helps rally the troops around you and cause people wanna feel like they're a part of some shit, bro. They wanna feel like, yo, I can impact something and do something and I can vote for president, but damn man, it's so many people. I don't know if I really made an impact and my vote took the scale or not, but damn, this is a Russell dude. He's on the rise. I can hop on this train early and be a part of growing this thing. You know what I mean? I know to have an impact because he's small. He's indie, right? And that's what the indie brand like is. Like, yeah, they need me to succeed per se from a fan selfishness standpoint and whether or not I believe in the vision and everything else that's going on around them. And the Russell does that beautifully, bro. Yeah, I agree. I agree. The whole like, anti-industry narrative, I think it's done a lot, but you very rarely see it done well, right? Because it's like, to your point, you gotta be able to talk the talk, but the walk that we see walk alongside that has to line up, right? Which is why it hits so hard with Russell, which is why it does hit so hard with Russell, like I said, I think why I hit hard with Chance, right? These are all artists who like, we're walking and talking and talking at the same time. I think Russell is doing it the best that I've seen. Oh, number one, top two and ain't two. Yeah, top two and ain't two. Like in terms of that as a whole, like holistically. Now, whether he ends up with the same level of success, musically or a number of fans, things like that, but just holistically, because not only is he doing the anti-industry narrative, right? Laying into that, he has the self-promotional mouthpiece where he can talk himself up, get the gap, that whole thing, right? Hustle approach where he capitalizes on it, you know what I mean? Monetizes on it, because those people who do it the best, so you gotta have that, because some people just talk, talk, talk, but they don't really have the hustle to like move and cap off of it, right? And then beyond that, when you think of Russ, right? And going up against the industry and how he moves, what do you think of? Well, I think of Russ going up against the industry and how he moves, what do I think of? I think of like, I don't know, man, it feels kind of like the big, I don't know, it still feels kind of industry, you know what I'm saying? Like it's like, because it's certain holds or gaps in the story that haven't, you don't really feel like, yeah, I haven't been feel, yeah. I haven't been feel, bam, part of my point. Like we already know, we already took chance out cause he doesn't really have the anti-fan thing like that. So let's just do Russ and LaRussell in this example. Even though there's more we can get back to, Kanye obviously does it very well at a high level, but we're just like like this Indian newer age. So, LaRussell, he's capturing the story along the way from early. The documentary. Yeah, that documenting. And showing where he is, showing the more humble beginnings than where he's about to be or where he's trying to go. And then building community. Russ ain't build community. It doesn't mean that he doesn't have a community. It doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of fans that fuck with him. But I'm talking about like hardcore touch and feel community, community where you know why, like we can show up and we all know why we're here and there's a mission in the vibe. That's why it's more like J. Cole has a community at scale. And it's hard to even do that at his scale cause J. Cole really started building his community after he was already big. And it's a little bit harder to do it that way. But no, he's like early on, very like building community, community. Doesn't we rest of that? No, but Russ is not. It's a part of his story. He did not push any part of community. No, I can't say that, man. You can't say they're resting in the push community? All right, what's the community? Like Russ's community, like he was kind of building was like, hey, we are the group of people that think anti mainstream and kind of do what we want to do. No, I don't look, I don't rock with it. Like he was, he was talking directly to us. He's like, he had Facebook groups and SoundCloud things that he did. Like he was very like, I remember, and I also think about it too, because I remember when Russ was coming up as an artist, I was in college and I had this blog that I used to run. And I remember Russ would come in on the posts that I would make from the blog. I remember thinking sometimes it's crazy, like he really pays attention to like everybody and everything that talks about him. And this is pretty what you want. This is pretty like him pop. This is just like, you know. Russ was extremely savvy. Don't let me like, don't make it seem like I don't appreciate the strategy and he wasn't sharp at what he does. That's why he's in this conversation. I'm just saying in that specific way, no, I don't think he built community. I think he was a part of community or like commented, created presence in community. But like to me, like doing the thing, like the pay what you want or whatever, the restaurant, because he's already, so it shows all these different things that you stand for beyond the anti-establishment. La Russell's community? Yes, like you start because of La Russell and who he shows himself to be or like maybe some people came in because of his music and maybe some people like first notified, learned about him through like the anti-establishment messaging and interviews like that. But it's very clear when I look outside of that messaging, there's like shit that people believe that they're together beyond that, right? That aren't just artists, that aren't just dudes. It's his place for men and women that could feel comfortable like around in that community. And he shows the community and he shows, and part of that he shows team, but Russ didn't really show team like that. Not true. Yes, it is. He doesn't mean he doesn't have team. He had team from the very beginning and I watched it. It wasn't a part of his narrative. Russell had like his team gets interviewed. How many people on his team get interviewed? It sounded like, but Russ had like the two or three main members of like Demo and with him like Boogus and others. That was like in all his early content. That was on a lot of his early interviews. But it, all right. So I think this is what, why, and I don't think I don't use it against him. I just think part of it was being a different era. People weren't paying attention to it like that. So he would have had to do different stuff to build community, you know what I'm saying? Like, but like even though, I think, I'm sorry, I can't remember the name. I don't know if it's just T or Tee Tee. What's the rest of the name? The Russell's like right here. Oh, the girl, I don't know the name. Yeah. Woman, not a girl, man. You savage. No, but, she like talking about, oh yeah. She has ownership. Oh, she's dope. Bigging her up and dah, dah, dah. And again, this isn't any slight at Russ. It's just I'm saying when we have to split hairs that why he has, why the Russell has done better in this category. We look at textbook, I think he's checked more boxes in terms of the anti-fan strategy and building like an entire ecosystem that people can rally around. Well, and that's the only space I would give it to him. He got to touching the people in real life faster than Russ did. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, but like Russ still did, like Russ was building community. That's what I can't say that. I can't say like watching like. All right, he built it slower. He just didn't build it as well. I still can't say that. Like you tell him if Russ would a tweet about, not even tweet just put like I'm doing some little thing here today. Of course he got fans. Everybody can do that. No, that's not true. They got fans. That's not true. They got real fans. That's what a fan is. But that's how we gauge who has real fans about the community. No, fans and community are different. Community, like that means I fuck with you because we represent in the same thing and we already know what we're here for. We can vibe just off of that. Fan is I fuck with this artist. We might both be here because I fuck with this artist not necessarily because we represent this world of things to be a part of and we like automatically connect beyond just the artist itself. There's other values and things that come into play. Yeah, but we said real fans. Real fans, there is that distinction. Real fans are typically people we consider a part of the community. I don't consider someone who is cool, likes the artist's music, but isn't a part of the community. I don't consider them a real fan. You are a fan. You are a degree of a fan, but you're not a real fan because the real fan is in the world and no understanding of the world that the artist is trying to build. How many, you really fucked with Jay-Z growing up, right? Yeah. I'm sure you can think of some people who really fucked with Jay-Z and you don't feel like they're in the same community. Like, are probably stronger fans than you. Not really great. Like, I'm thinking about all the people. I'm thinking of some of these old heads. I'm thinking of all the people that I know that are like, that I know personally around my age that are like all like Jay-Z, man. So you gonna block it to age? No, what do you mean? There are communities in communities. So you talking about communities? Like, there's some sense that are there not subsets? If there's a range of fans between the ages of 20 and 50, it's like, yeah, they're gonna be certain commonalities amongst us as a part of this, but the 20 to 30-year-old demographic of that fan base is gonna have different cultural distinctions than the 30 to 50-year-old demographic of it. All right, let's just run this back. Yeah. You already said, the Russell has gotten to touching the people. Faster than Russ. Faster than Russ. Yeah. What was my point? You said he built a strong community. Yeah, we go at what gauge and point of your existence, where he is, pound for pound, for community is greater than where Russ was at this point. I'm not a conservative. I don't think it's possible for Russ to have had that. Like, it was just way harder back then. Niggas weren't putting content out of the content. The content wasn't as frequent and even just spreading as much. People weren't on the social media like that. It wasn't as strong of a platform. He did a lot more physical stuff. Russ was out there going overseas to the shows and stuff and nobody even fucking know. Everybody knows the Russell is moving. It wasn't even possible for Russ to build community from a media perspective and have a media... The Russell has a full media brand, like a media company in his company. Not just because of the good company stuff, but literally just because people could have these separate companies like below, literally the production consistency of content, consistency and simplicity of narrative. Russ, before he really got to build community, he had to use the fact that he was popping first. Like, and let the people know that he was popping and that created the media attention for him and then he had the opportunity to start building. That's what I'm saying, because he was building his SoundCloud community and his Facebook community before. Like the big problem for him was like what you want. Like what you want. But that was around the music. What, what do you mean? You just sound like the community around like the brand, like him in general. Everything, yes. That's a full, I'm talking about a full, the whole point is being holistic. A full holistic community, the Russell. Russ was more around music. Because again, it just wasn't even possible and we like to the same extent, it was very hard. If we want to go to some people who did it in their own way and did it more holistically and was closer to what the Russell and what he's doing, it would be more like, odd future. They built community, community, where it's very clear that we're these type of people and some of these other things going, that I would argue they probably did it better than both in terms of community. Anti-fans, they had the anti-fans, right? Yeah, that was very, I feel like they're anti-fans that could have been stronger. They didn't have a, because of the internet, they didn't not having to deal with the industry as much. They didn't have to, they didn't get as much like pushback for who they were as they could have. Like it's like, as they could have. I mean, Tyler got banned from countries, bro. Yes, Tyler did it specifically, right? I'm just talking about them as a whole. But and Tyler had to like do that specific shift for it to happen. But like, look, but they were doing stuff, Russ and LaRusso are like more against the end, like they used the narrative, right? And that created the pushback and it was more industry, like blocking gatekeepers all that. Tyler and them weren't necessarily using that narrative. It was just like, I'm going to do some shock, shocking shit. And then you get banned, you hate me for that, right? And it was different. And of course, as a result, it helps their fans like level man, but it was a different thing. But they did build a hell of a community. That's a, but that's a different conversation. I wouldn't call them full blown anti-fans because it's weird, like Tyler should have been more hated. He was hated, but he wasn't like the media conversation about hating him was not out there as much as you would have thought it would have been because we were still at a point where we could kind of ignore the internet. And then you realized, oh snap, this may have been in the game this long. This may have been, like, did X, Y and Z. You look up one day and it's like, he ran for 10 years. Yeah, exactly. And somehow he's just floating, being at a high level, like a legitimate celebrity. Everybody knows him as successful. Like he, that's a whole other conversation. The taller conversation point is, that all these people did these strategy well, but Lil Russell, as of now, he's using the anti-fan and community combo better than anybody I've seen in the last, at least since Russ. Lil Yachty, not a chance, but go ahead. Go ahead. All right, man. Lil Yachty was probably one of the first artists I seen doing a lot of the in-person like community events. He had the fan piece of parties he would do, you know what I'm saying? The fan game nights that he would do, you know what I'm saying? The media part, like, you know what I'm saying? Wasn't really there, but to your argument, media was different back then, you know what I'm saying? That's what I'm saying. They just couldn't. But that's how we can, I can't say it's better, because they were working with what they had. Like, at Russ' time, all he had was Facebook groups and SoundCloud comments, and he was working them shit. He was working them shit. They did better stuff. Like, they might've, but their time brought advantages in other categories. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Well, Russ was able to take advantage of SoundCloud, get his streaming going crazy in a different way, and in a technically easier way, not that it was easy to do, but like easier and cheaper way, hacking the algorithms, because it was easier to go viral musically back then, and harder to go viral personality wise, right? Through content. Now it's easier to go viral through content and harder to go viral musically, especially like straight off the music platform today. Yeah. Right? So you take what you get, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, so they all maxed out their error. That's part of the problem. Like, they had their argument in sports all the time. Like, comparing errors is hard to just say there's a single goal that cast greatness across all errors, because every error comes with its only challenges. You go, oh, well, he did more than his will. Like his team didn't ask him to do that. And he got these, like, so that part, I'm not, again, I'm not taking anything from him. I'm just saying because of where he is and the time at this juncture of his fan base, he's done the best job. Now, I think I wouldn't call this person an anti-fan strategy person, but they use all the elements. That's the crazy part about this person. He had the independent narrative. He had the community and mission-based narrative that people could rally around the mentality narrative. He did all these things, but he didn't necessarily, like, use the anti-industry narrative, because he had industry people and friends, too. He just didn't make that decision until later on, and that's nipsy with the person. Oh, right. He had all that. Right. What'd you go say? I ain't got nothing to say. What'd you got to say about this? I got nothing to say, man. What'd you go say about this? Nothing, man. But he didn't use the anti-fan strategy. Yeah, he didn't. That's what I'm saying. I don't think it was. No, that's my point, though. Because he done the community, he did all these things with, but he didn't use that. And that's the interesting point about it, though, because I have to feel like people be splitting hairs and comments. And I feel like the nuance and the reason to split hairs in the right way is because people are trying to compare shit that's not necessarily comparable when you look at the definition of it, specifically of what we're talking about. So I think the cool shit that we did here was the nipsy hustle and the chance to rap it. People who are doing the same shit but didn't necessarily use the same narrative, right? In the same way. You can have the elements, right? But it's the move that you decide to make with it. Whether you go left or right, a lot of these people have the capability to use an anti-narrative or to use an industry narrative or to use XYZ. You choose which box you want to open and then hop on in it. Yeah, personality plays a big part in it, too, right? Like it's much easier to believe that nipsy hustle was being held back because of his background than it was to believe that chance was being held back because of his back, especially when his background came out and people started learning about his dad's history and shit like that, you know what I'm saying? Like that kind of like hurt. What do you mean by nipsy being held back? Well, not held back, but like the whole like, I think like the whole like anti, I'm going against the industry in this way. It feels different when people come from different backgrounds. Oh, for sure. Nipsy's was more the Gary Vee route. Like just trying to achieve something big, not necessarily going against anybody. Like how Gary Vee like build the tallest building, become the biggest building instead of tearing something down. Well, Russ and Russ's, they don't necessarily say tear that other building down, but some of the energy that's created in the fans, right, in the community as a result. It's still like, because they create hate for the system. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like just like, because you're like, you're attacking my man's, you know what I'm saying? Like so like, fuck y'all. Right, exactly. So I'm attacking the system, whether it's intentional or not, that's just kind of the result of like again, like just how that narrative goes. But yeah, again, you never gonna get there with that Yachty shit, right? You never gonna get there with that Yachty. But he, Yachty is a whole another beast for just how different he moves and how dope he is. But that wasn't a conversation for him. That wasn't a conversation. But he did the fan piece of party. 100%. He did a fan piece of party. He did more than one. He did like three. At a time and to the point of Russ again too, right? Russ's message was so interesting because of the time he was coming up here. And I was like, all of these songs, I remember it was like, it was the Smoke Purse, the Lil Yachty's, the Uzi's, you know what I'm saying? And then Russ over here. And if we look at the group that Yachty was in, he was the only one doing that type of shit. He was the only one building community about that. Yeah. Uzi wasn't building a community. Kari wasn't building a community. Oh, I agree. He was mindful about it, intentional about naming the community who he represents. Was it like the king of teams? Or I can't remember the name. Oh yeah, he was the king of teams. Like, you know, all that different type of stuff. He was very mindful of it, about community trying to be representative of something larger, but he didn't fit the anti-fan strategy for one. So we didn't need to get deeper into this. No, he didn't. He was the one that the old has got hate. No, he did have that. Yeah. He was the youth thing, the whole youth thing. And the crazy part about that with him was he had shit to do that. Are you right? That's true. These other people we talk about, like were built in there, he was just hating on Yachty. That's the crazy part about that. Some very vocal people with platforms, hated on Yachty. And then that just generated the love from the people who love them and all that stuff. So I guess that was like a lucky, lucky hate. Okay. I thought he was gonna, I thought he was gonna, I was gonna call him and I was like, no, man. No, no, no, no, no, no. I still don't think he fits into the same way. Cause I'm looking at the intentionality of it, but Yachty was very good at having strategy for actually having some strategy and then using strategies that become available because of what happens in the marketplace. Okay. I get that. That's true. He's a good reactionary market. He's like one of my favorite when it comes to brand understanding and manipulating that. From jump, from jump. All right. Let us know what y'all think about those points. Done went them off, off the rails, but valid and needed at the end of this anti-fan. Cause I feel like still again, that back and forth still clarifies what truly this definition of anti-fan is. All y'all can use this in some way in some capacity, cause even throwing in a Yachty or people who had it in different, like who had it like, yo, this is my centerpiece or just a little anti-fan work over here. You know what I mean? You hate me sometimes. Just a little rumbling about some random old person hating on me or somebody who didn't let me in the restaurant cause they thought I didn't belong there. You know, just a little bit, just a little light work. Basically look out for these people that are building out of their life. That's basically what you gotta do. Like, oh, shit. My fans will hate you. Let me tell them about this. What's your name, bro? Oh man. Yes, that is another episode of No Labels Necessary. I'm Brandon Shawn. And I'm Kory. And we out. Peace.