 Kendrick Lamar started as a hype man and TDE has not always been successful. Wack 100 breaks it down, what it looked like in the early days and the growth that he saw with the company. There's a lot of things to take from this, but we'll wait till after I play this clip. K-Dot, J-Rock's hype man. Seven, eight years before the birth of Kendrick Lamar. So I tell everybody don't give up because you never know when it's gonna happen. People see Kendrick and think it just happened overnight. That's why I respect Top Dog so much. I watch Top Dog, man, hold a regular job and take his money, support his family and build that label. J-Rock took all the hits while Top Dog was learning what to do. By the time he got to Kendrick Lamar, Top Dog is sharp. He know what to do. He's in position to do it and he did it. And when he got on, he kept all his people together. Took care of everybody. You'll never hear nobody over there saying they broke. I'm probably the first to put them on New York radio. What I get from this, right? One patience, of course, right? You hear people like Eric, you always talk about that. But it's also being active this entire time, right? So it's not like, oh, I'm just gonna move slow and wait for luck to happen and wait for my opportunity to come. These people are being active. So Kendrick Lamar wasn't rapping, bam, but I'm still being this hype man. I'm still getting around it. Top Dog, this is where you tie it together. Top Dog was investing, taking losses, and then eventually you get the skill set to be able to take advantage of everything. You got opportunity of Kendrick Lamar, all right, and you got the skill set. But a lot of times people have expectations beyond the skill set they have at the moment, not realizing that it's not just about like, do you have the talent, right? But do you have the skill set to make it happen, the resources to make it happen? And that's the part that can take a long time to get. Especially in the music industry where it's like, oh, I gotta get these people from over here, like these connections, oh, I gotta get some capital from over here. So you spray it then, cause and you still gotta do your creative work until eventually like it all comes together. And I think that's why it takes so long in music of Kendrick Lamar seven, eight years, the whole time, think about how long Top was doing shit cause he was before and after Kendrick Lamar, you know what I'm saying? Like he's been really working this whole time and learning the game. It takes so long in music cause you have all these different things to learn and you can only grow each of them, but so fast, right? It's like, I can go run up my connections really quickly or I can run up my money really quickly, you know, sometimes working at a major label or something can kind of pair some of those a little bit, right? But then I also gotta have the creative talent. The creative talent has to develop really quickly where in some industries, you know, it's like, oh, let me just create the product. And then now I just gotta figure out where I'm gonna sell that shit. You know what I mean? Each of these are slowly going up. If I got my life points or something like that, like a video game, it was like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. There goes my connections, you know what I'm saying? But my fucking talent is on 20 cause I'm spending time on connections all day. That'd be the real shit, but if ours were a character, like a video game, they would look at it like, they don't max out the creative style and they zero at networking, zero at capital, zero at information. Cause I even added extra layer on top of that. You gotta learn that you even need to learn these things. You know what I'm saying? That'd be a whole game in itself. Like, damn, I need distribution. What's distribution? That's another six months of learning what distribution is before you can actually implement the shit that you got. So like, then after you learn it, you actually gotta get involved to really know what that shit means. Cause that's how music works. It's like all these terms, but what does it really mean to be in a deal with it? And do I even like how this deal tasty, you know what I'm saying? Do I want to do it at scale? Because they hide the real business before you actually do the business. Yeah, that's true. And it's like, and like Wax said, right? Like, there's that balance of I got real life shit to figure out. I gotta take care of my family on top of figuring out how to pop this artist off. And I don't know if a lot of people remember it. It's like J-Rock's early career, but his early career was hot. You know what I'm saying? He was like that. There was a point in time where like, he was the flagship artist. Like he was the person that they planned to build the whole operation around. And then Kendrick just kind of not came out of nowhere. It looked like he came out of nowhere to us but like Wax said, like he been behind the scenes grinding for years and it just happened to hit a point where, you know, like you said, top had the skill set and there was a arguably better music artist that came over. Artists that had more commercially appealing music that kind of came along. So I think there's a lot of different lessons from that, right? Like there's the patience, right? There's no shit. We assume that it took Kendrick seven to eight years to pop. We have to assume it took top seven to eight years to learn the information and get the connections and make them pop, you know what I'm saying? So we have to naturally assume that. Minimum. Minimum. But his shit was probably 15, something like that. And, you know, I want people to gloss over the fact that like top, like I said, top had a regular job, right? He had a job and he was figuring out investment. So a lot of times we'll see ours be like, man, I just want to be all in on music. And we've said this before, like that's a cool case for the lucky few that can do that. But for most of you, you're hurting yourself by doing that because you're not getting capital together that helps you talk to people and go to places that, you know what I'm saying? And get these connections. It's like, but if you ain't got a job, cause you think you're too good to work a job, but you learn about this network, networking conference that, that somebody is going to be there to change your life, but you ain't got the $500 to get out there. Then it's like not having that job to set you back more than you thought not having a job would help you move forward. And I've been in that position before as a manager with like, you argument, I was like, bro, you need a job, you know what I'm saying? Like cause I can't keep dishing out six, 700 every time we need to go to LA. You know what I'm saying? Like you, you need to put the money up. So I think there's that. And then, you know, from Kendrick's point, like what I always like about this story, cause this story is a new to me, but I always thought it was very humble of Kendrick to be like, hey, I'm going to go play background character to another artist to just learn the game, right? Which I get. It's like, hey, here are these two people that have been working towards figuring this out longer than I have. Who am I to come in and be like, yo, focus on me? Like, no, let me get in where I can fit in, learn what I can learn until my shit is ready. And then when it's ready, the operation would take care of me. You know what I'm saying? I don't think enough artists have that longterm vision, especially when they're coming in behind someone that's already doing so well. Cause typically what you hear, that nigga hot, why ain't hot? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like y'all, you got him on these playlists, why don't they play? Yo, he on XXL, he's a XXL freshman. Why am I not a XXL freshman, right? Like you typically hear that from ours, but it's like to see that like Kendrick was like, all right, cool, be a hype man, right? These motherfuckers don't know me, but I get some show experience, I get to travel, right? I get to learn some things expeditely, you know what I'm saying? That I wouldn't pick up on my own. All I gotta do is like go on stage for you 10 minutes early, you know what I'm saying? And make sure the crowd is lit. Which even in that, bro, like I don't, most of ours have never been a hype man as hard, bro. Like hyping up a crowd of people that didn't come for you as a skill set, you know what I'm saying? That a skill set that I'm pretty sure translates as an artist when you are once again put in rooms with most of the people that don't know who you are, you know what I'm saying? Jim Jones did that? Yeah. Yeah. Walker did that? A lot of different artists, man. I think one of the bigger lessons, two of the bigger lessons is one, don't be afraid to use your normal life to help you start for your artist life. And then two, don't be afraid to play background to learn how to be the foreground character, you know what I'm saying? For sure. And it takes a lot of ego management, understanding the big picture for all parties involved in a situation like that. Like you said, the newer artists could be like, how come I'm not moving fast enough or I'm better than this artist, I should be the one, right? The artist who's already up, right? As Kendrick starts to take off, right? A J-Rock could have tried to hold him back, right? Or like parted ways just cause he felt a certain way. And then a top dog having to manage that type of thing, right? For one, right? And make sure that doesn't happen, right? And all the while learning and then probably seeing, yo, there's a bigger play with Kendrick in terms of market share. So how do I navigate and get off of J-Rock? Not get off of them, but you know, like begin to communicate that the resources are gonna go this way, right? It takes a lot of communication, ego management, big picturing, and trust, yeah, and trust, yeah, for real. So those are all things that have to be taken to account and understand a lot of these managers, their first artist, that's their learning situation. It's like their first kid. Right, cause then after that, they begin to pick different. Well, I'm looking for artists with this level of opportunity. I'm not just gonna manage any artist, right? Or I use that artist to then be able to get connections in the industry and legitimize myself and build relationships and stuff like that. And now I have that to apply towards the next situation to make it move faster. So, you know, managers are bumping their head in the same way artists are. And y'all have to have that same level of patience knowing that, yo, I'm building that machine. Things feel like they take off overnight because you are building underground. You know, that's like one of those beautiful analogies like the flower before it blooms, like all the roots are being played. That really is what happened. It's just the thing is, like the music industry, until those roots are laid, you really ain't seeing like above ground like that, right? You'll see something sprout out and that thing die cause it didn't have any real roots. You'll see that all the time. But the ones that we like, we look at and it's like, yo, they're amazing. They really impacted the game. Roots, roots, roots, roots, roots. Whoa, they came out of nowhere. It's like, nah, cause music is, we don't see shit above the ground until things start popping. In most cases where, again, I always elude to other industries, some other industries, you might just see the slow growth process from early above ground, right? Cause the roots aren't, they don't have to run as deep or it's not as many of them. So, you know, just keep that in mind that you are a part of this process and it's not like just some constant inspiration thing where it might feel like, yeah, I'm encouraging myself and I'm running down a path. Look, some of y'all might be, I can't say that. But the reality is, even when done correctly, it's like that, right? It's like that. I look at like building a rocket, you know what I'm saying? Like literally it's like the, when you're building a rocket, it takes a while. Hold up, man. It's dude about to put me on game. Man, how you do the rockets, bro? You know, it's, I don't know all the technical intricacies of it, but I know it takes a long time. It takes a lot of research, right? A lot of development, a lot of engineering on the right parts. And then it's like, if you put the rocket and the skeleton together, they won't, it's not going to take off, right? But like once you make all these tweaks, make all these modifications and shit's right, and they press the button, that shit moves fast as fuck. You know what I'm saying? It's like, I look at like building ours, like building the rocket. It's going to take us a long time to put this shit together, but once the infrastructure is done and we press the button, now shit's going to move as fast as we want it to move. I don't know. I don't know if that makes sense. Ladies and gentlemen, nah, he pulled that shit together, bro, don't dilute yourself, man, you killed that shit, man. Exactly where we ended. No labels necessary yet. Another clip tuning in on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music for full episodes. I'm Brad Manshine. I'm Cory. And we out. Peace.