 If you don't have a lot of money and you want to blow up, then you need to understand how to predict music industry waves. And that comes from paying attention, understanding what makes each wave happen, and then moving fast enough before everybody else takes advantage of it. You don't want to be last. So we're about to break down exactly where the industry is about to go and how you can flip that information for yourself so you can always be ahead of the game. I'm Brand Man Sean, I'm Cory, and this is yet another episode of No Labels Necessary. Rap is failing and country is the next wave. That is what multiple people have said, including the rapper by the name of Russ. We're going to get into our thoughts on this whole situation, but that's not the only wave in the way we're going to speak in this particular interview. If you already have your thoughts, this isn't what the whole thing is about, but it's a good lesson to understand understanding industry waves. So let's start here. You know what it is? Four years ago, every CEO was signing every SoundCloud rapper and their cousin. You know what they're about to do? Sign every country artist and their cousin. And guess what? The country artists like we talked about before, they'll make enough money to cover the loss of the rappers that they're still fronting. And so it doesn't matter. It'll always look like a rap is still doing its thing. Country is booming, yeah, but rap is still crushing. Yeah, but y'all are signing the country artists. He goes on and say, I know because I got relationships with people who are in these label systems in his infrastructure, right? Well, he starts before this, he goes like this. We have heard everything. Oh, you're also sliding on and off? Heard that. In fact, I heard it and it was better. You're selling drugs? I heard that. 50 did it and it was way harder. Right? So he starts there. And I think that's part of why a lot of people misconstrued everything he was saying, right? Shout out to Jelani. I see Jelani said country music already been popular, so it's not the next wave. I think I know what he's saying, but I think you're missing what he's saying here. It's a lot of people saying, oh, he got it wrong. African music is the next wave. It's like basically Afro beats, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's a lot of opinion going on that I think is causing people to miss the facts that Russ is speaking on. And when we talk about industry waves, there's multiple elements that cause industry waves. You can be popping, there could be a sound, it's cultural movement, and every cultural movement doesn't have to be commercialized. There's a lot of local bubbles and it's like, oh yeah, I remember in my scene, there was this special time and then it fizzled out and only your locale is aware of it. It didn't become this thing, like the way Trap hit Atlanta, you know what I mean? And the way Zaytova and Gucci were doing, what they were doing, that didn't have to permeate throughout culture and the way it has, but it took signings and label infrastructure to back it. So Rewind, how do we even get to this and think about this as a topic? Like me and you have been saying, a lot of these country artists pop up. A lot of them. Like black country artists specifically. So this is when we get into the conspiracy of sorts. You can call it a conspiracy, but really it's just observation. I mean, conspiracy isn't founded in the level of truth and expertise that we have, you know what I mean? I'll take that as an insult a bit. But legitimately, if you look at like all these black country artists that have been popping up and being shown on these platforms, the same platforms that we pay people to market on, or people pay us to market on. So we know how you, if you got a post on this page, oh, okay, that's interesting. Okay, we see a post on another page about these black country artists. And now it's multiple black country artists. And now I'm seeing this person that I've never seen a regular celebrity post about this same five or six black country artists and another set of celebrities post about these same six black country artists. And they've been lazy about it. They're using the same copy. Similar copy, yeah. Very similar caption, very similar copy. Very, very interesting. The same group of like six to nine artists. Very, very interesting. Like conspiracy theory definitely went off. And this is where we get into industry way. Like what happens, right? You have the natural culture that can take off and then the industry goes, oh, that's interesting. Why don't I invest in that? Somebody invest in that and everybody else is trying to get behind it because they're chasing a wave that's already popping. All right, it can happen that way organically and then somebody invest in it because they see it, it's an opportunity. It takes off and the rest of the world follows. And I think that's what most people are used to and understand from a like direct standpoint. But there's an alternative where we know that there's enough raw material there. It's not a wave that's necessarily taken off but we know that the timing is right to push into something, right? Or something is already going away that we don't like and we have to find a solution to go along with what's happening. And this is our solution. So, how does black country fit into this? Because Russ said country is the next wave. Now, he already alluded to country was late to streaming platforms. Now he basically said that, like that's something we've known for a while. Hip hop was very early, historically, hip hop and R&B audiences, especially hip hop though are first to the technology platforms. So that means you couldn't really capitalize on country artists to, I mean country audiences at to the full extent at the beginning, right? And since like 2018, maybe 2023 is like now you are full blown momentum on the streaming platforms. And we can truly lean into the country audience. Y'all really exist. Y'all are on there. Y'all are a significant part of the streaming and that's what we start seeing. Oh, country is taking over hip hop, right? So it's there. Now that we see that people can, we already hear gripes about like how it's harder to make money in like a hip hop, right? Than a country. Cool. And we know that that's the next wave. What does he mean by the next wave? If I'm a label, I'm signing artists to support the next wave. Any wave needs financial support on a commercial scale. So if I'm not signing hip hop artists, if I'm not supporting hip hop artists, if I'm not signing dance music or whatever type of music and supporting it on a commercial scale, then for all intents and purposes, that wave is gone from a commercial scale, right? I guess it came, it popped. It doesn't mean that it's not culturally relevant at all. And I think this is what people are missing because they're getting too caught up in their feelings and their love for specific genres, et cetera. It has nothing to do about that. This conversation where Russ is talking about is not that. He said, I know people who are at these companies and yes, hip hop will always be around, but these people are going to be signing country acts. If they're signing country acts, that means they're supporting financially and pushing country acts the same way. Y'all talk about all this music and everybody likes to talk about, act like all popular music is bullshit. The same way that y'all like to talk about, well, this music sucks and the only reason this music that sucks is theirs because of the labels and the industry is pushing it. You're the man. The man, whoever that man is, you know what I mean? This is that, this is a version of that. Like what they are pushing now is going to be country. There's a plethora of reasons why. They might be moving along from hip hop. That's another discussion. Maybe, Jacore, you got strong thoughts on that, but if you look at all the pieces and just pay attention, the artists are popping up. You keep seeing black artists, country artists pop up. You keep hearing, seeing posts about, well, country has always been black, right? You keep seeing all these things. Next thing you know, Beyonce drops a country song, supposedly project coming, right? And who better, right? To lead the revolution. To lead the revolution, right? Then Queen D, right? We got hit them from the bottom, we hit them from the top, right? Beyonce is there to take those bullets, the first person over the hill, she can take that because it's not going to knock her off. She Beyonce, and she got everybody paying attention. Whoa, whoa, whoa, y'all not supporting Beyonce? Beyonce is Beyonce, like that. You don't think Lil Nas X was already the martyr for that cause? Not a chance, not a chance. Like Lil Nas X did what he did, but Lil Nas X created context for this stuff. That's fair, that's fair. Because it's early enough, no, it's close enough historically where a lot of people remember that moment and remember it became a question of racism or not, right? Yeah, yeah. So bam, that context is there. So people are looking, whoa, what's wrong with this Beyonce stuff? How come it's not being accepted because there was a lot of question of racism going on before. So now we got a super microscopic, magnifying glass on this Beyonce situation, especially since it's being Beyonce, you can't turn her down. She takes those bullets or whatever, protects everybody with the Captain America shield and now everybody else done got in the door. Like she's making way, like point blank. She's making way. Interesting timing, at the same time you're seeing all these black country artists pop up and at the same time, you're hearing all this consistent education about how country started with black people, right? And then on top of that, you're hearing that hip hop, my rap is failing a little bit, right? In the way that they can textualize it, country is the next thing. So it does a couple of things because, well, shoot, who are we gonna replace these rappers with? Black country artists. Because we can't get as a label, I can't get into country country. Country country already is locked down. That's a legitimate closed community, not like not open to everybody, but they have a very strong handle on it. It's true old school style gatekeeping. They got legitimate gatekeeping going on in country. Legitimate, you can't just like make, oh yeah, we hear now, you know what I mean? And then revolutionize and this is just what it looks like. You can't do that in country. There's some people who got some things to be said, and feel how you want to feel about that. I think there's positives and negatives to that. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Because people like to focus on the negative aspect of that, but then those same people get mad when they feel like their genre gets diluted or taking advantage of. Country does what rappers say that wish rap would do. They do, exactly. So you can look at it either way. So since we know we can't just like bogart up in here and be like, yo, we hear now. And all of a sudden take over the game. So we got to bring in these guys that the country's artists or the regular country, they're not going to really invest in or understand it anyway. If we want to just like connect the conspiracy like dots, you know what I mean? Like that makes sense. Because what do you say? All right, if you want to increase the size of the marketplace, oh no, if you already dominated marketplace, you got the only way to grow is to increase the size of a marketplace. Or if you look at the other way, if the marketplace is already being dominated, the only way to create room for yourself is to also grow to pie. You know what I mean? So that's what it feels like it's happening. I don't know from who, why, where or whatever, but the right team with the right resources, that would make a lot of sense. I would try to do something like that. It's like, dang, how can I get in? I'm gonna bring in these black kids. I'm gonna switch them into the country artists. And by the way, not to say that these artists aren't legitimate country artists, these black artists. Okay, so I could also flip it this way. I'm gonna start investing into these black country artists that I was ignoring before because I was looking at these other black artists that were in hip hop and taking advantage of that opportunity. And that's what a lot of this timing artistically is to be real. Artist popularity, legitimate artist. Like a lot of their popularity is predicated on the timing, not necessarily them taking advantage of commercial trends. I wanna drop a quick note for anybody who has a fan problem. And not just any old fan problem, but the type of fan problem that we encountered after helping a lot of artists go viral, have a lot of success, get a lot of streams, but still not being able to know who exactly are my fans? How do I reach them? How do I actually leverage that to sell merch, go to a show? Because that's where Spotify leaves us without knowing who our real people are. Same for social media. If you've had this problem, I'll tell you how we've been solving it. And our agency for a while now in the pro version is just now being released to be accessible to any artist or manager out there. I'm talking about Forever Fan. A lot of the campaigns and successes that y'all have heard us talk about on this channel have been powered by that software that's made finding and understanding your true fans simple so they support you with their pockets. Cause we all need a little money in this music thing. And now they're making it available to our audience for only one dollar at foreverfanmusic.com slash no labels, no labels with an S at the end. And you gotta put in the code, no labels. All right? Now look, the DSPs, the social media platforms, I think they've shown us how much they care about artists for a while now. So at this point, we can all play naive or actually do something about it. Bet on yourself at foreverfanmusic.com slash no labels. And again, put in the code, no labels to get initial access for only one dollar. Let's get back to this episode. Like Russ brought up probably one of the best examples when he mentioned the SoundCloud rap wave, right? Like you think about those artists at the time, a lot of them existed before the boom happened, but it took kind of all of them starting to make momentum for it to become like a little, well, I wouldn't say legitimate scene before the, but the commotion, like you had to have your exes and your little pumps in order for you to have like your, you know, like your smoke purpose and whoever you were kind of considered to be a little bit further down the funnel. And every wave is like that, right? A more recent music genre too, actually, I can think about is Afro Beats and Hyper Pop. Afro Beats is a new, you know what I'm saying? Anybody that is a fan of the music can tell you like it's not new. It just became mainstreamed last four or five years. And it took the collective effort of a couple of artists where you had like your burner boys and you know what I'm saying? A couple different other artists kind of add into that pot to make it like a legitimate movement. It went from being like, hey, there's a handful of successful artists in this genre to like, oh no, this is a legitimate movement. And so the country was interesting about the country. One is, you know, we talked about this. A lot of the artists that they are highlighting, they are artists that like have been around for a minute. Like two of the bigger ones, I see Shabuzy and then I think her name is like Tanneryl or something like that. Tanner. Tanner, yeah, I know I'm messing it up, but like those two artists are artists that like, I personally have seen at least over the last like three, four years, you know what I'm saying? I've seen them kind of grow. And like you said, a lot of it is timing. Now, when you read that comment earlier from Jelani, right? And he was like, your country music has been popping. I think maybe I understand, I understand I think where he's coming from and then what you're kind of saying, right? Like so it's like country music has always been popping. There's probably not been a decade, not a lifetime where there hasn't at least been a handful of countries. To someone who loves country and understand that country has never not been here. Yeah, it's there. But the argument against Jelani's point would be when is the last time country music has been culturally relevant mainstream wise? And then when is the last time country music has been relevant in black culture? Those are two really important notes to think about. It's the same argument. And this is why I say people have to not get caught up in like their own bubble or their own like affinity for whatever they're doing or something like that because it's the same argument when people say R&B is dead or whatever. And then people are like, oh no, man. Like y'all just being lazy. Y'all don't understand it. So many great R&B artists out there, dah, dah, dah, dah. No, that's actually the point. The fact that I have to dig to go find them is the point. When we talk about trends, when we talk about the wave popular, we're talking about what's the stuff that's in people's face that they don't have to go look for. You know about that person and you don't even listen to that type of music. And next thing you know, you hear that person enough and maybe you hear another few people and now you starting to listen to that type of music and they're making your genre bigger, right? Like that's what the wave looks like. And that's why, again, when people complain about where R&B is, it's different today to know that anyone from Ari Lennox to October, London to a Givion or whoever, whoever you go down the list to know they're there versus like 2000, I don't know what it was, maybe like 18 or 17 when LMA, Boo'd Up was just out there and everywhere. It wasn't like, then you go back to the 90s. Well, R&B was out there as a whole. There was like 20 R&B songs that you just go outside and hear everywhere the same way LMA's Boo'd Up song was everywhere. Now it's like, yeah, I'm an R&B fan and I know where that, so I know that this music is there. And if you want the investment, the capital pushed behind you, your people, whatever your genre is, like that goes along with being the commercial wave, not just from what you look at culturally, but more importantly, in this case, not judging the quality of art and what should be, but the wave from a business standpoint where all the executives are like, hey, this is the next wave. You should be post, like country music is on the rise. You better find you a motherfucker to invest in. Like that's what we're talking about right here. Yeah, bro. And I'll even say what made me realize it is there is a really popular traditionally urban-leaning record label that I know of that has recently signed the Country Act. And like I said, label is traditionally urban music-leaning, rap, R&B, all that stuff. And I remember just sitting in a meeting when they were talking about them. And at first I was like, oh, maybe he got like a killer war vibe. Like he kind of that land, cause I didn't know he was a country artist, but I was just seeing like white kid on the Zoom meeting, thinking about who, what label I'm here consulting with. I'm like, oh, this is interesting, this guy's here. And I always remember hearing like one of the execs on the call say like, yeah, we're excited about signing him because he represents a really interesting journey this label is about to take. And at the time, I didn't really understand that until I saw them working him. And a lot of them working him was like I said, you do the same way you hear rappers talk about going to labels that don't have rap artists and they had to either figure it out and sometimes they didn't fuck up. I'm watching that happen in real time. I'm watching like it's an urban label try to figure out how to break a country act. Now they were able to do some things that typically work for rappers for this artist that did push him in that direction. But then there are times where like I'm, I worry for him where like, all right, you have to use rapper tricks to break him but you might push him too far away from the country audience. But the bigger point is like that said a lot to me is like, man, here's this label that has had success with this type of artists still has success with this type of artists and they feel like, yo, we don't hop on this country wave. We gon' miss out, you know what I'm saying? Which I think says a lot, you know, cause there was a point where a lot of labels stuck to their guns and it's just like, if you were the country label, all you did was country. If you were the R&B label, all you did was R&B but you can't do that no more though. Yeah, you can't do that no more, you're right. The before, as you go further back, labels were more independent. Not necessarily purely independent as we think about like indie today in that way. Independent choice. Independent choice because it was less monolithic. You know what I mean? So much of this stuff was still evolving. Commercial music is still a relatively new industry in this way. Pre-1950, commercial music wasn't a thing at this level. Michael Jackson was the king of pop. Pop was basically being created as he went along. You know what I mean? He's not the inventor of pop music but it wasn't fully solidified. So then you continue to evolve music and look at these industries and then hip-hop was still new. So back then, you think about the regionalism. You're speaking to a region. Now all that stuff is gone and a lot of these labels that started as a region, in their own region and then later start to sign to a label or a major label, now they're answering to them. So if you're answering to them, you don't have the same choice because if I'm, I don't know, insert label and I started on the West Coast with some rappers or whatever, like back then, if I don't decide to hop on a country wave, it's probably the right decision, first of all because shoot, man, that's not my audience. I don't understand that. Why am I gonna do that? I could just stay true to who I am and keep moving but it only affects me and my label and I probably have enough money and I'm making enough money. But when you start to have these labels signed to other labels and everybody's kind of tied back down to a major, you make that decision today and now somebody higher up is looking at a balance sheet and they're like, yo, it's not that much profit coming in on this West Coast, traditionally hip-hop label or something like that. You know what I mean? Like it's just like, well, up, cut off that budget. Up, that means cut off those people, which is your job that you decided not to go country. This is what it looks like to not go country, right? So it's a completely different like game in that matter. And I think before we go like deeper into the country, I wanna play a second clip that goes into a similar thing. It's not country, it's not country. But if y'all are still listening, which I hope y'all are, like, y'all need, send this to your managers. Send this to your other artists, homie friends. They need to hear this conversation to understand the ways that are happening on the other side of the waves. Y'all look the cultural waves. I think we get that as artists, as people who are in it, we touch it, we feel it, we love it. But the business side of the waves and how they can impact, stop our waves and fuck up the money that we think we're about to get is understanding this other side. Check out this clip and hopefully you get, I want y'all to guess in your head like what the point is before we start talking. Y'all ain't gonna wanna hear it from me, but the girl rapper wave is over. Damn. Come on. Just telling you what it is. I'm normally a few months ahead with this stuff. Sometimes a few years ahead with this stuff. When you say over. Why do you say that? You just said it was over. The girl, the girl rapper wave is, is finito. How you just, all right. First of all, Joe, like I'm a few months ahead. Aye, I feel it. You say I'm a few years ahead sometimes. To me, you just wrong, bro. Like, you just wrong in there. Broke the clock, right twice in the weather. Broke the clock right twice a day or something. But real talk, he's about to say something that however you feel about the girl rapper wave and what he just said, the wave being over is about to tie right back in. And this is the part that people miss because people think he's hating. Oh, and what's a man doing, talking about women's business and things like that? If you listen to him, it's gonna have nothing to do about how he feels about women artists or anything like that, like that. Check this out. You just said a couple of weeks ago that it was lit. I wanna waste. No, the cream rises to the top. So Lotto shall remain. Sure. Flo Milley shall remain. Got it. Rhapsody will always be there, but she wasn't really a part of it. But all of that, go find a girl, send her to Columbia, get it done, put her in the studio with fucking Mike Will or any one of them niggas. All of that, planting the girl in the scene, getting the record, and it taking off. That wave is over. That wave is over. What did he just say? He basically just said, there was a playbook that became popular. I'm gonna take a woman. I'm gonna put her in the scene in a specific way probably get a sample. Cause boy, that was a huge part of the playbook to pop the women artists off in this last, you know, three, four years or whatever, and then sign them, get them signed to a major and then keep running that play. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. That's the play that he's talking about. People are so focused on the artist, right, that they're seeing as a result. The wave that they're seeing as a result in popular culture, but he's talking about, yo, no, if the people who make these plays happen, the reason that it rises to the top in that way, they're gonna stop investing. That's all it goes back to. The money, the effort, the resources, the support system, and the gatekeepers that be are investing in one thing at this moment. You see a lot of it, all right. And a lot of times people get fooled in the front end to thinking that this wave is the wave just because it's the wave. People are driving it. Nah, man. Nah, man. Yeah, bro, it's been a lot of money lost on BBLs and studio sessions, you know what I'm saying? That's how I look at it. And, you know, I feel like it's one of those insights we get as a marketer, but any marketer that's ever been brought like one of those artists, you know what I'm saying? Like, we all can empathize with each other there and understand what Joe's coming from, because I always thought the same thing, right. So there's a point where you start to see, like, if you pay enough attention, you can see the moment when public sentiment starts to dictate where the future music is about to go. You start noticing that certain concerns of fans, you know, maybe you would see a comment on a post a couple of months ago, and it'd be 10 people that liked it. And you see a similar comment five months later and then 2,000 people like it. You know what I'm saying? Like, sometimes you can in real time see like public perception change around certain things. I mean, if you think about what Joe said, right, I call it, you know, bad bitch rap, you know what I'm saying? I think it's the genre of female rap he's talking about. It's crazy to say like a whole gender of genre. And that's what he's alluded to more specifically too, I think because of that, like lack of specificity, people, that just gives more people room to just say, oh, you talking females, but yeah, it's that specific genre of rap. The BBLs, the I'm scamming dudes or like I'm a boss. Like that ain't safe. Yeah, that whole specific way of doing things, that's what's being exploited at this period. Yeah, and it's like, you know, I think there was a time where, you know, you think back to when that really started to take off. I attribute the take off of that to like around a time when like City Girl started taking off. That's when I think it. No, no, that was it. Yeah, like, so you think about that. It's like, all right, man, you know, that's pre-pandemic. Everybody feeling a lot more carefree and we all outside. And, you know, a lot of that demographic now that, you know, they're still here now, listen to that, like most of them are probably like 23, 24, back then, now they, you know, late 20s, 30s. Dang, bro, they over the, they over the hill now? All about to be, you know what I'm saying? Looking at the wall, bro, you know what I'm saying? And so, but I think that's what happens. Like the core audience starts to change. And if you start thinking about things within it, right, there's been the argument about quality. That's been big since the genre popped off. We've seen, you know, there's been a couple of notable, like surgery related deaths with women in the last couple of years. You know, it became a big issue. I think when SZA got her BBL, it made it start a really interesting conversation around, like, you know, body dysmorphia within music. Like, and you start, like, if you watched a lot of these things happen, you could literally start to see public perception go like, I don't know if we want these women that kind of represent this because one, you're kind of ascribing a lifestyle that like 99% of us are never going to get to see. And then two, there are a lot of dangerous elements to their lifestyle that we weren't privy to that now we're starting to become more aware of. It's just like street rap, you know what I'm saying? Like how many kids will listen to street rap thinking like, oh, this is all fun and games. And then, you know, the first time going to like a show or something where they seen shit get real, like they completely changed the way they look at it. You know, so we got to see a lot of that happen in real time. And so that's the other element of a wave being created or dying that I don't think a lot of people think about is a lot of times it really does has to tie back into like what are the people going through in real time. I remember watching this YouTube video not too long ago. It might've been like fashion theories, like MatPat's channel, something, one of those channels, but it was a video about like about how you can track recessions and the state of a country's economy by like fashion trends. And I'll talk about how like, you know, when you're in a recession, like jeans get more popular because they're a lot easier to come about and more durable versus like when the country's doing better. You know, you start seeing nicer fabrics, like satins and silks and stuff start to come back into play. And it's like that, it's really interesting because like I said, like the social, the social styles of the people start to dictate what the next wave is because the people are starting to look for something that either represents what they feel like they're going through or looking for something that represents an escape. And the hard thing for artists and creators and you know, even business people is you know people are in the middle of that line. You just never know which way they're gonna go. Like, do they want an escape or do they want representation? You know what I'm saying? And a lot of times if you can figure out which one of that is gonna be the bulk of the mark and you can jump ahead on that, you know what I'm saying? Like you will be good. The flip side of that is if you jump on the wrong side of it and it goes an opposite way. You fuck. And you gotta understand which escape is it, right? If it is an escape. Cause it's always functional, right? Escapism is functional for the people who need it, right? And then you know, the genes or the representation is functional or just like, hey, this has a real utility in my life. This is what I can afford right now. You know what I mean? This is gonna last, you know what I'm saying? And I think, I don't know man, you got me thinking of just like these BBLs and stuff. All right, at the time, man. I can't wait to BBLs or look back at like jibos. What do you mean? Like I remember when we had those, like that. You see them jibos in the thrift store? You know, like, hey, the BBLs, man. You just see silicone in the bin somewhere, man. Oh my God. Well, I think the market is like, there's more and more people that are realizing, it's doing more damage than good. People use it as like a symbol of, like, yeah, freedom or empowerment. Yeah, we all know, like on a real human level that it's more of a cover up. We all know that, right? So like not to get too deep into that direction. I think what you're saying, right? And you look, you know, I got daughters. I feel real strong about this shit. But like, but like, but what you're saying, like a lot of that sentiment and cause people are looking at artists, right? That they already believe are like beautiful and then do something to them. And I think that's when it really started becoming a thing. It's one thing where it's like, someone's doing something that you might feel like, hey, well they needed to do a little something or whatever, but then you're looking at somebody who like objectively, superficially, stereotypically, right? Is a 10 or a nine. And then they're doing stuff. And that's when it just clicks, right? So there's an alarm like, all right, something's wrong. Yeah, something's wrong. It's like, you're doing this, you're stereotypically, you know, good looking and you're like 20 years old. You know what I'm saying? And I know you see the comments. Yeah, like so what is this for, right? And then that's when you start realizing the impact. Just like you mentioned the kids looking at guns and all these other things. And you just see the market going that direction. There's a sentiment and the labels, the infrastructure can invest in these things for as long as that sentiment isn't beyond a certain level. Once that pushback becomes eh, and people are starting to get tired of it, right? Now we gotta go strike another nerve. Like, oh, we had that nerve right there. We, I don't know why I wanna say this. So we, I will turn it down from where my mind goes naturally. But we stimulated that nerve, you know what I'm saying? And it was all exciting. It was all great. But beyond a certain point, there was a diminishing returns. So we had to find a new nerve, you know what I'm saying? Because most of the money is made in the beginning aspect of the excitement. You know what I mean? After a while, let me switch my mind again. It doesn't have as much return and value, you know what I mean? So yeah, like the big part about this is why is it so valuable for artists? And I think this is the biggest part that I don't want people to miss. If the marketplace is going somewhere and you're able to read the marketplace, you can be in a moment where the marketplace is moving towards you. Which means it's time for you to bag up, right? Because you know that they're coming, everybody's invested in this. And we do this in other industries. Like when it comes to tech, whatever, like if you're dealing with like VCs, like there'll be things, 2024 at the top of the year, investors are being told that these are the trends and this is where the market is going. So they're all putting a certain portion of their investment in play to invest in that particular market. And it might be way bigger than any other year because of the trends and forecasting that they're hearing. Because of the collective push. Because of, and then there's a collective push and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at some point as well, right? It doesn't mean they're not all wrong. Like, you know, people went crazy in crypto. But look at how much money went into crypto and got lost on crypto. What if that money could get lost on you though, bro? Yeah, that could have been you, right? It could be you. And it makes me think about that hot chicken conversation we had a couple of weeks ago and we was talking about all the restaurants like hopping on the hot chicken wave at that point and where that came from or like even the chicken sandwich crave that happened a couple of years ago. You know what I'm saying? It's literally just like somebody says, hey, this is gonna be the next thing. And this is really important for us to understand, man. Because I think because a lot of y'all never get the chance to talk to executives, you don't understand the exact brain. A lot of executives talk to other executives. So they're sharing this type of information with each other. Yo, does your label tell you? So you're on a chart metric data and show you that XYZ is going up? Yep. Now that exec is like, damn, this is about to go up? All right, well, the VPS, Sony told me that. The VPS, you know, Atlantic or whatever told me that. I keep hearing it from all my exec friends. I need to start paying attention to that. And then like you said, they start actively working on it. The rumor spreads or the data spreads and they all are actively working on it. And what might have been the rumors, like you said, now it becomes true because you literally have millions of dollars of resources and teams and ingenuity being put towards almost making sure this thing is gonna happen. And as much as, you know, we sometimes like to be like, nah, the labels are wrong. They can't move the needle like that anymore. Yes, the fuck they can, bro. Because it don't take a lot to make it happen. Like you, if you have every major label pushed towards this collective trend, that could easily be a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand artists in this particular trend being developed and being primed to be the next up. We give it that year to two year gap before the superstar comes out, which all it takes is one superstar to come out that way to cement it. Every wave, every big wave that you can think about really only needed one superstar. You know what I'm saying? Hyperpop, they just need an egg deal away. You know what I'm saying? The SoundCloud wave, they got eggs and a little pump. You know what I'm saying? I was like, you look at most of the ways you only need like one to two good people to break out to completely legitimize the wave because the tide that rises the rest of the artist makes them visible enough to where the untrained eye just thinks the shit is just booming across the board. You know what I'm saying? And I don't know, man. I think like, I'm not, I see where it comes from. I can understand where the journey to country is kind of coming from. And even some of the logistical and cultural things that will make a label wanna push for it. But I think that to Russ's point and into your earlier point, because we know about this collective push for country music that is happening and is about to happen, if you are someone that's never really understood how a wave is being created or is kind of manufactured in that way, this is probably gonna be the, we probably won't get another like real-time case study to watch for another couple. If country ends up being truly the next wave, that means it's gonna dominate for the next like three to five years, you know what I'm saying? So you want a real-time case study about watching how a movement's momentum is kind of built out and structured in that way from ground up, then it's the best time to pay attention and really watch it, you know what I'm saying? Because next example might not come along for another two, three years. Good minute. Yeah. Like you said, to really get the wave popping, all you need is one star. Yeah, one. All right. One star, two, three good support acts and then just a bunch of other artists trying to do it. Right now they're using a manufactured star in country, there were Beyonce in my manufacturer, I don't mean she was a star because like she's manufactured to be a star in her place, but like in the country space, that's manufactured. You're not natural in that particular space, but that only is buying some time for a true star to emerge in that particular country genre that they're trying to build up and they're making wave on. Perfect example, a new star merged August 12th, 2019. You remember that? Lil Nas X. No. The baby? Wait, we're not talking about countries specifically, we're just talking about in general. The Popeyes chicken sandwich. Oh God. All right. You already had the incumbent Chick-fil-A and then you had this Popeyes chicken sandwich. Pop up out of nowhere. It was out of nowhere, yeah. Pop up out of nowhere, went crazy and after Popeyes chicken sandwich started going crazy. Everybody got chicken sandwiches. Literally everyone had chicken sandwiches. Everybody. Now I remember literally at the top of 2020 watching one of Gary V's, it was like a marketing of the now or something. He was interviewing a lot of executives and it was like an executive at KFC or and she was saying that everybody, all of her competitors were about to drop new chicken sandwiches, McDonald's, KFC. She went down a list. Like no, this is going to be the thing because that one star emerged, Popeyes. And because that one star emerged to make it hot, a trend, oh, somebody can challenge a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich, all of the investment was being poured into that space on chicken sandwiches. Artists, you are the chickens. Be a chicken, be a chicken. Or you could be a burger. Or you could be the farmer dealing the chickens. I don't care, but just know where the money is going. Are you a burger? Are you a chicken? Are you a deal pickle? I don't know. But that's really how this works, right? Just knowing that the money is coming your way or not. And if it's not coming your way and you don't want to flip and stay true to whatever you believe your art is, then know that the money is leaving the room so you can adjust accordingly. 100%. And you asked me something earlier too, right? You said something about the timeline of country becoming relevant. You said maybe I have some ideas on that. I've been thinking about this whole time and I think I have a rough timeline in my head of why we are what we are today. Like y'all follow me here, right? 2018, right? We get Lil Nas X, Old Town Road, and we get the baby's Walker, Texas Ranger. Two heavily country-influenced songs, right? Two songs that albeit it was kind of like a joke within black culture at the time. I still think made a large majority of young black culture at the time at least aware of like country music and country time. Open to the vibes. Yeah, open to the vibes, exactly, right? Both of those artists break through, they kind of fall back. Yeah, we fast. And then, you know, I think in the middle of that there's this artist named Shibuzy who I give a lot of credit to kind of like bridging, like actively working on like bridging like that country and kind of like rap. I mean, I know there's been like other people like Jelly Roll and stuff, but I'm talking about specifically in black culture, I give a lot of that to like new age to him. Cause he's been, yeah he's been. Meanwhile, also there's been a lot of black country artists that are beginning legitimate country artists shine too as well, where it's not in black culture and that's the differentiation you're making with Shibuzy. That's a lot of what we're alluding to in this conversation of what's gonna rise, but there's also been, I can't even think everybody's name right now, but male and female country artists that are black that have been getting shine within country artists, country culture already. Yeah, exactly. So 2018, Lil Nas X the baby. Roughly, I'll give Shibuzy, I wouldn't say 2019, 2020 was around the time I became the most aware about him. So let's just throw it out there as best when he started getting his breakthrough, right? That's 2020. I think it was 2021 or 2022. I'm trying to remember what year it was. Whatever year we did our TikTok report. So 2020, I remember that being another report that came out that started talking about country music fans migration to DSP. It was talking about how like, it grew like maybe like five to 10%, which wasn't crazy compared to the other genres, but for countries specifically that was pretty crazy at the time. Like damn, like five to 10% of the marketplaces jumping ship to DSPs. So now the major industry is starting to become aware of what Russ said. Hey, the country music genre is open to being a part of the new age in a way that we didn't think they were ever gonna be. And stay with me here, man, because it's about to get crazy. This was, I think it was gonna get crazy, right? That's 2020, 2021. 2022 or 2023, about even last year that one country artist went viral for being thick. She went viral on Black Twitter. That was last year, yeah. Last year, right? She had a BBL. I don't think she had a BBL. No, that was a super BBL, bro. I don't think she did, bro. That's what made it more interesting. Her response to it made me feel like she didn't have one. I mean, you can look it up, bro, but I don't think. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely something like thick ones out there, but nah, she had a BBL for sure. So 2022, 2023, thick country artist go viral, right? Right, bringing more attention back from Black culture into the space. With new rises in the financial sector of it, because of the streaming and the vinyls and all the new stuff that was adopting. And then we get to 2024, Beyonce, and from there to the rest of the story, rice itself. I think those are the steps that led up to where we at today. Lil Nas X, the baby, whatever that country artist is that went viral, you know what I'm saying? And the artist like Shibuzy, and I can't thank her now. I keep feeling bad, man, because I keep forgetting her name, but the woman I tried to reference earlier, I think those are the steps that led us to where we are. And from a label side, we talk about investments and what's safe to invest in. I mean, the reality is a lot of the cultural things in country keeps the artist safe for the most part. It's a genre where I do think the investment is a little bit safer, because you know that even if the artist doesn't break through through the newer, the newer means, they still have potential to be successful within a more traditional music system. And I think that that's a type of stability and safety that you don't really get with any other genre. Maybe rock music, maybe classical, might be the other two I could kind of think of that might have that same kind of safety net, but it's not a lot of them. You know what I'm saying? Like it's not a lot of investments you can make where you're like, okay, even if you don't like blow the fuck up, you still should be okay. You know what I'm saying? So I think all that plays into it. Bruh, she ain't got no BB around, probably not. She refused to tell people if it's real or fake. Only people with fake booties refuse. And like either that, or she got like them spandex leggings from TikTok. Oh yeah, the TikTok leggings? But she got on different pants, man. That's not, anyway. Anyway, like everything you said, correct. Except for the reference to her butt, Bruh. Like that was an unneeded distraction, but you chose to lie, Bruh, no way. I mean, I really just really more so want people to understand how many cultural revolutions have been started because I asked, like you'd be surprised if you really look deep dive into your history and just look at, you know, enough pieces of the pie or the puzzle. So many cultural revolutions have come because of just the right cheeks at the right time. It's crazy to think about. What about the left? Maybe the left too. I mean, look, it's a classic to say that women drive marketplaces in many ways. So at the end of the day, again, this whole conversation is understand how culture moves things, understand how infrastructure and resources move things, how those things can intersect, but how those things can chase behind one or another. And the culture that you're aware of at the top, the tip top top is oftentimes more than not infrastructural support, not just the culture, because this culture always happened in all times in different places. And there's a lot of culture that we don't get become aware of going on in different places until that infrastructure gives you a certain level of support. Right, like you said, Afrobeats has been Afrobeats, but now you're seeing the infrastructure here and it being put in place here. So it's up to you to pay attention to that, understand that so you can know when it's your time to cap and when it's a recession or when the recession is about to come so you can cap beforehand, all right? So if you don't have anything to add, do you? Nah, that's it, that's all I got. This is yet another episode of My Label's Necessary Podcast, I'm Brandon and Sean. And I'm Corey. And we out. Peace.