 No, I just made the beat. You feel the rap on it. I don't care if you like it or not. That's just how it was, but that's how we made some of our best music. Artists, you gotta stop overthinking. You're killing your own career and you don't even know it. But trust me, there are so many barriers that come your way that you're unaware of. And legendary producer, Zay Tovin, actually talks on this from several angles in this video we're about to cover to help you escape that place that's keeping your career from going forward. We're gonna talk about those blocks. One of his exercises is actually getting people to rap on music that they don't like. Would you do that? I think you're gonna change the way you look at this by the end of this video. I'm hoping so, but we want hardcore debates in the comments. Watch this video, comment. We want to know what you're thinking. Hold it in your mind, but don't let it keep you from listening out of, because these are some gems. I promise you let's start with this clip of Zay Tovin saying there ain't no such thing as I don't like a beat. What's he mean by that? Back at my house, there ain't no such thing as I don't like to beat. No, I just made the beat. You feel the rap on it. I don't care if you like it or not. That's just how it was, but that's how we made some of our best music. It's like, bro, we not skipping over no beats. Future don't say when I give them some beats. Let me go through them. I pull up the number seven, pull that one up. No, the first one they come up, pull it up. I'm going to go on the mic, boo. As you do that one, pull the second one up. It ain't, you know, man, that's a, that's a, that's a real confidence. As a, as a producer, you can't say you know, I can't do no wrong. So now I can really get my bad, because it's like everything to you is going to be, you know, good. And you going to give them your best. So that's it. Let's start here because there's an artist in the comments that says a shout out to the RMB money podcast. They're saying a beat is a vibe, it's energy, connection. If an artist doesn't connect with the beat nine times out of 10, you won't get their best work. To that I say, which I've heard so much from Motown, hit factory, the hits, the great music, legendary music that they put out. Smokey Robinson said, no, we don't write when we're inspired. We get up every day and write like it's a nine to five. If you are a professional, you treat your career, you treat your craft like a profession. You develop it in the exact same way. It's not when I'm inspired. This whole woo thing that a lot of artists try to move on. And I don't mean that in a dismissive way. I mean that the greats right, they curate their craft over and over again. They're chipping away and you're going to have those failures. We look at every single field was like, oh man, look how many shots Kobe missed. Look how many shots Jordan missed. It's like, yeah, you're going to have some misses and that doesn't mean that actually comes out, but you still got to create. He's not saying that every song isn't necessarily going to come out, but you're going to create to it. So I want to start there. Because a lot of this overthinking and thinking that I got to like a certain vibe and I got to work so hard to make a song meticulously exactly how I want it. That's strategizing. All right. That's what a marketer does. So are you a strategist or a creator? Because creators create all that overthinking. That means you're strategizing trying to put stuff together. Future. Oh, turn on the track. I'm a create because I'm a creator. I stay in that mode. I stay in that vibe. And maybe that's part of why some people end up in that over thinking phase two, because you're not staying in touch with that energy that allows you to just create. Maybe it's because you're working your nine to five and then you're trying to now be an artist at night, right? You're not at that place where you can truly treat it like a profession and just stay tapped in. But these reasons, excuses, whatever you want to call it on why something like this doesn't work is they're just not true. At the very least, it's an exercise that's going to make you better and help you find something that you didn't know that you had. Yeah, 100%. There's two things in that, right? That he said that spoke to me is one, he's like, I'm this great producer. And what I basically took away from what he said is like, I'm not giving you trash beats, right? They may not be beats that, you know, to your point, maybe you don't feel inspired by them or you don't feel like you connect with it necessarily. But these are someone in my level at his level, right? It's like, I'm giving you quality to work with something on come out of this, right? And then second thing you said is like an exercise, right? And I always remember when I had a trainer, he will always get on my ass about warming up before session. He'd be like, yo, if we coming in and we say I say today we benching 225 and your first time lifting the bar is that 225, you don't already fucked up. Because you should have came in here and hit a hit a 100, hit a 150, hit a 185 and then you should have been ready for this 225. Yep. By the time I walked in this bitch and sat down with you. Let's just say out of that batch of beats, you feel like number four is the one for whatever reason one through three don't really inspire you like that five through seven sound cool before is that one that hits that just hits for you for whatever reason. It is very possible that you will misuse that beat. Because to your point, you haven't warmed yourself up to the point to where your creative juices are flowing enough to where you're going to really be able to to like I said use this beat to the highest possibility. Your brain isn't thinking of the right hooks and cadences and bars that would really make what we need. And you know, someone like Zaytov and saying that he's realized the best way to get that out of someone might be to force them to just go through the motions and the exercise like let's just get some stuff going on this. Thoroughly, you know, there have been lots of stories of songs that started out as rough drafts of other songs, right? So you may have created something to beat number one, just off of sheer me forcing you to do it making a point. Yeah, and then maybe a month down the line, I'm going through my hard drive. I'm gonna go like damn, but a hook that you had on this beat is actually pretty crazy. I agree with you. This beat don't make sense. But what if we took that and put on this beat? You would have never got to that. If I hadn't forced you to go through that, you would have maybe possibly never even inspired me to see that if we hadn't forced you to go through that creative motion. I love that point. I love that point. Because even a lot of times when they talk about getting over writer's block, right? I've used that before, it's like just write something, get something there. And once you have that material there, you're going to have these raw pieces that you can build into something. First, just get it out of you, get something out of you so you can begin the creative flow process. Yeah, exactly. I think this also might just speak to like higher level of creators, more professional creators. But that's a great point. It's like, hey, you, this may have forced the pieces out of you. We can figure out what they fit later if this truly doesn't fit on this thing I made you create too. But my job was to just get it out of you. Yes. Yes. And again, right? There's a lot of people who have creative talent, right? But your talent has to be nurtured. And the more that you nurture it, the more that you're in that space. All right. So a lot of times you not being in that space can be a sign of the amateur nature of your skill set at the time. Because you have, because there's a skill to pull in your creative, you know, like to express that. It's a skill to express your creativity. And you might not have developed that or you might take longer just to get in that bag where, again, there's some people who are literally just 100% of the time almost just living in that space. They didn't even get him out of that space. But to add, we're going to get back to overthinking and just some things I think will help you all out. But to add to this particular point that this person said in terms of a beat is a vibe. And if an artist doesn't connect with a beat nine times out of 10, you won't get their best work, right? Right? Because I think we need to start preview. Best work is relative, right? But we're going to play this from another producer. Actually, it's not going to be a producer speaking, but he's going to be referencing another producer is offset of the Migos. I think this interview is actually a producer grind interview. It wasn't a producer guy interview. At least they posted this clip. So shout out to them one way or another. Check this out offset talking about one of his songs that he hated and you would never get. I remember Ric Flair drip. Y'all just so y'all know. Hard. I hated the song. Bruh. I hated the song. Who convinced y'all to put it with a Metro 21? It was Metro. It was Metro for sure. Because it was a West Coast beat. Not saying nothing like that, but it was like during the time, it's 2017. You know what I'm saying, 2018. It's a West Coast beat. When I did it, I didn't take it serious. I'm like going to the Zula, but say AP. Yeah. Like I'm not trying to like, I like y'all don't even know. I cussed his ass out when the album dropped. Because you know, I'm like, bro, don't put this song on the album. He in charge of the picking the songs and shit. So I'm like, bro, don't put this shit on the album, bro. He put it on the album. I wake up to it in the morning like, man, this nigga put this song on the album. I'm like, bro, this West Coast beat, bro. This I was bullshitting. I call him and then I never forget like three days later, we never won on Apple. And he like, I told you, I do this shit. I do this shit. I do this shit. There you go. All right. So these are two commonality producers in this scenario. All right. Trusting other people in the process and other people's opinion around you, because hopefully you got good people around you that you can trust. But check this out. All right. Again, the person said, if the artist isn't feeling it, it might not be their best work. Again, best work to who? He wasn't feeling it. He wasn't feeling the beat. Literally this is the exact scenario that we're talking about. All right. I'm not feeling this beat because it's the West Coast beat. I guess that's not my vibe. I wasn't even taking it seriously. And you know what? When you think you're not taking it seriously, ironically, you're probably not overthinking. So you're actually flipping the script. And by not taking it seriously, you're being looser and just actually doing what comes to you. And dang, that should actually hit. So it's a weird phenomenon. But I mean, we've seen this happen a lot of times with artists, where they're like, dang, I didn't necessarily like it, or I just kind of went in and did something, but I wasn't really, you know, I was going to go back and do it. I thought all this stuff needed to be added to it. Like, no, come what, come move with what's natural to you. And I always say this, right? Music is far more a natural level phenomenon that we give it credit for. Right? It's just vibrations. If you get into physics and just spirituality and nature, right? It's just literally this expression. And we're trying to connect with other humans. Right? In the rawest way. If you do that yourself, when it connects with somebody else, it's probably going to trigger and ring truer, then you overthinking, right? And putting all these extra bells and whistles, especially since people don't necessarily understand music, Cali, which I think we should get to this next clip. And then I'm going to let you you bring him home because this is actually going to relate to this. Zay Tovin going to say some other stuff that might sound controversial, but y'all need to hear. By the way, this is Tank speaking about being in the studio with Zay Tovin. Rich Homie comes in, a rapper, or a younger rapper. Tank is a legend when this music stuff. I mean, when it comes to this music stuff for y'all who do not know, but all right, run it back. Nigga, I got to my verse. Rich Homie came in. He said, stop, stop it right there. Stop right there. That's it right there. That's it. What's the problem? I said, you don't think it, no, I don't think nothing. See, that's your problem. You're thinking. You're thinking, you using your talented mind. I said, what am I using? You using your talented mind. These niggas out here just doing it. Got to feel good. They just feel good. They just doing it. They just, they just putting it out there. You overthinking it. That's it. I said, that's it. And I had to go home, go back to the hotel and think about how much I still didn't know about this shit. And the main thing he said to you, you're being too talented. You're being too talented. Too talented. What does that mean when you hear that? We won't keep playing this clip, but when you hear that, what do you think of first? I think it means that you are you sir or madam are getting too big for your britches. That's what I hear. All right. Y'all, what does that mean when y'all hear too big for your britches? Look, I think that's literally everything that we've been talking about though. All right, you have the talent to do more, but you don't necessarily need to do more. Right? That's what I hear first and foremost. Oh, that was enough. You don't have to add four or five different layers, tweak another seven times. I've known some very successful producers by beats, right? And then literally, because I, and then literally strip the beat down and then just go with that because they're hearing. Oh yeah. This beat has that thing, but this person added five, six instruments that didn't need to be there or a couple of melodies and things like that that didn't need to be there. So I want to just take the part to actually make this thing hit. So that's kind of the type of thing that I'm thinking of right now, which goes into a producer. They can overthink creating the beat due to much saturated and there's no space for the artists to rock because the beat is doing too much, right? It's the same thing where the artists can be doing too much for the fan to actually enjoy it. Relax, brother. You're trying to sell this music to people who aren't musical. They don't play piano or sing. They don't know the scale. They don't know none of that. They know it feel good. I saw that matters. Stop overthinking the feeling. I'll never overthink that. Ever since you said that, I have not been overthinking anything. You ain't supposed to. I barely do backgrounds. You already talented. You already too good. So what you feeling of overthinking some over? Yeah. Firstly, can we take a second to recognize the randomness that is rich homey coin given tank such a phenomenal life changing piece of advice. These are the stories and that the music industry is really driven by. I don't know. I just stories like these I wish got told more often. It makes you really respect certain artists more than you may have already respected. Or if you didn't respect them all, you have to give them that respect after hearing something like that. I just thought it has a big knowledge. That's what he was saying for a while. I couldn't tell if he was saying tank or Zaytoven or rich homey said that, but maybe he did say rich homey said that. Rich homey is actually one of my favorites. I know a lot if he was on rock with rich homey to a certain level, whatever I'm talking about, the time of life that he hit for me was the right time. That's all what most of our favorites are based on. It's not about all skill set. We're not talking about this all the time, but that's a whole other thing. Yeah. This right here, man. You're already talented. If the talent is there, and I think this is what a lot of artists are going to miss, if the talent is there, it's going to be involved in the outcome. So you don't have to overthink. So maybe you don't have confidence in your talent. If you can't just push things out there too sometimes, there might be a lack of confidence in thinking, oh, the song doesn't sound right. X, Y, and Z, because you're not confident enough to think I can just go out there and sing or I could just go out there and do this and be done with it. And because of who I am and the way I approach things, it's going to hit or it's going to be a certain level of quality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can say I can, I can definitely say with confidence that this, this club made me feel some type of way because, you know, I see what you did there. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. But the biggest point he gave to me is that you are selling music to non-musical people. Yes. The average music consumer can barely hit a note, let alone play instruments, let alone understand music theory, let alone tell the difference between that four-chain vocal stack versus that seven-chain vocal stack. Just be real. Today, the average artist doesn't understand music to that degree. Oh, man. I don't, I ain't want to take it that bad, but you know. He just is what it is. Not playing instruments, not understanding the notes, not being able to read music, but they know how to do what they do. Right. And their particular formula is I know how to deliver that, but there's a lack of knowledge of all these other elements and that can go work for or against. But you know, like think about it that way because in the same way that the consumer doesn't understand all that stuff, you might think the same thing. You might think things are being diluted, but somebody can feel the exact same way about you and the way you listen to music. Yeah. I mean, the way I've kind of come to look at it, right, is I remember a long time ago, I don't remember if it was like a YouTube video or a clip or something. It was some business guru talking and he was saying that the measure of real intelligence is when a person can simplify a complicated subject or the average person or let's just say a simpler person in regards. I've always heard that. Yep. You don't understand it if you can't explain it to somebody not as smart as you. You can't take quantum physics and explain to a third grade of how well do you really understand quantum physics, right? So sometimes I look at creativity the same way. If you are so creative, then you should be able to build this thing or piece it together in a way that someone who is less talented or less creative, then you can possibly still enjoy and consume and things like that, right? Artists, man. Artists love to circle, jerk each other. And a lot of times talk about all these elements creatively that maybe other artists are paying attention to, right? Like you might walk into a room of your peers and to my point earlier, your rapper homie be like, man, bro, I feel like that song would have hit harder with a seven-stack vocal chain rather than that five-stack that you did. But once again, these are elements that the music consumer is not paying attention to you. And I would challenge all of you to ask yourself this question. Who is keeping my music career life of the artist or the fan base? I'm willing to bet that 95% of you that thought about that said fan base, which means that you have to think about the person at the end of the creation, you understand? The person that that their first stop is enjoying what you credit during your last stop, you understand? We kind of alluded to a lot of this in an episode, probably like 10 episodes ago. But it was the podcast, we were heavy talking about songwriting and simplification, right? And a lot of people demonized the word simplification, not understanding that many of the greats look at simplification as the ultimate elegance, as what Steve Jobs would say, or the ultimate sophistication. Because you have two forms of simplicity. You have simplicity because there's lack of thought, right? But then you have the curve simplicity turns into complexity. And then on the other end of that curve becomes the refinement of that complexity into simplicity that's potent, right? And that's when we're making an impact. And I think when we go with your analogy about if you can't explain something complex to somebody down here, right, who doesn't have that level of knowledge, if you can't explain your PhD level material to a third grader, you don't necessarily get it, right? You don't know how to make it impact the masses because a lot of people don't have PhDs. That equivalent when you think about music is, well, if I'm a PhD, right? And I'm talking about quantum physics, right? And I'm trying to explain it to a third grader, the kindergarten. Poor third grader. What am I going to do? I'm not just going to speak the exact language that I was taught in. I'm going to try to come up with different words. And ultimately in those different words, I'm probably going to find an analogy using things that they understand to still deliver the exact same message, but in a way, a package that they can understand. I'm not getting rid of the message, otherwise it's not being taught, right? So I refined it into something simple. I took five pages of a textbook, and then I created a couple of analogies that made that third grader get it as just as much as I did, right? But they didn't have the ability to take that same information and come to the same conclusion. So musically, it's that same thing, right? I'm not getting rid of the message or getting rid of the impact. No, I'm coming up with a way of packaging it in a way that'll make that same thing happen. But I think a lot of artists think that, no, you're just going to leave the message behind and then just give some kind of low-grade quality of music and expression. It's like, no, the art, right? First of all, art isn't supposed to be easy. The whole idea of creativity is founded on constraints, right? You have no reason to be creative if there's no difficulty, right? I need a restraint. I need to be told that I can't fly to then come up with the idea of an airplane because if I could fly already, I'm not going to create an airplane, right? So I need to have this challenge to then force me, right, to be creative and come up with a solution. If I didn't have to go through that, I didn't really have to be creative. I kind of just say what I thought, which is cool sometimes too, right? So hopefully that helps because I feel like that drawing, that tying with what you just said about the education being simplified is really the exact same thing that's happening with the music. Yeah. And one of my least favorite characteristics of a certain demographic of music artists is when they demonize the metaphorical simple fan, right? We've seen different analogies for, oh, there are sheeps, there are low IQ, you know what I'm saying? They just don't get it. And these all stem from, if you really look deep into it, it stems from a place of, at least what I think, where maybe A, the artist feels like they finally achieved something artistically that has been hard for them to achieve. And it frustrates them that the audience doesn't recognize that. Man, it's taken me years to learn how to play the piano. Why didn't anybody notice that the new piano chords I have in my production now? It's like, well, we never really get a fuck about doing your piano. It sounds like that's how the fans might feel sometimes. Or like I mentioned earlier, sometimes artists are competing with other artists when they really should be thinking about how can I make an enjoyable experience for the music fan? And artists, what I've learned is that a lot of times, y'all like to stay in that bag. I want to shit on other artists regardless of how it affects the relationship with my fan base or my potential to acquire new fans or, in some instances, my music quality and the quality of the things that I'm outputting. And I think that if you want to make, and you've said this before, so I might be stealing your point, but if you want to make impactful music, that's something that you ought to think about. If you want to make objectively good music, do your thing, you know what I'm saying? Stay in your bag and you can perfect the non-stack vocal change. You can learn 15 instruments, you know what I'm saying? All in the pursuit of being greater artistically. But I will argue that if that great, and if you can't figure out a way to translate that greatness, or at the very least get other people to understand it, then, you know, artistically it may have been worth it, but career wise, was it really, you know? You busted that move in practice, but you can't bust it in the game. Exactly. Or even actually, it's a great example, because I look at it like, it's like, yeah, it's like training for some shit you don't need, bro. It's like, man, you've been, you've been practicing this fucking awkward, weird triple behind the back dunk. Doing all the N1 stuff. And it's like, nigga, we just want you to hit a layup. Please, for the love of God, hit the fucking layup. Yeah, you did the triple behind the back and then missed. Got hung on the rim. Okay, so one of the most important things that artists have to realize, if you truly become a brand, then everybody that buys from you no longer has to be a fan. I know that sounds mind-boggling. You have people buy from you who support your career, who support your movement that aren't even fans. But the truth is, regular businesses do this every single day. And that's how we had this realization that we then began to capitalize off of with our artists. And if you want to see this for yourself, I'll show you for completely free. If you go to www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash monetize, you have to put in www. And if you're on YouTube, you can find it in the description somewhere. So just go there and I'll show you the massive paradigm shift that we had that allowed us to start to help our artists monetize their audience way faster while increasing the amount of people that they can monetize at the same time. So basically a lot more money, you know what I'm saying? So check it out www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash monetize while it's completely free to check out back to the conversation. You know, if you have to realize even some of those things, like you said, I gain a skill and it might not be appreciated in the time, but but a part of what you do right in a part of the challenge and what the greats overcome is the ability to impact, but still be ahead of the game. Right. So if I have a skill and something that people can appreciate in the moment, I can still put that in there, but I still need to do it in a way where I introduced that, but I still impact in the moment. And that does what that needs to do. But over time, because I create a catalog, I create a body of work my career isn't done as an artist. I'm constantly creating. And as people look back, they can also see where I'm ahead. And that becomes those that music that you hear once and you love almost immediately, but still three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years later, you're listening and catching more elements as time goes on. All right. So again, they're like one, I just want this conversation to be hopefully encouraging for artists to just express and not overthink and realize that you can get in a flow, right? And get in the mode where you trust yourself and even put things out, all right? That might not have felt initially right, all right? Or you got on things that didn't feel officially, initially right, but they can create moments that you didn't expect in your career. No difference than us dropping a video and someone being like, this is the best video you ever created. And it was like, bro, that one for real. You know what I'm saying? Every playlist and video ever on the channel. Please, please go away. But this is the game and that's a part of it, right? Like tapping into your creativity is an art form in itself, right? And I just hope artists kind of begin to see themselves more as creators who just create versus this strategic approach to what they think art is supposed to be. Because artists too often, more than anybody I know, try to define art. And the reason I've always loved art, all right, since the moment that I began to love art as a creative, as an artist myself, as visual artists when I was younger was because I always saw as art or something that could not be defined. And it always weirded me out when an artist was trying to say, this is what art is, not like that next person or next thing, when that was literally the path of art. Oh, now this person's doing something else that nobody gets. And now all of a sudden everybody's doing that thing. And now they're not hating that person there and putting them on a pedestal. Now somebody else is doing something that everybody hates. It's like the site, how do people not get this cycle? I don't get it. You know what I mean? Yeah, my thing is because idiots are born every day, you know what I'm saying? And they grow up and they populate and they just carry over unnecessary traits and mindsets sometimes. I don't even, it might be kind of hard. It's not idiots, but people that don't look at it as deeply as that. The way I've kind of come to understand it is that in creative fields, right? I'll keep it there. Any creative field, music, art, entertainment, film, whatever, however hard you're thinking about it, the average fan of that thing is maybe thinking about it as a third of how hard you're thinking about it. At most, a lot of the time, you know what I'm saying? Maybe like I'm saying, and you'll notice in your fan base sometimes you have savvier fans who are more aware of certain things, but the average just general, I just like listening to songs that are like music fan base, not thinking about it, even remotely close to how deep you're thinking about it. So that's why I always go back to that point. So you have to think about am I making this art for myself and maybe some internal things that I've wanted to work through, maybe some personal goals or am I making this with the goal of impact and acquiring people that actually enjoy my art and hopefully even willing to stick it out while I do figure out how to add all these different artistic elements that I want to hit into my music in an enjoyable way for you. I think that does have to be a middle ground even for those type of artists. Those type of artists always find a way to make a middle ground. Everyone from J. Cole has made catchy songs, you know what I'm saying? Kendra Lamar has wrapped over Trap Beats, you know what I'm saying? 21 Savage has been lyrical, you know what I'm saying? Lil Yachty has been lyrical. That was a great example. A lot of great artists, I think hit a point where they understand like, okay, I have to find a way to walk this middle ground between the higher echelons of my creativity and then also making sure that I give my people something that they can actually enjoy at the level that they may have come to understand art and things like that. And I think that the faster that artists recognize that these people that you're creating music for are not nearly as complicated as you. They're not the artists, they're not built in wire to be complicated like you are. That's your job. Your job is to be a weird mesh and mangle of emotions and thoughts and ideas as you. The way that the average fan looks at it is you are an escape from the other things in my life, I feel that way. I feel that way about it. You know, and like I equated to, you know, I'm assuming that most of our audiences went to school, you know, I'm assuming we've all made it through a fair amount of education. It's the equivalent of being in the classroom about a subject that maybe you don't understand and you're hearing the professor or the teacher talk about it and I'm sure you've had scenarios where you hear them talking about something in the back of your brain, you're like, man, I wish they would figure out a way to like simplify this for me or break it down for me. I understand the importance of this date in this history class, but can you please find a way to help me understand it? I understand that this math equation, you know what I'm saying, is going to do whatever math equations do, but can you please find a way to help me understand or relate this to my life or can you, to the point, can you step down from here and come and talk to me here, you know what I'm saying? Please so I can pass this class. I think a lot of times fans like that with music, it's like, man, like I see you trying to go here, all I'm asking for you to do is come down here and help me enjoy it so I can enjoy it. You know what I'm saying? It's as simple as that. So I can enjoy it because that is where my be-boo-minded fan brain is. I didn't learn music theory. I didn't watch YouTube tutorials. I don't know what a 12-stack vocal chain is. I just know what I like and what feels good to me. Bucks. Can't leave it any better place than there. This is yet another episode, no labels necessary. Podcast, I'm Berman Sean. I'm Corey. Peace.