 The breakdown is really about to occur. Okay. When we're talking about breaking an artist, this clip will give you three things that you need to do or be aware of when you're in the process of breaking an artist, or if you are the artist, breaking yourself. Benus is Benus. You need to touch people at least seven to eight times to get them to bite. Right there. Gym number one. You need people to see you over and over again, touch and feel over and over again. Rick Ross just said this without even saying this. He got sold himself. He basically said, you sell me if I see you everywhere I go. Multiple times, not just one time, multiple times. And the huge part of breaking an artist, right? And you'll see as we talk deeper into it, it's not just about your fans. You're really breaking yourself and giving an impression to the fans, the industry at large, right? And your peers. Everybody is seeing this motion and you're selling everybody by popping up again and again and again. So the fans, you're becoming, oh, this artist that we really want to listen to at this level. And there's so many of us, we want to see you at shows. We love you, right? To your peers, we become, oh man, I'll see what they're doing. I respect what they're doing. I like what they're doing. Actually, I want to capitalize. I cannot get in on that. How can I get in on that shit, right? So now you become an opportunity on that side, not even in a negative way, but people just realize, oh, there's leverage in working with you. A bigger artist might say, oh, that's the person to come up. It might make me look cool, right? Or like, I know what's going on, an artist that's already on your level. Hey, let me hop on this train so I can get some visibility on the way up. Your peers are also being sold. And then the industry is being sold. Oh, how can we invest? How can we get to the table before this other label gets to the table or whatever the types of investment happen? There's three people or three stakeholders that are being sold, at least when you start to break as an artist. So it's not just TikTok. We still go to radio. We still got t-shirts and merch. And we still touching down in the city. Three records, top 40 right now. Yeah, like we still in people's faces. And like we just don't rely on TikTok to sell the record. Like, here goes the other thing. You don't allow the platforms or wait on the platform itself to sell the record. You can't wait on TikTok to blow the record up all the way. You can't wait on Instagram to blow the record up all the way. People out here complaining, oh man, like TikTok isn't breaking records. TikTok is going to create the spark. Like we had a moment in history where things were crazy, like unprecedented, where you could just throw shit into the hit machine and hit come out almost. Now, okay, we back to the basics, right? It's still easier to get a hit. But now you got to have some strategy. You got to know what you're doing. And what does that look like? You don't rely on the platform to blow you up. You allow that platform to create a spark. But you are in charge of it. That shit actually spreads to Instagram or not. Whether it goes to YouTube or not. The merch and all those things he just touched here. Whether it translates to the world or not. That's your job, your team's job. Yeah, that's the biggest thing I got right. It's like, yo, we don't, we don't wait to make it real. Like we take it to the things in real life that make it a, what am I looking for? A none, no longer just an internet thing, right? Which is why a lot of artists kind of fall short when they have these viral moments and things to the point of breaking is it never really leaves the internet. You know what I'm saying? So as much as we see it, as big as it feels like in that bubble, there's never any like real life evidence that this moment is as big as it looks on the internet. And people pick up on that. And they eventually, I think lose faith because of it. So like he's saying it's like, yo, like this is just a piece of the machine, the digital machine, but we're going to make sure it hits right here. We're going to make sure there's merch and street teams and these things that, you know, we're essentially going to do everything else that we would have did whether or not this shit hit. It's just now we have the attention and the spark from the TikTok moment to add to it. Which is like you said, it's just like, I don't know. I feel like people try to look at how to, how to get by with just one part of the machine, you know what I'm saying? Which we've seen a lot of artists do successfully. Like it may be 12 different parts, but we've seen people be successful using one or two. Because it goes so crazy on that one. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But they forget they're like, oh man, in the perfect world I should be doing all these things at the same time. You know what I'm saying? Or more importantly, the ones who are watching don't forget, they don't even understand that that's an anomaly. Most people have to go multiple platforms, like really work it to blow those cases that one thing and they really take off, one they're still on the spray to other platforms in general, but two, like those are moments in time that are very hard to duplicate. Yeah, exactly, anomaly. That's it, that's it. On August 12th, myself, Sean and JR McHugh will be hosting a live event in Atlanta, where we'll be sharing some of our best marketing, branding and content strategies that we haven't really been able to put out anywhere else. So if you want a reason to come to Atlanta, or if you're in Atlanta, or if you just want to adapt us up and see if we're real, go and get your tickets at nolabelsnecessary.com or check the link in the description if you're watching this on YouTube. We're only doing 60 tickets, like a hard 60 tickets, so you want to make sure that you're one of those 60. Once again, nolabelsnecessary.com or check the link in the description and we'll see you there. Let's see what else he got. Actually, we're actually touching the people and making it visible. So people are like, oh, okay, yeah, okay, all right. I heard, I saw this, I heard this, like, take an example. Right now, we got one of the biggest records in the country. The J.K. Mack, no love record, it's got the big dancing. Everybody's doing it. But like what we did was we were very, very, very, very smart because we made sure that the girl that created the dance was in the video. Nice. Which was another point for people to be like, oh, I like this kid because he's smart and he likes influencers. Because there's so many records where the influencer never made it to the video or never got a chance to, you know what I'm saying, good customer service. That part's huge, man. I love that word customer service. Exactly. This is reminding the artist that you are doing a service, right, to the audience. A lot of times it's like, hey, come listen to me, me, me, me, check my stuff out. But it's like all of this is a customer service business. When you say it's a people business, all right. Everybody knows the music industry is a people business, right? Relationships business. Well, customer service is essentially a better way to even streamline that of saying, hey, it's not just people, but you have to figure out a serve people. We go back to the stakeholders, which is why this is so important. He just said influencers haven't been getting their love in some music videos, right? It's like, I came up with a dance. I got this thing popping. You showed me no love. This is his way of saying, hey, man, like appreciate it. Right. We're going to show you some love. We're going to give you some clout. What was the term that you used? Used social currency or I don't know. Maybe it was like compensated with clout or something or whatever. It was a little alliteration that you said earlier. I forgot what it was. But the fact that if an influencer gets my song popping, there's more than one reason that I need to figure out some way to acknowledge them. And I just alluded to it when I said, you got three different type of people that you got to sell. One, if I put this influencer in my video, right? Or I show them some type of love, it shows me as one an appreciative person to that particular influencer, right? Great. But oh, man, well, that influencer is nobody. What does that mean? I don't care. Well, that's when you look at the bigger picture. Today, more than any day, people are looking at whether they like somebody or not as a whole, right? People are investing in brands and using brands that are lower quality just because it matches their identity and how they like how people move, right? Or I don't like that brand because I don't like who that person is as a person. So your fans and the culture is looking at like, oh, how does he treat people? Or how does she treat people? Oh, this influencer popped this person off and he didn't put them in the video. Oh, does he not like something about that type of person and whatever their identity is? We've seen that in certain videos, right? Where the track star video was a big moment like that, right? That was a huge moment like that where it's like, oh, okay, man, you got any problem with, you know, dude's orientation or how he moves. So now you get all these other assumptions and now you're either selling to one specific audience or not selling to another audience or you're cutting everybody out. But these decisions are the PR that's happening by how you treat the influencers and people that have started to get your shit moving, right? Yeah, yeah. That's the customer service of it all. So a lot of artists aren't thinking about that. But again, as you are breaking, that period is literally the period when you're winning everybody's hearts, right? When you think about, oh, Cardi B's on the rise. It's not just oldest song is popping. When Cardi B is on the rise, when the artist is breaking, then you're making people have a decision and thought about how they think about you, you know what I'm saying? Like, oh, Cardi B's so funny or, oh, man, she's so real and transparent or who else has been somebody on the rise and going through that breaking period? Ice face. What would you say the conversation has been about ice face as somebody who broke last year? Like while she was breaking? Yeah, like while she was breaking, when they started to make some sort of impression beyond the music. I think the first impression I became aware of was her being a bad performer and then it started like, oh, is she going to last long? You know, because I think like her first show ever was a rolling out show or something. That's different, though. That's the more artist specific. I'm talking about even the winning their hearts. The winning their hearts is more like, you know how they talk about this pretty privileged type of shit? That was like a conversation around ice face. But then it also got negated in some ways because I've seen conversations saying ice face is like, she's nice and cool. And she respects other women and things like that. That's what I'm talking about. So that to me didn't really start to probably about five or six months into it. When she started talking more, like she started doing more interviews. She started, you know what I'm saying, being a little more vocal. And then she had enough time to be unproblematic because then you look at that stuff and you think like, man, she hasn't done anything in the last six months. That's the word. Yeah, like she hasn't like talked shit about anybody or beefed it. Like, you know what I'm saying? You can reflect and like, man, she is pretty cool. So I would say, yeah, probably about like six months in. But that to me changed the first and out of which the first and out of was like, oh, is she going to last long? She's not a great performer. She got one song, blah, blah. And then it was like, oh, she's cool. You know what I'm saying? Like she's cool. She's nice. You know what I'm saying? Like we got that's when you start to break when people say, oh, you cool in some form of fashion where they have more of a personality connection with you beyond the music itself. Even Gorilla had multiple songs. Like she was ringing off. I think they had to slow down with her because she was about to Fetty Wop the whole game. Like she was coming with them. Right? But then it became like this narrative of like, she was real in a different way than the Cardi B reel they talk about. But it was like a, was it like a humble type of thing? Or like around the way, you know, you know what I'm saying? That they were kind of doing with her. Yeah. Like the girl next, I don't think they were girl next door in her. I won't say that. I think it was just like the opposite. I mean, it depends on what door. Like they were girl next door and it was just a different door. I think it was just the juxtaposition of the genre that she's in right now. Like she's in bad bitch rap, which like bad bitch rap was very braggadocious. You know what I'm saying? Very like, like they out there, they the characters 24 seven. And then she's not like she makes the music. But then she's like realized she was kind of chill. You know what I'm saying? Like even like the interviews and stuff I've seen her do with streamers like Ka, KaSanat and all those people just always, she always just like chill. You know what I'm saying? Very low key, quiet. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So it was like, man, you can't help but not like it. And I think will also help the, which we haven't touched by and talked about a minute, but you know, we was on it pretty heavy is whoever started running her meme strategy that completely flipped everything for her. And you know what I'm saying? It was like say it specifically. Go ahead and put out there. So there, I don't want to say was a point. Let's still do it every now and again now. But like they, you can tell that whoever her marketing team is has really good relationships with meme pages. And so what I'll see every few weeks is just the most random memes and discussion topics around ice spikes. Like I saw one a couple of days ago. It was like this rap page posted, you get a call at 3 a.m. You know what I'm saying? Who you going to see first? And it was like on the left, it was ice spice on the right. It was a lot of, and I was like, this shit random as fuck. Like why is this on a rap page? But I was like, but you know, my marketing brain kicking in. I'm like, bro, that's a nigga pulling the strings of this shit. He knew the ass was going to stop everybody. You know what I'm saying? You get engaged by the headline. Now you talking about it. You know what I'm saying? But like her team is really good at putting those types of memes and stuff out on on the meme accounts in a way that like, like I said, I haven't really seen too many of the girls from the bad bitch rappers. I don't really do that. Usually when they do it, it's like they accidentally kind of crossover. You know what I'm saying? Like it seems like ice spices team has been controlling that for a minute. Yeah, I mean they're really heavy with it. I mean, I think the ones that's more interesting to me is Glorillus because it's not so heavy with it and just be everywhere in Omni present. But it was clean in terms of again saying what type of person is girl. Like, oh, let's show her at peace and not piece of work. I'm working at McDonald's. You know what I'm saying? Like she had a narrative with a lot of women that I've spoken to where she's unproblematic in many ways in terms of that type of problematic that they're talking about. Like, you know, it's like, oh yeah. And then things that she talks about is a little bit, it's adjacent to like scamming, right? She has her own pocket. It's adjacent to I'm just a bad bitch. Like it's not, she's actually talking like a nigga. Like when you really like, the other like, there's, this is going to take us too far off topic. But the other women they say are talking like dudes, but really they're just talking like, I know women to talk, but it's just putting, actually putting out there public. But like the way her bars are delivered, there's fewer women who really deliver the bars the way that Glow Real is doing. But that's again, a side of the point. But I think they actually had a part of how they branded her.