 Wow, what's up everybody? Once again, it's Brandon Shawn and today I got a special guest for you guys and that's Lilo Key, up and coming rapper has already found quite a big success. He's an indie rapper still, right? You're still an indie, right? 100%. Still 100% indie and with that being said, he has over 100k monthly listeners on Spotify, monthly listeners. We're not just talking a boost on one song, right? He has a legitimate fan base. He has a legitimate fan base that he puts into his videos on YouTube and he's still building though. There's still a ways for him to go because he has his ambitions of his own. So we're going to ask, dig in some of those questions that I feel like you guys might want to know and hopefully you guys find some benefit. Maybe at the end of it, you can ask questions to him in the comments below and maybe he'll check them out and answer for it. Yeah. Perfect. Sure. So Lilo, first question real quick. How long have you been rapping seriously? I've been rapping seriously, I'd say for 10 years. And I'm a unique kind of person where I don't do things un-seriously for too long. If I find something to be a passion of mine early on, I am obsessive about it. I dive in and I do it every day all day. And so probably about 10 years ago was when I made the transition of just making songs in my head or maybe recording here and there to deciding, okay, I like doing this. I like the process of this. I like the expression and just kind of getting my feelings out there in a way that I was unable to before. I want to pursue this as a career. And so I started like diving in and I've always been like an artist in any capacity like before I wanted to rap, I wanted to make comic books. I want to do fine art. I majored in filmmaking. So I'm an artist across platforms and mediums, but it's been a long ride, it's been a long 10 years. Though, I mean, it's great to hear right off the back that you have a solid fan base but you've been in this for 10 years and you're still not at a super, super known level yet. Yeah. And that's, so Lilo Key, like I started using that name two years ago. So that's when everything kind of shifted. Before that it was, the way I like to think of it, it was kind of like eight years of learning how to do those next two years. There wasn't a lot of growth in the first eight, but the next two were really where I was starting to make connections in ways that I hadn't beforehand. And all that teaching really started moving me much quicker than I would have been able to otherwise. Bam. So that's what I want to hear, man. You go back 10 years. That's 2008. So social media had started to come up, but that really wasn't around or as much of a powerhouse for artist marketing as it was. So what was that biggest shift when you talk about this eight years preparing for the last two years that you've, what happened? What was that light bulb that clicked? So it wasn't like, it wasn't just one thing. It wasn't like I was trying to make music in the same capacity for the first eight years. And when I first started, I was doing it as myself, as my given name, Aaron Keba, like solo projects, songs, makes tapes on dad, PIF, that kind of thing, putting my music online, wire following the soldier boy mentality of like, or putting your stuff up under somebody else's name, just whatever, like growth hacking in any way that I could in the early stages of social media. And then Rick rolling people, man. I was not Rick rolling. I was not to that capacity, but I was on the, on the verge. But after a little while, like of harnessing my skillset to a, to a limited extent, I joined a group with two other guys. And that's when I started really like learning the performance side of rapping and, and coming up in the industry in that way. And we opened probably like 90 shows within two years for people like GZ, Mac Miller, Styles P, Jada Kiss, tons of people, Chris Webby, Dizzy Wright, bunch of people. And that was a whole different learning experience. And that, I was in that like for, for I think three years while I was starting college in 2011 and the two guys were from my hometown in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. So after a while, it just, it kind of took a transition from I was creating and learning with two other individuals that had more experience in different areas than I did to then those two of those creep, the other two guys from back home creating, sending me songs with an open verse and saying, Hey, can you write a verse to this? And then like take the bus out to this city, we got a show and you got to perform. And for me, that just seemed like work and it was, it was lacking the creativity that I wanted. We had an issue a couple of times with like, we had an issue, a manager from Atlantic Records, it was an A&R there when we were real young and he wanted all these things from us that we were unable to provide at that time and he wasn't going to put in effort until we did them, like till we build up our fan bases and everything on social platforms really early on. Eventually I left him and then we had another manager who went to prison for 10 years for selling a lot of drugs in the city where I came from and he was, he bought us like an elaborate studio, paid half a year's rent on it, got us like top-line equipment and then he left and we had it for another three months and then lost everything and those, those elements kind of all added together towards the end and just made me decide, all right, I'm going to leave that. I left the group in probably about 2015, decided to try a super experimental solo project where I released music every day in the form of singles or albums, rapping everything in a British accent and I was a prophet from some other planet. It was like super obscure but it was my prediction of where the industry was going and how the, how artists were becoming more bizarre and just in look, aesthetic, sound, their release strategy in efforts to break through the mass population of artists that were just making music because it was so accessible now. So I tried that for a bit and then long story short, to get to where I am today, that light switch that you were asking me about was I went through a bad breakup and I was starting shy away from that experimental project that I was doing and through the bad breakup I was dealing with it for a couple of days, met up with a friend of mine and he said, look, dude, you got to get back to making music seriously for you and so I made the song too young that night and I remember making that song and that was the first song I made like seriously as myself again and I listened to it and I was like, I think this is it. That was the first time I'd written a song and I wasn't listening to it again after making it and thinking this sounds like kind of who I'm trying to be but it sounded like this is who I am and within a couple of days I sent that to when I first I Frank Ocean was about to release Blonde and the internet was waiting for him to release Blonde and he wasn't doing it that one Friday that he was supposed to. So I started up a soundcloud profile as if I was Frank Ocean and I had made it probably six songs up until that time since too young uploaded them as if I was Frank Ocean releasing his album and that week until he actually released it, I generated a bunch of traffic. And the weird thing about it was that like I tried similar things before and got my accounts deleted everything but this time it worked and this time I had no even negative comments on the songs. Everything was positive even though I was just blatantly lying to everybody. So after that week, I switched everything over to Lilo Key temporarily, message trap nation with too young and they got back to me the first time ever later the same day and said we listened to the whole project. We want to put up too young and local celebrity and that was like right there is where things stuck. About how many listens did you probably get in that first week from the Frank Ocean Blonde project that whole experience? The first couple of days was like 5000 listens a day and then it started to die down to about like 2500 a day and that's when I made the shift over Lilo Key because I figured I don't want to hang onto this forever and I'd since tried similar things with other artists with just throwaway accounts and every time they'd been deleted. So it was like a once in a once in a blue moon thing that actually stuck. I'm going to hold on to this. Okay. Yeah. So now that's a while that you've message trap nation and they replied like you just sent that one email. That was that was what blew me away because like I had been messaging these guys in the same way like going through their website, taking their email and messaging them since I was first making songs and never did I have a single response. So I had emailed them this time went out to lunch with a friend of mine and he was just he's another creative and we were just splashing ideas off and he I left that meeting and I just had like this supernatural high that was just like, okay, I feel good. Something good is going to happen. And I was on the train the subway back from the meeting and I checked my email and see a reply from rap nation and wasn't even like they wanted to upload the one song that I sent them. They wanted to upload that went through the whole playlist and another one that I didn't even send them. So this is sick. This works like this idea that I thought worked as a little kid actually does work. If you stick to it, you just got to stick to it. That's that's the biggest thing. So what's the now you're even on trap nation. They posted you several times. Oh yeah, we and it's been it's been a rock like behind the scenes working with any YouTube channel or Spotify curator or anything. The internet is super deceptive in that you see a big channel and you think, okay, this person makes a living off from this. Most times it's a kid that doesn't or it's a member of a bigger company like a parent company that owns a ton of YouTube channels. So channel owners change with like great randomness and pretty frequently and they just have their own schedules. So I think from when I first made the connection with rat nation, they've changed hands probably four or five times and each time it's been reestablishing a relationship with the new guy in charge and it's been a little easier each time because I've had the words of the previous owner, but it's still it's a lot of work and I really make an effort, especially with the like the guys, the bigger guys that showed me love right off the bat to really maintain that consistent relationship and it's somebody I look to for good advice in regards to making relationships, building them. Gary Vaynerchuk and other big supporter of mine. He says you got to give more than you take and I think that applies in rap more than anything because there's a lot of people trying to take from these channel owners and everything. Yeah, if you can give to him much more than you're getting the relationship is there for you. Don't I mean, well, all right, you just name drop that Gary Vaynerchuk bomb man. How'd you like him? How that happened? Did you guys, how'd you guys run into each other? I know you're in New York most of the time, right? Yeah. So I've never met him. I have yet to meet him. I think we're going to try and talk to his camp and see if we can do something in regards to this debut album that I got in the works. But quite honestly, it was so random how it happened. Like I'd been a passive follower of his for some years, going to film school, being in touch with a million different creatives. I have a lot of friends who are like die hard. Gary Vaynerchuk followers and I'll go to the house and every time I go over there'll be like, yo, what'd you see Gary's new video and like you got to watch this and stuff. So I always been, he's always been on my radar. And one day I was just shooting a freelance video project at somebody's house and I get a tweet from where like somebody sent me a DM on Twitter and they were just like, Hey, love your music. Would you mind if I use some of it for Gary Vee video? And I thought, okay, this is probably some fan that makes like fan Gary Vee videos once he's on music. So I said, yeah, sure. And then I clicked his profile. He's the videographer for Gary Vaynerchuk. Oh, yeah, DRock, that one. Well, this was, this was Elliot back when Elliot ran like the social media and everything. And so me and him then later met up and we've been working together closely ever since he's since left. And then again, like months later, even after Elliot left and we had been working together, I thought my connection to Gary's team was kind of nullified with that. And then randomly DRock hits me up on Instagram. He's like, yo, love your music. Can you send me some over to using some of Gary Vee's videos? And I was like, yeah, do you not realize we, I had this conversation with the last guy, like, how are you, how are you guys all catching on to my music without me doing anything? Yeah. But yeah, it's been, been good since then. Always stay in touch. Have you figured that out? Huh. I mean, it seems that DRock and Elliot both reached out to you, but not being aware. Unaware of each other, right? So do you know how they found your music? Found it through Spotify. I mean, a lot of the artists that they've used previously in their videos are either related artists to me or they pop up in related on YouTube as well. That makes sense. And I can, I can see that when you talk about the sound and everything. Now, I don't want to skip off too, too fast. The fact that you were on Trap Nation, you got on there after really some minute for years, but then you got this one reply. You've also been on promoting sounds multiple times. You've been on Rap City, all big pages that a lot of people can't get on. It's great to hear that you talk about the fact that, hey, you didn't really have a relationship with anybody at you or at your way. And you really did get into the submit way with Trap Nation. But how did that get established with the other people? It's the same exact way. Like one of the Rap City was easier because they just accept most messages and their tastes are more kind of wide, wide perspective and what they accept. The hardest for me was promoting sounds. So for a long time after I got the like first couple of connections on YouTube, I was trying to establish a relationship with promoting sounds and unable to directly get in touch with them and any of their like submission, email, Facebook, messenger, anything. So I started to go to promoting sounds and find artists that they posted frequently. And I happened to be going out to LA. So I did a couple of songs with a couple of the artists that they posted frequently thinking or telling the other artists like, yo, I'll get this on Rap Nation for us. If you get it on promoting sounds for us and started going about things that way. And then after doing that, that didn't really stick either. And then just one day I got in touch with Sam, the guy, the owner of Promoting Sounds, just randomly via Facebook. And then since we've done, we've gone on to do all kinds of work together beyond just like YouTube posts and stuff like that. He's a, he's a super innovative thinker when it comes to how to stay relevant in an ever changing social media music industry. I think we'll have to come back to that stuff. Before we leave this subject, what is when you talk about channels, changing owners, and then you talk about the other end of, Hey, it might just be some kid or somebody who's not really living off of the social media. Are there any, are you thinking, are there any other things that you think is important for an artist to really understand when it comes to the back end of just the YouTube portion of business? Yeah, I mean, I think what my advice that I'm going to give is, is the same for any platform. And, and just doing this independently is you have to do as much as you possibly can when you're working and reach out to every single person you possibly can. And then, but at the same time, you, I almost, the way I think about it is I work and I constantly contact new people so that I'm never just sitting there waiting for a reply from a person I just got in touch with, because chances are they're not going to hit you back, but you just keep working and keep working and keep pushing your stuff out there. And then if you just constantly keep yourself busy and your mind focused on thinking forward, random things will happen and some of the channels will get back to you and some new connections that you didn't even seek to establish will just pop up out of thin air. Yeah. Super greed, man. Random people will come. Sometimes somebody you reached out to a long time ago, all of a sudden, hit you up like all of those things. And sometimes weirdly enough, people who have hit you, I know people at even having my YouTube page, I'll do some people, people will hit you up and you've hit them up. They never replied and they never even knew your message. They just hit you up because they found you some other way. So it's that's that's probably the best I can say in terms of this last three, four minutes in terms of networking that Lilo would you prefer people could just call you Lilo key? Which one? Coming. Coming Lilo. Lilo key. It works. That's the those are the best things he said. He's really highlighted some very key things in terms of networking, even though him did not be able to even though you didn't get on and promoted sounds. I love the fact that you strategically try to work artists that have been on there and that didn't work then, but it will work in other situations in the future. I'm like not with promoting sounds. I've seen with with management situations, a lot of things, right? Like just to move that way. And then when you talk about just the mentality of I'm going to reach out to people regularly. I'm not going to stop looking for new people in the green space. That's literally a sales mentality. Sales people do that all day. Like I have to keep going. Eventually somebody is going to reply. Most people will not reply. That's just the numbers. Period. I don't care who you are. Well, I mean, I'm sure you're like Jay Z or somebody who has a good reply rate, but he's also not cold messaging people, right? Yeah. But when you're sending a lot of these cold messaging, most people will not reply. But the fact that you do that constantly and keep working is beautiful and I really want people to hold on to that. So switching it up really quickly. Let's go from YouTube to Spotify. Yeah, how that happened for you? So for me, how it happened was like it was it kind of happened at different stages like for the first when I had two young release on Rat Nation, that happened unexpectedly. So it wasn't like they chimed in at the right time where I had things set up career wise and like in a forward thinking manner in regards to that, I still was completely oblivious to the business side of the music industry. So I didn't think to when they first put two young up on their channel to have it available on all platforms. It was just SoundCloud and YouTube. So about a month later, I thought, you know, if I'm going to take this seriously, if I'm going to start organizing this and making this a professional business, I need to be available on every platform, especially Spotify. Put two young on Spotify along with a couple of the songs. Well, no, I think it was just that one at the beginning. But for the first month, maybe got like a thousand streams just trickling from like people that saw it on YouTube and then open up Spotify and searched it. But nothing really happened. And then one day, like two months into it, it shot up 20,000 plays. And I saw that and was like, OK, this has got to be a glitch of some kind of what's happening. I didn't understand the platform at all at that time. I didn't really use it to listen to music even. Yeah. So I was blown away by that. And I thought, OK, this is something's wrong. Next day, it shot up 17 more thousand. And it was at number 40 on the US 50 most viral songs list on Spotify. And that was for me doing nothing. And I thought, holy shit, this can this can happen without my immediate effort. I need to learn how that accidentally happened and then do everything in my power to learn how to manufacture that time over time to to make sure that that's the baseline then. And the crazy things that happened on top of it happened on top to keep stepping up. So I started to do that. And I Spotify is a tough platform in that it's it's hard to just within the platform itself, find the independent curators and which how active playlists are, how many of the how many of a followers playlist are real and not through a download gate or any acquired through any number of means like that. So I was I don't know how exactly I found this other platform. I found another platform called chart metric that I started using and realizing that I could find I could look up any artist, find every playlist that they were put on, find the creator of that playlist, go to the creator's profile on chart metric, which is essentially their picture and all their information. A lot of people sign up through Spotify with where a lot of people sign up on Spotify through Facebook. So the pictures are the same on Spotify and Facebook. And so I started finding all the curators on Facebook. And I'm doing this all in like this was like a 30 minute span of me figuring all this out. And my girlfriend sitting right next to me the whole time. And she asked me what I'm doing. And I'm like, cold messaging all these people on Facebook that I'm not friends with. She goes, they're going to think you're crazy. Like, this is this is ridiculous. What you're doing. It's not going to work. And that was like the day that I released strange things. And two days later, that had like, probably close to 100,000 streams that was on playlist over 800,000 followers and everything. And I looked at her again, and I was like, I don't I don't think this was such a bad idea. And after all, and so that's essentially what I did. And that was a month ago, right? Maybe that was that was November of 2017. That wasn't even a year ago yet. Yeah. Yeah. So the last year has been insane in that like, that's kind of what started this whole separate path of my life where like, I caught on to that. And I luckily caught on to chart metric early because chart metric, the guys that made that hadn't fully realized the potential of what they had created and just put out there for free. So they since kind of taking, taking things back and put up pay walls and in front of different aspects of it. But I knew that was going to happen. So I started making spreadsheets of all these connections that I'd acquired, all the playlists, how active everything is because I knew eventually what I if I make these excel sheets and everything that in and of itself is going to be worth a lot of money. And so I made these huge lists. And then I was talking to Elliot, I met up with Elliot, the guy from VaynerMedia again. And this was like a year since I'd seen him last time. And I was leaving for LA in two days. And he connected me with this guy in LA, Dylan Druze. And he said, you got to meet with him when you're out in LA, gave no other preface. So I meet up with this guy, turns out he runs a marketing company in LA, does campaigns for all the biggest artists like in the world. And so I was talking to him for a while and asking like what what artists charge and stuff. And he was naming outlandish prices. I don't want to give too much information away about him, but I started naming outlandish prices. And I was like, I can't do this. I'm an indie artist and everything. He goes, okay, what do you do? And I told him about the Spotify thing. And he goes, now you've got something valuable. Maybe we can work together in some ways. And so I've since been able to build an entire company that specializes in marketing singles and music videos and doing promotional efforts for artists like a little bit below me, my level or a little bit higher that want to take it to the next level and then kind of get on the Dylan Drew's type plane where you could pay that much to take your career exceptionally higher. And yeah, it's it's been it's open a whole lot of doors since then. Right. So that that 30 minute window will or just you discover in the website you has allowed you to build your yeah, I mean, it was it was a ton of time after that, like the manually finding the playlists, messaging them, creating the Excel sheet. Of course, all that stuff takes a lot of time. And that's just a lot of that's just busy work. But the actual learning like that was that all happens pretty quick. So do you I will obviously I guess you don't necessarily use chart metric today, right? I still do. You do. All right, perfect. Yeah, because I want to ask you, do you for anybody listening, you think it's still worth using it then saying if you're still using it? Yeah, very much though. I mean, that's you obviously have to pay now to see anything valuable like I think without paying they show playlists that an artist had been added to within the last 28 days or something. And even like elements of that are hidden. I think maybe the change in growth over the last 28 days per playlist might be hidden. But if you if you give that like, if you're going to take your career seriously and you're going to go for it, pay that $50 a month and make the most of it. Because that's still not much to pay and you can get a wealth of information off there. And if you if you don't want to pay for that, then pay me and I'll run the campaign for you. I love it. Nice plug. So now when I look at your mean everything that I've seen from you since like last year, right? Overall, I haven't really seen much. Well, obviously, like let's say your Instagram Instagram still around like four or five thousand followers, right? Yeah, you have your a lot of songs on YouTube, but they're pretty much all still promoting sounds, tribulation. Do you even have a YouTube page? Like I'm sure you locked the name down, but do you have a YouTube page that you post content on? I've a YouTube page that I I will upload most things just to keep like a central hub of where an art or a listener fan, a potential fan might be able to find everything in one place. I don't promote that too much. I think an artist like Takashi 69 was interesting to watch him come up without social media profiles, without a YouTube page or anything. And I mean, you look at where that got him. I don't think there's unless I'm creating something super unique for that YouTube channel of my own, that I'm not going to post on these other channels. I don't think that's super necessary to promote. Also just the kind of artist I am that strategy doesn't work for everyone. But I think it's more beneficial to work on the quality of the content that I making rather than just making some for promotional reasons. Right. So these routes are there's definitely different routes. And I want to hear more about the artists that you are. How do you describe the artists? Let's just the music itself more of the brand because that's what he speaks to. Yeah. And that's that's something that like I've been I've been working on figuring out a lot like since starting out because I am so independent to the extent that like I don't even trust a manager 90 percent of the time because I know more than them and I work harder than them. So it's hard to separate like the business my business mindset like the guy you're talking to now and the artists. And so for a long time I had a difficult time establishing who I was. I knew I wanted to be like a elements of like a cinematic character almost because I'm big in a filmmaking. And I like that like the Dark Knight Christopher Nolan aesthetic. But I didn't know how to like narrow in exactly how I fit. It wasn't up until recently where I kind of struggled with that. And then I I signed a deal with the orchard for my debut album in for distribution and licensing. And so being able to sign that deal gave me a bit of freedom so I could take a step back from the promotional side of things and sit and just craft music nonstop and focus solely on figuring out who I am as an artist rather than make a song and then market it and and then make the next song based off of the results of the previous one and say, OK, this is what an audience wants. I'll make that. And working that mentality, you never get to fully dial in on the the full well rounded artist brand that you are. You have to take a step back and hone in on the craft. And that's what I was able to do. And I started noticing like there are definitely that like I'm I'm an artist that has that darker aesthetic that like at the core of who I am I make music because I have to in most cases. It's just my way of expressing and getting getting out like the things that I can't say in public. And so through yeah, through the last couple months of making music nonstop, I realized that what what I've been telling like the the A&R at the orchard that I've been working with is I just had a meeting with him the other night. And I said to him, I'm halfway between Frank Ocean and Eminem. And I said, and he's like, those are two radical different things. I said, I know I'm more Frank Ocean in person like that's that's the persona of Lilo key. Like I want to be quiet. I don't want to just talk too much. I'm not a wild individual person, but the music is very much like this Slim Shady Eminem thing where it's that's everything that I'm not going to tell you. And I want that dichotomy between the two because dichotomy creates interest and I want I want to be a cinematically kind of silent off the radar individual. And that's something that came into play too. Like Instagram, you mentioned now it's still still relatively on the lower end. At a period I was being pushed by a lot of individuals to focus heavily on that and grow that. I started I spent about a week doing that. And I realized this is just not who I am. The music's got to be first. And I just looked around at all these different supposed rappers who were copying like Takashi six nine running down the hall. That becomes a meme. OK, now this next tier of Instagram rappers, they're all copying this same thing, doing this running down the hall thing in hopes that they're going to get a little bit of buzz off of that. And they're spending so much time just making Instagram videos that nobody's going to listen to their product. And that's I'm a I'm a product based artist where you get a lot of interest beyond the music. But you got to enter through the music to figure out who I am. Got it. Got it. Yeah, there's those two routes when anybody listening. Yeah, the product could be different things. You can be yourself or the music can be the product when I'm talking about the primary product. Ultimately, you want to want to lead people back to you, obviously. But when you it makes sense if you're not going to have a very like gregarious type brand, you're not the out there type person, you want to have a more mysterious or just lay that reserved brand. Those visual driven pages will not be your driver. And I mean, I still am. I'm still a ridiculous person, like I'm still absurd. And my Instagram kind of reflects that. But what I started seeing was I would watch I've seen vloggers since vlogging became a thing. And I saw that like the minute a vlogger would would get a bit of success and they'd stop releasing content every single day. A lot of their fan base would would just dip and find somebody else who was producing content every day. And that's kind of how I feel is is a big element of these Instagram rappers and these guys that like want to create a fan base all from releasing these obscure, like weird videos every day is like the minute you stop doing that, you're going to lose the following. And I want to be at the end of the day, like I want to be the biggest artist in the world. I want to have time where I can step away and not do something. And then when I come back and I release a new album or release a new song, that's big news again. I don't have to constantly be in front of somebody's eyes to be a factor. Got you. Yeah, I talked to a lot of artists that just might hit me up who are or people who are really trying to transition. They've been established as maybe a comedian doing skit. So whatever on on on Instagram and they did it to get that initial attention. Obviously, there's people who don't successfully, but the majority, one of their biggest stresses is you have to keep posting that same character or that same type of content. And it's a lot more of a long term transition. I dropped music. Wait, I dropped music, but you can't if you whenever you just try to stop or they just try to stop and then just do music. It's it's tough. It's a really tough. So it's interesting that you see this and you make these decisions early because you because you're staying true to who you want to be. As an artist, right? Really quick question earlier, you talked about that experimental phase. Yeah, two things came out of that. Now, you talked about doing an entire album in a British action or a whole bunch songs in a British action. Are you British because you do speak a little bit differently? There's a sense of an accent there. No, I get that. I don't know why I get that. Honestly, I'm from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Like there might be a slight Pennsylvania accent. But if I go back home, people tell me I don't sound like I'm from there either. Could have been adopted. I don't. Yeah, I was. Why? You don't sound like most people. So I was like, maybe that makes sense because I didn't. OK, cool. I like I grew up and I would make movies in the backyard and everything and every movie that I would would make. I'd have an accent in just because I was really good at it and I like doing it. And I just thought doing a fake accent adds a lot of obscurity. So for that experimental project, it was necessary in my in my thinking or thought process. Yeah. So maybe all the accents you did as a little as a little kid kind of just changed your voice a little. It might have. I mean, I've got songs even on this debut album that are primarily in a British accent for a good reason. Like it's not just not just random. But yeah, yeah, with intent. That'll be some interesting shit to hear. That's why that's what I said. The M&M influence kind of comes in. Got it. Having characters and dynamic like OK, I'm a storyteller at the end of the day. I want to create dynamic compositions within these songs. So I get that. And that was the kind of leans into my second question from the hyper creative period. Now, I've I've learned right just from my own creative things like theater and all that type of stuff that I've done in the past. Like when you go to the outlandish like you're just being you create a character caricature just to practice. Right. Whenever you try to go back to the norm, like you realize that you're comfort zone as it got a little bit further out, right? Or you felt or you found some shit out there when you were just playing around that you could actually use. That's that's so true. And so for me, like the character's name was Hoey Blasco, the known one. OK. And it was all just consolidated into just one long word. But for me, the creation of that project was seeing or was trying to do things seriously for so long and I'm not working and watching how things were changing on the internet like Soulja Boy, then Lobi, then Riff Raff and for a long time, like I just kind of saw where that trajectory was headed, where rappers were getting more and more obscure in their appearance and the way they acted and the rate of content release had to be so much quicker because everybody was able to do it. And I thought if we look a couple years in the future, I think this sound cloud wave is going to be a big thing. This is where mostly the next artists are coming out of it was. And and there were a lot of interesting sounds within that that like the coolest thing about the sound cloud scene early on was that it was music that wasn't trying to sound like Drake or wasn't trying to sound professionally polished to just like commercial in any way. They were just unrelentlessly themselves. And there was there was an energy around that scene and I thought, OK, if I can be the weirdest member of that scene and just work with every single person, I possibly can release music every single day in the form of like it was typically albums a day. I think I made in two years, I made probably 3000 songs and had them out on the internet. And I would I freestyled everything like without even hearing the beat most times. One of my golden rules was I could not say no to a project if somebody sent beats or whatever. And like you were saying, that expanded my my level of comfort so much when I got away from that because I had never freestyled songs before. I'm not even that much of a freestyler like just in parties or anything. I'm a very eccentric writer, like making sure every word is perfect. But having coming away from that period of two years where that's all I did. I was able to have much more freedom in the way I thought like when I heard a song in in constructing hooks or yeah, just the structure of songs and making things less rigid. Don't. And I was I was less rigid in everything that I did marketing and all that too. Nice. Yeah, I was interested on how and how that affected you well forward. So yeah, I would not be here without that. Don't. So that that experience, those experimental phases are so important. And I hear so many artists these days. I might talk to that you might be 14, right? You might have been rapping for some years. It might be like 20, but still like there's so much experimentation left to do and just trying to pop on that first sound of yours and when it's not really developed. I think an artist gets so much into going straight to promo and get seen by as many as people as possible. I think it robs an artist of what they actually could become. You know, 100 percent. And like my whole mentality is and this wasn't exactly why I was doing what I was doing while I was making these radical changes in my approach. You have to fail a million times early on doing the craziest thing that you can a million times because if you get picked up on your first sound that you come up with and you get put on the scene, if you if that ever gets boring to you as an artist and you want to make a change, you don't know how to and you're not in the place where that's a viable business solution. Like if you have success based off your first sound by the point you want to make a change, you got a million people around you telling you now you can't do that now, you're locked into this. But then people will tell you and they will tell you loud. And that's like that takes away everything of why one would become an artist because you're suddenly just working for everybody that was working for you when you started. Yeah, well, by the way, speaking of working, being an artist, you have your own business. What's the name of that business? It doesn't have a name right now. It's just like Lilo Key Media is the tentative name. I'm working on registering that and everything legally hiring a couple of people. But it's a lot because I was going to ask if people actually want to, you know, use one of your campaigns, how do they get in contact with you for that management at Lilo Key dot com. I have one sheets and everything. I'm more than happy to explain to any artist interested how we work. I cater each campaign to the artists and to the song so that we're not just doing a general push with with no regard to what the artist wants at the end of the day. Now, I'm assuming you don't accept like any artists, right? You guys turn now you got to be you got to be good. Good. I'll tell some artists, man, if you get turned down by somebody, particularly was based on the song quality, it's kind of a good sign. You might actually want to try to work with those people again. Don't be salty because that means they actually care about quality and what they actually can get you in position for. If you get turned down, that's especially like by somebody in my position who's running a marketing company because like the goal of my company and I'll tell every artist is I'm I'm going to put your product in front of enough people that it'll be a successful project or product if the quality is there in what you've made. And if you get turned down now, that's great. So then you're not spending time on your own promoting all this stuff. And I mean, I could be wrong. I'm not like the end of what's good and bad. Right. If you get told no enough, then you know not to waste time promoting something that's not quite there and go back to the drawing board and work on the product first. Like I said, this was eight years of working on the product every day to get to a point where that product was something I could then promote. Exactly. Like that. I don't know. So I'm weird. I'm just like in terms of comparing me to some marketing people, but generally speaking, it doesn't matter what field I work outside of like music marketing, whatever. I say I'm a marketing person, but I'm a product person first because a product makes my job so much easier. Oh, yeah. We all know the number one marketing method is still going to be word of mouth. And if it's great, what you have is great. Once I put it out there to what I can do, the word of mouth will start to work for itself. Right. That's no ball will happen. So I need the product to be as good. Like it has to be to a certain extent, right? No matter what it is. So I love hearing that and you talk about product. And one thing that I can't like let you go without talking to you about the fact that you're an artist. Right. And you have no manager at all. But you have you've managed to accomplish quite a few things. All right. Yeah. And your business is together. You like the certain things that you mentioned you've done, like signing with what's your name again, Orchard and Orchard. Yeah. And some other people pretty much wouldn't have been able to do without a certain amount of business being together. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's like if I were to introduce myself now to like 13 year old Lilo Key, I would never have expected me to be as good at business as I am now or be that in tune and organized on that side of things. I am not naturally that way. First and foremost, I am a creative. So I am super scatterbrained. I got ADHD or whatever, whatever excuse that you can name. What changed for me was part necessity, part that I started getting attention for the product that I was making. And in turn, I wanted to keep making and keep having that happened. So I had to do something. But the other half of me was like, I just started looking at business as an art and different ways that I could like make radical connections of two different people that had power in their individual fields that might be able to help each other in me doing connecting those two. I could get something out of it. Like right now I have guaranteed slots on a lot of major Spotify independent playlists that I just own the slots of because of the connections I've made within the underground like Indies Spotify community. And I love doing that because like that creative just figuring out how to artistically weave things together. That is the only thing, especially when you're not making a lot of money at the beginning, that's the like the driving force behind getting to the point where you're making money. Nice, nice. So why don't you said, you know, she don't have a manager because a lot of times you'll run into him and you seem to know more than them. But what is your team now? What does it just you right now? So no, it's not I wouldn't say it's just me like you at the point I'm at right now, I cannot do everything myself for sure. So my girlfriend works in influencer marketing. So she works like with the biggest agency here in New York City. She just started working there recently. And they they work with like brands and connecting them with reality TV influencers that have big social followings. So she's been able to help try to steer me in a in a good direction and help like organize things from like the spreadsheet side of things and my business side to get everything professional based on what she does with her company. Since signing the debut album deal with the orchard, I have my connection there at the orchard to bounce ideas off from and just kind of converse with and make sure that things are going well with the album in particular. And then like I can get as much advice and help from him in everything else as well. Because ironically he kind of runs his other artist campaigns through me. So that's a strange dynamic. But I have I have assistance in different capacities and I'll give jobs that individual assistants would be good at like that fit their skill set to do so that I'm not bogged down by everything. But I there's nobody there's nobody above me or nobody handling my my marketing or anything day to day that I have on a team. I don't have like a set team. It's just a network of connections and individuals that I can look to do for specific things. Nice. When you see yourself ever developing. Yeah. More so that team under you. And yeah, I think not a manager but a CEO because I feel like artists should have a CEO more than a manager. Yeah, that's so that's that's an interesting thing. Actually, I'm going to think about that after talking with you having a CEO at one stage where I was at. I had just gotten back from L.A. meeting with Dylan Druze and was working with Elliot at the time. And my theory then was I don't want to manager, but we were looking at forming an agreement where I was going to have three advisors and kind of have an abortive advisors that were superstars in their given field like Elliot is a huge time social media dude runs a million accounts. Dylan works on the music marketing side of things. And then I was bringing on a lawyer slash brand guy who made like built digital brands. And that was that was the approach that I was looking at to build my personal team. That kind of fell through in a limited extent in that like they're not advisors. We still all work very closely together. But I definitely don't see myself having like that that basic structure of like, OK, there is a manager. Here's a tour manager. Here's everything else. But I need to form a team at some point. Like I couldn't I couldn't go on a tour right now. Just myself and expect to not go insane. Yeah. So that's really interesting because you're at this point of a relative to a lot of artists right now. You're super successful, right? To 13 year old Lilo key. You're super. Yes. Yes. So and I love that you talked about. You can't go on a tour right now. So would I like to close with what wasn't I say close? I don't know. Not on this point. But one of the last things I want to talk about is what you're saying that is what do you feel like your weaknesses are because of how you've established what you've done so far. This is super cliche. I don't like to think of them as weaknesses. Just they're the elements I need to learn more about and need to focus on more heavily moving forward. Because I don't think you can make a whole lot of mistakes and and keep being successful. But along with how brand identity and figuring out that was before. Now it's it's taking everything that exists digitally and making a real world presence of that. And so that includes doing more interviews go like showing up at more shows. I was just at a CJ flies and Joey Badass's new recent show in New York City and met all them and all the like industry people there. I need to do much more of that. I need to perform more. Get on some of these tours that artists a little bit above me are doing and jump on the leg of the tour as an opening act. But with bringing everything to a much more real world point comes getting the people and bringing the people on that are going to help and be there when opportunities arise. Right. Because touring is something that's really in the conversation now like with bigger fan bases and having been out now for two years as opposed to just one year people are are more into Lilo Key as opposed to just oh they like strange things or they like a single song. There's more of a connection with the the artists that I am and and that that core audience is growing in different cities that are actively trying to talk about bringing me out for shows. I've been talking to a couple different artists about doing like the opening slots. Like I said with likes of tours but I need the people there because I had tried to do a headlining tour. I done my first headlining tour in October last year and that was a mess. That was it was it ended well in New York City luckily but that was that was a learning experience unlike any other. Right. Well that seems like a whole another story. I would love to run over that sometime. But I'll leave it there man. Is there anything that you should that you would like to leave the crowd with leave the audience with? Yeah. I mean if you want to if you want to be an artist first and foremost make your art and focus 100 percent on that and then promote it once you feel like it's everything that you are. And then also if you want to be an artist in 2018 you can't just be an artist. You got to be a business and you got to be a million other things as well. So it's kind of that juxtaposition is weird but the two things are very true. Like one thing with what he said that I would want to want you guys to take note in is how he started to use his artistry and for the business world really business is an art too man. Every to me I see everything as an art in science just like there's repeatable ways of doing music in music like it's all an art in science to all of it. Just dealing with like getting through life is an art. If you can get through life. Well that's that's it. You got you got qualities that I want to learn from. That's a real shit right there. Well great man I appreciate talking to you man. And everybody if you have any questions for Lilo you can put them in the comments below but you can also hit them up if you're interested in doing campaigns at management at Lilo key dot com. And of course if you like this video go ahead that like button if you like you might as well share it in if you're not subscribed. You know what to do. Hit that subscribe.