 This artist, her name is Phalaje. I believe I said that right. And she's actually dope. I can play a couple seconds of freestyle, but she just signed a shoe deal with Puma, right? Signs a shoe deal with Puma, which is something you can't do as an athlete prior to the NIL situation that they've had. I think it's been maybe two years, three. Now, having been able to do that. So now she can do that. That's great. Cool. A college athlete actually can sign. But why this is important to me or interesting to me is because she's a Hooper, but she's also a rapper, right? And Rock Nation, you know, they got Rock Nation sports. And then obviously Rock Nation is Rock Nation. So one, I wonder how far ahead did they see that coming? I'm sure they were from the people lobbying to get NIL resolved. So yeah. And now you have both sides. We already know how close culture and music, not culture and sports are in general. Well, shoot, culture is music and sports down there, right? The arts and sports entertainment. So you're able to start seeing a lot of these college athletes possibly become artists, which actually are. So, you know, Johnny two phones, right? Yeah. You know, he played ball. Yeah, he played ball. And then obviously he's Johnny two phones now. All right. He quit just to commit to the music. Shout out to Johnny. Shout out to him. We know J Cole played ball. Yeah. All right. So we'll start instead of finding the X athletes, we're going to see the athletes be athletes while they're moving. Yeah. And I was just looking at that. That's what made it interesting. I just peeped the last line where it says she's just she's going to start her freshman year. So she's not out of high school yet. I think she's technically just started because the season is, you know, basketball started. You know what I mean? But yeah, this is you people signed these ideas in high school, bro. That's crazy, bro. Yes. Yes. Like I wonder, I think I think I saw somebody who might have an NIL in middle school, bro. In middle school? Oh, yeah. You know, sports, you want to talk about music when it comes to A&R and sports is ridiculous, man. They watch, they watch all the way up. Well, yeah. Yeah, I did know. Yeah, that'd be like your, your sixth grade games and shit. You know what I'm saying? Cheering you on. Yeah. It's been, you know, plenty of stories where this such and such is committed to Duke and he's in ninth grade. You got four more years. And sometimes those people switch up. But like, I think this is really interesting, because this is a new type of competition for artists or a new type of weigh in for artists, right? Because we've always known that school is a great space and place to market your music, right? And the problem often times that people face is getting beyond school, right? Oh, you can create us a song about your school that blows up within the school and that's pretty easy to do. Now, how do you go beyond that? Right? That's pretty much just struggle that most people face. Johnny has done it well. Golden has done it well, but both of them literally went there out song about the school at some point and then take off, right? Flip it, but you gotta know how to flip it. The thing is though, you add athlete to the mix. Like athlete is like the equivalent. It's like an A&R. It's just that inside network where you can influence so many people so easily because once you get something in a locker room and make it a part of sports culture, you got other athletes that come on to that really quickly. You have the rest of the school that are influenced by athletes. So for me to not only be an artist because I like to rap and just do my own music, but for me to now be supported truly from a label standpoint, that's different because I imagine I don't notice I would have to look it up, but I wonder if people actually could have signed an artist deal. This is a combination, right? It is rock nation. They do everything, but I wonder could an artist, a basketball player or a football player, whatever you are, have a record deal in college before? It's a good point because it doesn't make you a professional basketball player, right? It makes you a professional record artist. They are allowed to have a professional job as well. That right there might be the key. No. Maybe that's a part of it. It's almost like a title, man. You know how many professional artists and how many signed artists are even doing as well as unsigned artists? Like, I don't know. That's a weird space. If you look at music the way you look at it, but they probably look at it as a black and white thing. And I would imagine too they don't want the brand attention going to the label. It's like, we would much rather the other celebrities than me affecting the school and our city sales rather than be like, hey, look at what this Atlantic Records artist is doing. I could imagine that's a part of it. That was a part of the issue that people had. It's like, yo, you can monetize the names on our jersey, but we can't monetize the name on our jersey. I can't even sign somebody and let somebody pay me $50 for this thing. It's technically wrong and it's illegal that somebody want to buy the shirt off my back or whatever because I made a game-winning shot in it. So, yeah, I don't know. That might be part of it. Maybe you couldn't even be an artist. Yeah, I'm saying, has there ever been a college athlete that got far in music? Because most of the athletes, I'm familiar with that game of music. They're usually professional by the time we really start to hear about it seriously. Or they start, or they're professionals in their sport before it sounds like they start putting out there that they do that. So, I'm trying to think, has there ever been a college athlete? I don't know. I don't know. That's making me think because when you say it out loud, it doesn't make sense. What you think about is like, bro, you mean taking of all these basketball, you know what I'm saying? These basketball teams, these football teams, these baseball soccer. There ain't one motherfucker on there trying to rap for a scene. Oh, we know it is. Yeah, we know. That's why she's here. Yeah, I'm thinking about nails like that. That hasn't made sense. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's a hotbed. They're instant influencers who wouldn't use that at least try to feel their music. But nails is peeping together. They can't, bro. Oh, they couldn't. They couldn't. That's crazy. It's a crazy system, man, because they also, you know, outside of the financial aspect of it, they put it around like focus. Are you committed to this or not? Yeah. They got to leave. Remember, like Blueface, Blueface played college football for a year or two or something like that. Right. So, there's never been at the same time that I've seen personally. I'm sure there maybe there has been somebody doing it. Y'all put it in the comments, help us so we can just have another topic. Right. But one, her freestyle. So, y'all just say, y'all go check her out. Like, we're not going to play. Like, because I don't even know we might even get copyrighted or whatever. But like her doing it at the same time and being able to play that game, we're going to be able to see more of that type of stuff. And it's going to be interesting for the people who are artists and they don't have to make the decision early on. So, go get your free money in college. Have deals which is money money. You're talking about like million dollar, multi-million dollar deals that are happening for these college students before they go into college. Yeah. Right. And then you can, I don't know, incubate your artistry under the safety net of school. Yeah, that's crazy bro. So, she's a little at the pro. She's got to be like the pro type of that whole model. One of them. Yeah. One of them. I'm surprised that it's a woman as well. Not because, you know, a woman can't do something like that, but it's just, you typically don't find people doing, typically women are later on in the curve. Like it's like, oh, just naturally, they'll go to male athletes, right? And a lot of the males are already like rapping, okay, or trying to do some music. We're going to sign this and we're going to start here. But to take on our artists and support her in these two ways and have her in these type of outlets where she's already doing interviews, because that clip I shared, right? That's an interview for her music and rapping. I like to actually put her in that circuit and lead that way. It's really interesting. She's dope as hell. Everything I've heard, by the way. 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It's dope to see that there actually, there's going to be a woman that's early on on this curve versus the opposite. So, all right. I think this is something I'm actually going to like look a lot deeper into. I think we should actually kind of follow the athlete-artist thing a lot more because it goes back to culture mixing. Remember, we talked about everybody is the artist competition now. You got the athlete-artist. You got the politician. You got the regular content creator. Everybody's making some type of music, but now you got these people being supported by the infrastructure. That's the thing that makes it so crazy for artists to deal with. I could be an artist who likes to ball. And you got like the crew league where Chris Brown and all these other people play with their teams, but they're not playing on NBA games. You know what I mean? They're not fighting with the NBA players and competing for NBA money, but you got artists competing with all these other types of people for Atlantic Records money. Anybody with social media competition. That part is crazy, man. It's just making me think. The whole athlete thing is crazy, but I'm thinking about this random TikToker I found. Two weeks ago, I think he's like a golfer or something. He was signed to VaynerMedia, but he's in college. I remember the thing that sounded like, I remember it didn't click then. That was all he's in college on VaynerMedia. You know what I'm saying? But it's like, so even there starting to see that. And I'm going to guess they probably been lobbying for it. And they're fighting for it in the back end. Because you know he got VaynerSports too. Exactly. I'm going to think about it. So he got VaynerSports, Jay-Z. He got that side of everything. So I was like, are we going to fight for this shit? So we can be the first ones to get these people that can take advantage of it? Yeah, it's not going to be ugly, bro. Because it's such a... I don't know. It's going to be bad, bro. I think for us. Because like VaynerSports, a big sports player immediately makes you like influential. You know what I'm saying? Almost immediately. You know what I'm saying? Like you get a strong head start. Yep. Especially if you... I mean like her narrative, right? It's like, oh, we're not taking the ones, we're taking the ones that's already built and some celebrityism and within the sport they do. So that's an easy flip at that point, right? Like you got X amount of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people paying attention to you. Yeah, bro. That's about it. The game about to be ugly, bro. It's going to be really interesting. But in a good way, you know what I'm saying? People like us are going to be great. Yo, I mean it's beautiful because you've seen so many times careers get fumble that were possible in terms of like sports stars who wanted to be in music and vice versa because the infrastructure wasn't clear. It was that one or the other. But now VaynerMedia knows how to monetize culture, right? That's what we do, right? So the system is there full of funnel. Rock Nation, they know how to monetize and navigate culture. So we can easily slide you from this athlete to that side of the culture versus being, again, two separate companies. Oh, yeah, you're doing what you're doing now. Now you got to go find a record label. So all the development is clean throughout the entire process, man. Right. And I just clicked again. We're like the brand narrative they're building out. That's why the first thing I saw of her, like heavy was that freestyle clip. You know what I'm saying? Let's go ahead and start setting the foundation. Bro, she's a rapper, right? Yeah. Like this is a music interview, but she made sure to throw that narrative in there. Right. Spin it. Yeah, it's like they're literally planting the seeds now. It's going to be interesting to see what she's at. Because I mean, she can have push on a holiday time. We already had that whole talk about what's going to be. But it's going to be interesting to see what she looks like for her around the summer. You know what I'm saying? Right. Especially because that's what I see is going to open around about the top of spring. Yes, what is it going to look like in between seasons? But she's also going to have that whole season. The ability, attention, come off the season, be fresh on it, right? Good or bad? Because the season is in it. So that's like, to me, it will be the start of the rollout when the season is over. Especially if you win, that's definitely got to be the start of the rollout. If you lose, maybe like a week or two later, you know what I'm saying? Kick the kick the rollout. Take a break. Take a little break. Feel bad for a second. You know what I'm saying? Let that be the narrative for a while and then get back into it. All right. Well, it's either way, bro. Like, yeah, coming off of season, top of spring to then go into the summer rollout with like that behind you for the last six, seven months. Yeah, that's going to be wild. Yeah. Yeah, they're going to really take time. Oh my gosh. And another thing, if I think about from a company standpoint, if you're getting both sides in that regard, and look, I could be wrong where technically, they might not have the artist side of it, right? Technically, they might not. I don't know. All right. So let's put that out there. But we still know what's up, right? This is Rock Nation. Then they're going to want to. It only makes sense in some ways. You know what I mean? And the resources, look, how did she get here, right? She, matter of fact, let me see. Sign, Rob Starb. Yeah, like it just makes sense. She's probably in some way involved, or at least they made that a part of the sale. Hey, we have this access, right? You know what it is, love it. Right. From a company standpoint, bro, how hard is it to monetize an artist? Scale of one in ten, like a seven and a half, eight, at least. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And how long does it take, typically, to be able to monetize an artist? Like, I signed an artist that they're developing, and then, yo, we can seriously start making that money back. That's like, if you're lucky, two, three years, if you're lucky. As a constant, in a lot of cases, it really is that, right? We see the pop, but that's it. Two, three, if you're lucky, I'd probably say five, six. You know what I'm saying, if you're one of the unlucky few. Shit, you're still the lucky few if you pop in five to six. Yeah, that's right, that's true. Man, if you have a real career, most people never. Right? So if that's happening, I now, damn near, can monetize immediately from the athlete side. Yeah. Wow, I'm waiting for this money to be made from the artist side. Oh, he's figuring the artist side out, because we don't know what they're going to have to go through with that. Exactly, they're still developing. And maybe look, maybe there's an L completely, who knows. But that, even from a business standpoint, makes a lot of sense. So because I don't have to worry about all those things. And while you're an athlete, it's funny, it probably creates extra, because you is now a novel thing that you're an artist, right? So it's attractive because you're not graded by the same, you know, criteria as somebody who's not an artist. So you look more successful than, I don't want to say more successful than you are. It's just not great. It looks easier. Yeah. It looks easier from the other side. They have their own tribulations they have to go through, the artist athletes, or the athlete artist, but it definitely looks easier from the outside looking at. Right, right. So like you come out with a song, it's almost fun that you came out with. Not, people don't judge it as hard, because this is the only thing we're judging you on. So there's all these benefits to that as an athlete. But again, as a company, if I can begin to monetize with these brand deals with Puma, all right? Like this is how you know Rock Nation, man. Like, come on now, Puma, right? This is all, this is rock. Or whatever other type of deals that you might be monetizing this personality from outside of just your regular stuff, but the things that additionally come from music as well, well, which brings me another question. If I could do that, and then finally when the music stuff pops out, that's a beautiful situation. You take away, again, so much risk that comes from music, and everybody's been waiting time and time, year after year after year, figuring out ways to decrease the risk of artists. Like artists, I don't know. Look, I get deals have been historically really bad, but y'all also have to understand that there's a high, high risk. Historically, it's a lower risk. That's why deals are becoming, are better. That's actually why. It's like, oh yeah, because we can A and R a little bit better. We can look at data. We can- We don't have to pick you up until a certain point. Right. We don't have to pick you up until a certain point. There's all these other factors that put people in a position to actually offer better deals. It doesn't mean there's not people offering trash deals. That's all that's going to happen like that. People are always going to get in where they fit in. There's going to be those characters. But a huge part of it is literally just where the marketplace is. People are going to make smarter decisions on top of that. How can I make, again, minimize that risk? So yes, I came on this TikTok artist. The shit already has a million strings from TikTok. We're not starting from zero. Let me get that single up off them and get that. Or let me get that single up off them. But a part of that, I'm signing him. So hopefully he comes up with something else, but this single is going to at least get me to break even. So he's not as much of a risk, right? Yeah. This isn't a single, but this being an athlete is in some ways equivalent to being a single, probably even better in some ways than being a single that has some momentum. Like I said, the monetization route is already there. So it's like we can literally cover that gap. We'll lose the money on your music brand by just maybe not hyper-focusing on the athlete brand. But we have the option to if we need to, right? If the shit start getting dry. Hey man, I know you want to put this merch out and go on tour, but let's get some more of these jerseys out. You know what I'm saying? Let's get that stacked out first. And then slip it from there. So it's interesting, bro, like thinking of it that way. Because like I said, I wasn't aware that they were even kept out of the competition like that. I always thought it was just, because you meet so many athletes and they want to be artists, right? Like I feel like that's a secret desire of like them every athlete. So I always thought they were just keeping themselves out of the game because of the love for the sport. I know they really couldn't hop in the game. None of that doors wide open, bro. No, it's going to be ugly. Yeah, it's going to be a very, very interesting mix. They just need one to hit that. Actually, you got really, really fine music. Like usually they're like at max like okay. You know what I'm saying? Or good. It's probably like the highest bar personally, obviously from artists in that world. I think that we get one that cracks the quality aspect of it and has this machine behind them, bro. It's going to be bad. Pop out with it, hit, hit. It's going to be ugly, bro. That's going to be sound. That is going to be something. Yeah. I mean, we know we've seen the prototypes. Deion Sanders dropped his track. It wasn't really a good song. You know what I mean? His music wasn't good, but you know, it was entertaining. Right. It was entertaining. It was great for the moment. Shack arguably had like some solid stuff like his track with Biggie 30 years ago, 30 years ago. And yeah, it was some pretty solid music. Lonzo Ball is like one of the more recent artists that I could think of. We get a good athlete freestyle at least once a year. Athlete freestyle is just better at more. There's better athlete freestyle than athlete music. They're good at maintaining the image for like long enough for it to be interesting. And then once it comes to like the super long-term work aspect of it, I think that's what we start to love them. Right. Yeah, because it's different. It's a different type of work. It's like, I wake up, you know, I go on this court, this field. I'm that nigga. I'm top 50, whatever. To now I have to go back to the music side where I'm one of many over here. You know what I'm saying? Like the whole big fish, small pun things, small fish, big pun. Right. That can't feel good. Nah. Nah, I can't. It can't. Man, I just made a quarter million over here. I checked my Spotify streams. I made $36, but I can't come back with that. So I get it. I get a while. Yeah. Yeah, that's just going to be interesting, bro. Like I said, like built-in influencer base, bro. Just got to keep you going long enough. Starting up from ground zero is definitely hard when you're already used to that upper level.