 Your connection cannot be purely music. You gotta like the artist. Why do you like Jay? It's not just he can rap. I mean, he's a hell of a rapper. We all acknowledge that. But there's more. Beyoncé, there's more. On down to Snoop Dogg with Khalifa. Every big major artist that we love has a thing about them that we're really tied into. Beyoncé, I like that song. And I tell every artist, like, yo, how are you gonna tap in outside of this music? And the music's not working. What else is there? What's up? What's up? I'm Brandon Sean. And I'm Corey. And we are back with another episode of No Labels, Necessary Podcast. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, whatever you stream, your podcast here at the intersection of creativity and currency. This is No Labels, and as y'all know, we like to talk to people who have taken interesting paths, the path without the labels who have done things unique in their career. Nick Love is here with us today, project manager currently over Urban at one RPM. But this man has done many things throughout his career. Too much. I'm highly, highly interested, excited, and curious to hear some of the, just the information we'll get speaking with you, man. But first and foremost, appreciate you stopping by, bro. I appreciate y'all for having me, man. This is, it's a big deal. Anytime anybody invites you to stay platform, you should treat it as an honor. You know what I'm saying? Because everybody's trying to build their thing. They don't need you necessarily to build your, you know, to build their thing up, man. So for y'all to give me any amount of time is, is, you know, I take it seriously, man. And I appreciate y'all. How's on time for y'all? Wasn't it? Hey, bro. On time. See? Nah, yeah. That's a, like, to give you, give that professional credibility. Toa said we needed an extra 15 minutes and he got here 15 minutes on the dot. Yeah. Right on time, man. For sure. Is that a big thing for you? You know what? Yeah, it is. Because so many people want to have meetings with me and, you know, I try to be, you know, gracious enough to honor that, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, I don't, people want to talk to me about random stuff. They want to talk about, you know, getting a job. They want to talk about marketing. How can I help them? It's usually how can I help them? Cool. But when I get you my time, it's like, don't, don't play me. Don't, don't play, you know what I'm saying? My time is too valuable. And I don't say that like, I'm so busy. It's just like, I honestly have a lot to do. I have a family. I have things going on. I got my own life and things that I'm trying to build, you know, on my end. So I don't have an hour, extra hour for you to be late. And then you get there and you want to hold me for an additional hour. You know what I'm saying? And I don't like to rush people either. I don't know. I like to be like, amen. Well, you showed up late. So now you only got four minutes. You know what I'm saying? That feels cold too. So it's kind of like, bro, just show up on time so we can do it right. You know? Yeah. No, it's crucial. It's a sign of respect. Facts, yeah. It's a sign of respect. I'm huge on that, honestly. Yeah. I ain't got enough, you know, little fights with my significant other about that kind of stuff before. Just like, hey man, you got me being late. That's gone. Same. You know? So my ex-wife, she was time. Time, especially when we weren't together anymore. I used to really be like, yo, like you really think I have nothing else to do but wait on you. Like, what's happening here? And she's, you know, my ex-wife is one of the sweetest people in the world, but time, terrible. Awful with it. Awful with it, man, you know? So she sees this, you know, you know. You know. I feel like you said a lot to people who don't work in music. Like they always assume that what you're doing is either fun enough that like your time isn't as significant, you know what I'm saying? Or like, you're just not doing something. So like, oh, you're just hanging out with artists today. It's like, no, it's a real job. No, that's my pet peeve. People who disrespect what I do. I'm a fun, you know, I love to have fun. I'm a fun, loving guy. I love to crack jokes. I'll crack jokes with you all day long. But my job is a job. It's a job at the end of the day. Like whether I'm at 1 RPM or not, when I was working for myself, I worked for myself for 13, 14 years on my own hustling. So it's like, my job is more than going to the club and hanging out with rappers and popping bottles. That's not my, my job comes with perks, but that's not really what I do for a living. You know what I'm saying? I don't pop bottles for a living. I don't hang out with rappers for a living. I do, I have a function. I provide a service for these guys and these women that I work with. And so when people kind of reduce your job to all you doing is hanging out, all you doing is like, okay, cool, you come, you come do it and see how long you last hanging out. And it never fails. Like I've hired interns, I've hired employees and they do it for a week or two. And they're like, oh, you actually working on like this, you know what I'm saying? I really thought we were just hanging out. I didn't know it took all these little menial details in between to really get to the fun part. Let's get into that because, so I'm gonna read off just some of these, just a basic LinkedIn, like you've done some things. So I'm gonna start there. You're not gonna LinkedIn this way. I was surprised. You know I didn't have a LinkedIn until a year and a half. I was about to say I was surprised a lot of people on music didn't have one. So when it popped up, I was like, oh, stop. I didn't have a resume. It's hard. A lot of times you don't need one here, but let's get it to it. So VP of Promotions, no VP of Marketing and Promotions at CTE World, formerly Corporate Thugs Entertainment. All right. That's on my resume. That's crazy. Co-founder and general manager of Coalition DJs. True. 2008 to 2015, classic tour manager and brand liaison for Tequila Avion. Mm-hmm. All right. Jesus, shout out to Jesus. Brand curator and co-creative director of Magic City. That's a fact. All right. No lies yet. I ain't lied yet. Would love to hear those details. President and general manager of Thousand Island Inc. Yup, that's me. I'm still doing that. That's my company. That's your consulting and things like that. And of course you're still the project manager over at Urban at 1 RPM. Yup. So a hell of a resume. It's longer than that. That was just the stuff that was, you know, LinkedIn friendly. Character limit. Yeah, well, it ain't even that, man, like funny. Like so, 1 RPM fell in my lap. Like I wasn't even really familiar with 1 RPM like that. I had a couple of friends that were working there before me actually had my same job. And that was the extent of what I knew about 1 RPM. I had no real knowledge of what the company was, what they did, who their competitors were, nothing. So out of the blue one day, I'm actually with a client doing my own thing. I was actually working with a gentleman that was running for attorney general for the state of Georgia. We were reading to some kids at an elementary school off of Bankhead. And I get a phone call from my guy, Orlando McGee, who was actually my boss. He's the head of Urban and the head ANR for Urban at 1 RPM. He reached out to me. He's like, hey, man, you want a job? And I was like, not really. He was like, yo, man, I got an opening. It's in marketing. I wanted to hire you a couple of years ago. I didn't think you would take a job. He said, I was having a conversation with one of your close friends. And he said that you and him was just talking about you possibly taking the job. He's like, I got it for you. Like, are you down? I'm like, eh. He's like, just come by the office. And I talked to him and it made sense. So I jumped on him. He said, but look, I can't just hire you off the strength. You're gonna have to get you a resume and it's gotta go through a board. People gotta interview you the whole night. It's not just me bringing you in. He's like, you got a resume? I'm like, not really. I don't have nothing. Everything I've ever done in my professional life came off of referrals. It was like, man, Nick is the guy to do da, da, da, da. And people just brought me in. I've never had anything on paper that said, these are my qualifications or this is what I do. It was all just hustle and people that needed my service who heard about the last thing that I did. Even this technically was you just had to create it to go through the process. Exactly, yeah. So I put together some stuff on paper. I sent it to my partner, Wes. He put the resume together and whatnot. And I just took what he put, put it on LinkedIn and that was my resume. But that resume got made three days before I actually had an interview. Like it was, you know what I'm saying? Like my concern was always, what am I gonna put on a resume? You know what I'm saying? Like if I like, cause for me in the music business, I never had to apply for a job per se, right? So I'm like, if I go apply for a job at AT&T, what am I gonna put on a resume? Corporate Thugs Entertainment? We gotta take a quick second because we have some big news. If you like the marketing, branding and music talk that we do in our content, you have an opportunity to meet with us in person and get the real deal information about how we are currently moving in the music industry blowing up artists that we can't put online. So if you wanna see myself, Sean, JR McKee, give you marketing, content and branding advice that's absolutely guaranteed to help you move your career forward, then you wanna make sure you check into this event. It's gonna be super exclusive. We're only letting in 60 people, not 61, not 62. So if you don't make it, then your best bet is the hope that we do another one. So if you wanna make sure that you're one of those 60 people, go to knowlabelsnecessary.com or check the link in the description if you're watching this on YouTube. And yeah, hopefully we see you there. In reality, and this is the thing that a lot of music people will tell you, in our world, one thing qualifies you for the next thing, right? You have experience doing something for GZ, you can probably work for Tilt or Two Chains or Baby or QC, you know what I'm saying? You kinda move your way through and up the chain. But what does that mean in necessarily the real world? What does working at Corporate Thugs and Entertainment qualify me for at AT&T? What does it qualify me for at any corporate situation? You know what I'm saying? I don't know that the head of, what's with Home Depot is gonna look at my resume, like, oh, you ran the marketing for Young GZ? Great, we're gonna bring you in and make you the, you know what I'm saying? You can run our marketing, you know what I'm saying? They don't look at it that way. So there's a fear and a like, oh my God, what else could I do if I leave the music business? Because I mean, trust me, everybody in the music business has wanted to leave it at some point, just from frustration, egos, money, stuff just not going right, things slowing down, just like, everybody wants to get out, but it's like, get out and do what? What job is gonna give me the freedom, the time, the money, the opportunity, the perks that the music business provides? And you start to be like, oh shit, I can't do anything else. So you kinda end up in this cycle, man. It's a scary time until you realize like, actually I'm qualified to do a million things. You just have to rework your perspective. Just don't know how to put that in a transferable space. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, cause we talk about it a lot, like there have been times when we would take all these different corporate courses and stuff and we start seeing them talk about things. It's like, oh, we're technically already doing that. You just never heard the word before. And you like, even project management, like CRMs, all these different words, it's like, I've never heard that until we start paying attention to other businesses. But it's like, oh, I already have this, technically like a million dollar skill set in the corporate world, but in music, I'm gonna figure out where it can be valuable. Bro, I ran a food blog for a little while. I had a thing called a bite life where I was one of the first people in the hip hop space interviewing people about restaurants and stuff around town. I got interviews on YouTube with Travis Porter, Two Chains, you know what I'm saying? Geez, I got all these people that rocked with me that went out to restaurants to eat with me and we talked about food and that's it. That's dope. You can still see it. You can still see this on YouTube. And this is like literally 2012, 2013. This is pre-action Bronson. This is pre-anybody doing anything of that space. Cause I was an oddball. When I'm calling people and telling them I want to do stuff in the food world, they're like, what do you mean? Like they were very confused as I was asking them to come do this. But that came from a long period in the music business where I was like, I don't want to do this no more. Same thing I was just talking about. But I noticed that when I would go to food events, cause after I kind of made a little bit of a name for myself, a lot of the local events would call me and say, hey, you know, we want to invite you to our restaurant grand opening or our food tasting or stuff that they would invite food bloggers and stuff too. And I get there, I'd be the only black guy in the room. And I started to realize like, I'm actually a little more qualified than anybody here. I'm the only one here that's used to staying up late to write something at two, three o'clock in the morning. I'm the only one here that's used to kind of zigzagging all over the city. You know what I'm saying? I kind of got these skills that I'm looking around. I'm like, yo, this is a bunch of housewives. And you know what I'm saying? Like this is just who was in the space at that time. You know what I'm saying? Like and the writers that were there, they were just writers. They were full time food writers, but they had no experience and no connection to the hip hop space. They hadn't done what I had done. And I'm like, oh, I really, I really got to handle on this. I just didn't think I did. You know what I'm saying? You had to see it to really believe it. Yeah, it's definitely a confidence builder. I feel like getting outside of the music space just to start to have conversations and get a feel for things. Because we even had experience like that probably two years ago, or maybe a year and a half ago now, we were at this event. It was like this private type event and a whole bunch of companies, people killing it, like millionaires and stuff like that. And then, but they were like teaching. So people go on, go up to the front and teaching all these subjects. And the questions that they were asking and the things that they were teaching were stuff that we were like, bro, we do all this for artists. Anything in the marketing space, we're just like, we'll do all this. You know, like they're trying to figure out how TikTok worked and how it went. I was like, bro, we know all this about space. So it just boosts your confidence once you can kind of like see where you measure up outside of the space. Even if you're still in the space, I definitely have had that experience. We'll talk about before we go into the details of the job specifically that you've worked in the experiences there. You mentioned people wanting to leave a lot of times, get out of the music industry. Like what was that like for you personally? And why? I mean, I've had it a few times. You just, the biggest one I think was when me and GZ fell out. And it's funny, I always tell this story and I start with me and GZ fell out. Everybody's like, oh, and I'm like, no, no. Listen, we're good now. We're great now. Like, you know what I'm saying? I see him, he sees me. His love, there's a respect there. But that's what it was. For me, it was a respect issue. When I first started, mind you, the GZ, when I took the job as VP of marketing for CTE, that was my first like job job. I had worked at DTP as an intern with Luda and Chaka and all those guys. I had taken a job with DJ Tsum. So let me refer to that. Tsum probably gave me my first job, but I mean, this is like some under the table cash. There you go. You know what I'm saying? Give me a couple bucks every week. And I used to work with real street promotions. I had done street team stuff. So that's how I really got in. Passing out flyers, putting up posters. I was making money doing those things, but how I really got my name was GZ. I met those guys, I was working Bobby V records and play a circle records down and making. I met Kink. I met some of the other guys that was on GZ's team. And so we ran into each other again in Atlanta when I was working at the tag office of all places. My mama had got me a job at the tag office in Fulton County. I was working off of Hogan Bridge Road up in Alpharetta. And Kink came in, Kinky B, who was GZ's partner at the time, came in to get tags for their truck. And everybody at the job knew I wanted to be in the music business. The lady was like, hey Nick, you know that guy that just came in here? I was like, nah, cause I didn't see him. She's like, he worked with something, thugs entertainment. I was like, let me get up. So I get up, go outside, it's Kink. I know him. He's like, man, what are you doing here? He's like, last time I seen you, you was down and making, working your move. I'm like, man, I got a job, bro. I got kid, like, I can't play with y'all all day. You know what I'm saying? I gotta make money. He's like, bro, we looking for a marketing dude. He's like, man, you'll be perfect. I was like, I said, man, if y'all heard me, I'll eat this thing today. Like you ever seen Woofer Wall Street? And dude was like, yo, if you show me that check, I'm out of here. I'll call home right now and be like, I ain't never. But I did. He told me like, yo, I want you. I'm like, when they resigned that day and they were working out of a house. This is pre, this is right when streets is watching this getting done. So this ain't even TM1 on one G. This is still mixtape, GZ. And I'm like, I'm out of here because I want to be in the music business that bad. But I give you that backstory to say this, when they met me, I was still very fresh and new. As the years progressed and I built my resume and I built my name and, you know, I was learning more and more and more. What I found was me and GZ's initial class, Clash was him still kind of treating me like the guy he met at age 22, 23, you know what I'm saying? So when I'm 28, 29, I'm like, hey, like, this ain't that no more, you know what I'm saying? Like, thanks to you for the opportunity for sure. But now that I've accrued some knowledge and some experience and I've kind of taken on some more things, like I know more and that attitude of like, well, I'll just fire you. I'm like, all right, cool, I'll go somewhere else. You know what I'm saying? I would have that confidence of I could just go somewhere else. And young, young GZ wasn't feeling that. He wasn't really open to like, oh, you just, you know, oh, you think you can, you know, it was that. It was just that machismo with Lamayu. Everybody was young at that time. When we started the CTE, everybody's 22, 24, 25 years old. It's really essentially a bunch of kids running around, hugging in the music business. There's money, there's everything else. You know, there might be just BMF era. This is peak of all, peak Atlanta at this point. So everybody's kind of making their bones in a city. And as men starting to kind of, you know, you know, bump class, just bump heads, you know. And it took leaving GZ, getting away from him for a while, coming back. And even then, like I came back and it got weird for a little while, then I leave again and I come back. One of the last time I came back, it was like, okay, cool, we've established like, he's grown, I've grown, he acknowledges my growth. And, you know what I'm saying? And we can kind of have those mutual conversations and it'd be all love. But that's what it was. It was kind of like, man, hold on, I'm in the music business, but I feel like I'm being treated like, you know, little bro. And I don't want to be little bro. I'm a grown man. I got kids. I ain't, look, who little bro am I? I got a big brother. I don't, it can't be yo little bro. You know what I'm saying? It's the same that. But you run into these, you run into these egos, you run into these personalities and you run into like, where is my, where is this going to take me? Where is my future going to take me? You know what I'm saying? Like I'm watching everybody else. We're at Lambo's and fly private. And I'm like, okay, this isn't mine. You know what I'm saying? Like I'll never be able to take CTE and hand it to my kids. You did? So it's like, I got to figure out what I'm going to do. And you start to just get frustrated. Like, okay, what's, where does this ultimately lead? And I was like, I got to get out of here. I got to figure out something. And when I left, you started, I started to realize like, oh, how people was only rocking with me because I was with Jeezy. You know what I'm saying? Like, I remember sitting in my house like, oh, shit, like, I thought I had friends. You know what I'm saying? I thought I really had these close relationships. And it was like, the minute I wasn't there, people was like, oh, what are we talking to you about? And that was a harsh pill. You know, that was a hard pill to swallow to like realize like people are only rocking with you for your position or for what you bring to the table in the minute that you no longer bring that to the table. You're useless. So that was one of the first time I was like, I want to leave all of this alone. All my life I want to be in this now I'm in it and I don't like this side of what I'm seeing. And everybody in the music business will tell you that at some point either their money got funny or the people got funny or the opportunity started to kind of dry up and they was like, yo, I'm gonna go do something else. Life long dreams and she was a kid to be in this. And then you're just like, one day, get me out of here. It's tough. Rare tough. I'm trying to get y'all too much. Oh, no, like, you know what I was saying? Like, it's personal to me. So like I said, I could talk about it in extreme depth. You know what I'm saying? Like it was, I remember them days vividly. You know what I'm saying? That's why I'm appreciative of the opportunity I have now but even now I'm still looking like, okay, what else? What's the next move? It was interesting just because, you know, being in the industry, I've heard versions of that. Everybody talking about whether it's fakeness. We were just talking to Ferrari last week. Oh, y'all have Ferrari on? Yeah. That's my guys. Little bro, I met him on the road. Me and my guys were responsible for bringing him up here. We met him in Tampa. Him and my man, Dave, who's one of the heads of Rock Nation. I'm not, I'm sorry, not Rock Nation, United Masters. Dave is at United Masters. Him and Ferrari were like best friends. We met them. They were throwing parties in Tampa. We was on a promo tour with Innoscope and we came down with a group called Rock City. Incredible songwriters. They write some of everything. Like literally if you look up to Ron and Timothy from Rock City, you'll see that they, Rihanna Records, Justin Bieber. I think they just wrote the Dirk and J. Cole record. Crazy. Amazing. Like some of the biggest songwriters you ever know. My man Ray Daniels manages them. Me, Ray, my man Bitty and Rock City, we were on the promo tour. We ended up in Tampa. We met them because they hosted a party that we took Rock City to. They were like, yo, we wanna come to Atlanta. We was like, come on up. You know what I'm saying? My man Bitty put them on. Ferrari used to host my parties. That's my guy. So that's cool that y'all have. That's funny, man. Yeah. Small world. That story of him going from Tampa to Atlanta was big. So it's crazy. I remember that bridge. Yup. Yeah. He went through it, but. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. That's dope. Well, I mean, you just said something that I did. And y'all got a part of me. Like I said, this is, this is my life. So I, and I've noticed that when I tell my story, people are like, tell me more. So I probably overexplain now because I have to like make people understand why. Cause I used to be real vague. Nah. You know, I come from that era when nobody took pictures and nobody really told you much. Nah, man. And now I've like tried to overcorrect and be like, okay, let me give you. This way is better, man. You know what I'm saying? People need to get the context. People need to get the context. Yeah, context. That's the right way. I want to give you context as to why or how. Like y'all, see, you said, you great man. Oh man, I don't want to forget what I was going to say. It's going to come back to me though. Tell me more about, like, let's go to Magic City. Okay. That job that you had, I forgot the official title. Yeah. Bruce Brand Manager over there. But what do you do as a brand manager? And especially, I think that was like 2017 issue or something that I remember the dates. There's already a brand, right? Yeah. Of Magic City by that time, a well-established brand. So what does it look like? Come into a place that already has that and then trying to navigate that. So, I love that you said it was already a brand because that's one of the things I acknowledged, right? So, oddly enough that we're in the church, that's how I met the owners of Magic City, church. The church I went to, it was off of Kellen Road, well, Flat Shoes, Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, one of the biggest mega, one of the first big mega churches, especially in Atlanta, right? So, at that church was a ton of talent, but you know, and I could go into, all the people who went to that church too, but I didn't even go there. Anyway, the owner of Magic City, Mr. Magic, and his son, Lil' Magic, who I know is Mikey, Mikey, we all went to church together. So, when we got a little older, Mikey would be like, yo man, one day come out of the club, bro. And I ain't even know nothing about the club. I didn't even know that that's what they did. Mikey one day was like, yo, yo, come out of the club. And I'm like, okay, send me the address. The address is Magic City. I'm like, what? Okay, so you know, goes to the club. We might've been 18, 19, no young, probably couldn't, I know I wasn't supposed to be in there. And I'm like, yo, Mikey works at Magic City. He's like, no, it's my dad's spot. I'm like, what do you mean it's your dad's spot? Like, no, my dad owns, I'm like, what? You know what I'm saying? Like, we go to church together. Like your dad owns one of the biggest strip clubs in the city, it's crazy. So, fast forward to, like I said, 2017. I was at the club regularly. You know what I'm saying? I'm managing coalition DJs at that time. My DJs are working at Magic City. I recognize that it's a brand, but I was having a conversation with somebody. I think I was in a meeting with Nike. And I'm like, Atlanta's brand has become strip club. You know, like the biggest brands in this city, like when you really think about from the out to the outside world, especially before that, Atlanta was civil rights, Martin Luther King, Coca-Cola. But if you live here, it's Coca-Cola, Magic City. You know what I'm saying? Like I might be before Dr. King, which is crazy, right? But like Magic City is a household name in Atlanta. Everybody in Atlanta knows what that is. And it's such a big name that when tourists come to town, white or black, they're like, I heard about this Magic City place. And so I remember going to Nike being like, bro, y'all got this brand that everybody knows about. Like y'all should be selling merch, y'all should be doing all this stuff. And he's like, yeah, you know, we got the hoodies. I'm like, yeah, but those hoodies should be flying off the shelf. They should never be sitting here. Like everybody in the city should be like a Magic City hoodie. People from out of town should be like getting a hoodie just the same way they would go collect memorabilia from Coca-Cola factory. They should be getting Magic City stuff the same way. He's like, bro, I've been saying that to my dad, but we don't have anybody to run it. He's like, we're so focused on the club and managing the girls as a full-time gig. Like the girls, anybody who's ever dated a stripper or God forbid had to manage a strip club and had to deal with 50, 60, 70 strippers. The personalities and the energy that come with the girls is a whole nother thing. Like it's amazing to watch. Like if you could just be a fly on the wall sometimes and hear some of the stories, see some of the things that go on. And I ain't talking about no sexual stuff. I'm talking about just pure, the personality of a woman who dances. They're hustlers. They're aggressive. They are, it's a tough room, you know what I'm saying? So I understand why all your energy and focus has to go to make sure they are where they need to be. You know what I'm saying? So he's like, bro, if we had somebody who could come in here and do it, we would gladly jump it off. I'm like, all right, bet. So I jumped right in. I'm like, let's rock. This is my man. He brought me right in the door. No resume, no application. Just come on in here. And I started doing it and I brought my man Demap in because Map was way more into like the fashion space. So Map came in and he started designing like new capsules and he put out the Valentine's Day version of the hoodie. He was the one introduced to different colors. But when I first started that, it was the black hoodie, the white writing, magic city on the front. That was it. And I was like, yo, that's iconic enough to make this make sense. So I started just, you know, this is early influencer days. So I'm giving out the hoodies to, you know, the influencers here in Atlanta, the DJ, you know, just making sure that everybody who was cool had a magic city hoodie. And it just built from there. And you know what I'm saying? And people understood immediately what it was. Like everybody's like, yeah, this makes complete sense to have a magic city hoodie on if you represent Atlanta. It's the best conversation starter in the world. If you ever wear a magic city hoodie to the airport, everybody's going to want to talk to you because it's that wink, like, hi, magic city. You know what I'm saying? You see it. Old white guys, teenagers, rappers, whoever. It's like, no, magic city. Magic city is one of the biggest brands in this city. Hands down, not even close. No, it's a fact. That's a fact. It's interesting that experience of building brands versus like there's already there. And it sounds like you respecting the brand that already was there, kind of just made things easier. For sure. But you could have tried to overwork and like do some stuff that didn't need to be done. Some things you don't need to put your twist on. Some things are fine the way they are. You know what I'm saying? Probably the lesson I've learned over the years is like some things you just need to come in and amplify what's already there. There's no need for you to come in there and put your, just sprinkle your sauce on everything. You know what I'm saying? Like some stuff is just fine, just cool. Like, think of like your favorite chicken place or whatever. It's like somebody came in there, and even if they took something else that you actually like. Like, you know what I'm saying? You like Chick-fil-A? Yeah. Like Polynesian sauce? Yeah. All right, cool. I'll rock with that. You like chicken from publics? Yeah. All right, cool. If somebody came in and sprinkled Polynesian sauce on the public chicken, you wouldn't like it as much. Even though you like Polynesian sauce and you like public chicken, together, you don't necessarily want them. You know what I'm saying? Nah, they don't hit the same. I've tried before. Exactly. You know what I'm saying? I've been hanging with the Polynesian. Yeah, yeah. See, that sounds crazy, right? I do sometimes. And it's like, yo, sometimes that public chicken is just fine. All you gotta do is just serve it on a plate. That's it. And I think some people, that was, I remember when I first started doing it, yeah, you got the like, oh, you work in the Magic City? Like, yeah, but when people realized why and when I explained, like, yo, think about it. Like, what's bigger than Magic City in Atlanta? Everybody's like, well, I mean, oh, no, now that you say that, nah, bro, Magic City is, Magic City is one of the, it's a top five brand in the city. Yeah. Like literally outside of Coca-Cola. And like I said, maybe Dr. King. Maybe Waffle House. Waffle House. Yeah, Waffle House. Magic City. My boy ran me like top five. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's neck and neck for sure. You know what I'm saying? Like that's the kind of brand that they've built over the years, man. And even more so than some of the other strip clubs. Other strip, Blue Flames been around longer than Magic City actually by, if we talk about length of time that it's been there, but the Blue Flame brand, which I love, Magic City has transcended the Blue Flame brand. Do you have a sense of what contributed to that becoming that level of brand? Location. Location, it's in the city. And Mr. Magic had relationships. He was, you know what I'm saying? If you go look at some old Magic City pictures, you'll see Dionne Sanders and MC Hammer. Like these guys from the 80s, early 90s that are hanging out in Magic City. So then when you fast forward and then Jermaine Dupri and Dallas Sauston and Rico Wade and all these guys are in the club. And then you fast forward to that. Then it's GZ and Tip and it's Future. And you know what I'm saying? That legacy, even though a lot of those guys went to the other spots as well. They went to Strokes, they went to Pin Ups, they went to Blue Flame, they went to Babes, they went to, you know what I'm saying? They went everywhere. But Magic City, because of the location, it being central and being across the street from that Greyhound station. And having the food, all those things contributed to making the brand what it is, you know what I'm saying? Like it just became the cool spot that if you had a couple bucks and you was a hustler, if you was a pretty girl, if you was a dude that was kind of in the mix, that's where you went. The Flame was real West Side. Like if you're a West Side dude, you go to the Flame. Like if you're a East Side dude, you go to Strokes, you go to Pin Ups, you go to the Jazzities when it was open, you know what I'm saying? A lot of people, you go where you live at. You kind of stick in your, let's talk to your neighborhood bar. Magic City was where you came when you was in the city and you was trying to get in the mix. Yeah, we're all clashed. Yes, we're all the cultures converged in the city. Yeah. Let's take a quick second to talk about the elephant in the room. If you're an artist trying to grow, we already know what your goal is, a thousand true fans. Everybody talks about it, but how do you actually make that happen? How do you get those fans? It's not just about getting views. You gotta push people further down the funnel. So let's talk about it. Number one, do you have these people's data, right? Do you have the ability to text and build highly engaging relationships with these people? Can you boost your Spotify plays to actually have engaged users, not those surface level play-listing plays? Well, guess what? Febra Fan is a platform that allows you to do all of those things in one. So it's not overwhelming. You don't have to switch and have all these different logins and switch all your LinkedIn bios. You have even a LinkedIn bio tool that you can do. So everything is done in one place. So not only do you grow your fans, you do it for less work. How about that? Check out foreverfan music.com because we know it's not about views for the day. It's about getting fans who will be there forever. Foreverfanmusic.com. Let's get back to this video. Can't miss on any of the artist marketing that you're now involved in. Saw recently, you did somewhere, ASAP 12. ASAP 12, that's my guy. Album and stores tonight, midnight. And you had a post where you said, you came up with an idea for them and y'all ended up in Paris and something was an idea. So what I did was, I had a relationship with my man, Mel. Mel Testimarch, y'all talk to my guy, Mel. Mel works with like born fly clothing. He works with a, you know, he works with a lot of different clothing lines. And so I was looking for a merch collab for ASAP 12. So anybody who is not familiar with 12, he's probably one of the original members of ASAP mob with ASAP Rocky and the Ferg and all those guys. I wanted something that would help him stand out because, you know, it's easy to get lost in the sauce when you're standing next to Rocky. Rocky, who has been a star from the time that that crew has been stars since they jumped out here. I mean, and got re-reason. Yeah. And he got Rihanna. So I mean, he's already in another stratosphere. Ferg is put out anthem after anthem, you know what I'm saying? When it comes to him. So 12 being the other guys, you know, they've kind of been relegated to Rocky and them, you know what I'm saying? Rocky Ferg and, you know, and the other guys. And I wanted 12 to kind of, you know, stand out. And it was, where can we find these collaborations? Where can we find these brands that want to be a part of what we're trying to build here? And the original plan was to go with BBC Ice Cream because 12ies album was called Kids Gotta Eat. So I was thinking like, okay, where can I find something food related that'll make sense? And whatever. So I reached out to a couple of guys that I knew we just couldn't get the ice cream thing to work out. So I reached out to Mel. I'm like, Mel told Mel the idea. And he was like, well, you know, told me from New York, maybe we can just do Staple. And I was like, okay, cool. But I had a meeting, Staple is a clothing line called Staple, Jeff Staple owns it. Asian dude who has like been integral in like hip hop culture for a while, right? Beyond the clothes he's been behind some of the dopest like hip hop logos and clothing trends and art trends. Like he's amazing, dude, look him up, Jeff Staple. But it's a clothing line called Staple Pigeon. It's New York based, super dope, right? So you'll see it has a pigeon. The logo is like a pigeon. You've seen it around even if you don't know it. So anyway, I had a meeting with the guys and I said, hey guys, listen. Y'all wasn't necessarily my first choice. Then we just put it out there. I said, but I am excited to be working with y'all because you guys at least have bought into the brand of what 12E is doing. Here's the idea. I say, you know, he's working on an album. It's called Kids Gotta Eat. We're gonna do this down the third day. We're like, oh man, we love it. You know, we're familiar with him. First of all, we're familiar with him. We like him and we like the concept of the album. They said, matter of fact, we're going to Paris Fashion Week. He said, and one of the guys like, y'all have a great idea. What if we did like a activation that's like food based? Like we can give out food to like a little restaurant. I said, you know, that'd be dope. And then we start adding little pieces to what it is. And one that maybe about two weeks, two, three weeks prior to Paris Fashion Week, they were like, hey, we want to bring 12E out to perform at the activation. We're going to do a collab. It's going to be like a shirt. The shirt says, A-Sat 12E on it. It got the track listing for the album on the back. It says, Kids Gotta Eat is super dope. He's like, we should bring 12E out to perform. I'm like, okay, cool. Like let's put it together. And they were like, yo, Nick, you should come too. In my mind, it wasn't even, I wasn't going. You know what I'm saying? This was for him. I'm all about my client. I want to make sure that my artist is represented and he looks good. 12E's like, no, Nick, you come. I'm like, all right, cool. So we get out there, bro. To their credit, staple, shot shot to y'all. These dudes took an empty space, created a restaurant, like a cafe. Like when I got there, I thought that it was a cafe already. They just stuck their name on it. They like, no, no. This was nothing. We went in here and built benches, tables, a makeshift kitchen, put a bunch of staple stuff all over the walls, these menus that had like 12E stuff on. Insane. And created a restaurant. They served a different item every day food wise and played 12E's music throughout the thing. It was amazing. Like, but that was just a play of just calling my buddy. You know what I'm saying? Like, hey man, this is what I'm trying to do. And you just never realize how certain relationships that you have will kind of shift things for you. Like they shifted things definitely for 12E because that was the biggest. Outside of the YouTube billboard that we did, that was the biggest portion of his promo that we've done. Like that was a huge look for him because it gave him an international look. And by the way, while we was in Paris, we were walking down the street. This dude got stopped 20, 30 times, bro. Like he was ageing 12. We just walking down the street and me and him, like we just going, we going shopping. We just looking around kicking it. Oh my God, you ain't except for me to take a picture. People showing us tattoos that they had of like ASAP mob on their bodies. Like him, Rocky, their faces on people's legs and arms. I'm like, wait, what? Like what's that? You know what I'm saying? Like I was tripping off that, but it just made me realize like how far hip hop has truly like infected the globe. Like for real, like we're, you know, people always say hip hop is a global brand, but you don't realize it's a global brand till you see the globe, you know what I'm saying? Like from Atlanta, you're sure or whatever. That's some cliche shit you say. Like, yeah, you know, but to see it in practice, to see these young white, young Asian, young German kids out here looking like us, dressing like us, probably fresher than us. Actually these foreign kids might be cool. I ain't gonna lie, they might be cooler than us now. Like for real, like these kids, they got swag, they got us down packing and they done put, they twist on it. Man, them kids cool as shit. Like I ain't gonna lie to you. Like I was like, oh man, are black kids not as cool as the, how do we become third in line on the cool? Tripping. That's funny. Yeah. It's crazy you say that connection internationally because I remember being somewhere overseas and seeing like Beyonce and Jay-Z on this Billboard and it just hit different. It wasn't Billboard, it was like on the side of a mall, this long banner or whatever. It just hit completely different when you see it there. And it was, you know, and that's when you start to realize who has reached. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because you don't see everybody when you over there. So the few people you see over there, if you're like, whoa, okay. Like you're really doing something different. And obviously we like, Jay-Z and Beyonce are already, we know they're like bigger, but still even then it kind of solidified for me. We were just having a conversation this morning where a guy on our team, shout out to Zach, he had this theory about the fashion space and like people go into the fashion space and become like bigger stars in a way. And a large part of that I felt like might have to do with just the international reach that comes along with doing fashion. For sure. When you were over there for Paris Fashion Week and then obviously we know ASAP, a large part of that, right? If that group is fashion and that collective. Yep. What did you personally kind of observe, especially working with 12 in terms of like how fashion helps their brand as an artist? Oh, it's everything. Lifestyle is always going to be a huge portion of any brand. I tell every artist that I sit down with, major or indie, you need a lifestyle portion. You need a lifestyle component to whatever you do. The music ain't enough. It's just not, you know what I'm saying? And because music comes to go, it's too much music coming out. It's too hard to sift through the millions and millions and millions of songs that are out and that will be coming out on a daily basis, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, okay, why do people connect to you outside of a song? Because if they only connect to you outside of, if they only, the only connection that a fan has to an artist is the music, the day that the music is mediocre, they're gone. You know what I'm saying? Like, think about you and your girl. You said, you know, you have your significant other, right? Yeah, my wife, I got a wife. Okay, you know, I gotta make sure I gotta make sure I'm proper with everything, right? But think about this, right? If your only connection to her was how pretty she was, the day she ain't pretty, you out, right? The day she cut her hair weird, the day she don't dress the way you, you know what I'm saying? If that's your only tie-in to her, the day that that thing changes, you out. There has to be more. There has to be a thing about her that you like beyond that surface thing, right? And that's the same thing with music. Your connection cannot be purely music. You gotta like the artist. And it's like, why do you like him? Most people that you like, you like him. Think about it, why do you like Jay? It's not just he can rap. I mean, he's a hell of a rapper. We all acknowledge that. But there's more. Beyonce, there's more. On down to Snoop Dogg with Khalifa. Every big major artist that we love has a thing about them that we're really tied into. Whether it's the weed smoking, whether it's the parties like Puff, whether it's the money and the opulence of Jay, whether it's the talent and the dancing and all the beyond. You know what I'm saying? Like we all have a thing that we're tied into beyond just, I like that song. Because like I said, at some point they will ultimately drop a song that you don't like. Or that's not your favorite. There's a reason we don't just be like, I'm done with Rihanna. You know what I'm saying? We like Rihanna because there's more to it than just the music. And I tell every artist like, yo, how are you gonna tap in outside of this music? When the music's not working, what else is there? You want them to like your fashion sense. You want them to like the fact that you were into video games. You want them to like that you're into old school cars. You want them to like that, you know what I'm saying? You're a dad. And I tell people, find your niche. What's the thing that you do outside of music that other people can buy into? Like for me, I've always known it's my kids. People love to see me hanging out with my daughters. I'm a girl dad through and through. I remember when COVID passed and he had to hold everybody's doing the girl dad hashtag. Everybody's like, man, Nick been on the girl dad thing. Cause I got four girls, you know what I'm saying? Like I got four daughters at 2017, 16 and five. So I've been a girl dad for a long time, you know what I'm saying? And I've always been very proud of that cause I didn't have sisters growing up. So it's just me and my three brothers. My mama was the only woman in the house. So when I had girls, I was over the moon. So I love showing off my kids. Everybody knows I'm in the sneakers. So I'm always posting sneakers that I buy, stuff that I like, have my opinions on sneakers and everybody know I love food. You know what I'm saying? So those are things that when I'm not in the music business and I'm not boring you to death with all my music knowledge, I can still talk to you about other stuff. And it's really, you know, it's really about being more well-rounded in anything. But I always want to have a connection point that when I meet people, they can, everybody don't want to talk to me about music. Some people want to be like, yo man, it's my anniversary. Where can I go get some good food? I want to take my girl out. Where can I go? You know what I'm saying? Hey man, you got a daughter, bro. What are you, man, how do you deal with that, bro? I've been trying to tell my, you know, my daughter woo, woo, woo and I'm like, you know, I can relate to you on a parent level, or going out dating level with your girl. You know, I can talk about a multitude of things and I try to just make sure that I have a connection point to people outside of this. So if I'm doing it, you as an artist absolutely got to do it. Yeah, so it's interesting, man, cause like lifestyle marketing is basically almost like culture hacking, right? For sure. And so you mentioned you give the same advice to indie artists as you do, the bigger artists figure out their lifestyle thing, you can attach yourself to, but how do you measure the lifestyle impact for artists who hasn't hit mainstream level yet, right? So like, for example, we can see, let's say like 50 with the vest sort of tanks, right? We can see certain aspects of his lifestyle translating over, like cutting it with the glasses or something like that. But like when you're working with artists who maybe isn't like mainstream yet, but you know they still need to do it, or how are you gauging if that lifestyle marketing was successful? If we can't watch like the whole world take on to it. Now this is where analytics come in handy, right? So like you start kind of watching the numbers. The numbers tell you everything. So even if you read Instagram analytics on the most basic level, right? So it'll tell you something like the age group of people that are following you plus like the ratio of like gender. So you'll have, let me say 60% men, 40% women or whatever the case may be. So let's say you're doing something that is, I would say let's label it quote unquote feminine, right? Cooking. Cooking traditionally has been a woman's or a more feminine trait. So if you're doing the more cooking videos, just start to see who's responding to what. You know what I'm saying? Are you getting more women followers? Are more women starting to follow you all of a sudden that when you post a video, who's commenting? Is it more women? You start to kind of see who's truly paying attention to the things that you're doing. And then you can see if it's not catching. You know what I'm saying? Or you might just be putting it out there in a way that isn't translating to who you wanted to translate to. Video games generally skew male. Like I said, cooking generally skews more toward women. Cars, muscle cars in particular skew towards men. There's little things that you can do to kind of just see like, okay, am I, if you're niche is cars, right? Let's just say you into painting cars, old school cars, rebuilding engines and whatnot. Are you now getting invited to perform at car shows? Are you now, are people from car brands, like, hey, let me send you one of my T-shirts so that you can wear it in your next video? You start to see who's coming to the party when you start putting that stuff out there, but you have to put it out there. Yeah, it makes sense. But you just, I just followed the numbers. I followed the info. Yeah, it makes sense. Like I said, if I'm talking about cars and I start noticing, I don't know, more of my audience is now leaning towards cars that we can assume is working. Yeah, or you know what I'm saying? Or let's say you talking about cars and now you finally make a song that's about my car. You know what I'm saying? You talking, you know, Crypt was great for that. He always had like a my sub or my Cadillac or something like that. You know what I'm saying? Like when you start getting people that's hitting you like, yo, this is my Cadillac. I just, I just got, or this is my dad's car. Woo, woo, woo. Now you're like, oh, okay, gotcha. They picking up what I'm putting down. Yeah, gotcha. And that's the thing you want. You want people who are relating to you on another level besides, I like the song or I don't like the song. It's too fickle. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. There was another post I saw you put up too. You said, we got a billboard but we didn't pay for the billboard. Yeah, yeah. One, how did you do that? And then two, how much money did you save? The post I made, I made that post today I was talking about the billboard that we got with you two. I said we pitched for it, we didn't pay for it. So I made that post because in the last month or two I watched people, well, first of all, let me state this. For the entirety of me being in the music business, I've always had people who were not in the music business tell me how the music business work. And I'm like, how you know? Music and sports are probably the only two fields in the world that people who have never done the thing can tell you how to do it. You know what I'm saying? And we all do it, we guilty of it, right? We watched the basketball game and Shaq not making his free throws. Like, why can't he hit a free throw? And it's like, bro, I don't know if you could go out there and make 70% of your free throws in front of 30,000 people and the millions of people that are watching this thing on TV. You know what I'm saying? Like he's trying, you know what I'm saying? But if you're at home, why can't he complete this 10 yard out? Why he couldn't just throw it down the field six? You know what I'm saying? We watched football games. Like I would have just threw it. It's like, would you? You know what I'm saying? Like with eight people running towards you and a man double covered, you would have just threw it 60 yards down the field and you would have just lobbed it to him. Like that's what you would have done. Perfect. Right, perfectly. And we do that with sports and we do that with music. Everybody who ain't in the music business or who's trying to get in it can tell you, oh, this is what Puff was doing and this is what Jay was doing and this is how these deals work. And that's what the contract was saying. I'm like, man, what are you talking about? And so there was a thing on Twitter, not too long ago where somebody was talking about the billboards in particular. Just like, oh yeah, you know, the labels pay for that stuff. And somebody that I really respect in the music business, she was like, no, you pitch for those. Oh no, that come up the artist budget. And she's like, no, like we pitch for it. And if we pitch it in time, because that's what happens, you get the artist to send you the video or the song or whatever the case may be in advance. Hopefully you have three, four, five, six weeks in advance so you can send it to YouTube or send it to TikTok or send it to one of these, you know, the DSPs or one of the social media platforms telling them what you're trying to do and then they say, oh, okay, we like that. Let's rock, we'll use that as a banner for our site or we'll use that as the billboard or what, you know what I'm saying? They specifically allocate support in that way, you know what I'm saying? You just have to pitch for it. It doesn't come out of the artist budget, it doesn't come out of our budget. That's what we're pitching. I have to write a pitch and send it in and say, hey, this is the last single going into his album. The album's coming out on July 7th. The album is about this, this song means this. I got to send the lyrics over. I got to send everything so they know what they're getting in business with and cross your fingers and you hope that they rock with what you sent over. And we got it. And I'm just like, take it from somebody who's actually doing it, this is what it was. You know what I'm saying? Too many people love to tell you what's happening. I'm like, bro, y'all don't have no clue, bro. And mind you, we've pitched other artists before and didn't get it. That's how we know if we could just pay for it, we would. That's the same thing with radio, so all these people have these ideas of like, oh, everybody just paying for this and paying for that. It's like, bro, do you know that if all it took was money, everybody would just do that? You know what I'm saying? Like I've seen Fat Joe do these interviews. He's like, bro, if I could just pay for it, I'd have the number one song every time I put a song out. If all I had to do was pay to make my song number one. And don't get me wrong, there is money involved in promoting and boosting these things. However, if the only requirement was you gotta have $250,000. Wouldn't everybody with $250,000 wax song, great song, mid song, whatever, wouldn't they just pay the 250? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So there is a bit of luck. There is a bit of work and relationships and stuff that goes hand in hand with this business. Most of it is relationship business. And that's like, I just get frustrated just watching people dictate and tell other folks, this is how it goes. You know what I'm saying? What the hell are you talking about? So that was for that. Yeah, it's interesting though, man. Music fans are much rather believe you pay for it than you write a pitch, you know what I'm saying? People who lose and would rather believe that the reason that they're losing is because they can't do the thing that the winners are doing. That's a loser mentality. Yeah, because if you get in, go get some money then. Bro, that's my number, hey, listen. How to write a pitch. Thank you. I tell people all the time when guys be like, man, these women out here, all they want us to do with money. It's like, well, do you like women? You know what you should do? You should go get money. If you believe that all they want is guys with money and you want to be with them, you gotta get some bread. That's the game. You know what I'm saying? You can't losers take the mentality of I don't like that because all these folks, they think the winners are cheating. And it's like, not really. But if you believe that, you should probably cheat too. You know what I'm saying? If that's what you believe, go do the thing that the winners are doing. And when you can't do what the winners are doing, it's like, oh man, everybody, I love hearing the, man, everybody at the Rock Nation brunch is Illuminati, but they all, they all gay. They all slept with some, you know what I'm saying? It's like, oh, that, cause you couldn't go. You know what I'm saying? Like that seems extreme. You know what I'm saying? Well, you know, Nick only got that deal because he, whoa, whoa. This person only was in at that meeting or got that opportunity because they did. Well, why it's like, not really. Everybody ain't sold, they sold. I'm yet to be invited to the soul selling meeting. And I've been in the business for 17, 18 years. I just, I've never been invited. Maybe I ain't big enough yet to make it to the meeting, but I do know that no one's asked me to sell, you know, to sell my soul, bro. And I've been living off this for a long time, bro. I've made good money. My kids are welfare. We've never missed a meal. We bought cars, houses, traveled the whole nine. And soul still intact. Let's not let that pass. Cause you got four of them too. Ain't missing meals and got four of them. And we eat good. And we eat good, bro. Like I'm a picky eater, you know what I'm saying? Like I eat good. Like we eat out a lot. My daughters is bougie. Like they want hibachi, filet mignon. They want, they want it all. They want lobster tails. They want the whole thing. And it's like, that ain't a daily meal, but it's an often meal. Ain't gonna lie to y'all. We eat out a lot. But, you know, it took time and it wasn't always that. It wasn't like that from day one. You know what I'm saying? Luckily I don't have no vices. I don't smoke. I drink in moderation. You know what I'm saying? I don't, I've never been a Louis Gucci guy. So I'm really good with holding on to some bread. But like, one of my vices definitely is eating out. Like you're gonna eat good if nothing else. You know what I'm saying? So, and my kids will be rocking, you know, right along with me. Oh man. But well, speaking of, you know, food, drinks. Let's talk about Avion, Tequila or a little bit. Yeah. That brand and manager in that area. What does it look like to help grow a liquor brand? I fell into that opportunity completely on accident. More or less. GZ at the time had gotten sponsorship opportunity with them and then he ended up buying into it. So when we were on tour, I'm trying to remember which album this was, but we were on tour. And the Avion brand, they were paying. They were sponsoring a bit of tour. They were moving us around. We flying this, we flying private, you know what I'm saying? On the liquor company. But we were getting there and GZ was doing a lot of meet and greets and doing these bottle signings and whatnot. And he was like, yo, the company doesn't understand me. You know, GZ, they don't understand me. They think that, oh yeah, we're just gonna go somewhere and sign some bottles. Like it'd be a cute little thing for GZ to do. Not understanding that GZ's fans are, these are trap music fans, you know what I'm saying? And the liquor stores that we're going to, or that the stores that we need to go to are in the hood. We're not going to Green's Bottle Store on Piedmont in Buckhead. We're going to, you know what I'm saying? The liquor store on Western Chapel. You know what I'm saying? Anybody who's familiar with Atlanta, you know, like this is, we go into the hood a lot of times. You know, we're going to Memphis, you know what I'm saying? And Yo Gotti's family is like, yeah, we're going to come with y'all because you know, it's get hectic over there. We're going to come make sure y'all good. We go in Chicago and it's like, you know what I'm saying? Fruit of Islam guys, you know, Minister Farrakhan's godson is with us. And he's like, yo, I'm going to go with y'all and make sure y'all y'all solid. Cause the way y'all going is it get treacherous over there. This ain't just some old Hollywood, you know what I'm saying? Bottle signings. This is like we in the trenches with a bunch of people who are drinking liquor, you know what I'm saying? And that want to see Jeezy and our adamant about seeing Jeezy. And so, you know, I was the one who was like, look man, if we're going to do it, we need to have a DJ there. We need to play the music. You know, we need to make this thing a thing so that when people show up, they feel like it's an experience. Because my you, in order to get the bottle sign, you got to buy a bottle. So it's not just a simple, oh Jesus going to sign my t-shirt. It's like, no, you got a standing line, pay 50, 60 bucks for a bottle of liquor and then get it signed. You know what I'm saying? So this ain't even like a cheat thing to do. Everybody who comes got to spend some money. So now you got men, women, kids, everybody out here with cash in hand in the hood, in line for hours getting tired. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, I was the one who kind of came in and was like, yo, this is how we're going to do it. This is how we're going to frame it. This is how we're going to make it make sense. And it just kind of, I just kind of fell into the position. I learned a lot though. I learned a lot about how liquor companies make money. You know what I'm saying? Like when you watch, if you're a person like me who go to all these parties and you see the liquor logo on the bottom of a flyer, you're like, oh, it's sponsored by a Ciroc. It's sponsored by this. It feels like they're just giving liquor away. Liquor is expensive. If you ever tried to get into the liquor business and create your own vodka, create your own whatever, that shit is expensive. Like that's an expensive business to get in. So anytime you giving away bottles, you're losing thousands and thousands of dollars at a walk. So I'm always amazed when like a liquor company reaches out to me like, yeah, we need you to do promo. We're going to send you 30 cases. I'm like, I'll start doing the math. Even on a wholesale, y'all just sent me, y'all sent me to my house, $3,000 worth of liquor on the low end, you know what I'm saying? And retail wise, we tell them maybe $7,500 worth of liquor in my garage. You know what I'm saying? From one brand, so I'm always blown away, but you learn like, okay, whether the loss leaders, what makes the most sense in terms of, where do you give away? What do you hold on to? How do you upsell? You know, off-premise, on-premise. You know what I'm saying? My fiance, she worked at a Diagell for a while. So I learned from her as well. But the liquor business is a very interesting business and keep in mind, there's a lot of competitors. And then you compete them for shelf space, you're competing for branding. And in the urban space, you're really competing with, I mean everybody know Puff. Puff is the guy, but it goes back to lifestyle as well. Cause I also realized that, shout out to my man, Luda Chris, right? But like, nobody wants to necessarily drink a party like Luda. Everybody want a party like Puff. You know what I'm saying? So Puff, that brand was a great fit for Puff because he's selling you lifestyle. He's selling you, we popping bottles, we having a good time, we doing the nightlife thing, Dame Dash, same thing. He was, they was doing Armadale and all the liquor stuff that they was doing for a while. When Jay-Z does the gold bottle, you know what I'm saying, the ace of spades, like they're selling you lifestyle. Some people, you do want to kick it, like you want to date, like you want to move around cause they're around women, they're around the nightlife. They look like stars when they're moving around. Some people who are actually stars still don't give you that same feeling, you know what I'm saying? So again, like what's your, what's your thing? What's your lifestyle component that you bring to the table that is, that you can sell fans on? That informs the opportunities you can take advantage of? Yes. I remember everybody thinking like, oh yeah, I can get into the liquor game. He starts seeing R&B artists, my rappers, everybody getting into the liquor game. But like you said, I mean, everybody didn't have those pub daddy white parties or things like that, that history. Right. So yeah. Like I didn't say this, like, you know who's killing it? Ross. Yeah. Rick Ross is one of the best at it because he's giving you opulence. He's giving you lifestyle. He's giving you my, look at my big house. Look at these big parties. I'm the biggest boss. I got these things. He sells you that. So it's like, yeah, I want to kick it like Ross kicked you. But when you think of other artists, they sell you fashion. You're like, okay, I want to dress like him. I want to smoke like him. I want to, I want to get women like him. I want to do this. But then there are some other people that are just, they're just talented. Nothing wrong with being just talented. But I mean, it's hard to sell things when you're only selling, again, you're only selling talent. What's the thing that people want to do like you? What is it? I know that when I put out my food content and not on some food blog or stuff, but just like, I know people look at me and say, man, I want to move, I want to take my parents out in a sprinter and father's day and do the big thing like Nick did. You know what I'm saying? Cause I've been able to like do some really cool things with my kids, with my parents. Cause I, again, I'm giving you family. I'm not giving you, you know what I'm saying? Popping bottles and $3,000 nights at the club, $10,000 sections and throwing money in Magic City. I'm giving you, I took my family out and my mom had a great time. My mama likes me, you know what I'm saying? My dad, and that's important to me. I grew up to be a man that my mama appreciates. You know, my dad appreciates, you know, my dad looks at it like, I respect you as a man. My kids look at me and say, it's my dad. My dad, all right. You know what I'm saying? Like that was big to me. So I'm selling family, but what are you selling? Whatever it is, you know what I'm saying? Like that's tough. Except my fashion, dip set fashion, you know? Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, weed, you know what I'm saying? Like it's, and in the inverse, Lil Wayne is as famous as famous can be. Lil Wayne has a couple of liquor brands that he's attached to. I don't necessarily want to drink like Wayne. You know what I'm saying? Like Wayne doesn't give me, oh man, I want to just pull up and kick it like Wayne. And when I do think about pouring with Wayne, I think about something different, you know what I'm saying? Like it's not party Wayne. You know what I'm saying? I think Wayne getting high and going to the studio and doing what he do. And that's what I'm talking about. Wayne, as big as Wayne is, what is Wayne selling you on the lifestyle side? And I think he does sell a lifestyle. He says he gives you Rockstar. He was the one with the skinny jeans and the chain while it in the hole. Now, you know, he gave you that. Even on the record with Cali, he's like, you know, I'm the prototype. I was, all these guys look like me. They got dreads. They got the Rockstar look, the tats on the, they got that from me. Wayne is that, but Wayne is not selling you party. Yeah, that's interesting. Cause I never thought about it to you said it, but as big as he was, he didn't really have a lifestyle brand until he started leaning into the skate. The skate? Exactly. Yes. And that's the thing that always remind people like, yo, even little Wayne has a thing. You know what I'm saying? Like Birdman has a thing. Nikki has a, you know, these people, this isn't happening in my accident. This is purposeful, thought out marketing. Yeah. And that's what I do for a living. I purposefully, I make purposeful, thoughtful decisions on like, how are we going to make this make sense? So how soon into, I guess, you know, working with the artists, let's just assume like you, you come in, you find an artist that ground zero, you like them like the music, like the talent. How soon into working with them do you start trying to introduce lifestyle marketing? Immediately, but really I look at that before I do anything. Okay. I meet an artist on the street. I'm like, what's, I try to like size them up. Like, okay, what's the thing? Is he fresh? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like what's, I want to figure it out early on because it's super hard to take somebody that's talented and make them cool. You can take a cool person to find a record. It's hard to take a person with a record and make them cool. You know what I'm saying? Like, because again, the song only gets you, but so far. Yeah. So, you know, when I meet people, I'm just like, who he with? Is it, did he, I've had people meet me and they bring 20 of their guy friends. And I'm like, I don't really want to do this. You know what I'm saying? It's like, it feels aggressive. It feels, and that's not what I want to be a part of. Personally, nothing wrong with it. That's just not what Nick wants to do. I don't want to do the thing where we're doing the shootouts and the, you know, I've done that already. I've actually had that era for years and it was fun when I was 25 at 43, not as much. You know what I'm saying? So I'm not looking for the guy who shows up and like, yo man, I'm the biggest trapper. I'm the biggest, whatever. You know what I'm saying? I'm cool. You know what I'm saying? Now he show up with 40 chains on. I'm like, okay. And he pull up in the, you know what I'm saying? Something big. And I'm like, oh, okay, gotcha. There's some money here somewhere. Okay, now let me hear the music. You know what I'm saying? Because I see the look. Now let me see if the music matches up. And a lot of times that's the unfortunate part. And I don't. You know what I'm saying? You got a dude that got all the money in the world, terrible artist. Or you have a dude that can wrap circles around everybody don't have no money. They never, most talented people never have money. It's the weirdest thing in the world. Every now and then it matches up though. But I love artists that sell style. I love fresh rappers. I drove one of my favorite rappers. Oh man. And not only is he talented, but he's selling you something that you don't find every day. You know what I'm saying? Like, everybody's selling you, I sell dope. Everybody's selling you, I kill a bunch of niggas. Everybody's getting you that. Drow is like, look at me. I'm killing it. Like, look at what I got. I'm so fresh. And I'm like, yeah, you are. You are fresh. You know what I'm saying? That's why I love that dip set movement. I love, I love anybody who's giving me fresh. Because fresh takes some, that's a skill to get fresh. Everybody can go to the store and buy some clothes. Putting it together, because I don't have that. And it's an attitude. Yes. I dress okay, but I'm also very matchy-matchy. And I'm also a mannequin guy. Like, let me get that. So when I see kids that pull up in there, like a green hat and a red shirt and blue shorts and some shoes. And I'm like, damn, but it kind of came together. I would have never picked that out on my own. So I love seeing it where I'm like, damn, like you really like figured something out here. Like you get your shoestrings, match the thread on your shirt, and I would have never seen it. But I appreciate the eye that people have for it. So I love that, man. So I want the lifestyle component off the rip. Show me that if you the guy who showed up to the club with 40 girls, now I'm like, okay, what's happening here? You know what I'm saying? Now I'm curious. You showing up with 20 of your homeboys is like, you know what I'm saying? But if you got 10 girls with you, now I'm like, okay, I see what's happening. Oh, I think I see, you know? Do you feel like the fashion side of lifestyle marketing is getting oversaturated over it? For sure. For sure, but only it's only saturated on the designer side. Cause everybody's way of getting fresh is, I got a Prada jacket on a Balenciaga hat, you know what I'm saying? The Gucci shoes, I got the, you know what I'm saying? The Chanel belt. I get, you know what I'm saying? Everybody's doing that. And I'm like, that shit look country is here. Y'all think it's boogie. It's just expensive. You know what I'm saying? And that's the part that bothers me. Cause I'm like, yo, you don't have no, there's no style there. Like y'all not actually fresh. You just have a lot of expensive stuff on. And like, I know some guys on the executive side and on the artist side. And I'd be looking at them on Instagram. I'm like, you look country. Like you, like the outfit sits grand. Take offense to that. But y'all look, I mean, I mean, in Atlanta people are the worst because, and like I said, I take it from an Atlanta. We got money. I know that that's how we perceived anyway. Proceed as being country and slow and boogie don't handle style, don't handle. So when I see an Atlanta person and I'm like, damn, you look like what they be telling us we are. You got, you look crazy. You know what I'm saying? Like I appreciate people who just know how to put it together and to be real fly. And I'm not even no person that's like, oh man, you got to wear your brand. Like I'm not that guy. Like hell, put up all over print. I don't care about that. That don't bother me. You got Louis, Louis, Louis, Louis, all of your shirt. The LV big, I don't care. Just put it together in a fly way. You not selling me on you fresh just because that, you know, those shoes happen to be Balenciaga shoes. I don't care. Do it look good with what you got on. You know what I'm saying? Is everything fitting right? Like we going back to a baggy era now. I don't know if y'all noticed, but like everybody's getting back to the clothes are a little bigger now. So now, not that you look crazy wearing slim because I still prefer the more slim tailored fit now that we've gotten into that era. I like that era. But now you start to notice like, okay, who's keeping up? Are you still wearing everything super, super tight and skinny jeans and skinny shirt? And you know what I'm saying? Or are you kind of getting with the times? And like I'm always paying attention to who's looking. Cause I'm looking, I look every day cause I don't want to be the old guy in the room. And you know, in any way, you know what I'm saying? I don't want to be the guy that's old in appearance, old in thought process, old in nothing. Like I want to know what's popping. And so I keep up. So I'm looking around and saying like, are you keeping up? You keeping up? Y'all help do what's happening cause I see it. That's always say that artists are ultimately selling their POV. Everything you do, your taste is just the decisions you make musically, you know, dress what you decide to eat all those things, right? And, you know, if they're poor decisions, you know, poor taste, then people won't follow them. But I think artists struggle with the idea of more than the music mattering. Something that you've been harping on a lot. Like it's going to be some negative comments. You know what I'm saying? Like, like, oh no, it should just be about the music. But when you think about artists in general, that just, that goes beyond music. And I think a lot of artists, like music artists actually settle into being a musician and really what they're thinking. But artists always entail all elements of it. You know what I mean? Artists last. Artists last. Artists last forever. Yes. Rappers, singers come and go. I don't know. Rappers and singers come and go. Think about, here's something I always admire just about L.A. Reid. L.A. Reid, the people that he signed to LaFace early on, those people are still famous. We still see those people and be like, wow, Usher. Wow. TLC, wow. Even Post-Left Eye, Weight Game, Age, everything. We're like, wow, TLC, Tony Braxton, Outkast. We're like, man, these people are still, like, you know what I'm saying? And yes, the air made a difference in terms of their exposure and people's attachment to them. But these people were picked because not only were they talented, they had a look, they had a style. Like, why do y'all think R&B niggas take their shirts off? That's part of the aesthetic of it. It's like, I'm not selling you that I can sing. I'm selling you sex. I'm selling you, I'm singing to you. You know what I'm saying? This tank is singing to that girl in the crowd. Usher, Usher, who we all, you know, I've been hearing about that on social media all day with Kiki Palmer, Usher is singing to her. I missed that, I gotta get on. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotta catch up to the whole Kiki Palmer drama. It's messy, it's messy. But I won't even go into it. You should watch, you should just get on Twitter and just search Kiki Palmer. You'll get everything you need to know. But Usher takes his shirt off. Chris Brown does all the sexy gyrate and all that stuff. He's singing to you. He's selling you beyond, hey, I can sing or I can dance. I'm selling this fantasy, this image, this whole thing. And again, it's not necessarily fashion, it's not cause or whatever, but that's the thing he's selling. That's the lifestyle portion. I'm selling you sex. I'm selling you fantasies. I'm selling you images. Whereas on the flip side, and this is a bad example, actually, because she's very sexual as we found out in recent years, Jill Scott. Jill Scott's selling you souls. Jill Scott's selling you like, I'm giving you something from the heart. I'm giving you this heartfelt thing that's connecting with you on a different level versus I'm singing this sexual song, whatever the case may be. Jill Scott's giving you something. You know, she's selling something else. She's selling, much like Erykah Badu is selling you something else. These artists, it ain't just the rappers. It's the singers, it's everybody. Men, women, they're all selling you something if they're any good. The artists that come and go, or the rappers and singers that come and go, or people that just sing a song, went home. You don't think nothing about them after the end of the day. They can create dark, but they can't sell it. Yeah, yeah. It's like, because the other part is what connects with you, and that's marketing. Marketing is, you know what I'm saying? Marketing and branding, all of that stuff is what's connecting with the person outside of this, outside of the surface. Everybody can say, oh man, every black person I know can sing a little bit, dance a little bit, rap a little bit, you know what I'm saying? If I stopped for a couple of days, I'm sure I could write you 16 bars. They won't be Jay-Z level, but they'll be decent. You know what I'm saying? So why do you care that I rap versus Lil Baby? What is the thing that makes Lil Baby different from me? He's selling you something else. He's selling you Lil Dominique from Oakland City. He's selling you, you know what I'm saying? This lifestyle that he's led, that people can verify that he led, you know what I'm saying? He's selling you something else, young thug, future. All these guys are selling you something, which is why it's so disappointing when you have these, oh, you know, so and so we're snitching, so and so woo woo. It's like, damn, I was buying into this thing you were selling. Broke the fantasy. And now the wall came down, you know what I'm saying? Like that's the tough part of when you're selling. That's why R&B artists are always like, they gotta, I gotta remain single because I'm selling you, you could possibly get with me. You know what I'm saying? And so when I show up married, it's like, oh, now I've killed the fantasy, which now we realize that women don't care. You be married and for that, y'all know, we men in the room, women probably, probably makes you more attractive to be with somebody at this point. But again, that was the reason they were all selling you something and it was always about keeping up that veneer of the image I'm giving you. I want to end it with something that we probably should have started with. Okay. He said, mm. I just couldn't know what it is. Oh, yeah, I don't know what it is. Oh, okay, he's like do exactly what it was. What does a project manager do? You're a project manager at OneRP and what do you do? Project manager slash product manager, I'm just overseeing an individual artist. You know what I'm saying? I'm overseeing the marketing, the branding, the sequence of events that lead us to the release of a project. That's really all it is. My job is to get it from conception to out the door. So many artists that we have signed at One RPM, they will say, hey, look, I want to drop an album four weeks from now. And I'm like, whoa, we can't do that because we need to release some singles. We need to kind of build it up. Like I'm looking at everything. I'm looking at the analytics and I'm saying, all right, cool. Today, your monthly listeners are 100,000. I would love to get you to 250 before we put this album out. In order to get you to 250, we need to release a song, see what the fans are responding to, see the algorithm kind of peak up. It's kind of like, you know, you're just waking up the algorithm. It's a lot of that kind of goes into it, but ultimately that's what it is. My job is to care for your project like it's my own and just get us to the finish line. Again, it's not as simple as just we're gonna put out a song. We need somebody needs to pitch for play-listing. Somebody needs to pitch for those opportunities. Like we were talking about with the YouTube Billboard. Somebody needs to pitch for, you know, TikTok to put you on their playlist. Somebody needs to pitch for Instagram to give you what they call a Reels Amplification where they kind of boost the stuff up. And you know what I'm saying? Like there are all these little things that are important now in terms of a play-listing. You know, we don't want just the playlist to get on the playlist. We want to be in the top 10 songs on the playlist. We want the cover of the playlist. Like it's all these things that we know because the numbers and the statistics say that some people will put on the playlist and walk off. But within about 10 to 15 songs, maybe even less, they'd be like, oh, I wanna hear something else. And then they go. So if you're number 40 on a playlist, not as effective. It's a great look, but it's not as effective as if you're the first song on the playlist. Because even by accident, if you're the first song on the playlist, somebody had hit the playlist, your song would come on and they'd be like, oh, I wanna hear something else. So you kind of get streams almost accidentally. You know what I'm saying? Again, it takes relationships. It takes pitching, it takes time, it takes effort. It takes forth thought. Most artists are just talented. They're creative. But on the business side, not so much. You know what I'm saying? And so my job is to bring the business component and make sure that the company is happy as well as the artist and find that happy medium of how we can deliver what everybody needs. You talked about getting that streaming number up a little bit before dropping a project. Yeah. How do you feel entirely when you talk about rolling out or the timing of when you will or won't drop something? It's gut for me. I think sometimes you hear music, you know what I mean? It feels like something, it feels like everybody outside partying. Sometimes you hear something, you know what I mean? It feels like very somber, wintertime, lovey-dovey. You know what I'm saying? Like we're all seasonal people, right? So we know, you know, the joke is always cuffing season, right? You know, we all joke about cuffing season. Cuffing season is like when it gets cold. You know what I'm saying? You need somebody to be a companion with during the holidays and then Valentine's Day will run y'all break up so that you can be single and free for the spring and summer. You know what I'm saying? So a lot of times, you know, that's a real thing. So music sounds like summer. Music can sound like winter. Music can give you the feel of spring. You know what I'm saying? Like so you listen to the music, listen to the type of artist that you're dealing with. You know, you look at the artist, you look at what they've delivered before. You look at kind of who their fans are. Like bro, like you need to drop when it's festival season because your fans are at the festivals or you need to drop in the winter time because when your fans are all in love, that's when you need to be putting out this music. You know, it's that type of thing. I was just understanding like, man, we should wait. Like this music sounds too slow to be summer records. You don't really get a lot of slow ballots in August. You know what I'm saying? Like think about it. You don't get slow ballots in May. It's Monday weekend. It's before for July, everybody outside. Everybody want a party. They want to kick it. They want to dance. You know, you get all your twerk records in the summertime. You know, you get all them records now. You don't get that. You know what I'm saying? In the winter time, nobody's twerking because it's too cold. Nobody's standing in line at the club. You know what I'm saying? Like for real, like nobody's twerk. Yeah, like nobody's standing in line at the club when it's 40 degrees outside. 70 degrees outside, they on the patios. They on the rooftops, they kicking it. So you just, it's little stuff like that. It's little nuances that you learn. You know what I'm saying? Holiday weekends are great for some. Terrible for others. Jeezy, we used to always release a Memorial Day weekend. We knew because Jeezy was going to go do parties on Memorial Day weekend. We knew that. So that was the perfect time for Jeezy to put out a mixtape because we knew all weekend was going to perform that mixtape, pass it out, put it in everybody's car. So when everybody's riding down the strip on Ocean Drive in Miami, P.C. Street in Atlanta, you know what I'm saying? Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, Sunset in LA. They're going to be bumping this Jeezy. We knew that because of the season. You know what I'm saying? It works different for everybody else. So it's just a matter of just knowing your artist, knowing his fans, knowing, you know, just the little nuances of going on throughout the years. It's little stuff like that. So I love it, man. Well, appreciate you. Having a fellow Decatur native on the podcast is actually dope because I didn't know that. Where in Decatur are you from? So born in Eastwick, moved off to Tilson and then an appearance divorce with my mom over to Riverdale, but I'll say off of Camel Row it up. There you go, Eastwick. I love it. Who about you? Where you from, man? You know what Griffin is? Yeah, I do what Griffin is. That's Jody Breeze. Yeah, I'm off in that way. Jody Breeze is my cousin, that's funny. What? Yeah, that's what I got. Look at that, look at that. Now I'm asking the question. So what I got, bro? Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something about your cousin. He real names you copy white. That's all my dad's got, bro. Let me tell you something about your cousin. Your cousin's one of the most dopest rappers that I've ever heard. From lyrics to presentation to everything, Joe. It's super dope. Super dope, man. So shouts out to him. I wish nothing but good things for Jody Breeze. I ain't ever said it all out. That's all right, that's all right. Are we getting the no labels necessary fun facts today, apparently. All right, well, hey, I'm brand man, Sean. I'll guard. And we out. Peace.