 What's up? What's up? What's up? I'm brand man Sean and I'm Cory and we are back with episode 12 of no labels necessary. Let's get it. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Wednesday on every place you listen to podcasts. And of course, here on YouTube, if you are watching in our original space, we are owners of Contra brand agency music marketer found organization done a lot of dope stuff. But here, what are we here for? We just like to have fun talking music, business culture. And that's what we're going to do today. So the first topic that I got to get into, oh, you actually send this one over. Oh, it's not a bad one. Yeah, we're just getting a little advice, you know, I'd like to kick it off with a little bit of advice from an artist by the name of Jalil. So I'm gonna play this clip and then we're gonna talk because he's he's given some game in my opinion. You're like, in any way, psychology kind of help like your rap career? Like, are there any parallels you think? Yeah, Jalil is psychology. You know, what we're doing right now is psychology. Even me screaming Jalil, yeah. When I screamed Jalil, yeah. You might think of me ripping my shirt or me doing the back. Yeah, you might just think of something like exciting, you know. So it's like, all of it's psychology in a way side. I believe I applied it. That's cool. At least you learned something from. All right. I want to get your thoughts first, because to me, he's giving game and I want to go deep on some psychology stuff that he's talking about from like, just some anecdotes that I know. But yeah, what made you even share this part? I think the psychology aspect of marketing doesn't get talked about enough. Okay, right. We tend to just think of it as this thing happens numbers, pour in, pour out, whatever. But I don't think people think about the part that he was kind of touching on is like, I'm thinking about the way that people are going to kind of like, react to this or receive this, which is psychology pretty much right like you're thinking about like the user end experience of the funnel and applying it to top of funnel stuff that you're doing to get this desired outcome. But yeah, that's why I should have. I don't think I don't think enough artists think about that. And I think he explained it in a way where at first I was like, man, I kind of feel like there's some like branding things getting confused in here with like maybe general marketing psychology. Well, I guess it's the same thing pretty much like it. They go hand in hand, but No, he's deep in the psychology man. I'm going to tell you why. So are you familiar with how toothpaste really came in a game and when I say came in a game, Toothpaste? Toothpaste. I don't think so man. It was just kind of there. Every artist needs to understand how Toothpaste came in a game and especially blew up in America. So Pepsidant was one of the main leaders at the very beginning. You ever seen Pepsidant Toothpaste? Shout out to them. No advertising dollars that you know, maybe in the future because they are struggling these days. Pepsidant, there was a guy who created that formula. He came over to this marketing executive named Claude Hopkins if I remember correctly. So obviously as a business marketing advertising executive, he's like, how can I sell this thing? That's what he went to him for. He does some research and he notices something around mucin plaque. Mucin plaque is basically like just the film on your mouth on your teeth. So he shortened it to the film and called it the film on your teeth. And what he did was create campaigns around toothpaste and beauty. So you have this plaque on your teeth, this film on your teeth. How are you going around looking all ugly with that film on your teeth? Why don't you use some of this stuff and now you're beautiful, right? So he connected the dot where there's this specific trigger, the film on your teeth, getting rid of that. Now you can feel beautiful. And without it, you don't feel beautiful. You can literally feel that like touching it or all that stuff. We all got teeth here. So that trigger right there reminds me of what Jalil was talking about. This goes deeper by the way. I'm going to get to the other parts. But Jalil is literally talking about when I say Jalil, you see a picture. He went straight to imagery. What do you see when this specific thing happens? So when he says Jalil, yeah, maybe there was a moment that you have because the first time you heard it, it was a show and he did something crazy to it. Or it was a song, but it puts you in a certain zone. It probably makes you feel a certain way whenever you say Jalil, yeah, yourself or when you hear it. So that's psychology. I don't want to say one-on-one, but it's one of those levels to it and it's extremely powerful triggers and associating things with those specific triggers is huge. So on the other tip, there's Wolfram Schultz. That's his name. It's a doctor. He's a neuroscientist to be specific. And he did these tests on, I think it was a rat. I might have the animal wrong, but he did this test on an animal where they would be in a dark room flashing shapes on a screen. And whenever the shapes flash, he would have to pull this lever. So there's that trigger. You see these colorful shapes, you pull the lever. Okay, whatever you just pulled the lever, but why is that so powerful? Well, that part's not powerful by itself. You're just telling him to do that. But what was happening every single time that happens and he pulls that lever, all of a sudden there was this tube, like a straw coming in and it would feed him some blackberry juice. Okay. All right. So now he's getting a reward system because he sees these shapes and the shapes don't just mean, oh, I pulled the lever. Me seeing the shapes and pulling the lever now means, oh, shit, I get rewarded for this, right? So that right there, again, it's a trigger. Something happens, you see something, you visually see something. Now he gets excited every time he sees these shapes because he knows it means I pull this thing and then I'm going to get a reward, which is crazy. You're like, man, messing with the animals, man. Hey, the flip side of it was after he got used to that, they would start like staggering the delivery of the blackberry juice. So at first, every single time you pull that trigger, bam, here it goes. Next time, though, he pulls the trigger, it doesn't come. Next time, it does come. Next time, it doesn't come. That time after that, it might be diluted a little bit. So it's like that same juice, but it's diluted, don't taste, hit the quiet exact same. The other time, it might be a little bit more bitter. So it's this inconsistency and he's developing a craving now because he's looking for that high. The first time. So the trigger becomes even stronger and he kind of became desperate, depressed a little bit because he's not getting it. It's funny, it's like, dang, I can see how that works in my own experience. You get those triggers, even like looking through TV or scrolling through Spotify. It's like, let's say I'm just scrolling through Spotify, I land on a little playlist or whatever, got a couple songs and my reward system is there. I got what I want. Next thing you know, I'm now trying to search for something I want. And then that shit's inconsistent. It's like, oh, that song was good. Next song was bad. Dang, I'll find another song. And then you start craving to just hear a good song and not have to touch anything anymore. You're craving that moment, right? Yeah. So like that, those triggers on both sides, right, the positive to do something and the negative of like feeling the craving. That's all cravings are. It's almost like it's like the negative side of a trigger. Now bringing a full circle. I'll say no, bring it a semi-circle back to Two-Face and then full circle to Jalil. So there was another thing with pepsin and so pepsin pepsin and took off on them, right? Their two-faces was killing a game and it took about about a decade where all of a sudden these two-face competitors said, you know, we got to figure this shit out. Like we got to research, figure out why these guys are killing us so much. Yeah, they were a little bit familiar with the marketing campaign, but it still wasn't letting them hit like pepsin was. So what they found was in the formula, there were a couple of things, right? Citric acid, which is an organic compound and mint oil, right? We know that minty taste, right, was in there. Mint was not a common thing in all that shit before, in Two-Face before. It's now that mint is a common thing. So what they found was citric acid and mint oil were just mint in general. These things are naturally irritants. Why would somebody want to be irritated? Well, people aren't necessarily looking for irritation. However, people just started to associate that tingle that you feel when you brush your Two-Face, your teeth as clean. So you get used to it. Have you ever used, it's funny, I was using my daughter's Two-Face because my wife was asleep. I was like, I ain't about to go in the room and get all bothered again. So I'm going to use this little Tom's Organic Two-Face that she didn't have. She didn't have no sizzle. And I really didn't feel like my teeth were clean. And it was funny because that was the first time I've known about that. They talk about it in this book called Habits by Charles Dewick. And I've known about it, but that was my first time since hearing that actually brushing my teeth. And like, dang, okay, I can see how I don't have a reward system. So they literally changed the whole landscape of America just by adding a little bit of mint. Adding a little irritant or as you call it. Giving people a sensation. Giving them a feeling. And that's what Jalil was talking about right there. He didn't go that deep into it. It sounded like he talked about some other things, but he's very aware, right? When I do something or when I say something specific, I can put people in a place, right? Take them there or give them a feeling. And the more you can implement stuff like that into your brand, right? It's probably why sometimes people are like, man, Sean, bring the bowel back. You know what I mean? Probably not. But if I do it'll be very intentional. But I understand it puts people in a specific space and gets them into this zone of expectation. I just like knowing that he's even aware of it. There are times when you see artists doing things like that really well. And you can't tell if they're doing it intentionally or if it's on accident. And it's crazy, but there are some artists out there who are very successful on accident. They don't really understand why it's clicking for them the way it's clicking for them or what they represent to their audience. But then someone on the outside was like, nah, I see it very clearly. You represent angst or you represent freedom or whatever, right? So it's just refreshing to kind of just see that there's an artist out there who's aware. Awareness is probably making decisions to kind of enhance that. Because now I think about his overall, let's say, personality in the way he's out there. But if you're familiar with him, he's like, he's almost like the friendly giant. You know what I'm saying? Like this guy that looks like he could hurt you but probably wouldn't hurt you. You know what I'm saying? Very chilled down to earth guy. A lot of his like early TikTok videos and even things that he does narrow like very out there. And I'm thinking about what he's saying about, you know, the psychology of paying this experience for the artist and then kind of what you're saying. And now it makes me feel like, man, is this shit on purpose? Well, like he knows how I'm this bigger person. People would probably, you know, more often than not be afraid of me or have feel some type of way about me. I'm going to be extreme to one end on the internet. You know what I'm saying? And then maybe in like a real life, be like the complete opposite. So the juxtaposition of that is interesting to you, right? I bet you he is. I'll tell you why. Because I was that dude at one point and I had a funny enough of like a boss. I used to work at a spot called Tinder. I mean, he was that way too. It was this big white guy, a lot taller than me. And he was like fat big. But we both had the same thing because we were talking about it. And for whatever reason, people used to look at me as I was a little bit more intimidating because I was, you know, even more muscular and I probably didn't have a happier face on. So I would put on my glasses just to like make my shirt. To tone it down a little bit. I just noticed people looked at me a little bit differently. If I tone it down, I ain't trying to come around like a threat. You know what I mean? Especially I was moving in a lot of circles where I, you know, there were less black at that time. I was like, let me, let me let these people feel a little safer. Let me put these glasses on. So you saying like he's tall and big and the way he looks and all that stuff. I bet he's aware to it to some extent for sure. Yeah, yeah. Especially at this point, bro. There's no way he hasn't heard it. Because it's a big draw point. That's one of the first things that made me pay attention to him was, you know, him like ripping the shirt off and like flipping off the stages and doing these, you know, these like kind of like wild antics on the internet. And it was crazy because it was like, it was wild. There was like shock value there to it, but it wasn't like the traditional rap shock value. You know what I'm saying? Well, you can tell like they're kind of going like super overboard. It's like, oh, like he ripped the t-shirt size. This really, you know what I'm saying? Like swole guy making me. I will say his music is probably like hyper pop. You know what I'm saying? So he's doing like the whole high-pitched voice thing. And then you see him and you're like, what the fuck? You know what I'm saying? I don't think he's 100% aware of it. And he's playing into it because he's thinking about the psychology of like, how are people going to kind of perceive this? Right? Like the way I kind of set them up with my intro character all the way down to the music. I'm thinking about like, how are they going to perceive me throughout this entire experience? And is that going to give you an impression? Because if he was like, I don't know, let's say like a hood rapper. I don't think it would hit the same. We're used to, you know what I'm saying? Like the big scary people over there, right? You know what I'm saying? This guy that maybe looks like he could be, you know what I'm saying? One type of genre, but he embodies another type. Something I'm not used to seeing in that space, the same from someone that looks like him in that space. Like that's interesting to me. You know what I'm saying? See, when you say like the non-traditional, because I didn't know where you were going with it, the non-traditional like rap shock value. I didn't know where you were going with it. But then when you talked about it and say, ripping off his shirt and things like that, it really just brought me to imagery. And whether he's aware of it or not, the psychology of it is very clear, right? That imagery, very specific imagery that's strong enough to stand out. It doesn't have to be over the top and create extra conversation and do these things. But just to stand out, that imagery is so meaningful. X was really good at imagery. Like whether it was something like straight up visual or more creating a visual in his head or a story or just doing something, we could call it semi outlandish. And I felt like I remember him seeing interviews where he was pretty aware of it. But you can constantly create these images for people to latch on to, right? You look at Kanye reinventing himself album after album a lot more drastically in the earlier years. Now he's been pretty steady image-wise overall. But the kid with the backpack and the polos to the Mohawk or Fohawk, whatever that was, with the glasses and all that stuff. Like the glasses stood out, you know, Michael Jackson type stuff, like very specific images, the glove and all that stuff. And then what he went to probably like the chain and bag gear stuff. What, after, was that right after 808's heartbreak? Beautiful dark, just twisted. Fantasy was after that, right? I feel like his image was more like heavy chains. It might have been the suit error. He had a suit error. I'm trying to think of it because at a waist and so whatever after that was like almost suit him. That might have been in between albums though because that wasn't a part of the actual album though. Yeah. I think what you're talking about bag gear, him might have been closer to, I can't think of a name without it. Albin had like ultralight beam and all that stuff on it. Yeah, that was. No, no, no, no. Okay, we're talking about two different things. Yeah. All right, that's baggier baggier him. I don't really mean legit baggy actually. It was more that slightly baggy when, I remember he wore the kilt and then like the leather MC Hammer-ish type pants. Yeah. So it's like that kind of baggy, not like the, yeah, like the true, like large thing he's doing right now. Whatever era that was. But anyway, like those are very specific images and evolutions of it. I'm not super aware of it, but you initially brought up like, was he aware of it or not? It's good to see that he is aware of it because there's some people who aren't, but it's happening for him. And that's why a lot of times, especially in a creative space, marketing can be undervalued because there's so many people who are winning without knowing why they're winning. Yeah, exactly. They think, oh, this is just me. I'm being my, and maybe naturally you are just being just like some people are naturally charismatic people, even though they don't know that they're doing it. You can very well as an artist, whatever the colors you choose or the way you go about presenting your stuff. You just have that neck and that taste-making. You don't know why. So then when someone breaks it down to science, you might either recognize that a core or say, oh no, I ain't do all that thinking or overthinking into it, but it's still there. It's true whether or not you know it or not. Yeah. I don't know if it's justice or just, or yeah, I'll just go with injustice of some of these artists who do have it more naturally, making it seem like it can't be something that's learned or just because they didn't do it intentionally doesn't mean that the science of it isn't true because that keeps people who don't have that thing naturally from thinking that they can do the same thing. You know what I mean? If a person doesn't think about marketing, like if Kanye truly didn't think about marketing, if he truly didn't think about marketing at all because he acts like he said stuff like that before. All right. That doesn't mean this man had a great marker, self-promoter, you know what I mean? And of course he creates great product, but even that is part of marketing when you talk about the word of mouth that comes with great product. So his natural self might be just a born marketer saying the kind of stuff like that. A lot of artists end up, well, shoot, I don't need to promote myself like, well, hey, bro, you're not Kanye naturally. You know what I'm saying? Some of these things you need to be intentional about and thinking about. I think that's the best way to look at it is how can you bottle the superpower pretty much, you know what I'm saying? Because that becomes the part of what am I trying to say? The part about it with certain artists that kind of becomes alarming is like, really great thing that is working for you, but you're not taking the time out to understand it and figure out how to bottle the magic pretty much. And so to me that goes back to just one of the big things we've always talked about like community building and making sure you're talking to your fans and asking these people like, why do you like me? You need to be almost annoying about like, damn, what makes you fuck with me? Right, if you're one of those people that just kind of creatively going about things, you're not trying to put it into a scientific process. Yeah, that's naturally going to happen. But once you see it working, I do feel like you should be doing your best to understand why it's working exactly, right? Because in marketing, the game starts to become... The first game is let me identify a person that even likes this shit. Let me try to visualize that person and then actualize that person. And then the other thousand I hit that likes this shit. Nailed the game because how can I find more people like that person? You know what I'm saying? That means I have to understand this person. I understand why this person was attracted to me. What about, like you said, my album art made them click on the ad I sent through. What about this video made them watch it 100% of the way versus this video, they only watched it 10% of the way. 30% psychology based. Amen. That right there. The videos is a good example because when you don't seek to understand, that's when sometimes you get beside yourself without knowing you think, oh yeah, they just like me because it's me and I can drop whatever. And then all of a sudden you used 100,000 views per video and then you drop another video that should only do 5,000. You're like, what happened? Because you didn't understand. Of course, I'm not anti-experimentation and, you know, not continuing to creatively push ourselves and play with the boundaries. I don't want to use that to what people like you have already for to restrict you, but you at least need to understand because that even helps you understand where the bridge is to where you want to take them anyway. Yeah, exactly. Part of the interruption, I have to take this quick commercial with me. We signed ourselves. We signed ourselves. It's a brand-man network. That's why we're calling no labels necessary because no label, nobody else is necessary for us to get the train moving. So if you could just subscribe to show appreciation, we'd really appreciate that. Back to the program. You got a second clip by Jaleel too. We want to go ahead and play that song for two years before I was promoting it, promoting it, it didn't just blow up once I dropped it. It seemed like that from like outside perspective. It always seems like that. That's pretty motivational man for anyone watching just because he said the golden words. It always seems like that. It always seems like that. We've been preaching it for years, man. Anybody that's been watching is going to take you to push some shit. But it's always great to hear stories from artists that pushed it for a lot longer than that sometimes because I like the mode being broken of music takes off pretty quickly. That's the tell-tale sign of know artists don't know what they're talking about. It's been two months, this ain't taking off yet. You must have just gotten the race, my God. It took me a minute. It took a while. I was pushing the same song for 15 months. It started popping on month 16. Here we are now on month 38. You probably just heard this shit last week. Because how many times we've seen artists in general sitting on gold to us the next hit and they don't want to push it for like a month or two months. Something 6 maybe even when it looks like it has at least a year on it. That shit could keep going because we tell clowns out of time, if you were to do everything in the marketing space for a single, you'd be pushing a song for at least like 3-6 months. Minimum 3-6 months. Well not everything. That's if you did everything like once. Just ran through everything like a checklist. Probably like 6 months at least and then reprocessing and reconfiguring and things like that. So I was like bro to me a song that's working or at least shows that it could do well I really feel like the minimum is like 9-15 months. I agree. I agree. If it has that true promise for real for real. It doesn't mean you can't drop anything else in that way. Hey bro keep pushing that thing and check this out. You just talked about that timeline. Artists start feeling a certain way. If they're not blown up a lot of times after like 6 months a year. If you ask any of these record labels or people who have broken many artists before these are the people by the way who could just plant somebody and apparently blow them up out of nowhere and smoke and mirrors all that shit. These people will actually tell you 2 to 3 years. Like minimum that's what their expectations are. So if these people who have all of these resources done done it all done it before have those expectations it's no way you as a single individual should be looking away and start to build. But I'm all for manage the expectations and pushing this newer timeline because boy it would make it would change the game just for artists to change that mentality alone. Yeah I understand bro. They looked at building their artistry like building a startup. You know it's the same thing in business world. What's the stat most small businesses don't make it past year 5. Yeah. Which to me says that if you're a small business at year 6 and up you know what I'm saying you beating the you beating the statistics right so it's like I think if artists are to look at it more of like from a numbers aspect a percentage of how many people actually get to keep going through the marathon pretty much right because that to me is the biggest part of the music game. It's not about how many people in it are great. It's about how many are great and survive long enough for people to start realizing that they're good and that's for some people that changes right. There's some artists who get their flowers in two years and some it takes them ten years. You know what I'm saying like that just kind of naturally becomes a part of the game. The marketplace is slower but the reality of it is more likely it's not going to be a quick thing. The only artists I've ever truly heard of that blew up like in a really short time span was like Trinidad James like whenever he came out saying he had been rapping for like five months or some shit before. That's the shortest I've ever heard. You know what I'm saying. They definitely exist. The super numbers maybe was pretty fast because he came into that full system. Like year and a half you know all that stuff. Yeah. Even I remember once we had a conversation with one of our clients. I always remember like it was an ad only campaign and his shit was starting to go crazy. And then he was like man like you know based on the way things are going now like how long would you say until I get to like you know the X number consistently. I remember the exact number and I remember I was like oh man this shit keep going the way it's going. Probably like a year year and a half year year and a half I'm like bro that's short because this client was a client that we had this was like his very first song ever. You know what I'm saying Ground Zero and it's working out. Like bro if we got you from zero to I think he wants to get to the point where he's on like 100k to 300k monthly listeners or gang listeners. So if we get you to that within a year and a half time span with nothing but ads because you remember that client wasn't doing nothing else crazy. So it's been all ads bro all advertising monthly listeners. Monthly bro like we get you to that in a year year and a half that's crazy bro that's insane. Like there will be no one out there that wouldn't want to know how you did that as fast as you did it right because like I said but everybody that knows anything about building and growing the artist would be like damn like a year you know what I'm saying a year from zero to 300k you know what I'm saying like that's crazy how the fuck you do that. So I think that a lot of times even just artists being stuck behind the perception that music is supposed to be a fast thing like that is detrimental in itself because like you said you start making these irrational decisions and you start you know making these these tweaks and changes to things that maybe would have worked if you kept that it for six months because it wasn't working about it in the month one you just kill it you know what I'm saying but then it's like sometimes like we talk about a lot of marketing stuff that takes even times sometimes before it even starts working you know what I'm saying like it might take you doing this thing for three months for it to even start producing some results but then once it hits month three and that should be crazy you know what I'm saying it's like it's gonna generate some wild results for you so that's that's just what I get out there like the whole like needing to blow up the artists it's probably the most detrimental mindset of artists can have because it's gonna affect everything else you do and make you make bad decisions you know what I'm saying yeah I mean look any kind of creative space like that content online y'all watching in real time we're probably well with episode 12 we're 12 episodes in this podcast has been moving right at some point with four or five months down the road it's gonna turn the views have been nice or whatever for somebody looking outside but the difference of what is gonna be from here to then and how fast things are moving is gonna be crazy the difference is we know that right because we're used to that and we've done with so many things and so many people we're not like yo how can we not get 100,000 views on this how come only 1,000 people are viewing this episode in 2000 we already have the expectations in line which is where we talk about this actually he says it by himself something about like being like he's super patient but at the same time with the short term he's not patient or like I don't know it's like aggressive patient something like that hyperpatience something hyper something like hyperpatience whatever that is right it's like your patient in the short term but you do still have to be like be hyperactive in the middle midterm you have to be aggressive you still have to take those when people turn up and say oh I'm going to go 10x in this moment they feel like that means I'm speeding up the timeline in that way which doing more should speed up your timeline from a macro standpoint in general yes it should doing 10 more you should blow up faster than doing one level unit of energy however still that 10x is actually still meaning you'll go from what 12 months to maybe 6 months this doesn't mean 10x and I'm going to blow up in one month it can happen right so I just I definitely want to put that out there because I know one of the hardest parts is to feel like you're going real real real hard and then not seeing that result because you start watching a lot of clothes you're like I know I'm doing my shit like it's like lifting weights and all that stuff running around the gym and then you keep looking at the your how much you weigh every day it's like it really doesn't but with that being said got a quick transition if you want to get your weight up in terms of this music marketing we actually have a big announcement brand man network has reopened in its new space we've been working on this for a few months now we had brand man network to appreciate all y'all current members we already have over 1k members but now we're opening up the new space that is for free by the way for free so we'll put the link in the bio where we got tons of courses we have a lot of the tiktok game and how we blew up artists the information is in there the brand campaigns that's helped fans convert from people convert people's fan base and end up selling like 20k and merch and things like that a lot of those stories all that's in there and the tools that we use to get it it's in there so hop in the community today it's invite only so if you aren't invited by somebody you can just apply at the link below and when you apply of course you have to be accepted so make sure you apply to that and back to our regularly scheduled programming let's get into the next topic which is shaking up the industry that's what we call in this segment right here shaking up the industry Shakur you also blessed us with this clip right here I've been on it you've been on it bro you've been on it bro we're gonna give you some intern credits dawg timeline was buzzing as we can let's check this out right here I hate that Facebook I mean YouTube not Instagram does that there we go can you hear that I already did that but they took it off Spotify and Apple they didn't do none I did why did you do that why not what do I gain from what about people that want to listen to music I get that but what about the people who made the music that didn't get paid what's more important yeah how do they get paid the other way when I restructured and put it back up and put it in the right realm in the right business frame and make sure that the money's allocated to the right people then it'll be back up what the fans have to understand is that this is called show business and a lot of times we give them the show without having our business together so now we getting our business right and they just gonna have to allow us to get our business right but the show must go on 100% they still get to see you know bits and pieces of what we've done in the past but it's about what we're doing now and how we maintain the legacy and when I do present it back it's gonna be presented in a real way to where the people can actually have rights to owning it yeah to making money off of it what you want to make it an NFT label I saw bet bet bet it's a new set of mouthful right there that's a big executive decision right there big time executive decision taking down all of death row's music off of Spotify and such but we've talked about it before you know in our own conversations how Snoop Dogg he just moves different for a legend the way the post he keeps on the internet the way he's been moving in this metaverse NFT space has been really interesting because he's been doing it right right as an early mover so to speak from a music side where a lot of times people just try to do a cash flip and you know it looks like it's right because they did oh they made two million dollars and one week he's doing it where that long money is about to come probably has to patient because he already has long money right so but the like the real value of this obviously is just the fact that one this is shaking up the industry but getting that business together period right like that was what you know you shared this but that was one of the things that I thought about here it's like once you have that leverage now you immediately start saying how can I make all my business moves be right from from here alright whether that's leverage because now you have a fan base and you have a little bit more leverage against your label the management and everything around you but then also the next level of leverage is I have enough money to not be thinking short term yeah alright I don't need this so not let me just let's not just go hit another lick let's figure out how we can build this right yeah I mean I think you said an important point too I don't need this you know what I'm saying I would like to believe that this was a significant part of his catalog you know he would still have moved for the same way I would like to believe that you know what I'm saying but I have my skepticism about from artists from that era bro they all just grew up in a shitty music industry you know what I'm saying so I don't like knock it when they violate other artists I don't condone it but I understand it's like you weren't taught any better you know what I'm saying you're coming through so cool as to him especially at a time where the opposite of that is the Diddy and May situation or the Irv Gotti and Ashanti situation you know what I'm saying so these are artists who are coming out of the old school music industry and you know what I'm saying mentality that are still like hey it's not right but it's making money so fuck it we're going to keep doing it so as I said the fact that he's not doing it there's some power in that you know what I'm saying like I think it's far I think it's far it's funny obviously that we're talking about that because Snoop's talking about getting paid through these NFT and he considers that to be right but then also Meek there's this announcement that Meek Mill wants to drop his album on Cash App you want to drop a Cash App album Cash App album that would actually be far I think that would be hard I feel like there's a sponsorship in the works maybe not with him but Cash App probably seasons it like hey that's a good idea we did the Joe Budden sponsorship why not like Cash App has been moving hard like the last two years I've been trying to be like moved into the vergo with music like I would say probably probably like since the pandemic they've been going hard at being like culturally relevant there we go there we go so I mean the full headline obviously he wants to do J-Pay or Cash App but as I told you I said I ain't know nothing about Cash J-Pay you said that was a way to send inmates yeah it's like a prison payment a prison payment system it's like PayPal for prisoners PayPal for prisoners man that's a hell of a tagline I love it because he don't want to get paid a dollar every 1000 streams now the math might not be exact a dollar every 1000 streams however the sentiment is very clear he wants to get paid where he feels like he's worse than he feels like it's not worth the money if I'm getting paid very little for streams and we're gonna see this continue right there's too many artists that I'll say this there's a lot of artists that existed before streaming popped right so they saw those numbers right even Meek is like right before streaming went hard yeah he remembers he remembers right he's old enough to remember that's that gap right so when you have that memory you're like nah I shouldn't look like this granted streaming has saved a lot in terms of a macro for music in some ways and it's a lot helped it's been a part of the revenue growth in the music industry however if I'm a established artist already I'd be offended right if I saw those numbers which is why all of them are acting but they're offended like all of them like I ain't mess with that Taylor Swift was like nah I don't want my stuff to be on here well Jay-Z was like okay I'm gonna create my own platforms I can get more money from mine and some of these other artists like no one who existed before is happy like our clients who were existing before nobody I've never known any artist who existed before streaming that was happy with the numbers and don't still talk about it to this day everybody who's just trying to get in the game or this is just what they used to you're either not worried about it because I'm not there enough to worry about it you know there's like just your parents complain about stuff and it just is what it is and then all of a sudden you got your own rent to pay and you're like dang you got your own house and you're like dang that light bill did change relative to how much I had the lights on like maybe I should turn the lights off that's what I'll be thinking about now I'm like damn I never said I want to turn the lights off but now I gotta tell my girl nah I'll turn that shit off girl so you got that and then you got the people who this is all they know and Spotify's been God's sin for them because all I know is I wasn't making no money from this music now I'm making 5k a month from this music 3k a month I'm making something I'm making something so it's hard for the newer artists to truly see it that way or be as aggressive about changing the game and some of these other routes but you know you got the little rustles out there that are playing that game but I don't even think he's doing it just from what I see from a distance to be like anti-spotify it's just like I gotta else one get my money in other ways and how can I make this a part of my community and do it better that's what it seems like from him but like the newer artists don't really seem to have that same revenge approach to what Spotify and DSPs are doing because I think I think the smart artist is thinking about DSPs differently because you brought up a great point right like Taylor Swift left Spotify at one point Jay-Z left a lot of major artists have left but they all came back they all came back and I think that's because it can be argued that DSPs are probably the greatest music discovery tools to ever hit music consumership because it truly has democratized the playing field you could really shoot up into a whole field of music that no one is necessarily pushing you to like I guess I mean you can argue the algorithm I guess but there's no there's no entity necessarily pushing you to like like something right you can there is a degree where it's dictated by consumer taste what they like what their friends are recommending and things like that so like I don't I've started to train myself to not even look at Spotify's instead of like a viable monetization tools I know this is just a marketing tool this is a way that that's what they want you to do is working and they're winning and you know what I'm saying but it's not the worst thing because it's like it kind of makes me think of the Tiktok model right like we talked a lot about how their Tiktok creators who feel a type of way about the money they're being paid from Tiktok and I'm like I can understand why Tiktok is like now we're really bringing you to audience and mass numbers with relatively little to no work on your end compared to other social platforms like yeah there's work but like compared to YouTube you know what I'm saying it's not the same amount of work so I could see Tiktok going like hey man we're bringing you all this attention that's giving you the ability to monetize yeah we're going to give you 50% you know what I'm saying like so I kind of look at Spotify saying hey we're the ones building the algorithm that's introducing you to these new people like right like these new people would have never known you existed without our platform and our setup and our money because yeah you can argue that this is your IP that drives the platform but for you guys who is much harder to monetize for the discovery could literally be life or death for you so that's why you're not going anywhere else because as much as you hate this shit there isn't really too many platforms or tools that compete with us in terms of discovery Tiktok is probably the closest non DSP app you know what I'm saying to being something heavy like that but I mean like ours just need to kind of fold and look at it that way bro it's like yeah like it should almost be like your streaming money is just a part of like your breakeven your breakeven phone right whatever your growth phone looks like for yourself this ad setup this influencer setup your DSP money should be like hey I spent $5,000 I made back you know $4,000 in streaming revenue is going to come from see I think the thing about that is it's not just the discoverability because that's the new age tech version of hey bro it's going to be a good look you know what I'm saying that's all they're saying and you know how people feel about that after a while I was like bro come on now I need some substance so you're giving me good looks to avoid really giving me what I'm worth again you're looking for some kind of look the older artist I think the leverage that the platform has for them isn't necessarily a good look because they already have those good looks they already have that leverage it's about survival right at some point you're losing your audience's attention and you have to be where they are that's where they are listening to music and as much as you would like to say hey I could just bring all these folks over here and now they can blast my Taylor Swift and my Beyoncé in this separate space we know that many people aren't going to do that they already got your behavior that's how they win that's why these tech platforms scale so quickly it's like we want to get big enough where there's the network effect and we have such a large audience that they aren't going to want to go anywhere else right because I can listen to X, Y, Z here and if they go to the Beyoncé app I can listen to his Beyoncé as much as they love Beyoncé everybody also want to listen to somebody else too nobody's just a fan of one person yeah so you start losing that advantage of what's one of the marketing elements placement right being placed in the right position so that's why the tech platforms have been so good and not only doing it to individual artists but doing it to the labels the labels be like ah dang man alright we got the IP fortunately so we can prevent you from doing it to a certain extent and figure out how we participate right that's their leverage like they're like we got the IP if anything if all else fails we got IP the tech platforms though because they they can't like the labels can't compete in terms of attention and understanding that tech platforms like as long as we get the people we get the eyes they're going to have to negotiate with us for their IP because you can't just build another one of these like how many of these social media platforms have not hit the threshold where there's enough people on there and people care for long enough it's hard to do that yeah alright so they know you can't just do me overnight man like so go ahead figure out what that deal is going to be that's why they violate so much too yeah how many times oh man tiktok owes this amount of money to record labels and tiktok's like nah we don't want anything yet but we'll make a deal at some point it'll be like a year later they made a deal because they know and all the time they're just growing and growing and growing in fact growing knowing that they're getting more and more leverage the way that's why I've been saying for years it's just like tech is in a space where they're finally going to be the ones who take the labels down it's not going to be you know artists it's just going to be a tech platform and this is before tiktok it seems like it's going to be tiktok outside of like America kicking it out I don't know if you're familiar they're bringing those conversations back by the way nah oh yeah yeah yeah like especially if a Republican gets in office there a lot of them are pretty big on that as far as the politicians side but but yeah like tiktok is seeming to be that one if it's not them it's going to come they're just showing you what's possible through a tech platform we control the awareness we control the artists from ground zero pretty much have all their content on our platform blow them up have a distribution platform that they can now get on we participated in that we know we got our puppet stuff going in the background where we can boost the followers yes that's a thing on tiktok right and get them more views but legitimately yeah advertising data we got all of it here bruh like we got it here so now you just said something I didn't think about the same way the labels have the music catalog the stream the the social platforms have that content catalog I never thought about it that way before damn that's crazy hell yeah which actually think about the content catalog something that we didn't um weren't aware of y'all should be aware of shout out to Damien oh yeah Ritter almost said Lillard but you know we were in LA and we had that conversation with him and he was telling us how people are buying YouTube content catalogs in the same way people can buy your catalog on um you know for Spotify music well not Spotify music for your music catalog same way people can buy that because there's a value to it there's people who are out here buying your YouTube catalog because it's content it can be monetized we know that your YouTube content continues to be monetized you have old content that's getting advertising but also YouTube videos the length there's all these platforms that are popping up that are actually looking for content on their platforms I don't know if you've seen like there's like 2B they're all looking for some type of content always a B yeah always a B it's always as a matter of fact over Thanksgiving with my family all the kids were around there was through one of those channels it was basically a YouTube channel but it wasn't YouTube I don't want to say a YouTube channel but it wasn't YouTube it wasn't YouTube but they were showing a show that pretty much was a YouTube show it was these kids running around the house and they had all these skits going on it was some brother sister maybe like two of their friends or something and it was just showing on regular TV through one of those channels and I can imagine cause I can tell I know a YouTube video when I see it it's like it probably got licensed right so that whole catalog situation makes sense that they're purchasing that but it goes back to the idea that everything you're creating now can be monetized there's different ways right but it's beyond just how much do I make my video and I think artists start to start realizing that like get creative with what you what you actually built because it is desirable even if even if it's not getting a lot of views on YouTube or something or TikTok or whatever there is the opportunity to license to these other spaces and places yeah or figure out your own monetization off around it like what like an in-house set up like what me was talking about doing is like I mean he's he's essentially asking for like Patreon and Bandcamp models without the Patreon you know what I'm saying Bandcamp platform so it's like you know there's always an option so I think take the risk and just see which I do think is something that every artist especially at his level should do at least once in their careers like just do a temperature check bro like see where your audience is at this unique merchant experience or this unique product experience or show experience whatever just to have an understanding of where you are in the marketplace because if you go like man I got 20,000 active model because it's really the boss and stuff you know what I'm saying that changes the game versus like you know you learn like I only got a thousand like man I got a you know maybe I do need to get into fan building mode right or like I said there's something together that gets I'm excited about that so I do think every artist especially of his caliber who is recently going indie or like attempting to tackle the indie model needs to do like a temperature check see let's talk about that the different ways to monetize and just some of the history of like the monetization fan base capturing because you talk about Meek Mill doing a cash thing 10 years before roughly speaking that's kind of similar to the JZ Samsung deal remember that Magna Carta Holy Grail and it was launched on there exclusively for a period of time something like that yeah right all of these platforms are always looking for some type of marketing advantage or promotion to do so like you said it doesn't have to be through the traditional content on social media if I could just figure out who do I need a partner with if I'm a big artist you should take that risk because there's going to be somebody who says hey we're trying to bring attention to our tech platform you do the deal especially you know if it's a super risk and it's new you're not trying to make it exclusive and perpetuity or anything like that but hey you might get you a a half a Mill a whole Mill two X whatever that is and then it goes on the Spotify and all these other things right and that would be interesting because then you'll probably see people develop like these two tiered rollouts right it's like to make that initial launch and then what is the available everywhere launch look like right yeah it's almost like the release I'm trying to release strategy what was it like last year when everyone doing like the regular albums and the Lux albums like a couple of times it was basically it this reminds me of too you know how people have been doing this stuff for a while I was listening to Will Smith's audio book which was good as hell I didn't think it was that good I was bored at first and I stopped listening to it for a minute he did a little slap moment with Chris Rock in about three moments later I said did it with Chris Rock like they like like they did it together right here's my hand here's my face three minutes like three months later so probably like August I started listening to it again and then once I got into a certain period she got really good because it started getting you know around his actual music career and stuff yeah and one thing he mentioned was they had this phone line where people would call in and he was getting I forgot how much it cost for the phone line but when you did the math I think it was like five or ten thousand dollars a day that he was making maybe it got up to twenty thousand but it was some ridiculous math of people just calling in calling in calling in to talk to him right and you know you bring that into the future oh that's that same type of personal experience oh and by the way when they were calling they were calling in just to hear a voicemail a special voicemail from him so it's not like he was there talking to everybody it was like a minute long and they could some people want to play it back again and they had longer messages and all that type of stuff so people are literally calling in just to hear this special voicemail so you can give them an update it was like social media they'll be on tour hey yo I'm out on tour it's the Fresh Prince we're about to go to this city and the show is live and da da da da da hey yo we're in Miami now Jazzy Jeff just heard his head on the floor or something da da da last show cause it was so crazy and giving those updates and they're tuning in just for that which is like social media an audio tweet that they're calling in for so it's like that's crazy and they were paying for it and now we hear like now we hear about text message marketing and now we got social media and staying up to date it's like so all these elements and when you study far back enough and look at more and more things it's like they always existed and the value was always there so sometimes we like to just talk about the game now text up and da da da da or this is far more accessible overall things have gotten better I would say it's hard to argue that things haven't gotten better overall in terms of like opportunity quality da da da but the text stuff it's like yeah the opportunities to do it might have been harder back then and the game might have flipped where you focus on one thing through another but every single error there's an artist who thrives on one and they struggle with the other so it's like you might have been a good recording studio artist there's some artists these days who suck at shows and performing back then you could build an audience off of just putting on like great shows and that was the thing and then next thing you know you level up and get more attention from that or you get opportunities from that just from killing the show today the impact is still there but artists don't get enough credit for their show game or no they don't get enough what's the word I'm looking for punishment for a bad show game that's what's not happening it's just going way under the radar way under the radar they just let it be it's kind of one of the it's tolerated but back then that shit was not tolerated right so you know there's the ebbs and flow today looks are I don't want to say they matter more like they never they never matter but looks can get you further or like personality can get you further without the music then before before you had to leave with music right and of course looks can always elevate you or be a part of the image but you also had some of those periods especially especially like Jim Crow or like you know and then more racist times where you go far back enough where they'll have black artists writing and singing and then they'll have like white artists lip-syncing for the white audiences so they don't even represent their own music it was also Millie vanilla type of shit alright so you literally didn't have to look the part be the part now obviously that was a bad situation that wasn't like hey I don't want to be seen that was like my image or my music is taken from me but the point is there's all the the game has different ways to tweak it in every era that benefits or hurts somebody now if you don't like the game or you can play about it now either you're not seeing it correctly and taking advantage of the things that are there or you just chalking it up to the the lottery game and said I was born in the wrong place in the wrong time and you know find another career I guess it was one of artists from other eras ever said that like was an artist in the 70s like man I should have been an artist in like the 50s you know what I'm saying like back when they was bruh you know I bet I 100% because that's like a thing that everybody does right I wish I was born 10 years prior or whatever but you know who would have been lit as fuck today bruh James Brown yes but that's not who the hell that was a great statement you're throwing me off with that with the accuracy I wanted to say no but I could I was thinking similar enough though I was thinking Lil Richard oh yeah hell yeah bruh 100% this dude was a star dog I saw this interview bruh of him I'm gonna see if I can find it actually of him just talking and I'm like oh this dude was a star bruh like it was just a quick interview and the way he talked that shit was like okay if he was in this era bruh he just he just have social media followers he was a legit musician and all that great stuff but I'm like oh he would have a following just off of his his talk let me see if I could find that joke real quick okay bruh absolutely to somebody I know that'd be the the cool shit it goes back to the while I think artists have to pay attention to older artists to some degree because you see exactly what you just said man how much of this shit that I think was new today that really is just a variation of some shit that we're doing back then exactly and it's just like we talked about in that clip about the Travis Scott box most of music a lot of times if somebody finds an opportunity and takes advantage of it before somebody else does right and it's like you learn about this opportunity day one and it takes the rest of the industry 90 days to catch on to it and by the time they catch on to it you've already capped on it to a massive degree and it's becoming normalizing and that doesn't work the same right that's like there's there's a batch of artists that always come along and that happens for and I've been thinking about times where it probably happened on accident you know like we talked about artists like J Cole and Kendrick coming up during the early how a lot of those YouTubers talked about how much the algorithm would just like flood you with attention back then right it's like damn they just were like right place right time you know what I'm saying with good music and it kicked off in this thing or or even like rust with the soundcloud stuff like the first time I ever heard about the song a week strategy I was always like dropping a piece of content consistently that just keeps triggering the algorithm of a platform so he just kept hitting the soundcloud algorithm so much that eventually it took off he probably wasn't thinking that way but that's how that shit hit right like there's this technology of the spaces that hasn't been taken advantage of yet and then everybody does that shit and it doesn't work it doesn't work the same you know what I'm saying so it's like I feel like that is one of the hardest parts of staying in music is that you are 80% trying to figure out how to build a system within a framework that is already put together while spending 20% of your attention trying to like look out to what's going to be next so you can try to cap on it as soon as it hits and it's like that trying to like look at both sides of it at the same time and keep going that's perfectly good because that is the nature of fast moving culture that music has to present itself within it's cultural based and culture moves so fast and those trends and then you got the tech that culture moves on moving as fast as well so then you triple that it only increases but I found that clip that I was talking about so check this out bro this dude is only lies it's so full screen let me just listen to this man hold up five sisters but I was the best looking one of all of them and I'm not conceded at all what do they all do now well I have a brother he's a CPA my sisters are two sisters they're nurses but you're the only person that's interested yes in the show business I'm the only one see cause they don't like to dress like I do I like to put it on I had noticed actually I love to put it on I like to shine in fact I think everybody's supposed to do their own thing this is what you're called doing your own thing time do you always dress like that or every day I go to the grocery store like this and people turn around when I walked in the airport here in London today a man dropped this cup of coffee I notice you're wearing makeup do you wear makeup yes I do overtime yes you're supposed to wear makeup just you know just like when you toast your bread I put sugar in your coffee they had a little touch too yes God you're supposed to do it my mother have 12 kids I have I'm like this dude is is like gold bro just so many soundbites waiting to happen first and foremost my mother got 12 kids seven sons five daughters I'm the best looking one of all of them and I'm not conceded that would be the borrow tix off sound that right he just called him ugly like you're not conceded or like Egypt but he said it all like so seriously you know what I mean that's the thing it was all chill not that extra which makes it which takes the star quality of it even more right whereas now like I'm doing extra trying to get attention like man I was like this dude is interested that is the one thing and I hate to be like that you know that old heavy job bro but that do be one of the things I miss about like older generations of music artists is that they put a lot more emphasis on like being entertaining all the time you know they were always in character always trying to be entertaining like artists they don't want to be entertaining they want to be they just want you to like the music and just be there for that yeah it's weird it's weird you say that because they voiced that and then the way they try to validate that is by referencing old artists yeah and old artists would be like no that's not what it was like you had to we had training development how do we walk how do we talk how do we present ourselves at all time we are in a character and we up here trying to work life balance this artist shit and that's happening in every industry by the way everybody want to do the four hour work we work from home yeah not necessarily have to put into it and all that stuff so it's not just the artists it's cultural in general but it's funny you say that just because I never thought about the fact that they use old artists try to validate it's not appreciated the way it used to be back in the day it was all about the artistic and they built old characters and narratives they were down to do whatever it took to reach the top but they at least understood hey as an artist all aspects of me have to be entertaining all the time at least when people see me I have to throw my cape on to be a superhero pretty much today a lot of artists are like I just want to make good music I don't want to be like you're supposed to be Ray or sunshine yeah there's a like there is this consumer thing that exists today where people want to fill the relatability some type of authenticity but at the same time there's always going to be a desire for the superhero like you said right people entertainment is about escapism at the end of the day yeah right so you can't make it too real people always it's always funny when people argue about like oh this movie wasn't realistic enough right to me because I used to do theater and film scripting and all that stuff and one thing I always thought about this shit was like real realistic you'd be bored as hell because you don't want to watch a movie that's tracking every literal emotion you have to do the time lapse so you want to communicate it in a way where it's felt right but you don't actually want to see somebody wake up walk down every single stare brush their teeth for real in real time that's not what you're here for so people when people demand this realism it's it's representative it's representative of like some level of authenticity and my willing suspension of the belief but it's not truly the real like you want you to say right and it's like oh snap this rapper shot five people it's like well y'all like oh snap why N.W.Mellie like actually kill his friend right it's like wait like when it's real real it snaps people out a little bit right so allegedly by the way I'ma say that even with the history of it right but but it's such an interesting thing and I think a huge part and escaping the matrix if you will is is not getting caught up in words as people say them and what and figuring out what they actually mean alright and then tracking what they're referencing by like for instance you're tracking old schools like people say this say this and you'll just assume that's what it really is and make a connection is like wait that's not exactly it and that's why history when they say I finally really get this today just how wow this area it's not just because I'm older I feel like it's because today is just so wow and they like our culture is so self indulging where we just miss like the past and think we're just making everything so much better and not at all like it finally makes me understand the statement of if you don't know your past you're doomed to repeat the future because we really have people truly rewriting history or just people don't know when something happened so you just believe the current hype let's put it that way I don't want to get into rewriting history or like super conspiracy or nothing it's just you're so caught up in a current hype you don't understand that it's happened before you know what I'm saying and now you don't understand what the impact of doing that movement or this movement or this style of marketing and all that stuff how it went and it already failed before or it already won but the result that happens after that I could get into some examples but I I don't want to get too far beyond like you would doubt take me down a whole rabbit hole but you even see it with the music where people are constantly thinking something is new and it's not and we talked about that the other podcast right and it's like there's a ignorance is bliss aspect where you kind of want that because you're discovering something as a first time as you know a young person coming up but on the other end like that disconnect if you don't actually understand it and you don't actually just study the game how it was now before you and even the era before that you start to buy into the hype of shit that don't deserve it yeah that makes sense yeah because Bruh like this is a little richer shit Bruh Chains Brown I watched the Motown doc recently and have you seen the Motown doc the Hitsville okay I was about to say which one I don't think I've seen that one I didn't realize this was so any of them actually but they I didn't realize that they leveraged the four motor way of building out their assembly line well they took the assembly line method and applied it to their artists alright it makes sense they're Detroit right yeah but they literally said hey we're going to put it in artist development they had all these layers right and you're going to take you down this assembly line to blow you up and that's why the quality control was so big they even had a department called quality control which made me think I wonder if that was an inspiration for you know P and Coach K quality control because they made a big thing about it alright how do you develop your music how do we get you in the room with these writers a lot of the stuff that exists today but it was more control because today now an artist might not truly be signed to my label I got a manager and they can dip and dabble into different things you know you have to truly be committed to it on a one on one basis but before they're literally putting everybody do this same shit and you would think that would create a sameness among all the artists and there's no differentiation there's no unique nature of it I believe little Richard was actually on one point of time he's related around that story some way but if you look at what Diana Ross Stevie Wonder Marvin Gay Temptations these aren't the same right of course there's a quality music at bay but these are not the same artists and many of them were even using same songwriters so it's funny how I actually wonder actually I would like to go deeper into that or like find ask somebody there's somebody in Atlanta who's apparently like a goat artist development person but like how do you take people do this same system and ensure that instead of making them more alike based off some dogma you amplify whatever is unique about them because that's apparently what they did yeah I could kinda like I think about the show aspect of it right where let's say a core component of a good show that we know is crowd engagement and maybe we really beat crowd engagement into our artist head but crowd engagement for you might look like telling a story to your audience about I don't know the inspiration behind one of the songs and crowd engagement to me might look like I don't know me stage-diving or me pulling a fan from the crowd up on stage and having them play a game or something right so I can kinda see that where it's like hey we have these core elements or core fundamentals and we're trying to figure out what is your way of implementing this core fundamental right this core thing it makes me almost think of like a coaching program today right like businesses can join the same coaching program all from different industries so it's like this process doesn't 100% apply to all of us the same but we're making the framework fit like where we're kinda coming from that's kinda how I imagine that's the only way it will make sense to me is like hey all 20 of you we need to get amazing get performing well we need each of you to get good breath control so maybe you decide to play basketball every day for 20 minutes you know what I'm saying you jump rope for 30 minutes a day and then like you run two miles a day it's like same result getting the confidence we all just doing it in different ways but the core is still kinda there what I imagine it kinda works I like that I like that cause I even just got reminded when you said that that there was this one group that couldn't really dance like that and they made fun of it but they had their own way of making some shit shake with the fact that they couldn't dance so that's definitely the idea of it like you said the elements are there but how can we do it in a way that works for you but yeah that documentary is dope as hell anybody who's at Hitsville Hitsville it's real interesting I'm gonna watch it again cause I was around a lot of people when I watched it you know what I mean for Thanksgiving a lot of shit I also couldn't hear at the same time you know how that go but next story what would you do if I told you that you should wait eight years to drop a music video why am I asking that question because shy glizzy's white girl went platinum independently he's releasing the official video today well that's been three days ago eight years later eight years after the song came out he was dropping a music video what you think about this man it goes back to that minimum 12 to 15 months you know what I'm saying I don't know what's 12 times 8 96 96 months you know what I'm saying or to take off but I mean we've seen this before well I think a lot more recently like J. Cole had all those old songs that he dropped videos to Chris Brown that was a Chris Brown situation earlier this year or a couple months ago where all the songs popped off and so I think this is an important emphasis to the conversation that we keep having about IP and catalog moving forward whereas hey there might be this thing that you make in 2022 2022 yeah 2022 that doesn't become valuable into 2030 yeah but when 2030 hits and people start finding some value in it as long as you're in the position to cap off of it who fucking cares you know what I'm saying cap off that shit and go ahead and make your money back or 2X5X whatever it kind of looks like so I think that we're going to see more stories like this especially now because of like the boom of I mean the quality music artists that are I think we're going to see a lot of this where like they're artists today putting shit out and they sing when I really take off for like four or five years you know what I'm saying saturate the marketplace is getting but I think that this is a testament to what we were talking about earlier about not jumping the ship so fast and being patient enough to keep pushing something while you see it working and when you feel like there could be a moment behind it because I mean I think it's just smart on his part so hey this thing is getting me a moment today who cares if it's old there are people that are learning about today that's new to them let me go ahead and treat it like it's new and the fact that you know they said eight years I'm assuming it probably also took eight years for it to go platinum independently alright hey might take a little longer but he got there and that accolade is a hell of an accolade no matter like which way you shake it right going platinum but then you know the thing that I think about here is what you said things might take a while to hit their true monetization point or their true level of awareness however when you think about the game as a whole I get it I don't want to wait eight years for my shit to blow up alright or I don't want to wait five years or three years so the game has become because of the way online works let me figure out what I can cap on now and then I have that IP that might start to come into play at different times and then next thing you know that's when you get to that powerful point where you're a snoop dog or somebody like that where you always have something that's having a moment because you have so much out you have so much of an image you have so much goodwill with a certain amount of people I can come out with a movie over here off of my image alone oh this song just got remixed shoot this song just got remixed again and now all of a sudden the original's popping off maybe I drop a music video to that oh two other songs are getting remixed this song just got used in a movie oh it's the 25th anniversary of this project right like things just started to happen because it's all out there right that song never got any play at all but all of a sudden a sample or a re-performance or something to happen right like there so it's almost like not almost it truly is a game of let me continue to live another day right until I can live another day comfortably and then I can just wait out all the moments that are to come and be in a position to take advantage of it versus oh yeah the moment's come but somebody else is holding my shit oh yeah the moment's come but I'm not in the game enough to even take advantage of whatever the opportunity is so yes it's that's a positive way that I feel like to look at it that you can wait that long and something still could happen but then the realistic side of it which I know artists get discouraged about issue so yeah we do have to find that short-term pop I get it but boy if you can last and increase your relevance maintain and autumn snowballs start to trickle at one time it can be real sweet down the road yeah that's like I was saying earlier this episode bro like so much of the game is literally just how long can you stick out the marathon that's it right it's a hundred of us at the starting line and by the time we get to the finish line of us you know all of us falling off for different reasons good reasons sometimes even right I've seen artists get taken out the game for very very valid reason still taking out the game you know what I'm saying still no longer run the marathon and so I think it just goes back to what we were saying earlier about the whole patience aspect of everything because I do think that the artist that can make the smart moves while staying in the boot those artists I've never seen not win you know we always tell telling clients and branding network members that if you see things working for you then it's usually a matter of when not if right so it might take you going back to what we said earlier it might take you five years versus another artist two years but if things are up ticking for you and people like it and you see real world proof that people like and it always becomes a matter of when not if now it's up to you as the artist to not fuck everything up before that moment comes along it happens right not quit not do certain things sabotage your image or your sound quality or just like not deviate from the game plan that's kind of been moving you along and so I would go I think lack of patience takes out majority of artists we've had clients before that I could tell just started taking a year later because things didn't move so I was like I've been making music for the last I've dropped music consistently for the last like seven months and this shit didn't work out and you're like bruh it's been seven months bruh like it's motherfucker right now right now getting his first half a million streams and he been in this shit for ten years it's some crazy shit you know what I'm saying so it's just like one is just it's a slap in the face to the artist that do get that that's the way it works the game by how fast they think things are supposed to move most of the artists have been doing it for a while they're usually a lot more patient they understand things don't happen overnight it's not magic this shit gonna take a while artists that usually don't know shit don't know a damn thing don't know a thing none be the ones that be like it's been 72 hours and I still ain't got X, Y, Z like bruh like what it's been 72 hours bruh exactly like yeah literally be like that yeah just like that what's going on now when would I know if this name's gonna work three months three months but it's short bruh what you mean it's gonna fly by man it's gonna take a nap get you a little latte you know what I'm saying don't even ask questions about it it's gonna breeze right on by man come back with some sense yeah exactly I think you hit that on a nail too cause I remember Miguel had some quote basically saying that he felt like the game is built in a way to test to see how much you want it to be talented enough but how much you actually want this thing are you gonna stay about it go through the hardships wait out the time all that that comes with it cause of course you know especially when it comes to the money money's not coming people still gotta live that real life at the same time so are you gonna stay with it so yeah man that's a hell of a point and I wanna switch it to something a little fun but also educational in its own way cause Cardi B got flamed they were roasting her for performing in somebody's backyard and you know Cardi B had to learn them she had to school them I gotta pay one million dollars to perform at this elite bankers event private event for 400 people for 35 minutes think about that when you type about this Grammy winner alright I mean she kinda said what she said you don't even go much deeper the clout was there the clout back was there the clout back was there and to me it only makes me think about why it still gets me sometimes when fans have these comments and you know on the videos and they'll be talking about something and it's like you really just don't know how this jump works and they talking facts in their head and they telling you bro you just got an opinion and I'm like no this is actually a fact but as long as you think it's an opinion I can't change that you don't know you understand bro I do this shit but like on the other side what that makes me think of seriously is an artist funnel alright so these days we get sold or artists get sold this idea of having a marketing funnel just like other industries and a lot of times a part of your funnel might look like oh you could do weddings higher ticket events like that of course you got your CD that's cheaper and the venals are a little bit more expensive your shows but then you do something high ticket like a wedding or a private meetup and they're talking about 3k, 5k for that private meetup which is great for a lot of artists at that level but zoom out artists on this level that funnel does not leave it's a legitimate thing it's just you might not be in a space that you can utilize yet but boy this is not a new story to me I remember hearing about Beyonce getting paid I don't remember rax for performing and then somewhere in the Middle East I should get paid like a couple million or something 16 birthday parties exactly exactly stuff like that like just little things like that I think Beyonce got paid from Uber like hella stock oh yeah you know what I mean Lil Wayne actually I saw a clip with him probably like yesterday funny enough so he was in Dubai and they were like yo you can't come out here with all this chains and all that stuff whatever reason they didn't want they said you can't do it right he had 25 bands work for chains on right and the your highness you know what I mean found out and he was like yo what the hell going on man y'all are embarrassing me and everything 25,000 oh yeah I give you 25,000 or whatever I bought him a Lambo all these things but that's what type of time a lot of these places are on right let alone whatever he was making from his show money right they're like yeah let buddy do Dubai moves different that's like that oil money is 100% different but the point is like you said just go back to the bar of Mitzvahs man let's go back to the King Sietas man let's go back to the park festival the park festival the corporate events these things pay and there's so many ways to make money beyond this and the more special you become within specific crowds you're able to demand stuff like this you don't make this money from shows yeah hell no you don't make this even like your tour nights you got some of these people who got like a tour and they might they make multi-millions doing a tour official show in a stadium cool one show you might make honestly what there's some people make maybe 20 no 20 million in a show right is it more five I'm trying to do the math there's definitely people who are making multi-millions from one show 20 million is a little less so that's an even higher air but there's multiple artists that are in a position to make five meal from a show right immersion everything included we're talking about one meal for 35 minutes you know what I'm saying like that shit is so different the level of setup is different the level of people involved in terms of you don't have ticket master taking any money out yeah like this shit is is ridiculous money when you like bust it down like this might be more money than a five million dollar show in some cases in terms of what you take home yeah but and for 400 people like that's nothing for 400 people like these are the types of events that artists of that size misdoing anyway right like I wish I could go back to doing a 400 cap show but still be able to make as much money as these 20 30 thousand people shows that I do and like this is the sweet spot and like the thing I like about this and I think we've talked about it before like kind of talking about like the show promoter background is that there are just some industries that don't understand the value of music and everything else and sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes that's a bad thing right because like you said any world where this show was controlled by people that understand music she wasn't she's not getting she wasn't getting a million dollars right but like I said elite private banking event these motherfuckers don't know nothing from a fucking stick against the wall you know what I'm saying they're probably like oh I heard of Cardi B Cardi B is fine we're a banking company and what's a million dollars you know what I'm saying for this artist that we've heard about and know as a celebrity or a superstar right that's nothing to us because we don't have the same viewpoints and limitations that people in the music industry have and like I've seen that at smaller levels before it's just like like one of the biggest tips I think every artist will follow if they want to get paid booking shows like go out to colleges right if you've ever been an artist got booked out of college before you know they will pay you a crazy amount of money it's sometimes worth more than what you really are worth but then usually is the college level yes yeah bro it's like oh you a local artist whatever I'll give you all these people who have they have these budgets they have to spend budget is the budget budget the budget gotta go and no judging from people I've talked to that that control budgets of these corporate budget like if we don't spend the budget we don't get the same budget next year so we gonna make sure we spend the budget right and we get out there so a lot of these corporate events are like that bro it's like we got maybe a three million dollar entertainment budget that we gotta get rid of by the end of the year anyway so a million dollars yeah I think that might be worth it they don't fucking know her going fucking rate you know what I'm saying and if that lines up so it's like things that you will look at as like a finesse in the music industry or be like nothing in other if you can figure out how to monetize in other industry you know and so that's what I like about this is like she sound like hey like fuck y'all in the music space you know what I'm saying these banking people pay me a million dollars you know what I'm saying maybe twenty like fifty thousand dollars you know what I'm saying with that being said yo don't let these corporate dollars gash you up and make you feel like who you ain't oh fuck yeah music like you get that fifty bands from that corporate check or the commercial or the sink deal in some of these spaces places and you're like oh yeah man this is what I'm worth this is what I'm charging like oh do you have any idea what I'm making over be offering this no no no no with them music this is your value this is reset you actually think you're doing big money and I'm not saying this to like talk down on people but it's like I've seen the egos get inflated and then you take it back to the regular space and you ruin things with that new energy cause you may fifty K or a hundred K offer some corporate shit and you think feeling like your big money when it's like that's it's just a different entry level everybody knows the music hey the money is tighter in general so if you're dealing with somebody in the music industry you're going to get offered less in general whether it's a brand deal a music placement tiktok is a perfect example right you know you're paying an influencer hey even some of them got smart which I appreciate where they have their music prices this is how much they understand somebody like this is like five x that cause they understand is just different right so the moment you can understand that cause I just talked about artists but influencers I should be all out there too it's the exact same thing y'all start getting these other offers and doing a couple commercials and he's like I'm about to do this influencer post on tiktok for five hundred dollars and you're not going to get paid any more for music in period based on your value now cause your followers da da da da so one of the most important parts of business is understanding your value where you are and your value changes depending on who you're talking to period you know what I mean you think oh you got all this leverage because you got this platform and you know I'm gonna go talk to let's just say shoot a little baby right and I got all this value as Reebok as a business person I feel like I might have all this value but if I go from him and then I go talk to Beyoncé that's a different conversation right my value to Beyoncé is different than a little baby where he is in his career my value to a little baby and Beyoncé is different than where who's new enough to look for Jalil it's not as big of a look for Beyoncé right not as big of a look for so in the same way businesses have to understand their value in different spaces and places depending on who they're talking to at the moment you have to do the same thing and artists y'all want most certainly please do that don't let these checks get y'all beside yourselves but do let that inform you that you move in before you start to make decisions because you could be doing the opposite right and underselling yourself as well you should be getting 50 bands and they don't have no problem giving you 50 bands and you up there are cool and asking for 10K I remember seeing a job it was like a job interview and someone got mad because the salary was like 120K but the person was like oh yeah give me 90K okay it was like and then people were like well you should have told them you know you're wrong because you had a 120K budget it's like why am I supposed to tell them I had 120K they were completely happy with their 90K they were ecstatic they were ecstatic you up there making them feel bad about their life right so messing up their ignorance and bliss so like it's just really valuable man to know the numbers in every single room you move in and that might take time when you move in new rooms and spaces but it's something that you gotta do yeah man gotta know who you understand who you're getting the bad from or trying to get the bad from understand understand now this clip been waiting to play this clip right here your guy my guy me many people's guy what did you post on SoundCloud post my loan and how soon do people how he blew up what did you post on SoundCloud why did I ever why did I ever and how soon do people start listening instantly how old were you he let me I was 18 you graduated high school yes sir the night it was done I was like let's just fucking put it up what's the worst that could happen how weird is it that like all of a sudden kids started passing this thing around to the point that you were getting like a million streams in a month it very much had to do he's an Atlanta guy named Fat Man Key and he was there at the studio whenever I dropped it he was buddies with whiz and it just fucking what did Fat Man Key do you put it up on SoundCloud he tweeted it he already sent it to whiz and then it just went fucking nuts and then like all these guys walka-flocka like everything like people I fucking looked up to for so long were just like FaceTiming me in the middle of the night and I was like yo what the like this shit's crazy what was on SoundCloud White Iverson and how soon do people start listening Howard Stern for such an innocent question that was just so funny but what did Fat Man Key do that was that was that was hilarious but it's so interesting to see this and we can go like we can slice it down to so many ways but I remember one post in the long blow it up and you know I think there was some industry playing conversations by some people around him or another and my thing that I did have you know I'm not big on the industry playing thing but the thing that I did have was he didn't just post this shit and Wiz Khalifa knew about it within 24 hours you know what I mean that didn't make sense to me it's no why nobody would okay you can tell me it's the hottest song in the world it's no way like it works like that so it's like he had to be connected with somebody with some people I didn't know exactly who the people were that it was more than just oh I made a dope song I threw it up on Twitter Twitter of all places in the way my rally worked nah it's like that didn't make sense so I'll start with that statement but I want to hear what you got to say nah I mean first off you know shout out to Key Rockers Key especially will allow the SoundCloud artists of that time he was always like the secret puzzle piece for a lot of them that I always wonder if we only got to hear about it because we were here in Atlanta so you know the information hits the streets a lot faster but it's like I mean now we know Post Malone people like Lil Yachty Riko Nasi Uzi Trippy Red a lot of early SoundCloud pop and rappers he had a hand in there somewhere so it's crazy he has some great A&R roots or great A&R skills but the second thing I think about this is it's so funny how like that a lot of things that we're doing at that time we're just like really early stage influencer campaigns you know like that was pretty much like an industry influencer campaign where like he tweeted so Wiz Khalifa would see it and then he would tweet and then just spread from there but like they didn't understand it that way back then because I remember this was around the time when I was managing the rapper I was managing I remember us and literally the very next day all these different celebrities are posting it and then it makes sense is like you have this person behind you that knew all these other celebrities and people and influences in the game that could help you spread out so it looks like it's moving a lot faster or actually it moved a lot faster than it would have organically if you were kind of doing on your own so I mean that probably really just strengthens his industry plant argument just I think not from the level of people were thinking of it people tend to think of the industry plant argument is like oh you know it's just music exact with a lot of money and power helping you out but like what if it's just another artist that has a lot of other pop and artist homies that just like you you know what I'm saying he's like how many times have you heard that story artist A likes artist B and tells all his friends about artist B and they all help that artist blow up because people what the idea of it is like this super orchestrated thing right we're in a room a dark room with some hoods on with the map and how are we going to lay this shit out and trick the world and then bam there goes the artist it's like it's not that dog like there might be okay you can connect some dots because there's somebody in the industry that knows this person and then they do some stuff but also that happens all the time and that just doesn't by the way so much of the time so much right most of the time by and large not even close but it goes back to the importance of relationships right connections no matter what how long you move and how strong you are at what you're doing you're going to need connections and I don't even think that's just a music industry thing if you want to keep leveling up if you want to keep like if you want to lessen the amount of money you got to spend you want to improve your ability to stay afloat at the level that you already are it's just going to be about building connections and knowing people so the more I look at the game and research and get a vibe for different aspects of wealth and growth in different industries it's always like okay yeah the smart people just have other people that they can fuck with because what they say hey if I'm the only rich person I'm an op and we all rich you know what I mean I got a squad with me all right so that's I think one it brings me down that path but just a simplified relationships man yeah you can just knowing some really dope people just really dope people don't have to be this super duper I'm trying to trick the world type plan you know a couple of dope people they can get you in places that no one else can get in not even being super like like strategic about it it's just like oh yo homie like pull up x y and z cause y'all are cool and then all these other people happen to be there cause they're your friends and just like serendipitously other things happen a lot of stuff happens like that yeah I mean that's like the secret part well I guess it's not really secret but like the hard to quantify skill in the industry right like how lucky are you often are you able to put yourself in those situations which is usually much easier to do for artists because the artists y'all can always use a whole creativity you know what I'm saying I like y'all art you like my art thing to get into the room that I think makes it harder sometimes for like people wanting to be like business professionals but then on the opposite I can see sometimes it's easy for us cause we have a thing that we can offer we can like invite me here because I can do really well and my main power is making friends in the industry giving yourself in rooms with certain people not even just because you think the art itself is going to be super amazing or groundbreaking but just because like hey you realize this person has a network that could benefit me in some way and maybe I also have a network or some skill that could benefit them in some way and you know to get in contact with really are like one introduction away from somebody that you might already know or kind of know, right? So then it just becomes about how many friends am I making that are going to vouch for me in front of people that might hear about me from three or four different other spaces so that way the vouching is a little bit stronger and just like my name spreads out a lot quicker, right? Or I get in front of these people who do make these magical moments happen for me a lot faster. So that's how I look at it, but it's dope to see. Like I said that, I think a lot of those SoundCloud rappers at the time were getting that industry plant label when really they just were people that were just made friends with other artists, you know what I'm saying, in some way, shape or another. And it really was an artist like helping each other pop off, it wasn't really like industry people like that. And I think that was probably around the time when we started to be able to publicly see like artists like clicking up together, you know what I'm saying, like off the internet and stuff because socials were becoming a lot more powerful. You were seeing a lot of SoundCloud artists started to click up and things like that. So we got to like see that happen in real time. Like, oh, this artist knows this artist. Then it makes sense on why this artist got this look in Atlanta, right? Like he was cool with this underground Atlanta rapper this whole time that had whatever type of pull out there. So I think that era was when we started to be able to like see it see the lines because you could you could see them post a picture with somebody and then go look at everybody tagged in the picture and you could draw the conclusions right and put the line together. So like now to that I don't think that's not it's not a surprise now. It's like it's no surprise to sometimes learn like, oh, this artist was friends with this other artist way before they started popping up. It's like, no, that makes sense. You know what I'm saying, like they got somebody got you in the game. So, you know, shout out to to post along for being not early because I don't feel like he was he wasn't the first. No, maybe not early. I don't know where I'm looking for. Ahead of his his tribe, maybe. I don't know if I can say that they don't feel right saying that a lot. Yeah, I don't know what to say that I don't have any rebuttal and I don't have any clarification either. I'm gonna I'm gonna just let that one rock. But let's get to we're gonna do this one last one might have a time for the other one. But this right here, man. Ah, rappers who changed the rules of the industry. Soldier boy. Okay. All right. Lil Wayne. Now we got shot at pay who did this is underground sound underground sound. Future. Agreed. Lil Yachty. Agreed. Playboy Cardi. Agreed. Yeet. I think you was a troll. Tell me. Don't tell me all these artists are good. Okay, all these artists are good. All these artists have a legitimate fan basis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. This isn't this isn't a conversation. How did they change the rules of the game? Each of them. That's what I'm that's what I'm trying to figure out. Change the rules of of the industry specifically. Who are you? Who are you darling? Who am I doubting? Yeah, it sounds like somebody there's a specific person that you doubt in here. Not a specific person, specific people. Okay, Lil Wayne. I think I understand what that argument probably is. Right. I future I actually don't fully understand what his change rules of the industry is. Right. Love how he moves moves different, etc. So I don't understand. I'm actually I'm genuinely and like trying to figure out what that argument is. Lil Yachty. I know it. I don't understand. Right. Cardi. I actually don't understand. Yeah, I don't understand. I don't understand most of these in terms of change the rules of the the rules of the industry. That's a very specific thing. Not like who came in doing something different right and build a like like a different image or fan base and all that stuff. But I can we already know you can run down a long list of all the soldier boy stuff like he broke the internet like completely different did all the dance stuff, etc. All right. That's very obvious. The cell phone. He did a lot of things that's very clear and documented. Lil Wayne. I think the thing people would go to would be the volume volume. Right. So I know what that is. Right. I don't know what it is with that they're referring to here with with Tyler, do you know, I think with Tyler, our future in general were very early to milk in the social media wave. You know what they did say our future not Tyler. That's probably what I was because I was stuck on the image of Tyler. I can. All right. I can see. Yeah. Yes. Like them as a collector, but the vlogs are different like entertainings. So like that was heavy to socials. And I think also they're probably the most current none mainstream adjacent artists to be as big as mainstream adjacent artists. You know, it's like we haven't had an artist that looks like Tyler, you know what I'm saying stands out like Tyler from a general like as a mainstream perspective that's been able to be bigger than if not bigger than a lot of the mainstream arts. Right. So I think that in itself kind of like showed a different a whole generation of artists that didn't look like they're like, oh, I could be just as successful as the artist that tip that looked like the typical industry person, right? Or industry artist. And black kids who weren't moving like quote unquote black kids should be moving at that time. Yeah, exactly bro. Like, you know, our future made of the safe space for all all black kids. So I would say that they're kind of changing the sense. Who's the next one? It was a hell of a prediction. The future would be. Lil Yachty. Lil Yachty. Hmm. Where do I start with the King boat? I think. All right. So I think Lil Yachty is another one we have to give flowers to for how how he milked the internet really early on. He would he would he called a violent moment. You know what I'm saying? The internet early on is not changing the rules of the industry of the current industry at the time that other artists weren't other artists were afraid to be a joke at the time. He wasn't. It was him. Who else was coming up at the same time? Him, Uzi, Trippie Red, Cardi, because would he own that? I think he owns his business stuff and moving different. Like, I think once I see him own his brand and being so brand focused and know how to manipulate that. All right. I don't know. Rules of the industry is just like. And he started a whole like historical to me. He started a whole like bubblegum trap, you know what I'm saying? A genre thing which led to Rico nasty and all her Rico nastiness. You know what I'm saying? And all the little offset people that came from that. Okay. Yachty is at this point of offspring. He's a he's a he's a great uncle to a lot of like rappers coming out. I agree. I agree that he has a tree, you know, and then Cardi. I ain't really got to answer for you there. I think I think I think I understand because Cardi doesn't do a lot and does a lot at the same time. He almost has he's almost like the NBA young boy normally where it's like on paper. You don't understand why the audience is this big. But he like once you see you like, Oh, no, this is this is crazy. Right. Like I've I've seen him play about Cardi before. I'm at rolling loud. But that's it was terrifying. That's it was scary. I need a lot, bro. It's just like crowds of mosh pits everywhere. He's just running around on stage screaming, making noises. He didn't really write. He's just everybody lit, bro. So it's like to see that and to be like, Damn, bro, like it's like 30,000 people in this crowd. You know what I'm saying? Like this is crazy. So I don't really completely understand what the argument would be for Cardi changing the industry. I would love for anybody that has a great point to leave in the comments. Yes. I would love to know your thoughts. But I I can get why he maybe would be maybe be one musically but not like industry changing. Unless they're talking my life sound then I would get because there are a lot of artists who were birthed from the Cardi tree, you know, they have the Cardi sound. Let's eat. Let's see this right here, man, because we're going to go to some of these comments real quick and do it that way. Because there are some people who have some words in the comments in their own feelings. And that might help us along along the way because I am legit. I just feel like there's a difference between being different and doing some being dope and successful and changing the rules. Like people now have to do shit different like the shit the Taylor Swift did the re recording that changed the rules. So it's like what do we mean by changing the rules or just somebody who came in and did some dope shit and they kind of did it their own way doing your own way is a whole different thing. That's why I feel like they like they mixed up the meanings like it's one half like actual change the rules of the industry and other have to change like the musical landscape, like the sound of it, which to me is two different things because Soulja Boy changed rules of the industry. Like you said, like the whole ringtone thing changed shit. He was the first to the end that Wayne changed the industry. He made a volume strategy. Very, very, you know, made it cool, right? Like, hey, I'm just going to pump out a bunch of shit and then everyone's pumped out a bunch of shit. So like, yeah, those people I do see some of the others I think are more like musical landscape changed a little bit. Place Yeet with Ek. See, that's another thing. Yeet is just too damn early to even say he changed the rules. Yeah, I think I think he's a troll. Underground sound he be doing shit like this sometimes. He's be fucking with his audience. And I generally think that one has to be him fucking with his audience. I know a lot of these things are designed for, you know, commentary, which is what we're doing. So, congrats on that three, six mafia, yay, future young thug. See, y'all just naming people y'all like, bro. I will give you, I'll give you honest, but I'm not saying young thug should definitely be on there, but I'm not even saying that these people aren't dope or nobody on this list changed it. But like, bro, you think everybody just trying to change the industry? I think their argument is musical landscape of the industry. And then our argument is like the actual industry, like the way, like you change the way, like you did something that made it, that made every arts after you have to move differently. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, I don't think many of them, especially now that comment did it. That's what I'm saying. You know, people would just be hearing what they want to hear. It's like when the 2000s trash argument, nobody heard it. I was talking about the whole music industry business side, you decide investment, the whole product is like, oh, I'm gonna just name what you mean. You don't know nothing about them. Young job ti. Okay, y'all are just proving my point, basically talking about artists that I damn near referenced in the video. So they don't add to the argument. Yeet doesn't deserve to be out there yet. Where's ASAP? My ASAP, right? It was the first artist after Soldier Boy that got big all on his own over the internet. That's not completely true because that would completely discredit our future right above them. Our future. We're gonna count Lil B? Are we? I mean, he did his own thing. He definitely changed some shit, bro. And he was, he wanted to talk about some control and leveraging like that whole curse thing that he had going on. That was a whole different, that was a mega brand and whatever. I still don't quite understand how he built what he built, like the way he did it. That shit was interesting. I don't get it either, but I got this one homie that's a huge Lil B fan, bro. Like to the point where it's kind of annoying. And I just don't get it sometimes. Oh man, let's see if we can find somebody else. That's one of them weird comments where people come out. No, they mentioned Lil B. Actually, that's funny as fuck. Where this one? Yes, bro. That long guy's comment. Look at it. Oh, damn, they did. I've been blessed with your absolutely spot on content about the hip hop genre. More so, I'm appalled by the decision of yours not including the rapper who goes by the name of Lil B. What the fuck? Oh, that's crazy, bro. That would be the weird ass comment, wouldn't it? All right. I have another rapper who goes by the name of young thug also known as Jeffrey was also been excluded. I hope you fix your grave mistake as soon as possible. Fine guy. I have okay. Now it makes more sense. Look, honestly, all I saw was fine guy and hashtag free six. And I was like, it's one of those weirdos again. But now you're talking about the young thug. Okay. You ain't really done too much. Gucci Future thug and Chief Key Cardi B instead of you. It should be. No, I don't want to see nothing to talk about you. We are. Hear that and get that. Who knows? Who knows? Not to be young thug. Yeah. People just naming folks. People just started name. That's why I hate these arguments. People just started naming ours today like the other artists kind of sound like. And like I said, we go back to the core, which I wish underground sound if y'all are hearing this, I wish I had specified that. Yeah. Like change the rules of the industry or change the sound of it. Cause there are some of them like, yeah, but like, so like, like so it's about Wayne, but that art is often had to move differently. It changed everybody's release strategy. Everybody's promo strategy. Everybody's marketing strategy. When you come in as an artist and your decision impacts the way your peers have to make their decisions, you have a different place in music history. Right. And like every artist doesn't get to do that. It's cool. I think when you are one that gets to do that, but yeah. No, I think I wish I had specified because some of them, especially a lot of those ones in the comments, we go back, we already set up our fans on those shit. I can't, I can take, I can't take a fan hot take seriously. Sometimes when it comes to things like this, but, but, but, you know, there were some I do think it'd be argued for. Yeah. You know, in the right circumstances. Yeah. Look, man, I already made the mental decision. I'm trying to avoid any of those types of arguments because all the video we've done, like what we talked about, the, I've been on you. I've been on me. I don't mind. It's just that people don't be understanding shit. I'm just like, man, these arguments, they don't do the videos with the videos don't perform. The videos go crazy viral. Shit. I do them all day. I'm like, this ain't even a viral video. We weren't even trying to like troll. And then y'all just don't get it. This shit. I ain't even, it's ain't even worth it, bro. Because you got people giving all their opinions and it's not even addressing the criteria that we're talking about. That's my thing. He's like, stick to the criteria, stick to the criteria. Oh, hey, I'm not for those, but this last thing, we're going to get this out of the way because we've been trying to get out of the way for a minute. So then we can get it off our brains. This InstaFest app or website, if y'all have seen this, check it out. I mean, if y'all haven't seen this, check it out for sure. Let me put it on the bigger screen. But basically, all y'all do is sign in with your Spotify. Allow you to do it with Apple Music and Last FM. I'm saying, and Last FM, that's right. I didn't think they were doing like that where you'd be inspired to do any tech work for Last FM. But you do that and they're going to create one of these dope flyers with you basically saying the type of artist you should be on a festival flyer with. So, hey, a lot of times we ask people when we're trying to help them with their marketing, hey, who would you be on a festival with? Who would you be on a playlist with? Well, you use this little app right here, sign in, and you can get a vibe of what things glue like. And honestly, I like the strategic usage of it. They might just use the fans also like, right? That might be direct. But especially, I'm not aware yet if they pull like any extra data. Yeah, it's funny. It's funny your top string artist, like your top string artist. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. So, it's the one. So, all right, I think I'm getting confused. And this actually means the show that you would go to tonight related to your music. Yeah, exactly. So, like, me as a listener, it's going to make a festival line up best off of my top string artist. That is different. Yeah. So, like, if you go through the sound, I don't know if you got the country and Spotify on here to look at it, but like, that's what I use it. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, if you like run through it, then it just, yeah, it'll ask you like, there we go. You want your top artists from last four weeks, last six months, all the time, pick a style and then it makes it so. All right, this is my one wife, by the way, not my artist, except Steve Lacey. I know she don't listen to Steve Lacey. That's probably because I've been listening to the profile and Toby Lou knows to probably me. Let me see. Okay. Okay. So it's still adult features to check out. And honestly, once I found out for sure that this wasn't a Spotify app, I was just like, oh, okay, they finessing to get Spotify data because you know, Spotify is real tough about that data they let you get. So, hey, man, if you want to figure out how to extract your Spotify data, you might need to figure out how to do something like this right here. Yeah, I even know what I'm using it for, because apparently the girl that created it is just like a college student. She's like a 20 year old college student. Oh, of course. She made this, it went viral, and then, so it doesn't seem like there's any like intent not yet behind it. Yeah, exactly. They take the purity and they figure out. But from an artist standpoint, because you said something, at least in the terms of like the audience building, if you were getting tagged in these, about from fans, you should 100% be writing down every artist that's on that fly with you. Because these are artists that you might want to target in your marketing campaigns, right? If I'm in this situation, Drake trying to get some new fans, I might have to run some ads to Lucky Day and Beyoncé, right? Because I can see like, hey, Sean's girl listens to these people and listens to me. So, maybe she's a representative of another ideal fan. So that's what I would do. If I was Drake, I'd be writing down every artist in a fan flyer that I get tagged in. And then be like, okay, these artists I'm gonna do a little research on and maybe make them a part of my targeting options for whatever type of marketing I'm doing or whatever my campaign looks like. That's what I'll be using this for. Facts, yeah. Facts. Well, that is it for today. Show y'all, of course, as we say, Tuesdays, Thursdays, be on the lookout. We coming strong. And we haven't failed y'all since we started. So, you know, a little appreciation. I feel like that deserves a like and a subscribe. There we go. Maybe a comment. Maybe a comment. Maybe a comment. Give us all that. Once again, this is episode 12 of No Labels Necessary. I'm Brandon Sean and I'm Corey and we are out.