What's up? What's up? What's up everybody? I'm Sean and I'm Corey and we are back with another episode, episode eight of No Labels Necessary where we talk music, business, branding and all that good stuff. New folks, new folks. If you all do not know anything about us just to give you all a little context. I'm co-founder to Corey's co-founder of Contra brand agency, music marketing agency. So we help artists grow to work for the major labels, all that good stuff just so you can get a feel for who we are. But let's get to the real because we got a lot of dope topics today. Hopefully the audio is good. Shout out to y'all who's helped us along the way. I think we have a few episodes in at this point of some decent audio and look, we're on Thanksgiving week. You know what I'm saying? This is Thanksgiving week. So the episode might be a little bit shorter. Things are busy but hopefully y'all enjoy y'all families this week. Y'all chill. If y'all don't have no family, hopefully, you know, you get some sleep. You know, hopefully you get some sleep. And jacquory, I know you don't really like going home. All right, man. Yeah, I'm going home. It's right down the street. Why not? Why should they miss me? You gonna go ahead to those 10 houses? Yeah, bro. Every every year it's at least at least seven for real like that. At least seven houses because I don't I mean, you know, I don't know how to explain it. They're down the street but my family doesn't like coming to the city.  But it's cool because I'm fair for like two weeks. You know what I'm saying? I don't really stress about it. That's the game, bro. It's like a sampler from every house. Oh, this smack and cheese was cool but the the dressing was a little dry but they got the great dressing style. Mix and match in place.  Like, I ain't matter. That's good money for the budget right there. I like that. I like that. Well, she's now jealous. Well, let's get into today's topic because artist, I want to ask y'all, are y'all being creative with your experiences that you offer for your fans? Managers, are y'all pushing creativity when it comes to your fan experiences with your artists because my guy Omarion, Mr. O himself, he's doing a little something. I want to share this and we're going to we're going to talk. I had a little ad that passed my page. You know, I don't know why Omarion was targeting me how I fell into that subset. Yeah. Oh, maybe because I'm in it. I was in it. You know, okay, okay. Yeah, he's probably just generalizing. All right, but check this out, right? For those of you who cannot see, y'all are just listening. This says the experience, mind, body and beyond. Clever. Show dates, 1106 in Atlanta. You got the DMV. He's going to New York and he's going to Philadelphia, right? Omarion established artists, but this is different than that type of experience. He says the ultimate connection, private exclusive, and they spell connection like kinetic, you know, in motion. I didn't even catch that. Okay. I was wondering about that angle. I was a little nervous. Oh, you didn't do it. I did not. I did not. That's the type of. All right, the ultimate, the ultimate connection, private exclusive session with Omarion tickets available and it's 250, 250 per ticket. Now, we know Omarion is not an artist that people are really paying 250 to go to show these. I mean, who are people paying 250 to go to their show these days? I just learned that, you know, Paramore the band and the way of them, they're charging 400 for that show at the Tabernacle. 400. Yeah, that's what I learned. That's what Taj told me last night. Jeez. Exactly. So, apparently them. Apparently them. Um, nothing that I can't think of nobody else. I mean, I'm pretty sure probably like the Kendrick's Drake's, you know, the super high level. That's not even the low of it. They're still tickets lower, right? Yeah, yeah. They usually have at least like an $80, $90 when that's somewhere. That's what I'm saying. You know, you in the back. So, Omarion isn't somebody you would expect to be able to charge 250 for a show, but this is more than a show, right? So, to give you a little bit more context, right? It says limited ticket. It's available also on the flyer. Um, the experience mind, body and beyond the ultimate connection must have a ticket to the event. All cells are final. You will receive details on the secret location via email. Ah, three to four days before the event. Ah, this is what I love, right? This is how you create a little mystery. But at the same time, say, hey, we ain't figured this thing out yet and we're not going to book our our spot until we figure out how many tickets we sell. But I get it. I get it. I love it. I love it. So, you flip your weaknesses and and use it as a marketing fine as a marketing strength. That's the game. Originals, I guess that's what Omarion takes you on the ultimate experience, elevating your mind, body and beyond. Okay, give me some more. Go one-on-one with the king. Okay. So, there's some one-on-one aspect to this. Okay. He's the king of unbothered. When did he get that title? Oh, man. I was I was about to ask you that. What does that even mean? I mean, he has been pretty chill recently. Like, well, he's always been chill though. He's never been like a super out there guy, right? I kind of like he's been relatively chill for still having to be out there as a celebrity. I give him that and then there's a lot of stuff going on like with the group. Yeah. But he still tried to. Yeah. Now, you're just trying to claim the title. That's what I'm going to talk about. Like, he's like, nah, that's me. Let me get that. Okay. Okay. Unbothered in this intimate healing experience. This isn't a show. This is a healing experience as he shares gems on mindfulness, principles and practices on how to choose your joy and live an unbothered life. Oh, I love it. The branding on it. So, he might be branding himself as unbothered king of what, you know, whatever. Yeah. And now he's reinforcing what that means. He's motivational speaking to his audience. That's all that's happened. That's how I'm taking this, right? Yeah, he's giving real shaman vibes right now. Now, we're getting into the details. Okay. This unique session includes a personalized autographed copy of Unbothered, the power of choosing joy. I'm assuming that's a book. I was just about, I was like, that's a long name for an album. It gotta be a book. It gotta be, right? Appetizing cuisine. We're gonna feed you sound bath healing. I don't know if y'all know about that sound bath, you know, um, you know about the sound bath, right? No. Oh, man, the girls you date, bro, you don't even, I never even took me to a sound bath. Apparently, I'm in the wrong. The wrong day in pools, bro. You don't even gotta go to the stuff. All right. I'm about to look this up, right? Like, I was missing out. Like, I'm like, man, I need to know. No, no.  They, they're big on this type of stuff. Here you go, Jenae, Ico doing a sound bath. This time I'll take it slow. Take it slow. You don't have to have all that going now. She's, she's singing. Hold up, hold up. I'm gonna find this real quick. We're gonna get to the point of, of this whole thing, but who might take me? I'm trying to find out what that's like. Nah, sound baths are more like, they got a little bowl. Here we go. How would you like to turn your innate passion for helping other people into a prosperous part? Getting lost in the rest of her SEO. That seemed like, that seemed like her fault. Yeah. It's all of these, bro. I have seen this before. I've never been the one, but I've seen it before. You can buy them on Amazon for like 30 or whatever and just, you just, you know, scoop that thing on around and do it. Do it work? Do it work. I mean, I haven't, I haven't done it myself. Oh, you're up. Okay. Yeah. You know, my, my girl who requested, I just got a very gift, so it worked for me to get what I wanted out of it, but I didn't do the sound bath. I'll tell you that. Limited space on only 30 tickets available. Okay. Only 30, so he, he legit making it limited. Let me, let's go ahead and do the math. I don't even want to do it in my head right now. About 80 bands, maybe? Not 80, bro. I'm a little, I don't know, man. I don't feel like doing the math. Yeah. Somewhere. 7,500. Now, that's interesting. That's not enough. I would think to bring out Omarion. I think it would be more than that. We're breaking this down in real time, but again, we're going to get to the subject. You will receive details on a secret location via email again. So, all right. So, this is basically a high ticket event, a higher ticket. I'll consider it more middle ticket. And this is something that a lot more artists should consider. Not necessarily this, right? But you have these different experiences that you can do that aren't a part of a show. And the only thing that we see typically is the funnel. If I have a concert and you can pay me a little bit more to see me backstage. All these other things, variations of things that I can do while I'm there, right? It's a pop-up marketing funnel there. I bet he's going to have some kind of marketing funnel at within this event too. 100%, right? It's going to be merch. You pay here, but yeah, there's some additional merch. Yeah. I bet he'll, he could probably squeak in another 20 bands out of this event. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Some way.  Yeah, advertising a brand. There's more to it. So, we're going to get that benefited out, because I'm pretty sure there is, because I don't think Omarion's just stepping out for 7,500. Not that he is not enough. He doesn't do walkouts, walkthroughs and stuff like that. That he might get something like that here and there. Yeah. But still, putting up a whole event, I would expect him to have to want more. But one, he might do, this could be a prototype for a branding experience that he wants to build on. Yeah. Right? You get the footage, but you just try to break even. But then also, I think there's a marketing funnel. But the point is, how creative are you guys getting with your audience? Because we need to see more of this, right? We need to see more of this. Everybody doesn't have the audience yet. But if you have an audience, right, a show is cool and all. Right? But I'm still disappointed by what I've seen. The lack of creativity I've seen since the pandemic. Right?  They're going to become more of a real thing. There was very much of a trend that didn't get utilized enough. Yeah. Still hasn't got utilized correctly. And then people went right back to the same system. Now, after over, we just weren't about to wait for these shows. It was back. Finally it was back. Yeah. It was like all that time. And the wake-up call wasn't real. I'm not saying don't maximize what you can in this vertical of touring that's already established. Because the industry has a lot that pushes you in that way and go ahead and get that money. But you should at least start thinking a lot more about monetizing outside of that. So this is one experience we talked about well, you know, we both know Kari did that really dope show. Doing live stream show. Yeah, live stream show during the pandemic. But again, he did it in an extremely dope way. Right? It was branded. It was what is it called? The weird? This is weird live stream or something? Something like that. Yeah. Kari, forgive us if you ever hear this that we aren't remembering it. But like his whole experience was detail where it was a variety show. Yeah. Vibe. Games. So I'm an artist.  Obviously, he performs and his whole branding of dropping his ads, which we maybe pull that up or something. But like it felt like the theme for a TV show. Right? It was thoughtful commercials. Yeah. Let's put it that way. It's definitely something like I think if he had wanted to keep it going, he set it up in a great way that it could have turned into a series or a real show. Exactly. It could have become an entire continued series and experience that his fan base is happy to feel a part of. Right? It could just be a one-a-year thing kind of like so if you look at Travis Scott with Astro World, right? Yeah. And that was themed obviously had the album part of as well. That whole thing was amazing. But you know the fans more and more come every single year. Yep. Of course, it's a festival and that's something more specific. But you can do that with these side concepts because what it also gives you a way you can build a brand using your brand that becomes interesting in and of itself that you don't get to market when you're doing your music. Yeah. Like oh, a variety show. At this point people might just come because it's really fun. Yeah. Right?  It was funny. Yeah. It was cool. Who cares who Kari is? And then next thing you know you might learn you come closer to Kari as a part of the process or even if you don't Kari still got your money. Right? Yeah. So like that type of thing there's so many ways to do that with these side experiences like Mario with this. He's hitting this entire fan base, right? Next thing you know he starts to invite sound healers or or shaman or whatever speaks to that fan base. Have a little motivational panels. Panels. Exactly. And he's no longer even the center of it. It's just a concept almost like a festival or a seminar or a conference or whatever and now you can probably charge more and more and more and again he was just the foundation of it. So this is a great way to use yourself not only to monetize your fan base in a different way, right? But also to set the foundation of a brand that started as adjacent to you but you're attacking a vertical that and we know to be honest you can monetize a lot more easily than you can in the music space. Yeah yeah because people are paid for things to do a lot faster and they'll pay for music right? You kind of you internalize it differently. You justify it differently, right? Like oh this is an experience like in memories this show this song is a song, right? And I'm already kind of thinking of the comments for this and I know the next question is probably gonna be like well how you know what I'm saying?  Like and they're like hey how can I like sell my fans on being a part of this thing that I probably was gonna wake up and do anyway today right? I was already gonna go to a sound spot, right? I remember when um no gotta go gotta go back to the king you know what I'm saying? I remember when Lil Yachty was first going on tour and he had this experience with like I don't know maybe you do this though but you know good damn well I did not know you're about to say Lil Yachty when you said that. Shout out to Yachty, right? Yeah this is really this is really early tour experience with like you could just hang out with him and eat pizza and play like Uno or something you know what I'm saying? Rory, you know Rory is right? Like from Atlanta? Oh that Rory. He has to hold like in the woods thing you know I feel like yeah I feel like he just hangs out in the woods anyway it's probably like his vibe right? So I'm saying what artists are like hey like what is something that I like to do that I can put together see who else in my base is interested in it and then from that either I keep doing it right or I pivot and I'm like okay they don't like playing Uno well maybe next time I'll have like a big space game or something you know what I'm saying but I think it goes back to like just like what else are you interested in outside of music you know what I'm saying like what else do you like to do what do you care about or what have you heard your fans tell you they like do like what do they seem like they will possibly be in based on like the interactions and conversations you've had with them so the Mario thing makes a lot of sense because he's he's older so he's probably at this point in his life where you know he's getting himself together spiritually me all I'm doing all the stuff that he done done yeah when he was younger you know like that plus 30 that 35 plus mindset man I gotta get shit together now right so it's probably just like he put like he looks like he does stuff like this anyway yeah I mean especially in his picture yeah bro no it was built for that but he looked like black Aladdin right here but he should have charged like if it was me it was me I would have the 250 one I would have had like a five hundred all or maybe 750 like guided meditation group what I got like you can you can come be here for this price but then maybe five of y'all can get this extra ticket you ever seen that that might be there that's what I'm saying that's that might be the invisible funnel and now I have you in this peer pressure oh yeah I got you saying yeah yeah yeah anything here right it's controlled to make you want a little bit more than I'm a ain't trying to scare you away with the price yeah I'm trying to scare you away with these additional prices but I already got that 250 for you already here and now you spending separately because you forgot about the 250 you spent it already yeah now you're just spending 500 or whatever that that number is yeah that's that's what you might be doing yeah I hope so because like you said bro seven sending about 100 I mean I guess it's what 30 bands for the whole for the whole set but like you said that has to be something deep but there's no way he's traveling to all these I mean I guess they're all not that far in New York to Philly Philly the DMV well no because it went as first so it learned the DMV DMV the New York and then back down to Philly there's no way he's putting all these travel arrangements together without some type of up sale in the funnel or something you know what I'm saying no way no way might have to look deeper I wonder if he already has like shows in those cities at the time and stuff like that that'd be cool that'd be interesting but but yeah I think what you said is a good start right like just what are you doing yeah already what you like and then there's different levels of it right so you have your your fan base music the main thing they know you for and they come to you for now you can take what you like and then figure out what level do I want to introduce this to my fans with all right so yeah you said uno we could do some kind of private uno experience whatever go hard with it but I also could just play uno versus a fan alive right and yeah free and just another way to connect with them and build with them all right then or I could play Super Smash Bros right live but then I also can host the whole Super Smash Bros tournament yeah right and have them involved and then you know run that whole thing up yeah then there could be I don't know what I don't even know what it is well there's a virtual live I'm at a virtual tournament right yeah but then you can do a real life tournament all right and each of those come with their own different charges and extra things you can do around it but it all comes from that same idea of this is just another thing I do or like no name I think she had a book club yeah yeah something like that all right and then you think about this I have this audience that is reading books with me right you might always think well where's the angle I can monetize well she might then in the future have recommend books based on authors paying her because they know that she has this clout among people who actually are book buyers yeah right you know like an email list to blast and get sales and get affiliates where people are paying you with advertising costs bring that speaker in right and there's other ways and people might have private experiences again you get into the in person thing the in person thing is always going to be big in an environment that we're divided in this digital space yeah right yeah that's always gonna be a thing so it's the stuff that you like and then it's the stuff that is just a special experience as a whole like you know when Ryan Leslie did the whole castle experience you know I don't think so yeah so he I don't know how many times he did it but I know at least one time for sure because you know he has super phone he's able to hit up his his you know most real fans and they did a private experiences where he did a show in a castle oh shit yeah show the castle you know black tie like real like upper tier real swanky like some of that type of stuff and it was a private show for those people and you put them in this space that you know they're not used to being to that level experience that's a whole another day right it's one thing to just do something cool and private it brings them closer to you but another thing to do something that just takes them into a space and gives them access that they normally don't have yeah and I think the opportunity around you like a lot of fans just value like being in your vicinity oh I might there's a there's a hot chance I could have a conversation with him much easier to think that when you're in a room full of 30 people they're in the room full of 3 000 right even if they don't really get to talk to you or never touch you or whatever like they still think it going into a lot of people are kind of bound to that stuff like out of homey um Tom one time was going to throw like a kickball game at p-month and he was on charge for it have his fans come out but there were fans who were going to like fly out here fly that and I thought it was crazy but like they're going to fly from wherever they are to Atlanta for a kickball game yeah that's how much they like this man he ended up not doing it um I can't remember I think it was like just logistical reason you know p-month man it'd be shit you gotta go through to get them to do it but yeah that was when it clicked the next other man but he got at least like 10 15 people talking about yo when is it I'll get my hotel I fly out right and I don't think he was charging nothing crazy for I think he's gonna maybe do like 20 25 dollars of signed up you know you get put on your teams when she actually might even been free now I think I think you're gonna do some free shit and just sell like merchant stuff at it you know like use it kind of like a free funnel come play the game when you could have a special like tom kicker oh sorry yeah for the teams right yeah actually yeah that's a that's true memorabilia to move forward you know what I mean like not personable of course you have your regular merchant everybody has access to but only y'all have this specific thing yeah yeah it's a flex in the fan base yeah it's a flex in the fan base and that's that's exactly what you want to do give opportunities to your fan base members to flex on that's all they want bro I just want to be like hey you a fan I'm a bigger fan because I have like this exclusive t-shirt the only way you could get this year you pull up to Atlanta on October whatever at 9 a.m. and play this game you weren't there but I was that's why I got this shit yes I am better than you as a fan right a good way to think about that too is nfts right if you listen to a lot of the experiences people thought to make around nfts and say oh well this is going to become possible oh so that shit is possible right the metaverse and all that all that stuff they applied it to okay that still has to build out and yet that's going to become possible but doing these exclusive events having special ways to know that if you can get in whether it's a password whether it's a specific card or your names in a database it's a list all that exists you can already do that symbols like you said um like flex on the fanbase with the t-shirt all those abilities and possibilities already exist for some reason though it just takes people to like have that new outlet to actually see the possibilities for some reason I think people just like they're intimidated by trying to make it work in an old space but it's like the old space is already proven that there are people that is willing to get it the new spaces those shit you should be scared of because like yes new there's no opportunity you could cap but there also could not be people there that are looking for what you what you're trying to offer yet that's what I think it comes out to brother I can see that you're afraid but now that everything sounds like this is built to support that you feel like there's a lower chance of failure and it's still in such a new space if I fail it doesn't look as bad than me failing in the real world yeah exactly because it's like there's not a lot of people here yet so it's like if it doesn't hit it's like it's like running a bad ad on Facebook versus running a bad ad on like a new platform like it doesn't hit on a new platform there's not enough people that know you fucked up with Facebook it's like there are hundreds of thousands maybe millions of people that saw your bad so I think that it kind of comes out like that same thinking it's like oh I have the chance to like cap over here really hard which is true I have the chance to be you know we talked in the last episode to be able to say I was the first person to do XYZ and whatever space right so that's a narrative in itself yep but then also like there's a lot of sounds on me if I fuck up and if it goes bad I can just act like it never happened because nobody was over here anyway paying attention to it that's a huge limitation when it comes to a lot of artists and potential embarrassment yeah you know I don't know if that's part of insecurity that comes with not that's a lot of people in general but especially the personality type who wants to be an artist yeah all right but a lot of conversations that I have or artists there's a lot of barriers or limiting beliefs that come around embarrassment of some sort yeah which is weird because you're supposed to want to stick out right and part of the stick out risk is embarrassing potential embarrassment potential embarrassment there's this this concept right that most people actually do not want to stand out most people end up think about artists that's why we probably put certain people on a pedestal all right just because they are standing out and we innately understand that there's danger with standing out all right and that's why the crowd doesn't want to stand out all right because if I'm out there it's a risk it's just me out here all right yes there's a lot of rewards that come with it taking that risk if you happen to survive out there but most people don't survive out there all right so you look at zebras and I think it was what's his name Jordan Peterson that was talking about this that I heard he was talking about how zebras are you know they're striped so you're like well how is that built for camouflage right it's like the lions and it's a here are more camouflaged with the backdrop and zebras are right but they move in these herds so they're more camouflaged amongst each other all right and they're not standing out the way a lion identifies them is because especially you know lions often at times they attack together right oh this one got a hobbling leg they can barely move or that one's bleeding so we can all agree that we're chasing this one but when all of them are good you just keep a lot you keep you get lost yeah oh I was chasing that with all I thought we were chasing that one bro I was like nah man I'm not here like what's going on so like that risk of standing out right that's how we translate that to humans yeah it's like people wait when people say there's this innate feeling I think a lot of times people want the rewards of standing out but then that risk just to actually do it you know oh shoot you gonna get canceled you gonna get whatever whatever whatever yeah people walk up to you in public yeah if you walk up to you in public it's a weird feeling I know the first time you experience like all that is just like a weird thing when people oh what's up you like well I know you know you know dang these people they see me before I see them yeah but no it's crazy to think about it like there's somebody out there that knows so much about you and you know nothing about them it's a very wild feeling right right a very wild feeling so I think most people again they under they admire the fact that someone else is willing to do that knowing that they aren't or won't yeah all right so um I don't even get on that anyway you smell like R is not wanting to stand out because it's like it's a part of the job like you gotta kind of get over that right right and then that came from those was derived from why they're willing to look at NFTs yeah right in a certain way and do these experiences that they can already actually do all right so bringing that full circle again there's so many opportunities to do just cool stuff whatever your brand is right or marion's um doing this mind body soul type experience right but you could do you know gaming you can do music you might like watching certain movies and your fan base might be really deep into it like if you got a horror core audience and y'all are into horror movies yeah whatever that stuff stuff looks like there's so many possibilities so if y'all could dig in be more creative again the beauty of this right is it actually is easier to sell this type of stuff than it is a regular show yeah right it's the equivalent of when you have a merchandise brand that can stand on itself versus hey all my merch is just my face on it your audience really gotta like you if it's that right but if your shirt is but god is dope right yeah like let's say toby and way way i think i said that right i don't know god is dope would have been a great merch brand for him yeah right all his stuff could say toby right but a bigger brand for people that don't even know toby would be god is dope right and it's a line with who he is and what the type of stuff that he speaks so that's that example it's a lot easier to sell that type of thing you still get the money right look you can end up being on your own brand's marketing almost looking like who is this artist why do they have him showcased why is he on everything why is he why is he and it just makes it seem like you got a sponsorship or whatever and you're somebody all right so like all those opportunities exist when you start to move outside of this space in place but you can tie it back to your artistry where it makes sense and it creates new fans and if it doesn't create new fans it's at least creating new money so i encourage y'all y'all y'all definitely take advantage of these opportunities especially the way you can do it today but we're going to move on to another topic because cori you send in a really really dope video a really cool story in the way i guess i can say this like Oprah out here blessing people changing a lot of changing lives man changing lives let me i would put out this video every week man and nobody will watch it nobody and i would put out this video every week man and nobody will watch it nobody and and i say this and this is not even a joke is every week it would get like 11 or 12 views this video and my mother was watching nine of those you know and so it was no one was watching this thing but i thought this was a way for me to at least create my brand within the space now it turns out that one of those 11 views was Oprah but people say like okay how did Oprah find you the reason why Oprah was able to find me is because a year prior i was doing pro bono matchmaking services free work free work one of my clients and i had no idea but one of my clients was a writer for o magazine year later she's on Oprah's jet Oprah says i have a concept for a new tv show i'm looking for a fresh voice my client in the jet says have you heard of paul brunson oprah says no but let me see youtube search oh paul brunson save let me start watching so oprah was watching this youtube series and and you know when i always look at i say gosh to me it is a powerful that's crazy that's well actually does he have a gym at the end on top of this ooh should i let it don't worry because she ends up offering me a job to co-host a television show with her on her brand new network off of this youtube series that no one was watching but oprah my mother and like two other people and i say it's a powerful story about quality over quantity ultimately bam there it is there it is and ej you have to superimpose that video my bad man i didn't even do my little switch but um it's so much to this video i wonder what it's like on over his jet by the way right coffee there's he know probably coffee right coffee for a push-up i think there's so many points in this when it comes to content consistency like just a power of content period but let's focus on that last thing first that he said which is quality over quantity and i don't even i don't want to stress the quantity the over quality but just the importance of quality content because look man we've we've had people ourselves that we find out yo this person watched the video like these people reached out to me and you know spot even early on right before we're even doing the things that we've done it's like yo how can they find this in the first place yeah you never know i mean you got actually i could think of one person who's pretty big very well known if i say his name you would say it sure whatever this guy's son was watching and right no son wanted to be an artist all right so he's like yeah right son wanted to be an artist so he found um reached out to me wanted to work with us his music was trash that's why it's better i didn't say his name yeah yeah was trash you know what i mean but you know you know he was early on it i think it has since improved but it was just like you know just started stuff and but i never would have guessed right that any way i could have got with that person when we work i work with uh with macy was through our content not a label not any connections yeah they're like oh saw one of the webinars on top of that which is okay what i'm saying golden yeah golden was have been watching us uh before we were even official and that in that make up we technically contra brand hadn't even started yeah right yeah he had been watching us already so you never know literally who is watching your stuff and you don't know who the people who are currently watching yourself will become yeah yeah to me that's the biggest point like he says like this video has team views on it but like all it takes is one of those 10 views to be somebody that could do something for you and then it becomes sometimes more worth it and maybe the video that got 100,000 views or a million i remember um i don't know if you remember but we were doing a campaign for kelin brie one time and i always remember at the end of it we did like a mean campaign for and like the mean campaign did i think pretty well for the budget but it didn't do nothing like crazy yeah but i remember her telling me after the campaign like yo like this a and r from such and such record label reached out to me i wonder how they saw it i'm like no the fuck they saw it what you mean you wonder us we the reason they saw it but the post that i asked her i was like yo can you ask the a and r like how they found you um just no just i'm pretty sure she'll tell you and yes she had came from like one of the smaller mean posts we got and like that mean campaign probably like eight nine went up the biggest one had maybe 200,000 views it was the post that maybe had like a thousand views on it that the a and r happened to see and reached out to her about and i was like it's crazy she didn't come from the big one she came from the one that you probably in your head were trying to say like oh this should one of you worth it you know saying only got a thousand views on it this year got thousands got 200 i wanted that all across all the posts and so like you said we've seen it with clients i've seen it i've had conversations with people in real life they're like oh bro i love you i'm like oh that's crazy you don't follow me on nothing like how do you how you say you love me bro i don't get to follow no i might just watch your content not kind of or you come up on my for you page you come up on x y z and then that's when it starts to click where it's like man bro like i always tell clients like you gotta remember bro these views are like real people like real people every view every like is a real person and you don't understand the impact that person could have on you until they either make the impact they do it or you talk to them you understand like oh shit like you know blue j one two three is the fucking the main promoter at this club i've been trying to perform at for the last six months oh shit dude was just watching my he was one of my four people in my life for the last month and a half of some crazy shit bro as well yeah well man it's it's so interesting because like the quality right the quality quality quality versus what we think people want to see from us or what the algorithm wants to see with us from us that has them that gap is a risky gap right because a lot of times in trying to go viral in trying to get seen and adjust for what you think the marketplace wants to see a lot of times we lose what makes us unique yeah or just what creates quality in general come off to try hard right to try hard whatever that is right and now you'll have somebody see it and even if that person is important right they might not connect with the same yeah because you're so busy just looking like everybody else i don't even notice oh yeah just another one of those funny videos or another one of those songs that sound like this it was cool but nothing special right and as a matter of fact with taj right so remember got to send his project to irko oh yeah before he dropped right now imagine if he made it i don't know like just on some regular trendy stuff right that's cool and it probably could do well and then you might end up having somebody like him work on it just because you're big and you're doing it but they might not care as much for the music yeah but the other way around is oh snap you here and you and this person's like yo this junk is crazy and everybody who hears it on an individual level is like this is crazy so when it comes to trying to get people to help you for something yeah they're more willing to do it yeah they believe in more they believe anymore and that's part of heck right and i want to talk about in the video actually of getting things done in the industry right like when you do real dope work like why is somebody helping you let's put it that way jacore you can reach i'll be like hey shine man you know i got this artist can you do such and such for him you know and i'll be like check it out dang it's i but i'll rock with jacore though so i guess i'll go ahead and do it or do i be like yo this shit is hard yeah send them over bro with jacore so i'm definitely gonna do this shit like it's a whole different mentality and the power of having great content whether that's music whether that's your music video whether that's your post whatever you're doing right great at whatever you're doing so his his example was i guess he was what given a relationship advice yeah yeah yeah he i don't know his exact backstory but he was pretty much just giving people a free relationship advice turning content right like the power of just doing that in a way that actually hits it's a slower burn sometimes but when it catches to the right people like man it sticks and it's so much easier to help get other people to move on your behalf not just oh the algorithm got a hold of it a lot of people saw it but oh real people are willing to help me get it seen put it on their platforms attached their name to it that's a whole different type of thing and you actually touched on something huge um and my voice just cracked a little bit um the post for calin brie yeah right the one that had a thousand was the one that got seen by that a and r not the ones that went more viral and we judge things superficially just by views like yeah views and likes but where did i give you maybe that page for whatever reason that only had a thousand happened to be followed by more industry type people yeah right because maybe that page is known for quality post you know what i'm saying and we see it like how many pages do have we come across to have like 800 followers been all 800 be like a and r vp you know saying promoters things like that it's like yep i'm a surface level standpoint maybe engagement standpoint but this is not worth it when you think about who it could tie into and you're like no this is probably five times worth whatever that might be trying to get me to do for exactly exactly like so it it's really dope because it supplies across the board in this day of content creation especially i mean you know again like we're talking about over and and dudes literally just talking about like yo nine views yeah and somewhere in every city i'm sure sometimes it was 13 or 20 but like overall like you really ain't getting no views yeah he didn't expect to wake up and get a call about open bro he didn't see that come no way no way but that's it's real man like i and i can say for a fact right being quote on quote at this point to some people right an industry person i know that i'm watching right i know i'm watching some pages right that i might not be following right or i'm watching some artist and i am following they might not even know because they might i don't know for whatever reason they might just might not know like there's this one guy his name is silas i don't know silas yeah right now this is not necessarily beside a perfect example because this dude is like popping already um you know like he has his one song i ain't stressing today he had been working it i just DM'd him off of seeing like three four post not even his post no i saw one of his posts and i saw some other people post to it in the sound just off of that i'm just like this is dope as a matter of fact one of the comments that made me hit him up was someone saying i'm so glad that this didn't become a thing because i didn't like it or whatever and like why is it still popping up for me that was like oh this dude is consistent yeah which i loved yeah so like and i hit him out just like yo like how long have you been doing this i think he said he had been working it like a year yeah like a year but a longer song which made me have with him even more and i was like oh i'm definitely following this dude and just now i saw like Lou Peter um posted and like some other people some other names and that's just working at one song that he really believes in got the dance to go with it so consistency with the content and the song's actually good enough where you start to have celebrities connect with it in their own way to be on it as a matter of fact then we could look at uh i keep forgetting we so a big time artist right we can say this we can say snoop hop done okay okay song right snoop hop done buddy song and buddy song doesn't really have no views it's not really known by anybody like that but not only was it a really high quality song dope concept it matched snoop's brand yeah perfectly so when your content and this is goes innately goes with quality and also because part of quality within content is some level of authenticity to whoever you are or whoever you're speaking to right yeah so when i talk about somebody in the industry billing uh willing to go to the go to bat with you not just offer the favor of their friend but for the content itself is it's about can i see a vision for it i'm like i see where this can go me personally so i really want to do something with it it's not even work for me to like figure out i only want to take time well what can i do for him what can i post about it i was like i know exactly what to say in my caption or i know exactly who the collab should be or however my connections can make us make sense for it i got a vision because i see the vision from the content right yeah my point being that specific song was specific enough in its energy that snoop dog could see himself on that song yeah you know what i mean versus just oh that's another good song so that's part of not watering things now for a trend too because then people aren't going to be able to connect with it on the same level yeah so man it that quality content conversation is i don't know you know as marketers and then you know people like we talk about tick tock so much and all that stuff i think people think they were all about like chase viral yeah like people forget you can do both it's like you can make it you can make a corny tick tock and then drop the greatest music video ever credit in the same week they don't sound like that are you saying that a corny video needs to be a part of your strategy maybe don't know who you are you know or you know if you try to lighten the brand up a little bit you know nothing lightens up the mood like a corny video you know unless they already don't like you then it's just you know you shooting yourself in the foot oh yeah yeah but it's just like i don't know i feel like i got a 50 cent talk about nick canning yeah if you talk about like why does he keep rapping i don't understand yeah exactly bruh it's like ours i feel like always painting away like you have to do one or the other like either i'm going to make the most amazing visual content ever created or i'm going to make a tick tock and it's like why can't you do both yeah you'll be much better off if you can figure out the both right and then and then plus amazing is in the out of belt but hold on i've seen some amazing music videos that were made compared to some tick tocks i've seen some masterpiece tick tocks bro i'm like damn bro he really he or she really sat down and created this put this together so and um i think the whole quality thing too just going back to his clip is it comes down to messaging right like if the messaging reaches who you would or if you have a messaging or something and it reaches who is supposed to hit that audience is going to say this is quality if it hits people that don't care about the message they they might disagree unless like certain elements of it really are so hot quality we've seen some shit before that we didn't like but you we won't knock and say that shit with strategies like i don't like it but now this shit kind of fought you know what i'm saying yes exactly so a perfect example would be for this guy paul brunson to have got on the relationship talk train we know relationships he's in a relationship category and we know exactly how polarizing relationship talk can be on instagram yeah or social media every thing really right yeah he could have came from r.r.p kevin saying those type of angle right but that might have not have been him yeah right that's not my energy that's not my type of advice that's not my voice but oh this is working let me do that i want to bet nine times out of ten nine point nine times out of ten Oprah doesn't resonate with a kevin samuels voice she don't want to stand next to a kevin samuels in that specific voice for what she's trying to put out so he would have missed that opportunity right yeah paul wouldn't have got that trying to copy and i'm just using kevin example but there's so many different directions and voices in the way that you can speak right let's just say if he was caught up like just a cursing a lot or using the n-word a whole whole lot right which you know Oprah doesn't like the n-word i don't know if you remember that whole thing she had against uh jz and all that stuff for a moment right so those little things would have made a difference for her yeah all right so that goes back to like whatever your voice and your style of doing it is do it in that voice and style and there's somebody who will resonate on those different levels but if you get caught up trying to talk to everybody yeah talk to everybody and switch off or something just because it works then you'll probably miss out on those things because she might have trouble finding somebody who speaks in his voice because of all the things that are popular on social media and those other voices because i don't see anybody who speaks i might really accustomed to his his content but for everything even just that vibe of him talking yeah i can't see him talking crazy seems very encouraging and positive yeah and you know politically correcting in some ways you know very advertiser friendly yeah advertiser friendly there we go there we go now with that being said you know content content content content we are in a new content creator space and i don't know man it seems like artists are being disrespected these days all right people don't really respect music and i want to talk about why they don't really care about artists or respect artists quite the same straight into my chair a little bit yeah yeah you know get yourself together get yourself together here's the context that we're going to start with right rice gum okay right influencer star rapping right handleable birds for y'all don't know great comedian yeah great comedian great writer great writer starting to be a rapper he's pursuing it in the most respectful way i've seen right but one starting to be a rapper and like retired from doing comedy just a rap bo bernum another comedian starts dropping music right look at some of these random influencers who never even wanted to do music that were getting signed to then do music yeah yeah everybody's dropping in the song bag people are getting people are like looking at music as a lick look at that even if it's only for views right on the other side what other categories do you see getting taken advantage of to that extent it's not to the same degree but i would say now probably boxing and fighting every influencer is trying to box all right not to the same degree not to the same degree that's actually a good a great example actually yeah um because like you said it's not to the same degree but people are doing it who don't fit that tradition all right in the same way you could argue that comedy might be you know yeah you know people are think they're funny yeah everybody's dropping some videos that are some type of funny and then stand up comedian specifically all right feel like they're being taken advantage of all right so i don't think there's almost any content creator creative space that's not experiencing some level of people from the outside just taking it lightly and trying to create content on it but it seems like on a high level music is being exploited differently why because there's more infrastructure or report support of it i think in some ways all right think about bad baby yeah being signed to the landing all right she came into the machine she came into the machine the machine truly support and said that we're going to do this and i mean there's other examples like that um like you have somebody like ddg who took it seriously right so that's fine probably did the best out of all of them i would argue i would say yes yeah yeah well him and queen niger queen niger was influence first yeah i know that yeah really queen niger was um on youtube and she was in a relationship with uh some guy well i guess maybe it's she might her her first son i don't know how many kids she has but i know she has a she had a son with that one um guy and then they broke up that became a whole thing so they had a couples page okay i know yeah she used to see covers and stuff too on youtube she was one of those people and then he had broke up and then now she got some other guy um in some ways gives me similar vibes just she got a tight ish but but they um but yeah she came from that way and she's like you look at her and think artist first you don't even think youtuber yeah like that right so she did it seriously but again most people are violating look at the meme pages all right and this is why i think music is getting exploited on a different level and it's more disrespectful because as an artist you see that some random meme song goes up and a record label said oh snap we want to sign them or we wouldn't at least sign that song and we want to exploit that song now the record label you get it because they're just trying to make money short term and they know these windows come and they don't expect the song to be serious and their their business model is set up in a way that that doesn't necessarily hurt them and it's not short term maybe there's an argument that long term you're ruining the industry and it'll slowly collapse because you signed this meme song or this random one off i don't know maybe there's that but on a short term basis for sure it's like oh yeah we just kept we made a good year that was an extra million in the bank to report to our shareholders or whatever all right but and the artists are like well dang that's what you want that's what you want like something about him exactly so i don't know i think that's going to but that is something that i know i've seen a lot of artists um i hate it bro they hate it i hate it they just gotta say they hate it they don't like it they're not fucking with it but why is it so easy to do with music i think i think music i should probably say this i think music probably has one the lowest barrier of entries with a lot of the creative like think about it's like lower barrier entry entry comparison like other things you want to paint and do certain things like you gotta you have to own the equipment yes and you gotta you gotta buy the supplies there's not as high of a demand for like you could decide that i want to be a painter doesn't mean that tomorrow every people gonna buy your painting you could decide today that i want to be a music artist you go drop this in a ready thread like you might get eight people that listen to right eight people that could potentially grow into consumers or or fans or whatever so i think like one is that i think a lot of them see it as like a very low barrier to entry especially especially from an influencer standpoint because what do we always say the hardest part about being an artist is learning how to get attention as an influencer you've already mastered that part of the game so now your hurdle is can i make let's say the best of quality song at the least a listenable song right which i've said before on other episodes i don't think that's as hard as a lot of people like to make it out to be right like you have the influence and the money right you can put yourself in the room with certain people you can put yourself in you know i'm saying get yourself in certain situations with producers and writers and things like that it might not make you amazing but it might make you listenable to right and listenable to is enough to get things moving for a lot of people especially after we just talked about the whole fan experience thing if a influencer i like drops a song i'm going to listen to it not because i think they're amazing but because i like this influencer right so he could have dropped he or she could have dropped damn anything i want to check it out they just chose the phone that attention to music so i think that's probably one the biggest reason to it like they see it is like a very easy attention flip which it is like the like that biggest barrier entry is getting attention hey i already have a hundred thousand followers here or a million followers here if i can just direct those people to Spotify doing something i already know how to do because i already know how to make great content right most of them are really good content creators i already know how to speak to my audience and engage them and make them excited about things i can do the hardest part of this is now me just making the song that's nothing bro that's a that's a couple hours on google and some phone calls and you in the studio session bro i'm making some shit see i think a part of that like you said you don't even have to be amazing is your song can be good for the people while it's still bad yeah like the have you seen the period odd girl on tiktok period odd yes period odd yeah that girl well i should that should it was so terrible so bad they don't even like calling music bad well that should be bad so bad it flipped her in the fame bro it's crazy exactly we get one we get at least one of those a year like some of the internet jokes somebody into stardom like at least once a year easy right so when it can be that right it's not even necessarily a good song and people almost know that it's not a good song but it still connects in some way i think about being younger like when the hood wrap in Atlanta was like big yeah right i'm not not when the hood wrap was big i'm what am i trying to say i when hood wrap was less sophisticated right like pro tools and all this stuff it wasn't as figured out like now where most of the like known hood wrap actually sounds good right like in terms of the audio quality yeah we listen to the shit that we were listening to that she was horrible i was making a computer mic and shit exactly exactly so going back and listening to that it was like dang but it's still hit it's still connected right so you don't and some of these people might only have one hit back then or whatever they weren't the most sophisticated lyrics is like songwriters whatever whatever but it still connected because it was a real based off of what you understood where you came from right so you take that and then you put that out to basically the rest of the world everybody has maybe one song in them yeah all right yeah true and all that tech is one speaking that experience and letting everybody relate whether it's funny right like or some true go hard but i think obviously the ones that tend to go up are those ones that you know some level of funny right or some level of the relatability flexi i think the perfect combination of could easily have been a bad song but it's actually a great song which is why the moment i heard it i said this is a hit glow rilla oh yeah right yeah what's the official name of the song i'm so bad at song name fnf fnf right no i'm sorry oh okay now i remember what i said yeah okay cool fnf easy right it's it's funny there's a level of flex in it it's reliability the relatability and it's the type of stuff that somebody would just say anyway right and there's a lot of people who can do that all right they might not put it together the production might not be as good but it's a lot of people who can do that and connect because the space that is coming from all together is just like it's a real authentic space all right so i think that's what makes it so easy for other people to catch on to the space and at least catch one you don't really get challenged unless there's a whole album needed yeah all right and you know you gotta create another song you gotta create another song that's something different but a lot of fake people don't even want that from outside the space it's like oh i just want to create one song for fun right just because we're experienced and a lot of them you talked about Spotify they don't even want to monetize it necessarily they don't care about monetizing as much yeah it's just more almost like for marketing or just to have a video that went viral and then shoot as a label especially it's like we'll shoot they don't even want to truly lock down on these percentages and stuff like that they don't care the same so i might as well take the lion's share of this particular track and let them have a fun let them have their fun let them have their fun while i sit back in the house and count the money that's me is one of the bigger parts of it too where it's like every now i feel like i've heard other people say this too but it's like every other creative profession i always feel like deep down they want to be a music artist right like athletes actors definitely the athlete you know we see the influence like they all kind of have like that dream in the like man what would it be like to be a big rapper or a big pop star or whatever and so i think a lot of them just do it just because i think of an influencer mentality like if you're a big enough influencer and you've tried enough products and things with your audience like you got probably got in your head like there's nothing i can't sell you know i'm saying like if mr beast wanted to drop an album today that sure probably top 10 you know i'm saying because because of who he is right i hope you don't do that but you know if you did you know i'm saying um so you you know the thing about the influence you sell in t-shirts you selling shows you selling chicken nuggets like random shit and then you get to music and nothing and you're just gonna tell you can't sell music you know i'm saying it's like i've sold all these other things that are much harder to get created and packaged and produced in a song is so why wouldn't i take that leap um and then you know music can have a crazy return on investment if the right thing spark off you know like you could record a thousand dollars song that should blow up and make you millions right and so it's i think there's a a level of potential return on investment that these influencers see in music that they don't they don't see what their other creative avenue like it doesn't like like i said like a painting it's hard for like a pain to go viral like it's hard for like a um it's hard for like a stand-up comedy clip to go viral and have the same impact because the clip might just leave the ticket sale there's still something hard you gotta have set up maybe if you sell like digital products or whatever but it's like but music is like the attention is going to go off to 30 different streaming platforms that i'm getting paid from all of them is going to make me look cool to my audience right because they're like oh now such and such is rapping so they're going to buy in deeper into my brand narrative and my story and even the other things i have going on and then like you said it's like this shit work out i might have a legitimate career if it don't work out i can always be like well that was fun now back to the main thing you know just keep it back pushing wherever i was at before bruh do you remember Kim Kardashian dropping a song yes you remember Paris Hilton dropping a song yes i remember all of them doing it it was a weird time very weird time very weird time why are these people doing it right like why are they dropping music and not more comedy right more act legitimate acting and we know that a lot of people have tried acting right that some actors feel like shouldn't have and some of them feel like oh they've taken some of our spots because they already have some celebrity we know that's a real feeling in that space as well but the lasting value is different i feel like because of one major thing you can do it in the dark you can create music in the dark all right i'm in this room i create i can mess up a whole bunch of times i can have a producer work magic literally right mix engineer work magic literally master this thing and then it gets presented to the world but to do acting at scale i got to get good at this even if i do it badly because i got into a room that you know i normally wouldn't have based off of the talent where it is but you know my name the money connections whatever but still the audience looks at it like that's bad yeah right yeah and then you can't really keep doing that you can't ever get looking like look that is truly serious so it's just a different path and it's a different type of labor that comes with a lot of these other routes that i don't think music has music doesn't come with and definitely doesn't have the same level as potential embarrassment because you can at least give it your approval before it goes out yeah and i mean you said something too um i think is one of the bigger things with it is like the the perceived amount of talent you have to have to be successful in the thing like in acting i'm pretty sure there are bad actors out there they probably don't get far but it exists right yeah um but like you you don't have the potential to make it to being a top tier actress or actor without being like a pretty high-level actor saying i feel like with comedy right like comedy you're not hitting the big stages until you perfect the comedy at a certain level music is one of the only artistic skill says well you legitimately could make your very first song today and have an audience in the next couple of months so you haven't perfected it yet you haven't gotten you know let's just like quote-unquote good at it yet right like you may be bad to some people because it's such a preference thing and it like i was saying earlier like the internet jokes one terrible artist and to start them every at least one a year every year it's at least one and so it's like that could be used and the only difference between you influencer or celebrity with bad music and random artists with bad music is you already got an audience there's already people who gonna listen to it anyway just because you on it you understand you put it out so you have a little bit of an advantage in the head start that might kick off all the other things that are used to convince us like this is actually good you understand you know my example of all examples that i fall back on uh who what i'm gonna give you one guess i don't want to guess inside too many you know what i'm saying man i can already tell you like i was like your brother i don't know where you about to take this i can already tell you go to roger rush because this is an easy one that you wouldn't feel that way about rebecca black friday oh yeah a hundred percent a hundred percent bad song everybody joked about it being bad and it was so bad that in some way it was an earworm and good you can't forget it and now everybody knows what she is yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't have said that yeah i had at least three other songs so i was like now let me hurry up and slide a slide in the base before he put something out there so but it's a perfect example yeah like you cannot beat that it's so easily and specifically bad that it made people talk about it right that's what that's the other struggle um while i get into that in a second but like so people talked about it and they talked about it so much that they shared it oh you gotta hear how bad this is though yeah share it but dang it's catchy and now uh it's friday it's friday you got that jump going in your head or now you singing it almost in making fun of her but still you're still sharing it at the same time and that loop exists and then it became a thing i remember when she dropped the song a few years later that she was actually kind of good it's like oh she actually can sing a little bit or she's not all that bad like that became a story for a second song just because the first song was so bad that's so funny that's so funny we talked about this last episode so i think like if you fail big enough it's hard to lose yeah because you can flip it have whatever way you want to go so that to me is the disrespectful part with the influencer thing is like the the procedure amount of time you have to have because like either they come into it thinking like hey i am good at this thing right and i have a passion for it or they're coming to a thing and like i'll just other shit trash i could do it you know what i'm saying and i feel like a lot more lean towards the right because you know you have like you have the outliers like the dg's and like the paul brothers and things who could you know put out well i like dg so i think his music is great but the rest of paul brothers music was good i didn't actually have not listened to i don't remember just like default like i'm not really interested in checking it out i'm going to assume no i just remember them being the headline because one of them paid for like a gucci verse or something and then try to put out like gucci was fucking with me and gucci but no they paid me for that shit it came like a whole thing and i was like man the biggest narrative here is that they could afford a gucci feature because that was like they were big at the time they weren't like nowhere near where they are today right um but yeah like it's like because we worked with influencers that wanted to be artists and like there's some of them on like okay your music is good you probably really do care about this thing like people allow to have other creative interests outside of whatever the main thing is but i think that accounts for like maybe max 15 percent i think the other 85 percent is like oh that shit looks easy so i'm gonna get in that shit especially rap right every everybody thinks they can rap everybody they can rap everybody right you're just saying words there and i guess a keyword too you said is creative right most creatives don't see a limit to what they can do creatively yeah i think they can do everything they think they can do everything and oftentimes done that setters respect the other craft as it should be because should we've seen some bad celebrity music right um what's his name lamorn laverne laverne yeah laquif laquif my guy i tell that brother here so well i think yeah he's my brother hey man no don't hit me up don't hit me up i would look hey i i respect your your craft you know art wise and everything only reason i say i would love to work with you but i don't hit me up because i'm not a producer you know i just don't have the talent to make you better right that's just really not my thing but you want to be marketed like you have a great creative mind i'm sure you have a really cool concepts that that's my sauce that's my juice do not hit me up until it sounded i can't even play that game right and that's me respecting the craft that were producing right who else dropped some uh i feel like it was one other person that it was so bad and i respect them so much i don't mind commenting on how much of bad it was but then like my could be joined up a song or something i don't know i don't know you don't call me on that i don't know i'm gonna try to google real it feels right though like it feels like something he would have done let me see my dude jordan oh um the rock dropped us on recently yes the rock the rock that's what it was yes see the rock's music though i would not put on the level of lakith because it was good trash and what i mean it was theme trash it was trash with the with a clear message with a clear reasoning and a target a clear target target demographic it was like i understand what this is yeah it's like corporate so it's so it's supposed to not necessarily be great yeah that's what it felt like a corporate thing you know like oh this is one of them cheesy songs in a commercial or something like that right and you don't get hold of the same weight to it or it was like the the theme song to a kid show now you know some kids shows that some great theme songs but then there's also a lot of them that aren't necessarily all that hot and it's just cool you don't really judge it that way that's how i look at what the rock did because you can't even like the rock's image it'll be hard for him to have a good song that's that allows his image to be the image that it needs to be you know what i'm saying yeah like so so that's different right but it does go back to the theme right of what actually gets attention and when people get upset oh why is this bad music getting attention well remark ability right always going back to that theme the word remarkable what does it mean the word for marking about right someone's going to tell somebody else about it so good music like i don't know i might hear a good song but i might not necessarily share that song mid music not necessarily so all right mid music is almost good music these days right great all right we're getting better excellent off the chain however you want to say it that's the stuff that gets shared a lot of times right where it's like wow you bro you gotta hear this song you heard your song then on the other side of spectrum realistically most trash does not get shared yeah it really doesn't sometimes it feels like that but most trash does not get shared we're talking about without somebody having a platform anything like that the things that go viral is the trash word for marking about like bro this is so bad in the right way that is i gotta share this jump yeah you know i mean i got like rebecca back friday right it was perfect and it i don't even i don't it's almost good enough right and it's it's playing with that line where i gotta share it because it was like horrible and i can't listen to it no one's going to even you're not going to even play it or share it right one by one you listen to it yeah exactly you don't want to buy it well that's a whole another thing right like like just say poorly makes music that's the best way to say trash without even necessarily having to get into us the subjective ideas like this is hard to literally listen to yeah no one's really talking about that stuff right only reason you would talk about that is it's somebody who recorded it what somebody worth talking about right yeah it's like oh rock song was like just what is this right so now you go share and talk about it but most bad music doesn't get talked um talked about so it's like either the top of what i call good music mountain right or the top of the trash can those are the things right that get the attention everything below that i don't know man so i get it your music might be good but it's so much good music out here all right the new way the only the best way to make good music go viral these days it's almost like a bad way by somehow getting it branded as mid because people love to talk about how mid music is these days so if you can if you can catch that it's like we're not even saying it's trash it's like it's just nothing special so if you can i mean nobody really wants their music to be branded that way but that is the way that good music does get talked about these days yeah yeah bro i mean because good bad music stands out good oh regular good music does not stand out exactly it doesn't stand out man so you just gotta understand human psychology man like what what do you what do you when you think about what you spend your time on what you tell people about what you share because it was funny etc etc yeah what does it come down to what does it come down to what you literally do how much good music have you kept to yourself because it was just like good all right but of course the great music we know we try to share that as much as possible so like that it's such a complicated conversation i feel like people don't really give much attention to in terms of what artists are going through today in terms of the disrespect the genre is getting but i think on the flip side artists need to take advantage of it yeah a hundred percent right like a hundred percent y'all are doing y'all are missing the opportunity to take as much advantage of these other routes of creativity and monetization that others aren't all right so i have a a thought process so you you're aware how like the black community is always like by black by black right and we need to support our own and have you ever heard any conversations where people are like you need to build it almost only for black people yeah it's like this is ours our own and we don't serve anybody else that like that type of thing and for me you got to look at it holistically right it's just basic economics if we only circulate within us at some point right there's diminishment that happens all right things diminish because we don't have any new money coming in especially if others are taken from our community all right so it's a bar bill there's two sides of it one economically yes we have our own and we maximize how much we circulate within our community great and do for our self but you can't be mad at these other people who are not building specifically for black what you want to really track is what they do after they get the money yeah all right so let them get everybody like everybody else is getting everybody else money let us go get everybody else money and then bring it back to the community then we have those people who just want to stay within but you we need to have the full spectrum for the pot to grow otherwise if we're just circulating within us it doesn't move right it doesn't grow yeah so makes sense that's the whole way i look at it and in that example artists are the black people right artists all right cool do your artist stuff your monetization stuff but you got to expand all right into these other categories something about money and then apply it back to funding your music career apply it back to whatever your lifestyle and maintenance is as an artist so you can continue to pursue your dream otherwise if other people are taking from the community right while you're staying in your community your pot is only getting smaller while theirs grow so that's the game you got to have both a great example is the dude named Trevor Jackson i think that's his name it's confusing because there's a white one and a black one but the guy who's on not groupish grownish okay yeah right yeah he talks about like doing acting pretty much really just to find his music he has a respectable music career by the way let me see how many Spotify followers he has real quick or uh monthly listeners real real quick all right so he has 303,000 monthly listeners all right that's a very respectable that's crazy oh yeah he had a viral moment on tiktok recently too oh yeah because he did a remix of um some song yeah whose song was that he oh oh the pollin yeah pollin yeah bro yeah all these tracks again bro i can't get back yeah i can't get back hey the king man you want me over you might win me over you got me for the day um Trevor Jackson though yeah he had 303 monthly listeners and he's finding his music career right as an actor built the brand as an actor built the brand make that connection and the same way Will Smith went from music to acting that you can go from acting to music right i think the problem that you don't see a lot of people you don't see the reason you don't see a lot of people do it is because music's so much harder i think to monetize than acting the fans of small segment most infrastructure real infrastructure unless you get to the top i don't want to start no arguments actors and you know you like feel free to school me a little bit but i'm making a blanket statement i get it but let's look at it this way you can get an acting job and make a decent amount of money even when you're not like a big known name right there's like levels to make money on the way up yeah artists is very hard it's to make much at all like anything if you don't really have a name like it doesn't have to be the biggest name but it's all it's almost like the chasm is like zero to 60 right then you know 70 80 100 where acting and many other um careers have like zero 10 20 like they have a path to make money on the way up so if you're already big and you're making money and then you have the way the music industry works you're just like why do i even want to put my energy into that maybe i just might make some for fun that's the big one yeah but like why do i want to like do this and go that route they're getting that shame like oh there's what y'all doing over here oh no let me go back let me go back to where i can't make it too hard to make the money like it's just too much right so i definitely think that's a part of it but artists that there's so many ways right so much money in these other fields and spaces and places even within music right to focus on sink deals right versus just building your fan base that one specific way there's so many ways man like we of course we got the stories of damn your name not coming to me right now bro my bad oh cashmase cashmase getting this 100k plus writing a song for spanks all right DMing the CEO first of all which shot at Sarah Blakely i think she exited for probably like more than more than five billion i'm pretty sure selling spanks right um and then who else did something like that there was somebody else who wrote a sink deal that i know for some serious money yeah i know vance talked a lot about uh he got more money i think he said from the gta placement of his music then he's gotten from a lot of his music industry stuff who said that vance staples see he's in the last gta hey hey so there's so many other ways that you can look to to make the music work at least do that right at least do that do both do both for sure like like no every artist that's winning big is doing both yeah right like yeah we know that jay z Beyonce and you know those usual actors for sure have money and and their their music can do whatever they got real fans but a rihanna is in this new movie right what movie is that i don't even make that slow song that came out and they say she's gonna drop another one coming up soon don't do it to me but yeah like that's a sink deal right yeah all right everybody is going to get that extra cash yeah it doesn't make sense not to right it's just artists many of y'all y'all might not find that level success and find even more money just going straight to the other route yeah sometimes the music is just an entry point to the thing that's gonna really make you a lot of money you know and i think while we see it with bigger artists have gotten the opportunity to go through enough stuff that they realized that small artists haven't gotten to go through it yes they don't believe that until they get into there like damn y'all weren't lying this is not what i thought it was let me go sell socks it's like everybody's been selling socks from the jump clave black said bro i made a million off socks i believe him he said that he said in one of his songs something something right in the box i made a million off socks he did say that yeah he did i guess i just assumed that that was not socks he was talking about and i just said don't even talk about but maybe he was you might be right yeah i believe him he probably did just straight up shit oh man but yeah man the money is out there it's so many ways to get it even we just literally this is the whole conversation because we just talked about the experience the experiences right there's so many ways to brand it look at yourself as brand a brand look at yourself as intellectual property and look to build intellectual property with your intellectual property because that's the thing that could becomes easy to monetize you can sell that itself so then like okay now i don't own like let's just say adventure atl right at one point i was like well should we could just sell adventure atl the festival concept and name and then have nothing to do with it because we were gonna we're targeting a very specific audience and how it was being built right that's the way i was seeing it so and build the cloud and energy in that space and just like oh it could be on cups it could be on pencils it could be on clothes it could be in different experiences and spaces without me even having to do that work but how many uh they don't do what's his name anymore would would damn brother the festival is always festival og festival hippie did be festival what's called the brain brain it's my brain but let's just say burning man dang it almost came to me um i'm gonna find out there real quick but um i know carlo santana was there stockwood is that what it's called something would would dang whatever anyway if burning man stopped having a festival burning man as a brand could still move on keep going yeah i understand like literally people gonna are gonna have t-shirts right yeah that simple all right it's a thing that can be so so we should have like a deeper conversation on intellectual property and ideas and how that's gonna be very very different in this content space and era but you know we got a close out for today jacquory gotta go make some money i'm always a proponent for so so he threw it y'all but this is time this is time i'll be back but we appreciate y'all i did not mention at the beginning all right so hopefully you still here in the end tuesdays and thursdays tuesdays and thursdays come see us that's when we're dropping these episodes uh y'all have a great thanksgiving week travel safe uh safe travels safe eating don't eat too much you know i mean i'll put on too much pounds uh and don't get no uh was it diabetes and i don't know that's why i came to me but but other than that bro this is no labels necessary i'm shy i'm covered and we out peace


all here today. We have a wonderful program for you tonight. About over a little over a year ago, Shara called me and said she had this great idea for putting together music to some wonderful poetry that she's seen and known in Wisconsin. And she was going through ideas and we decided we're going to make this work. We're going to come up with this great idea. And so after all the planning and practicing, rehearsing tonight is the final night and we're so proud to present it to you this evening. So, without any further ado, Shara, to me, various of saying this with Poetsons. Thank you. Welcome to the premiere of Poetsons. It is an evening of gifts and surprises. The poets here first gave us a gift of their poems, which were the seeds of this project. None of the poets have heard the music that I've written using his or her poem. And that is a surprise and my gift to them. The musicians, the poets, and I hope that you will all enjoy the variety of these expressions in the twelve poems and pieces. And we thank you for the gift of your presence. Our Poetsons, Wisconsin Year and Song and Premier, will take us on a poetic musical journey tonight. Although each Poetson can stand alone, all of the Poetsons are related and were created as a musical unit, flowing with ease from one month to the next, just as our months and seasons do in Wisconsin. For each month, I'll read program notes about each Poetson and then introduce the poet to read his or her poem. Following the reading, we'll hear the musical Poetson. Let's begin with January. Poet Antler's poem, Looking Up at the Milky Way Thought. Looking up at the Milky Way Thought, uses medieval chant-like harmonies of parallel fits to convey the meditative, mystical emotion of Antler's poem. The chant's motif intensifies with the growing insistence of the poet's vision to at last relax and to ascending arpeggio, piano progression which foreshadows a melodic refrain of the next composition, Spring Sonnet. It's my pleasure to introduce our first poet this evening, Antler. Looking up at the Milky Way Thought, what must it be like for fish, watching ice form on the surface of their lake, or looking up at fish frozen in the ice above them, and feeling the water thickening around them till they too can't move, but are still alive, looking up seeing falling snow, slowly cover the ice till darkness engulfs their realm. A poet on his back, on snow-covered ice, looking up at the Milky Way. This grows into a viola solo of Section B, which introduces new melodics of the piece. The careful listener emphasizes the relationship between the themes of these two poems, one about winter times freezing and dying, the other about spring times sat, being set free, and life's return. She felt inspired to wrap the seeds of each of these expressions inside the other, since they are. Please welcome our poet-poten, who will read her poem, Spring Sonnet. Of melting snow, and February's page is facing out, then down the basement steps I quickly go to gather brace and bit, and two, and spout. I make a trail from tree to tree, at each I pause, acknowledge spirit's role, then slowly, slowly set the sweet sap free, insert a smile in every dripping hole while the sky is reamed by eager wings as geese bore northward toward their summer home. The sap of spring that rises in these sings to join the goose cries, I am not alone. The geese and I are here because we know that life is stirring deep beneath the snow. It's a variation, a contest of sorts, as the tenor tries to keep pace with the Irish flutus to break the musical code and earn his coveted emerald gene. For the month of March, please welcome Jack Jane, who will read his poem. No matter how noble my paternity, I must search and seek till eternity. To unwind my double helix strand, to break the code, I demand at least one emerald.  She squeezes more than one meaning out of the word to enhance the overall piece. It's my pleasure this evening to introduce Jeff Penebash to read this poem, Super America Invades Polish America. Polish America. Right across the street from Kosciuszko Park on the Polish south side of Milwaukee, the new Super America gas station. Sword upraised, the equestrian statue of Kosciuszko charges the Super America as futile, valiantly as the Polish cavalry charged the invading Nazi tanks. Ms. Charbonneau will first howl herself like then she will cue, she slowly lowers her arm, she will cue the audience to howl three different times. The audience howls should be fairly quiet and distant, so the music underneath. Since our poet Charlotte Potei can not be with us tonight, it is my pleasure to read her poem. It is a night for walking, the moon rides high, I follow the river, dry grasses crunch underfoot, soft gurgle of water in the dark, a cricket chirps, frogs fall suddenly silent, and I smell a wildness on the wind, feeling warmth near me as but a leap away, head held high, ears bricked forward, our eyes meet, one soft wine escapes her lips, then she turns, lobes away, moments later and she waits. From a poem by the composer begins with the soprano singing about a special summer trident suing string interlude. The vocalist enters on the triplet's motif and spins it out for the strings. The piece returns to the beginning lines. Need a pleasure to introduce our composer this evening and poet for the month of June, Sharon Zephus reading her poem, Kerosene Light. Before bed, dad would like he to raise his hands casting shadows on the walls and we'd be off, stumbling whatever rolled into our heads. Fragments of light twirled on the sowing spinning farther and farther away from the stones of our words until I would start to slip deliciously dizzy towards sleep to the tinkling of crystals. Ms. Youngquist fireworks flower's poem is so lovely in itself but the composer just couldn't leave it alone and she added further meanings and impressions. Thus the piece opens with a military style instrumental section based on the national anthem. Fragments of the anthem travel from key to key mingled with drum and cymbal rolls creating an unsettling effect appropriate following the September. Then comes the lush vocal rendering of the poem with rising and falling, falling triadic chords as the voices express the rich magnificence of youngquist fireworks flowers. This moves into the burst looms lines added by Ms. Zephus which hearken back to the bombs bursting in air words of the national anthem. These climatic phrases include a dissonant active electric bass part and a rock music drum beat to call to mind another turbulent time in our country's history the 1960s. The work dissolves quickly after the flowers fall into ash exploding light showing the skies over we fold up our lawn chairs and we head for home. Please welcome Mary and Youngquist who will read her poem for the July 9th. Explode into floral fantasies golden dandelions amethyst asters sapphire hydrangeas ruby shooting stars emerald sunflowers crystal chrysanthemums petal sparkle shimmer fall drifting drifting drifting with a sassy trumpet strings provide a lazy drawl seventh and ninth chord later in the song as Zephus includes a reference to the tune somewhere over the rainbow as a tribute to the memory of Ms. Ross's father about whom the poem was written. Please welcome Jean Ross who will read her poem Lackner and Rain. You sat in the trailer smoking a cigar smiling because you knew how I would look drenched by the downpour that began when I was all the way down the road picking the berries with no shelter and no shortcuts through the stands of birches brushing thickets just that long walk back on slick asphalt to the accompaniment of pelting rain the steady watersqueak of sodden shoes opening the trailer door to warmth and laughter the joke was sweet the shared amusement yes but even better the taste of those berries black beginning with a brief musical reference to a short shimmering piano interest of the piece a run of ascending thirds ariana walking in field in the sun the color of happiness in siphoning in the twilight and its stalks shimmering like her hair in the week in the sun setting like seeds on the wind above the punctuation of the pizzicato accompaniment in this work the composer treats the two voices as one instrument throughout the piece they nearly always sing the same words at the same time the one voice often follows the other contrapuntally harmonizing the musical line the safest one is to create a unified human texture rather than a duet with independent or interacting parts to help express the universal experience of happy solitude in the poem for the month of october please welcome cx dill hunt who will read this poem on the way to riley on the way to riley even before my bike thinks of stopping i am hopping happy to be reaching into these half open pods to release some late fall milkweed seeds and now before i realize one pod is empty i go on to the next and the next flying from pod to pod even before i realize that i am standing not riding and that all the pods are already empty except for one getting on and off my bike until i get to the one late fall milkweed pod the one with a single seed somehow missed by the wind the last seeker and i dig it out set it sailing and before i know it the bike is with me again and again the trail slides on slides along happy as a single seed hopping through space not knowing a name or a number just floating never thinking of stopping or landing and i am spinning along kettle around kettle pedaling along on this late fall day on this trail on the way to riley the three vocalists interact throughout warning each other to be truthful be truthful in a rising metal this musical snippet was actually sung by pamina to popo gano in mozart's opera the magic flute toward the end of act one after popo gano asked her what they should say to the approaching sarista pamina replies the truth the truth to popo gano who has a history of line the first time his safest heard the opera years ago the little motif struck her as a very funny and it popped back into her head as she was working on this piece begging to be included first the women chided ten or two be truthful as he is about to relay the amazing absurd things he saw in his fall drive later he warns them right before they describe what they saw on their north country drive which of course tops what he just said and finally it is you the audience it's your turn to scold the three singers to be truthful be truthful as queued by the piano player and the conductor before they join forces to get out the message to all non-believers but can you believe it you the audience you are invited to participate in this song by speaking or singing the phrase be truthful be truthful waving your fingers to the singers as led by conductor Earl Kenevers he is right here the audience phrase is the same one the vocalist will sing to each other earlier in the piece the safest will give the starting chord on the piano followed by mr. Kenevers conducting the audience's words be truthful be truthful you introduce Harvey Taylor who will read his poem getting ready leaves alchemyzing and blushing right fence posts were pulling stocking caps down over their gnarly ears old telephone poles were tying woolen scarves around their skinny necks way up high near the wires and a scarecrow surrounded by a flock of pumpkins grinned as she put her mittens on the work of many people made this program happen i'd like to thank the poets the musicians and conductor for bringing the music to life the program runs so smoothly first united lutheran church for use of a rehearsal space the arts center for putting this event in their new live series and my family for doing a lot of work behind the scenes and supporting me in this endeavor again thank you all for coming you are invited to a reception in the outer hall following the concert there will also be a table set up where some of the poets will have books available and there will be a place you can order a cd recording of this program if you're interested thanks again for the gift of your presence in snow moon is entitled the poem by louisa love reach down galas his love reach galas december lament for summer's green ballads to return lends itself to the bluesy style used the vocal line consists of a progression of descending minor six cadencing on a rising chromatic hook to cap off each verse after the third verse the composer introduces a rousing rendition of the on wisconsin march with the words changed into a fight song against winter the bluesy lament returns to eventually wind down in a mournful chromatic descending phrase on the word moon but that's not all for the truly astute listener the composer embedded fragments from two earlier pieces towards the end of wisconsin snow moon the vocal line on the words winters the only one choosing the tunes ends on the rising refrain from february's poem spring sonnet and directly following the mezzo's next words under our loyal in wisconsin snow moon the trumpet and saxophone articulate together a foreknown phrase that echoes the chant motif from the january selection looking up at the melky way thought this brings us full circle in tonight's performance of poet songs the wisconsin year is my pleasure of course to introduce liza leverage gallus to read her poor wisconsin snow moon wish the aloof winter sun would drop its attitude and cozy up to you just like last summer crooning gee baby ain't i good to you while you slip into your easy clothes to flirt with the breeze except this torch song only happens in your dreams tuck tight as you are in your hefty afghan icicles flicking a jazzy upbeat on rims of frosted windows summers green balance beneath huddle drifts winter is the only one choosing the tunes under our loyal wisconsin snow moon