So I'll give you guys my exact blueprint. I could care less if Spotify knows about it, doesn't know about it. I got over 200 records in BMI. The scale you a lot of do as an independent artist every day is 3,000 streams or below. So if I got 200 records and I'm doing 3,000 streams or below, I can do around 600,000 streams a day. You understand what I'm saying? But I gotta do it through an assortment of records. So I'm not allowed to have one record blow up, but I understand how I'ma get paid every day. So if I can do 600,000 streams a day times 30 days in a month, I know how to do my 18 million streams. I still know how to make my 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 dollars. What's up? What's up? What's up? I'm Brain Man Sean. And I'm Colby. And we are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast Episode Number. I can't remember what episode number this is. Yeah, we gotta start with the numbers, man. Every Tuesday, every Thursday, you can catch us streaming on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, whatever. You stream your podcast. Now chopping it up about music, money, content creation, economy, so many of the interesting things. Today is a very special day because we got a special guest up on here. And he's not like many of these other guests on these podcasts. I'm talking about Chad. Focus now, Chad, before you say anything, before you get up in there, I need people to know just a little bit about who's talking in one of those, one of just to talk around you so then you can clear it up from here. Next. So I'ma read the headline. There you go. Rap artist Chad Focus. Sentence to more than two years in federal prison for wire fraud and conspiracy. Rap artist spent more than $4 million on employer's credit card to promote his music. I'ma leave it up there. I could get into the details, the very newsy reading of it all, but that's pretty much the narrative that's been pushed. You've been sentenced to two years in federal prison for wire fraud and you spent more than $4 million on employer's credit card to promote your music. Leaving that Chad Focus is in the building, his building, because this is, we over the internet on this one. Appreciate you hopping on. What's that? It's not just that, because as y'all see, this man has a lot of thoughts and a lot of expertise on, it's not about clearing up his story or whether he's a rapper, music or not. Like he got game when it comes to the bots. There's been a vice special about him, right? I mean, there was other people in the special, but to me, I really saw that as a special about you as like one of the kings of that world and how bots work in the music industry. But without further ado, man, again, appreciate you being on Chad and I wanna go ahead and let you talk. We can start from where you want in that regard. Most definitely, man. Well, appreciate it, man. Brain man, Sean, my boy Jacory, man, appreciate y'all having me on the platform, man. It's good to be home. As you know, man, all marketing is marketing, I guess, right? All publicity is good publicity. So to be honest with you, Sean, I think at the end of the day, just being put on everybody's radar, man, I don't know, I guess it kind of worked out for the best, right? So I put it like this, man. My background, Sean, man, born and raised Baltimore, Maryland, bro, home of Kevin Louse, Cisco, Mario, maybe a couple of artists that you guys are familiar with. But as far as us being here, bro, it's not a big city full one music opportunities or industry at all, bro. We kind of isolated from everything. You guys most familiar with Baltimore as far as the wire, you know, the headlines as far as the violence, bro, and the poverty and a lot of things we go through.  No pun intended, bro, that was built around, you know, people concentrated on their skill sets and focus on their creative abilities. And that's really how chair focus started, bro. As far as like how the headlines go, man, I literally just got home, bro. I had to go ahead and serve two years. I ended up at a Petersburg FCI.  So, you know, I'm just touching back home, man. They got something called the drug program. When Gucci main went to prison, bro, it's called the residential drug assistance program, bro.  So I'm home right now. I'm doing my house detention, you know, I'm taking care of business one day at a time. And, you know, we here, man, while I was away, bro, they dropped the Vice TV doc. The Vice TV doc was about how I was able to kind of like take advantage of like what was going on in the industry. Most importantly, bro, we was talking about scouting the concert tickets. So I was one of the early guys, man, that was out here inflicting the concert tickets when I seen what ticket masks and those guys was doing. So behind the scenes, man, I've been a marketer, I've been an executive, I've been a musician, I've been anything and everything you need to get the job done. So I guess I don't know where we want to start at, man. We want to start a couple of years ago. We want to start when we certify focus music, like what about you, Matt? Well, first, I wasn't aware that they dropped this Vice special while you were in. So that was recorded before we went in? Thanks, bro. So when I got, so look, when I initially got arrested, bro, I got hit with what's called a no contact clause and I was hit with a gag order. So when I originally got sentenced, bro, I wasn't allowed to come on the internet and speak at all about my case. They disbanded my record label was sort of like the murdering situation. I woke up one day, everything was gone, bro. Stores, warehouses, cars, houses, everybody on my label or anybody that was employed, whether it was local radio or artists, producers, I wasn't allowed to have any contact with them. So I didn't know what was going on as far as like, who was in my circle that was right? Who in my circle was wrong? Who went to the left? Who went to the right? I came home, bro, on house arrest. So I spent two years plus COVID trying to fight my case and figure out how we was going to deal with the situation. If you guys notice, when you see my headline, it said, chair focus and nobody else. And it also say the unnamed company. So if you guys have seen the documentary, I was the search engine marketing executive for a company called the Gore Publishing. All right, it's a billion dollar firm here in Baltimore, man. All types of content publishing and financial news. I was the guy that built one of the early, early bot networks. And this was for like Google, man, like 12 years ago in my twenties. So I was making a lot of money, man. Incorporate America, making a lot of money in Wall Street. It started in content publishing first before I got the music publishing. And that's sort of like the background, guys. When I got locked up, man, the headline was dope because everybody's looking at, okay, the amount of money. And I think the click bait was what was really popping about it. Because if you didn't know about my story at all, I think that was a perfect introduction to Baltimore rapper takes all this money from some unnamed company and everybody went crazy. Definitely went viral, you know what I'm saying? You guys spoke about it. Hit breakfast club, CNN, MSNBC. And while this is going on, Sean, I'm just looking at the type of money it would cost to go ahead and duplicate that kind of campaign. That's millions and millions of dollars of people covering your, you know, covering your story. That's the type of syndication and going viral that you can't kind of predict. You can't do anything except for reverse engineer that and hope that you can pull it off again. You get what I'm saying? So as far as me, bro, I had to deal with the situation. If you guys are familiar with Baltimore that same year, our mayor got prosecuted by the same prosecutor. We lost our police commissioner. We had a couple of lawyers that's really prominent where I'm from. Chad Folk has got locked up. And right now, bro, the same exact prosecutor is also attacking Marilyn Mosby. She's the young black lady here in Baltimore, bro, that did the Freddie Gray case when they killed the cops. So we got a lot of stuff going on in Baltimore that if you hip to like politics and what's going on as far as your power players in Baltimore, we all going through a kind of shakedown right now. Interesting, interesting. So the story, like you said, I remember doing the video on you. And like you said, there's a lot of other people that talked about the video.  And kind of gave a light to, hey, there's this rapper in Baltimore. But at the same time, I feel like most of the people with their perception of you was like, who's this guy?  Like, how he spend this much money. I don't know who this artist is still and that he's waste with how he spend that much money. And you're not the most poppin and artist in the world. As you know, I didn't talk about it that way in terms of the video. But like that was the energy I saw. I think even in my comment section and other people who talked about it. So like, how was it seeing that vibe that was coming from things? You know what's crazy, bro? It was weird to me because I put it like this. As far as like being in the music industry, man, I got some extremely powerful players, you know that I'm associated with. So if you get a dialback to like the documentary, you'll see I'm tapped in with your executives, your people at 300 entertainment. I've been a billboard. We did Revolte TV. I'm cool with Dantavio, Double X shell, all the platforms, right? And so what my job to do was shown was kind of like expose the industry for what it is, bro. For somebody like myself, I did have a huge budget and I did everything that you could do as far as the major artists, but I did it independently. So for me to have the biggest billboard in New York City, not for just, you know, a couple months, bro, for an entire year. This wasn't a digital billboard. This was vital, right? So I got the city bank building. I got 42nd Street. I had the biggest billboards in the entire city. Now, if nobody paid attention to those, that meant that anybody could go ahead and buy that kind of marketing. That mean that you can say whatever you want on any type of platform and nobody actually doesn't need checks and balances. All right? I'm from the marketing game. So when I said I was a number one artist in the world, I think having the biggest billboard and just being out here and dragging your nuts, you know what I'm saying? That right there qualified as being a number one market in the world, right? In my mind, now if somebody else would have done that billboard, whether it's a Jay-Z or Drake, would y'all have noticed? That's the thing that we gotta think about. It's a young black dude. It's a young black face up there wearing a suit.  Even the creative was really loud. You know what I'm saying? Even the colors that I picked. I really did it for real, Sean, because Clear Channel owns the radio, all right? Clear Channel owns I Heart Radio. And you coming from the industry where you gotta realize how you gonna get your stuff syndicated as best as possible. Well, I'm an independent artist, bro. So if I can go ahead and buy billboards, that was a slick way for me to not do P.O. to get my records on the radio. You understand what I'm saying? I was more concerned with becoming rich and successful than actually becoming famous because we all know how that go, bro. A lot of these guys in the industry are famous, but they don't get applied to pissing. They don't own their masters. They don't own their publishing. They don't own their rights. They don't own their likeness. So I was just taking a reverse process, bro. I was working backwards. Like if we get successful when I get all the connections, I lock in with all the DJs. I got all of my situations set up as far as my sound exchanges broke, my VMIs, my distribution. We can figure out the famous part at the back end. I'm doing all the same things the famous guys is doing. You understand what I'm saying? We going on trips. We taking everybody to BET Awards. I'm performing with Lil Baby, Money Bag, Yo, Fat Joe, Rick Ross. At the end of the day, becoming viral for what happened, people could go back and see what we did. Like there's no way this guy shouldn't have been famous. He got a record with T-Pain. The best record that T-Pain put out in the last four or five years. Not the one with Tory Lanez when he did a remix of his old record. You know, not the joint with Drizzy. We got Dance with Me.   You go look at all the DJs I had planted from your DJ SNSs to your DJ apps to sus one. I can go down the line of everybody on the DJ pool that played my record. I can go down the days that I was on Power 105 and your Hot 97s. So all of this is happening, bro. And everybody acting like they not paying attention. But if I'd assigned to an empire, Sean or in a scope or Atlantic, it would have been a lot more energy around my movement as if it was like a Cardi B or your eight boogies of those guys. So it really was for me to show like, yo, look, if you're an independent artist, it's a ceiling. It's a ceiling that you get no matter what your budget looks like or your skillset or how many resources you get, bro. And that's just how the industry works. So you got to accept the successes that you do get. You might not be mainstream, but your success might be mainstream. Extremely wealthy. Why do you think it works like that? Well, you got to stand this control, bro. The system is controlled by the guys. We do got gatekeepers. We do got to respect what the industry is, right? It's also a reason why guys like me and you didn't exist as far as your platform, my platform 10 years ago, 20 years ago, because we the information, bro. Not only a yard of information, yard of information, I'm the case study. So I'm the one that walked in all these different buildings, bro. I'm the one that knows how the bots work. I'm the one that knows about your media base, how you can go here and pay to get on your radio stations, your playlist. The artists that we love guys, they aren't involved in this process because they don't own the records. They don't own the actual product. So as far as making a product, become a mainstream thing, as far as getting a brand out to the people, they not in those rooms. They not a part of those marketing discussions. You understand what I'm saying? They not a part of those balance sheet discussions or those loan discussions or what kind of money we putting up. These guys are just the creative, bro. So the guys that we come to love, man, the ones that we see in the face, they aren't a part of the decision making. Quick second, have you ever seen an artist catch some traction and then they start to move? The numbers start to grow. They might even go viral, but then fast forward a year from now, somehow their numbers haven't really grown that much. They dropped back close to the same monthly listeners they had before the traction and viral moment. Well, that's because you have to know how to convert those moments into careers. And we've done this again and again with not only songs, but artists. And so has J.R. McKee who's been a part of helping artists like Lil Durk, Rod Wave, Justin Scott and Money Long. And we just did a collab where J.R. McKee does a step-by-step breakdown of how he took Money Long from zero to millions of monthly listeners and winning a Grammy over Beyonce, Mary J. Blize, and Jasmine Sullivan. Check out this breakdown while we still have it up. You can check it out at www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. Again, that's www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. Back to the video. I want to get your opinion on a couple of trend topics that I think fall within your expertise. But before I even get to that, you just talked about some things that you feel like they don't know about. How much money it takes, media-based, all these things. So explain media-based and why that's important. All right, so look, in your local city, man, you got the DJs that you feel like a poppin', right? You got the guys that everybody knows. What you got to realize is that there are certain DJs that are affiliated with what we call media-based, where when they play your record, the statistics count towards you actually charting. They count towards you actually getting paid for your performance royalties and mechanical royalties. So in your local city, you might be the man, but nobody has ever heard your record in any of these college towns, Vegas, Montana, Detroit. Nobody knows who you are outside of your market. So what I did, Sean, that was different is that I affiliated myself with different DJ pools.  And then I specifically sought out the DJs that was also affiliated with media-based, which means that I need you guys playing my record on the mix shows. I need to be a part of the 9 p.m. rotation. I want the strip club plays. I want the inner club plays.  I want these marketing dollars to count towards the statistics.  I want my Spotify stream to count. So it was stuff that I learned, bro, early on. Like we like SoundCloud. SoundCloud doesn't count towards you getting your RIAA certifications. You understand what I'm saying? You can go ahead and use your Audio Max.  So I started to learn, man, that cloud and popularity didn't translate the money. And I was trying to find an equal balance, Sean. So with the media-based specific DJs, I know about like the coalition ones, you know, like the MP3 wax ones. Like how are you able to tell which of these DJs are a part of it? Is it just you networking, you talking, and it comes up or is there like a space where you were able to see like, hey, these are the DJs I need to go rock with to make this plan work the way I needed to? Let me ask you this. Have y'all ever heard of an app called Spinfire? Y'all familiar with Spinfire at all? No, I'm not. I don't know what it is. Six years ago, me and Rallo, shout out to my boy Rallo, he's still locked down. Me and Rallo was the face of an independent app called Spinfire. And the idea of it was to take independent artists or major artists in their records, and for us to have a quality control check-in for when they were actually breaking our records. You know how it is.  What if you could see those statistics? Now, we market the guys, man. We understand the money is in the data. So we can't see that we spent $1,000 and how much that translated into as far as plays or reach or downloads, it don't make sense for us. So for me to have a big budget and for me to go to the DJ pool and maybe like give me $15,000, we're gonna send you in all the cities, make sure you pop in. I had to go out here and hit the boots, hit the ground running and find and meet these DJs specifically and ask them, yo bro, are you media-based certified? Are you acclimated? Can we help you? How can I provide value to you as a DJ? You need help branding? All right, cool. You need a clothing line, you need some merch. So I started to build relationships which still exists today, fellas, that was bigger than just being an artist. It was about trying to build an infrastructure. Certain DJs don't even have a clue about media-based. So some of them think they're the guy, bro, but you playing in the minor leagues. You know, we trying to play in the big leagues. Your biggest artists and your biggest record labels, they have an assortment of media-based DJs. They know exactly who to send the record to to not only make a splash as far as your clout, as far as your social media, but also in the industry. Just like you guys know how the Oscars and the Grammy Awards work, not everybody's opinion matters. So this media-based thing, man, is real specific. They also only wanna play records of proven artists. So that's why I did Dance with Me and then I did a Dance with Me remix with T-Pain because people might not understand that his resume alone is bigger than 90% of artists in the world. He got some of the most Grammy, some of the most features.  Now we just talked about networking last episode and bringing value to people and having something that you take to the, bring to the table by a mutual exchange. And it sounds like if I understood that correctly, not only did you find media-based DJs, it sounds like you helped some DJs get access to media-based and be certified that way, right? 100%. So you just gave me a sales like, hey, bro, yeah, you already got the skills, you're doing what you're doing, but you're not even getting fully recognized on the level that you should be. So you plug me in now, of course, I'm gonna be like, yo, this is my guy, I'm gonna play chat whenever I can. Man, Sean, listen, bro, I'm from Baltimore, bro. I don't know if you know any Baltimore artists. We got young moves, we got YBS Scholar, Lil Scuder was here. Like you guys might not be familiar with some of these guys. I don't know if you know the, maybe the biggest artist you might know from Baltimore, Shorty Shorty. You heard of Shorty Shorty? Yeah.  Nowhere, no clubs, no strip clubs, no parties, no functions, no bowling parties, no birthday parties. Specifically, these DJs will not support a local artist who was bigger than just being local. Yo, he don't make the sound that we like. He don't make a record for us. He don't pull up in a strip club. My nigga, he's at Coachella. You understand what I'm saying? He's not coming to Norma Jeans, bro. He's at Coachella, bro. He's headlining, bro. He's on the B side and A side. He's marketing across the world. So what you'll notice is that when you become too big, yo, for your local market, especially in a place like this, it can also hinder you, all right? So behind the scenes, Sean, I was playing a role like what you and Jacoby are playing, which is I was informing the guys about the game. I didn't create focused music to become the artist. I had six artists, all my family members, guys. I signed them to the record situation. What I learned from them is that, yo, being an artist is more about hard work than talent. I need a guy on my team that goes to sleep last and wakes up first. Well, that was me. You understand what I'm saying? I watch you how Drake and Kanye West build their situation. Yo, I'm paying the producers. I'm paying the writers. I'm paying the ghost writers. I own all the equipment. I own the studio. I wake up, I work hard. I eat good. I take care of my family. So all intangibles as far as being an artist, guys, I had that easily. I played ball growing up. Learning how to become a musician and do the artwork wasn't the hardest part. It was about assembling the team and letting the guys that was around me know, yo, be humble enough to know that, yo, I might just be what we need to get this movement off the ground. Yeah, you might rap better, but I sell better. Yeah, you might perform better, but I entertain better. And it also comes down to interviewing and branding and being a people person, bro.   That's why my story, bro, is so important because it's bigger than hip hop. When you doing vice TV, bro, and it goes to CNN and you see these young guys that look like me and you, we can talk this talk, we understand his marketing, we understand bots, we understand engineering and algorithm, we understand networking. I'm doing podcasts, bro, on platforms I never thought I'd be on before. It extends past hip hop. But I'm glad to sit with you, brothers, because y'all consciously understand like, this is what's next. These conversations people don't have. Now we can do it all. We can talk about all the jewelry. We can talk about all the money. That's cool, bro, but what about the impact? The impact is that yo, right now, we sparking a conversation that you guys been in the game for a minute. And without me being known, I got more media-based DJs than Interscope Records, Atlantic Records. I could take a record right now with the right budget angle number one. You know, we talk about the budget, right? The budget, what QC say, about $200,000, $250,000? That's because you gotta pay the right people at one time to play your record in unison. It gotta happen at the right time. If you wanna go out here and you wanna do the bots, you can't do the bots to a certain type of level unless you are assigned to a major label. So that's where I went wrong at fellas. I sweep the system and the algorithm independently and they get different structures and they got different ways to go ahead and find out when you're gaming a system and you're not a major artist. I can't do what a 50 cent or a French Montana or a little baby can do.  It's gonna trigger the fraud detection. Now, if you are a major artist, they'll still detect it, but they gonna let it go, right? Yeah, they gonna let it go, Sean. And not only that, you gotta realize, man, you know, places like Sony or whatnot, they all got stakes in the Spotify. So if you think about why the system makes sense, if Sony is paying for the bots to get streamed, boom, the artist is blowing up inorganically, organically, everybody's gonna win at the end of the day because you building up a star. So now they gonna come back to Spotify to find a little baby. Sony's made money, Spotify made money, they in bed together. The artist is making their, you know, saying profile bigger.  If any independent artist in a couple of street dudes with their own bag and their own Intel can come and master the system like that, bro, they can't win no more. So my job was to break the industry and to show everybody how you could break it.  Now you got an audience. So we could just use their platforms to build our own audience and monetize it like that. Like a little Russell, you know what I'm saying? Like your Ryan Leslie's, who people don't speak about. One of the most genius things you ever done is came up with a super phone that connecting directly with your clientele. You think about the Nipsey hustle. These guys is geniuses, bro. They bigger than just being artists. These guys are pioneers as far as how you can really be an artist independently to another level, bro. Nobody speaks about that as much as they should. Yeah, man, you actually just confirmed something I said a couple of episodes ago. Remember, I said like the industry doesn't care about the bot thing because of morality. They care about it because they want to make sure they can control the people like gaming the system, right? Like if I don't have any skin in your game, why do I want you to see that way? So now that you've known that and you experienced that, has it changed your approach to like how you're running some of these marketing strategies, knowing that like you might hit a ceiling where you have to like get over that hump or are you still running things the exact same way? I put it like this, because what it did, bro, is it helped me kind of like, it actually helped me out. It helped me kind of see like where the loopholes were. You guys know how all loopholes work. And so what I'll say is this, the artists that contact me and that want to work now, I know it's a certain ceiling that they can go through. So I'll give you guys my exact blueprint. I could care less if Spotify knows about it, doesn't know about it. Like I'm going to get paid regardless, right? They banned my artist profile. So chair focus is no longer on Spotify, but what they can't ban is your metadata because if they ban your metadata, they got to ban everybody's metadata. There are certain artists that have been able to re-upload their tracks, but they had to change the name because there's different levels of fraud detection that's going to happen, all right? For me personally, I got over 200 records in BMI. The scale you're allowed to do as an independent artist every day is 3,000 streams or below. So if I got 200 records and I'm doing 3,000 streams or below, I can do around 600,000 streams a day. You understand what I'm saying? But I got to do it through an assortment of records. So I'm not allowed to have one record blow up, but I understand how I'm going to get paid every day. So if I can do 600,000 streams a daytime, 30 days in a month, I know how to do my 18 million streams. I still know how to make my 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 dollars. It's by becoming an independent label, which they don't want us to be as young black men.  So that's how I make my money now, guys, because I understand how to spread the love. Prior to this, get to the money was my record. Dance with me was my record. I was running up the streams a million a day, a million, two million, three million.  It just wasn't working for them. So that's really how I charted guys, because I was out here trying to break that shit and let it be known. Like, yeah, we figured it out. And it's not for me, as far as being an artist, guys, I'm like, you guys, at the end of the day, I love the music, I love the culture, yo, but I love the game more than that. Yeah, I got you. So it sounds like the strategy changed from, how can I blow up this single to be as big as possible to like, no, how can I just focus on making my entire catalog be so big that it escapes under the radar? Is that what you're saying?  And that's how I communicate with the artists that come to me now. Like, yo, bro, if you wanna do a million streams, give me an album. Give me an album and give me 30 days and let's make it make sense. And if the algorithm takes off with people like this record and the way that we put it on different playlists and we move shit around, then you wanna know which record works for you. So let the data tell you, if you are an artist, the one thing I want you to know if you watching Contra brand agency is let the audience, let the people tell you what the record is. Just do the initial marketing. You'll figure it out. You'll figure out what they like.  So that's a can thing. So I like to do that, guys. I like to figure out what's working first before I go ahead and scale up.  Yeah, Tuck, what about that, Tuck? Well, yeah, I was just gonna say why we on the subject of bots. I want people listening who haven't seen like the bike special and just heard that headline that I noted about you in the beginning to know it goes a lot deeper than you're just a guy who's using bots. You know what I'm saying?  You're moving at a higher intellect than someone would give credit for just any artist using bots. So can you explain how you got into the bot world, why you're in the inner workings of it just so people get a story of, get a better understanding of just even how it works beyond just, hey, you're an artist and you find somebody to pay for your bots. Thanks. So look, as of right now, this crazy guy, like I said, I just came home in January. I'm coming home, man. I'm looking at artificial intelligence and chat GPT and I'm like, oh, all right, it's about to be a wrap. But y'all see what artificial intelligence is going like. Videos, content, editing, copyrighting, like the world about to change right before our eyes. I was into the Boston Engineering Fellows 2011 and I got into the marketing world and it first started guys with the search engine, which is Google, Yahoo, Bing. Companies paid me a lot of money to help them rank on the first page of Google because if they had certain keywords that was bringing them traffic, they didn't have to spend money on paid advertising. The best client is an organic client, somebody who feels like they found something. But people don't realize organic is just a strategy. It's just a turn, fellas, it's just a strategy. It's just a way that people feel like they found something, it's a fulfillment. You can even do paid or you can do organic. When I came in a game, bots were used to manipulate the search engines to make people's content show up higher than others. So if you got YouTube and your name is Brandman Sean and you're doing a video on Gucci Mane and it's 20 million people searching for Gucci Mane that day and your video shows up first, Sean gonna get 18 million of those views. He probably gonna be rich overnight off of advertisements and clicks and whatever else he's doing. He might have to invest in his visibility. So Sean doesn't have to be hot 97 or complex or DJ academics or say cheese if he got a guy like me because I can use bots to make Sean an authority for whatever content he's posting on the internet. So that was the initial way I got into this lane. I was working for Wall Street companies that weren't as big as Wall Street Journal, that weren't as big as the street and they wanted their financial news information to show up in front of everybody in the world. So I learned how to tweet the game that helped publishers in the financial news space get visibility for big, big projects. They paid me a lot of money based off the front end and the back end sales. So I became a millionaire guys in my early 20s. When I seen how that industry worked this was before Spotify title and Apple music came out. When that came out the same exact contractors I was using from Upwork guys and Fiber.com they transitioned right along with me from the Google search engines to social media to YouTube. Social media, YouTube, Google, the one thing that nobody has a conversation with Spotify, they're all search engines and they own respects. They're just search engines with different topics and different niches. The concept is exactly the same. So the ability to tweak an algorithm based on traffic, views, likes, comments, streams it's synonymous in every industry fellas. So this don't just start and stop you with the music industry.   If you understand the music industry labels been buying artists records forever. If you go back to 50 cent and you go back to Kanye West they were buying those records to make sure one guy went platinum. They were making sure that she went number one on Billboard because you were number one then clout took over and then people really came to buy the records and engage. So being number one has always been a goal. Whether you were in the music industry whether you was in different publishing world and that's how I got started with the box guys. I've been building one of the biggest bot networks for the last 12 to 13 years. When I was indicted the conversation that nobody had was that Chad Focus took four million dollars and we feel like he invested into the Chad Focus brand. A lot of the headlines that people took was that he invested this money into the music industry.    It was a shot at us. Like y'all niggas ain't smart. Y'all better come and stick with us. Y'all gonna come and buck the system. Is you crazy? Is y'all Lonzo balls, Marvel? Is you LeVar ball? You're not sending your son over to Turkey and he becoming the number three pick and he's Lamello ball. They don't want that, bro. That's how you see how they attack anything that doesn't make sense to them. So I was something that didn't make sense because I was a threat to the entire industry fellas.  You can't control them. So when you look at your Michael Jackson, bro and you look at your princes and you look at all the information that they was giving us, people don't talk about that, bro. They don't talk about how Mike owned half the industry and all the publishing. They don't talk about how Prince changed his name, bro because he just wanted to be compensated for what he invested in his projects. You feel what I'm saying? So that's what it was, bro. I figured out the game. I made a lot of money in a lot of different industries, bro. This is just bigger than the bigger than music, bro. You know what I'm saying? It's much bigger. Like I said, we can talk about the ticket master. Billboards. I actually want to get right into that. You just brought up a story about Drake, right? So I want you to tell Chad that story just in case he doesn't know it already. And then I want you to start talking about your ticket scalping background as well. But the story that circulated now is ticket master is kind of catching some heat because people realize that they're scalping like Drake tickets. Really using something like, I think what we talked about camera like some high level marketing tactic but the end of the day is scalping, right? So what they did was, I might be wrong but I think it was in the New York show that Drake was having come around and the ticket master was pushing the whole narrative like, hey, this is Drake.  It was being reported like Drake won a certain price for the tickets but the ticket master like upscaled the prices. And it was running real hard. It's narrative like, hey, this is the last day. The ticket, this is the last day. They sell out the tickets and the very next day Drake releases like another New York date or something, right? So it's a lot of people in the ticket master saying like, hey, y'all finessed us into buying these tickets. And you know, Drake is kind of like, hey, that's not me, that's ticket master, you know what I'm saying? Doing other things. They got nothing to do with me but like that's essentially what's coming down to their raised in prices on Drake's tickets to be higher than I guess what the team was trying to sell them for. They're tricking the audience into feeling like this is the last time you can get certain things when like Drake has other plans to release other dates. Hey, look at Jacqui, I was doing this, I was doing this seven years ago and I was doing it early before I became an artist. So I'll break, I'm gonna break this down to y'all. Y'all gonna lose your minds with this one. Little baby in money bag, yo, this is before a little baby was who he is today. This is before he was 200 occasion, whatever that little baby version is. This is little baby at $30,000 a show. This is little baby at $30,000 a show and chair focus at a half a million dollars a show. And the way that you do it is, ticket master is going to go ahead and if you make a deal with them and you're gonna be a promoter, you can go ahead and buy y'all the venue.  They wanna get 30% of whatever you do as far as a net. The day that the tickets come out, you got something called a fire sale guys or early bird sale, which means that you can probably get the tickets for less the first day of. What companies like ticket master were doing and record labels were doing is they were buying out 80% of the tickets the day of at the lowest price that you could, all right? Because now, unless you guys understand why this is genius, they can write that money off as marketing. So they giving your radio station tickets, they giving tickets to the kids, they giving tickets to the artists, they doing all types of promotional things with those tickets.  Like, yo, this joint almost sold out, yo, you gotta get you a ticket before there's none left. Now ticket master owns those tickets, bro, they now not gonna upsell them for 200, 300, 400% to mark up. The week before the concert releases, you got 20% of people that actually brought the tickets because it looked like it was sold out and they really wanna go to the show. That week, they start to re-release tickets. It starts to look like people was refunding tickets, so you got a spot available. Ticket master is just re-releasing their tickets back on the platform. So now if they bought it at $50, you now can buy it at $100, $200, $300, $400. They gonna always break even for life, guys. They will never ever miss. They know how this game works. By the day, by the night of the concert, that Friday night, they gonna release even more tickets, but then they're gonna put them on third-party websites, your Event Brights, your Stubhubs, and now they're gonna sell them from $50 to $500, thousands of dollars, $2,000. By the day of the concert, they gonna have their own ticket scalpers in the street that work for them. The guys that me and y'all know that we wanna go to a basketball game. We wanna go to a Drake concert. We call Mike Mike up and he got the tickets for us. You guys know what I'm talking about. Everybody has a street team, all right? The day of the concert is called urgency and it's called scarcity and we are marketers. It's the same thing they do with PlayStation. It's the same thing they do with Jordan. Same thing we do with Yeezy. You buy up the market, you make it unavailable, and then you make it available for people that are desperate enough to pay whatever they want to get their hands on it. There's enough people that have money that will pay any price for a Drake ticket, a Taylor Swift ticket, a Beyoncé ticket, and they've been doing this forever, guys, from Metallica, Drake, Jay-Z, Beyoncé. The first concert that I did that at guys was Jay-Z and Beyoncé's On a Run Tour. I took my entire hood, 50 people, and then I sold those tickets that I had left over that were front row tickets for 100 grand. So I took my whole hood for free, spent 50 grand, and then I sold the other $150,000 tickets for 100 grand. So I was making money, taking my homies back and forth with me putting them front row, and I started to figure out like, okay, this is what Ticketmaster and this is what the live nation and these guys do, and if you're an artist, you just wanna show up and make sure that your concert is sold out. You don't really care about ticket sales. You don't really care about record sales. You just wanna do your job. So y'all look at interviews, right? And they ask these guys, do you care what your first week sales are? What do they always say? No, I just want the people that have the music. That's not what the execs are saying. That's not what the marketing guys are saying. No, we gotta break even, we gotta triple. So when you got a concert, concerts get canceled by them not being able to do the pre-sales, guys. So those Taylor Swift tickets that y'all seen, I can guarantee you that 75% of those were bought by somebody internally that made that entire craze about the Taylor Swift tickets. That made me and you talk about it. So even with this Drake thing that's happening right now, guys, is marketing. All publicity, good publicity.  Now I'll rate this down though. With that in mind, now that people have a sense of how that works, drop that little baby concert story. So here we go. Little baby concert chair focus. This is the, I'm the most unknown guy that ever got paid the most for like, you know, being open to that guys. I'm gonna break it down for y'all.  Y'all familiar with that, right? We all from that gang. So I always had my homeboys and they would perform and it'd be nobody in the crowd. Like, why are you paying $5,000 to perform for Rick Ross and Rick Ross fans on here, bro? You performing at two o'clock and he performs at nine o'clock. So what I did that was different. As I said, you know what? I'm gonna be a promoter. I need ownership over the merch. I need ownership over the marketing. I need ownership over the visuals. I need control of certain things and I want a certain percentage of the tickets. I want this percentage of the front end. I want this percentage of the back end. So I negotiated what I call an amazing leverage deal. I'll take care of the venue. I'll take care of paying Lil Baby what he wants, which we had a team of guys and promoters that paid Lil Baby. So he gets this 30,000. Money Bag Yo gets this 40,000.  Now, all I gotta do as a marketer is find the audience that wants to see Lil Baby and Money Bag Yo. Next thing you know, I make it as a co-headlining situation. Come see Chair, Focus and Friends, Lil Baby and Money Bag Yo. Now, I know I can't pack a venue with 6,000 people by myself, but I can probably bring 200 to 300 people. I can bring some of my other local artists and they can bring 200, 300 people. But Lil Baby and Money Bag Yo is gonna bring them up of 4,000 to 5,000 people.  It looks like it's a focused random event. So as the promoter and the co-headlining artist, I was able to sell out the venue and then I was able to oversell the venue out because I gave away a bunch of different tickets. I did exactly what you guys see Drake doing. I brought out all the tickets with my credit card, a month before the concert for $40. I re-listed them a month later for $100 so I could make my $60 flip. I made sure all the other promoters got paid, I made sure all the other ticket master guys got paid. I released another 1,000 tickets on StubHub guys for $500, $600, $700, $800. I gave away 400, 500 tickets to the kids that was in my hood that never got to go to a concert, that never got to go ahead and see their favorite artists up close and personal.    I own a visual of those guys performing and now we legendary. We made $250,000 net profit because the money I invested was 250 grand as far as your artist getting the venue doing all of the marketing. And being able to go ahead and upsell the right records, I mean, the tickets for a certain amount of money, that was the game changer, bro. So if I could have done that over and over again, bro, that was also one of the biggest situations before I went to prison. I was doing this to concerts I wasn't performing at. So I planned on starting a tour with all of your biggest artists from your young dolls, the Rick Rosses to your little wings. I was going to be the co-headlining act and I was going to make money in all the mainstream artists because I was going to be the promoter and I was going to be the artist. Scalping your own concert, bro. I love it. I love it. I love it. That's part about the headline, Sean, is they say, yo, he put $125,000 to his own concert. They never gave nobody no context. So I just never argued. You understand what I'm saying? It was a great headline. Yeah, like if I did that and nobody came to the concert, I think we've seen that before. We've seen people who try to embellish who they was. They got fake followers.   Spent the 125 grand in marketing, $125,000 to throw the event. I made $250,000 and I only performed two songs. So that was the conversation on Vice TV is what happens when an artist figures out the same process as Live Nation and does it himself independently.  So what if they bring in the promotion side in-house? What if they start doing that themselves? You understand what I'm saying? The promoters be making a killing.  You got to be your own manager. You got to make sure that you take care of everything in-house. Yeah, and you see it a lot with talent, right? When the ones who figure out how to make the money is no different than Floyd having his own promotion company. You're like, yeah, I'm a boxer, but now I got to own the promotion company. Now I'm promoting for other fighters and I'm promoting for myself. So I can get the big cut, right? So like bringing the house is big. And I feel like, I don't know, man, some artists, they don't want to do all that though. And they hate that the game is that way. What do you say to those artists?  I got too many miles to feed, bro. I can't just let, I can't let certain dollars go out the window. I'ma put in everybody to work. Like it just, it's a mentality to me. You understand what I'm saying? And you got to look at the people that we working for. They not, they bought to figure it out. If you a ball show, you figure it out. So guess what? Build your team, bro. You only as solid as your network and your team.  You know what I'm saying? You split some money. I can't let you mess my guy up name again. Just call him Corey is Jacory. Jacory, Jacory, my fault, Jacory, man. I apologize, bro. Yeah, you had a writer. Sean and Jacory, I apologize, big brother. But what I meant from that, Jacory, though, is I think that people should go ahead and build their team, bro. And also put people in position. And y'all can help out a lot of people and these artists could find people as help is there. But I don't think that they understand that you got to share a bit of the pie and you got to be informed about what's going on. So getting taken advantage of is a choice. Not knowing certain information that you guys know is a choice now. Yeah, and I think too, touch on Sean's point. I think the most successful people in music realize that the end of the day is really just a game, right?  Sean's gonna be like, well, that's the only way you can win. You have to play within the rules of the game. If you want to beat me, right? And I think that's what a disconnect is. Artists will come in, not realizing that all rules to the game, they'll learn the rules to the game, but oh, that's not right. That's not fair. And then people like us are like, well, it is what it is. So I'm gonna go figure out how to at least play it before I start trying to change things. You know what I'm saying? And I've seen that a lot just with what I consider to be successful and unsuccessful artists. The most successful artists, even if they put out the image that they won't play the game, when you talk to them behind the scenes is a completely different story. You know what I'm saying? No, I did this because I need to do this. And my manager put me on this game and that's what made this go. So like, I guess the question I wanted to tie in that to you was like, what was the moment when you realized like this was a game you kind of had to play right? Like I like asking artists like, when was the moment you got your rose tinted glasses kind of knocked off about the industry and realized you had to play it a certain way. So what was that like for you? Like what made that click for you? So the program director here in Baltimore, man, while I'm at me and him went to high school to go, right? You pretty much figuring out like, all right, we got a relationship. We know each other from the sandbox. He's definitely gonna take a good record and play the record. Hell no. He wouldn't even give me the information on how to get my record in media based in Nielsen so that I was allowed to, you know, do what I need to do to get it on to the actual radio. So what I did that was different is I found out what the radio was actually meant for was meant for advertising. I started an internship at the radio station and I hopped right into the marketing department. So I went to the guys that were above your program directors and artists. This is a big thing for you to understand. You don't even need to go to the program directors.  And you let them know I got a product and I got a brand. And I want to put my product and brand in front of your audience. And I also want to be supported as an artist. So I started to buy advertisements on a radio station, fellas, with my music as a part of the background. So I started learning how to get asked where I can get paid one for my music on that basic level. And then I built the relationships in the advertising and marketing department. When I became a client, then I became more important than just the artist. So then my opinion and my voice mattered because I was a part of the bottom line. When I realized the guys that were the gatekeepers that look like me and look like y'all, they were the real reasons that they were in the way because they didn't even have the intellect or the knowledge of how things were getting done. So sometimes, bro, the guys that you look up to and the guys you believe know the answers, they really don't. And that's what I want people to take in. It was a self education part for me guys. I was having meetings and I was sitting down with guys that I thought was important to getting something done. And they were never the point person. They were never the decision maker. They was just trying to ball a block of guy. And you know what I'm saying? They was trying to grease their own palms, fellas. So that was the most... A lot of times, them blocking you isn't really because they don't really feel you like that, it's because they don't even want you to know that they don't know what they're talking about. Fact. And that's the thing because it's like, oh man, they not blocking me. They actually can't do nothing but they don't want you to know that they can't do nothing. It wouldn't be a good look. It wouldn't be a good look, bro. Sean, it's a... I went to... You guys heard of Fiverr before, right? Yeah. All right, so this was crazy. Fiverr early on, I had stocks in Fiverr, Spotify.  Being a shareholder. So Fiverr had the record labels early on the last like 10, 12 years, they were selling their services through Fiverr because it was a slick and cryptic way for you not to know who was what and what was what. So I actually went on Fiverr and I started testing out a bunch of these different services. And then that's how I started figuring out who were the program directors and where my records were getting spent that and all types of stuff. There is an underground coalition of program directors that you can send your money to and be top 40 the next day and all types of other shit. Like I haven't been in that scene in about two, three years but I can guarantee that's the way that radio works. It's an underground way to get money to the right people to get your record and rotation tomorrow night. And the program directors is just as responsible for it. The thing that broke my heart is the guy where I'm from he told me that he could tell I was doing Payola cause I was getting a lot of support from out of town and doing different shit. He was just mad that I wasn't figuring out a way to strategically do Payola with him instead of him strategically figuring out how I could do it with him. You understand what I'm saying? He was frustrated at me for not figuring out how he could get his palms greased instead of being like, just tell me straight up bro we from the same hood. Like, you wanna get paid? Let's figure out how we get paid. Don't just be cryptic and block my record. And then eventually I didn't need them. Man, that's funny but there's a couple things I wanna like I wanna go through with you. First, let me tackle a couple of these questions from our producer. He said, in your opinion, are bots a necessary evil in the music industry? Trillion percent and it's never going nowhere. I think that when people accept it and start figuring out how to strategically use it it's gonna work out better for you. What I will say Sean is that I'm not perfect. The one thing that I did is that I had to rush my campaign.  So I'll tell you guys the truth of like why it didn't get to Drake status.  I had a lot of, I was just involved in a lot of different things. Meaning that I'd have built my profile guys with social media influencing.  Instead, I just wanted to bully everybody with the bots. You get what I'm saying? I'll put my own followers together, my own likes, my own comments, my own streams and I'll repost my plaques all day long because I'm still getting the royalties.  And I mean that, because that's how the guys is playing the game at the highest level feel. Don't talk to me about steroids until Roger Clemens isn't on steroids. I'm Barry Barnes.  Like let's have that conversation. I'm glad you've noted that point specifically because I don't think a lot of people understand that bots are profitable too. For many people, you know, a lot of these indie artists I'm paying to get 1000 bots and I'm paying $15 to get it. Like it's not, it's a different type of game. But like the, when a lot of these bigger artists, I'm not even gonna say some of their names like are using them, they're using them behind the scenes. Like it's one, they're paying for the bots. So it's the marketing that you're going to get your money back guarantee because the bots are going that you're paying for. And then when it gets to a certain level, then we're gonna do some other gang marketing. Nobody's even asking questions because I am who I am anyway. So they think I'm supposed to do this number. You know what I'm saying? So like bots make all the sense in the world. Like almost why would you not do it, right? This was funny, right? So this envy gonna see this, if he fucks with it what's not and it's gonna even make them, it's gonna make them think differently, right? So the breakfast club happening, they do the donkey today. They're like, yo, we don't even know who chair focus is, blah, blah. I put my billboard specifically across the street from power 105, just so it was something that they would not notice, right? So how unaware are you guys, right? You don't even know how power 105 is syndicated, how it's getting manipulated, how it's getting around the world. And that's why I like Damon Dash. He came up and he told the guys like, specifically we're not bosses. Unless we can call up and our kids got a job tomorrow at this platform, we're not bosses. Like let's be honest. That day changed the way that I viewed people in the industry. When I created my bot network, one of my first clients guys behind the scenes was DJ Envy. Why?  And you don't know that I'm the young black guy behind the website. You get what I'm saying? When you buying followers and likes and syndication because it's something that everybody is doing. So people might not know who you are specifically, but they wanna know of your work. And I'm gonna always appreciate the fact that your my work succeeds the name, bro. I got a lot of hands behind stuff, right? Right now to this day, Sean, we do streaming packages for a million streams because that's the way to get it done most successfully and for the best bang in your buck. If you spend in $2,500 and Spotify pays you $3,000 in royalties, I want you to spend $2,500 to make $500 build your profile and continue to get paid and compensated. If you are buying these things almost like the drug game and you buying 1,000 streams here, 10,000 streams here, you can't get the best bang for your buck as a bulk artist. So you gotta also boss up. Don't buy the Gucci belt. Don't buy none of the Armani or the Mary or none of the sneakers, bro, invest in what you got going on. Also the different thing for these artists is that you can get in the game and you can sell these services as an artist. And that's how I really got into the game and to the PR, finding blogs that will repost artists, providing services, building websites. So I also think that's a big part of the artists don't like to do. They don't like to be service based. And for those that are really successful, they provide the content, the music, and they also provide the service. And that's one of the biggest things I learned in the industry for some of our most successful artists. That's why I love the producers. They artists at heart, bro, but they really producing the music and they writing the music for other artists so they can feed their families consistently. I love the idea of artists doing services. People ask me that all the time, should I be a marketer or should I be in the industry at all? Like my whole thing, the way I see it, right? If I was an artist, me doing services is me learning and getting paid to learn on the job. So then I could go apply all that same stuff back to me and do it the right way versus having to waste my money messing up, bumping my head all the time. It doesn't mean you wanna like take somebody else's money and mess up with just completely, but you still are gonna slowly see things, right? As things open up, you get more opportunities, you get bigger clients. So I definitely love the idea of that service-based artist. They're just service-based in anything you do, right? Cause we know service is when it builds goodwill, it allows you to build your brand from a trust and business side, but then at the same time, again, that service allows you to continue to stay in the game until you can get it in the way that you wanna get it. So I appreciate you bringing up the service-based. One thing I wanna make sure, like we covered before, so we got a good amount of time, but the Agora publishing situation, do you wanna go deeper in that? Because I know there were some finessening things that you didn't understand around you at that age at first, you know what I'm saying? And they were kind of basically making it seem that you were getting into things that you didn't do in the first place. And I don't think we cleared that part up yet as far as it's not affected by it. All right, so we'll break it down. I put it like this, man. As far as, like I told you guys, man, a young black dude brewing Wall Street, bro, I didn't understand how the financial news world worked at all, all right? I didn't know my worth. All I knew was I had a skill set. When I started with Agora, man, it's a company of thousands and thousands of people. I'm one of the only guys that look like us that's in the marketing department and making a lot of money for them. Only a few of us had Amex accounts. And when I came into this, I kind of want to provide the imagery guys are like the Wolf of Wall Street. Man, you come in there at a fast pace, and it gets us doing the cocaine. They got the strippers like the environment crazy, bro. And you just, you basically a fish out of water. You like this what it is?  And the biggest mistake I made was not joining a company underneath of an LLC and giving myself a layer of protection. Joining a company as an employee, allowing people to upfront you money. And then for you to reimburse them on the backend, it's probably a very bad decision. Whereas going back in my 20s, I would have created an LLC. I would have had the company hire me through a contractor and I would have taken the budget upfront because I would have had protection for myself to go out and be creative. What they did is that they gave me free range to go out here and make them a lot of money and do a lot of creative stuff. But I didn't do the campaigns guys for a gore of initially, I did them all for Chad Arrington. So all of the different billboards, all of the different Facebook campaigns, media buys, we purchased them through me because they didn't want it to be associated with the company in case they were blacklisted by your Googles and your beings and your other network platforms. The market and industry bro has a lot of red tape.  But if you hire a marketing agency, just like what happened with Balenciaga, what can you do? You can blame the marketing agency. So I was the buffer for things ever went wrong with a gore. I'm the guy that was using bots for them through their company account cards so that when Google came and tried to blacklist them or you had the can span back or different type of agencies like the FTC, they would have a fall guy. I never realized this. So that's why it lasted for eight years. I was there from 2011 to 2018. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of budgets guys as far as paid acquisitions, buying services, backlinks, all types of search engine type stuff. And I was in a relationship as far as partners with the CEOs of the companies. And they gave me free range to do whatever I wanted as long as they made tons and tons of money. And guys, we made billions of dollars, but I should have been a billionaire. I shouldn't have just been a millionaire. I think the real reason why the shit that I was doing lasted so long was because they couldn't figure out how to have a case against me without also compromising themselves.  It's just, it just was an amazing situation because they were, of course, bro, plugged in with somebody. It's no way that that happens, bro, that you get protected. But I did find out is that they were getting investigated by the FTC. The traffic that I helped bring these guys in, they were selling false advertising and policy scheme products to their clientele. You can go check it out right now. You can type it in Google, I mean, in Google, Agora FTC, they had a multi-million dollar case that they lost because they were stealing money from the senior clients. And then I got hit with the same case as chair focused stealing money from them. And so that was like dope. Their story was back page news. My story was the front page viral news everywhere. Man, that's a lot. It's, and it's interesting because like again, not only from the way you're telling it, right? Not only was, were you not stealing money, you were spending money on their behalf to push their company. But narrative is specifically towards spending money towards your music. So how does that even come up? Like how does the connection of you and music and that money even happen? Was it somebody looking for a narrative so they can figure out how we can make this sound like it? Well, I think I specifically fellas think it was genius because the headline of me stealing money don't make you ask no other questions.  Who cares about what else is behind that? Who care who the company is or what's going on? Like that's a headline I've never heard before. You get what I'm saying?  How one does a rapper get access to that type of money? How is this an Amex account guys? And you know that gotta be paid off every month.  The whole situation was bonkers, bro. And I had to really go sit down for the two years I was away and just kind of digested it because it's us and it's cause of people that got this skin color and I don't want to make it a racial thing, bro. Certain stuff that just make absolutely no sense, bro, it flies for us.  Now when you celebrate, like I said, a Wolf of Wall Street and what he did to his client telling how he got rich and we sensationalized that, that's one thing. When you demonize a young black guy, bro, and say that he stole all his money from these corporate companies and you looking at what Donald Trump and these guys are doing each and every day, I thought that more people that look like us was gonna get on the internet and kind of be like, yo, something they right. I did think that people was gonna get on their platforms. Like I say, a Charlemagne and certain people would be like, yo, this ain't sounding right. This ain't adding up. You understand what I'm saying? Like we got the voices, we got the platforms to speak up and be like, yo, something happened with that brother that don't make sense. And I don't know, Sean, man, to this day, bro, it's still weird, bro. And like I said, the guys that I was working with, all of the young white brothers that was executives, man, they got immunity. None of them was ever charged, man. You see, I got an entire case that is no why your cell is part of my case. There's no me telling on anybody. It's me playing out to a why fraud conspiracy, which I didn't plead out to why fraud. I didn't plead out to that identity theft, which if those were cases, they're not going to drop those in a federal situation. And I got out of prison, you're on two years at the multi-million dollars worth of supposed fraud, you understand what I'm saying?  They said Irv Gotti was a funding murder inkyo with supreme money. Like this is the type of shit that they hit us with and people will leave it and it just come with the territory, you feel me? Think about it, bro.  That's funny. That's funny. What's your perspective of that situation since you mentioned that one? Yo, I'll tell you this. You know, the documentary was dope, right? Like getting to see the documentary, watching it on a compound with all the homies, like prison is a weird experience, man. It's a weird, weird experience. The people on the inside love the guys from our culture that have overcome some of the biggest injustice. So I'm a Irv Gotti fan forever, bro. I think that he was at the height of what he was doing, but I also know that we guilty by association. So you can come back and put yourself in position. And if you try to put other people in position and it don't match up to the vision of the higher ups, yo, they gonna shoot you down, bro. So Irv Gotti felt like he was too powerful and they had to come and humble him. And I'll be honest with you, chair focus started. He was extremely powerful, bro. When you got all that intellect and all these resources, you don't realize, yo, that you a millionaire today and you could be dead broke tomorrow. Almost like what they did to Kanye West. You could be a billionaire on Tuesday, bro, and be worth $400 million on Thursday. And that just goes to show you, bro, that we still ain't at a place yet, bro, where we can go ahead and speak freely and move freely. We got to still be very cautious of our platforms and everything that we got going on, bro. There was a mouthful there on that one, especially bringing in the Kanye situations. I mean, look, you brought him in there and I see the analogy, but going through what you've gone through, obviously you view a lot of these situations differently at this point. So what were you thinking throughout the whole Kanye thing? Not necessarily was he right and wrong in some moments or certain things, but just as a whole, how did you digest what was happening?  You understand what I'm saying? I had more white cops pull me over for being in a BMW or a Tesla for absolutely no reason. You understand what I'm saying? So I've experienced oppression and racism and all those different things. And what I know that Kanye West and Kyrie thought that they were doing is they thought that their freedom of speech was going to allow them to kind of have a pass. It don't work like that for us. And I'm not getting into the specifics of what he was saying. We just not allowed to go on platforms to speak freely. Everything that we're saying, bro, is going to be judged and it's going to be criticized. Not for what is right, not as for where you're making a point, but for going against the status quo. And you got to know better. And like I said, I learned my lesson, bro, with certain things that I should have never said certain things I should have never done. And am I comfortable with being even black listed or black ball? For me, it was bigger. It's a bigger impact at hand. I'm already financially stable. So I don't know that being famous in the industry and having a bunch of industry friends and stuff like that. It was never for that for me. So I think Kanye West and Kyrie Irvin, bro, they got different agendas, bro. And it was, and it's tough because you hear so many people be like, yo, you got to chill out. Like when Puff Daddy came and did the interview, you know, I don't know, man. How y'all feel, bro? It's tough. I just say, I just say it's tough, bro, because freedom of speech show isn't for everybody. It's not, especially not for us. We can't say and do any and everything. We got certain restrictions and we can lose our spots really quick. Yeah, man, I think that when it comes down to it, like you said, it's not even about the specifics, right? Because there could be, you can be saying something wrong, we're doing something wrong, but the leeway is different, right? And you have to understand what the power really looks like. And I think some people get into positions and they feed off of the success, right? They feed off of their own intellect and ego. And sometimes it's harder to see the power of others when you feel so powerful, you know what I mean?  Like I would love the superhero story and I think it's a little bit complex and more simple than that, right? It's just a situation that was a little bit beyond him. It doesn't mean he can't bounce back, right? That's completely different than I planned this from the beginning. And that part that I feel like people who like to constantly follow the genius level, the genius narrative, like the sheet mentality is just like, yeah, it's always when he can't win it, you actually miss the real story and the real lesson, right? No, something really did happen over there. And also, yeah, you can bounce back if you have the talent, you know, the perseverance, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, I think there's situations like that where it's hard to detect the other animals in the room. You know what I mean? When you win so much that you almost end the dark and then when you spark something and that flame lights up around you in the dark room and you start to see them other figures in the room, it's like, oh snap. I didn't realize exactly what was going on. So that's kind of how I view that situation. But switching gears real quick to go a little bit back to streaming. The major streaming platform, such as Spotify and Apple Music, right? Right. Now I don't want to go too deep into like what have they done to combat streams because we know it's not really all that serious. But the idea of shadow banning, how do you view shadow banning knowing what you know when it comes to like Spotify and getting rid of tracks or even shadow banning on social media in general? How do you view it? All right, point blank period. You can get a shadow ban on your Instagram, your Facebooks, your YouTubes, like that's a thing. That's really a thing. Now, we all understand as marketers that these platforms is only going to give us so much reach organically. They really hit bro for you to put advertising dollars into their platforms. Point blank period. We can't get around that conversation. Nobody really want to talk about it. Even six out. You will be spending money to get your content shown to the people that's on their platform. Let's just get around that. Now, if you can find these loopholes and tweak stuff and make stuff happen, cool. My best advice to you is that while it's working and it's early on, build your own list. Build your own list of people that you can market to and that you can communicate with on a daily. Figure out how to use your email and your SMS. The way that the Spotify and stuff works guys is that they will ban you, they'll ban your records. And like I told you, you can still work with your metadata, but the only way to get around it is to partner with the majors.   If you are an independent artist and you never want your name to show up on Spotify ever again, you'll be very, very careful and know what you're doing and know who you're working with before you do such things. Apple Music, not the same way right now guys, Tidal, not the same way. You already see Tidal went through a lot of stuff early on as far as like their own streaming, inflations and all that other stuff. The real reason why Spotify has to have so much control because they own the biggest network share of all of this streaming stuff. And they're the only one that got the free platform. So that's the only one that you can get a free account and go listen to the music. You give what I'm saying. And that's why Spotify is the one that has to deal with the most of the craziness. People don't really play with Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon, Napster and stuff like that. Me personally, I do. I got a lot of paid accounts. I got a lot of resources but that's not the kind of game that most artists are privy to. They just out here trying to gain the Spotify and YouTube, they free platforms. So it's a real thing to be careful man. That's interesting. I never thought of it like that, right? Like you broke it down to if you're an artist gaming, Spotify specifically, the dangers are there in real because they already won't have so much in place to detect it. But then too, it's like, you know, like they're trying to protect their reputation at this point. They don't want more, probably like more use popping up, you know what I'm saying? Like for real for us. So when you're running these bot campaigns with these different artists, is that something that you stress? Like, is it like, hey, I know you want to work with Spotify but we really need to hit. Bro, honey. Bro, hundred, hundred thousand percent. And the reason, and the reason why I tell you that is because like what Sean was saying, if you get into the industry and you can kind of do the marketing and learn, I learned that my own down.  Like you come to me for my pain so you don't got to go through that same pain. And that's why that's real love for me. You can buy my pain so you don't got to go through it. This what works. This what don't work. This how you want to do it. And if you do want to go through the Wild Wild West yo bro, these the consequences. You looking at a seven to 10 year sentence. You looking at losing your home, your cars, your house, your reputation. Like I try to give the homies the game, bro. And I want them to know that somebody do care and that somebody actually been where they been at. So for me, Sean, I was always the marketer that kind of told them like this might work. This might not work. This what you should do. Now they see me as one of them. I'm the artist who did it at the highest levels. I did it at the worst levels, best levels and I'm transparent and I tell the truth. So you can't, my place solidified. Even major artists, when they leave in a label, they got to contact me. Everybody that sees the Vice TV, whether you know it or don't know, you're like, yo, let me go ahead and see it, bro. She know what he talking about. So for me, bro, I think that being a case study and seeing what work and don't work gives me one up as far as the industry. And I get to work with amazing guys like y'all, man, where, you know, we link up and we talk and we go ahead and strategize and we navigate because you guys got a big following and y'all help out a lot of artists. And the goal is just to see the artist win. We know the industry won't win. We know we can't beat them. But we do want to make more of us win and get a chance to sit at the table.  How much did, if you feel like disclosing it, but like, how much did that Vice doc grow your business? Cause I remember like two years ago, there was a guy that Billboard did like an expose that piece on a round box.  And then he like came out like week or two later. Now this is the best thing that ever happened to me. You know what I'm saying? Like it ruined my credibility within indie artists, but then within major labels, I 10X down there overnight. So did you experience like a similar effect? Like that branding for the people that don't understand it, but I'm like, the right people are looking up. To be honest with you, bro, I never had so many apologies. It got to the point where I told the homies, I'm like, yo, you don't gotta apologize. Like, yo, I'm from Baltimore, bro. We seen worse, bro.  We understand this is what we signed up for, bro. We decided to be public figures, bro. We decided to press play and turn the camera on. We asked for everything that comes with it, good, bad or indifferent. Since the day Vice happened, guys, you got to realize this got released while I was in prison. A whole entire compound thought I was the most solid guy in the world because I put all of my homies on. I risked my freedom. I didn't sell no drugs. I never killed a shot, nobody. And I gave my friends a shot at their dream. I wouldn't figured out how they could come and do it. They always want to do that until I like it. I play basketball, fellas. I'm going to go to the league. I know what it's like to have your dreams shattered and not get that opportunity. Nobody gave me a chance to go no combines. Nobody caught no agents from me.   Like being a motivation, bro, and inspiration to the homies on the inside, that's like something different because I've seen dudes change their lives. Vice TV has made the bookings go up a trillion percent. I can pick and choose where I want to go at. I can make any situation work in corporate guys. Y'all know I understand the conversations, the technology, this automation world that we talking about right now and I was on the cusp of it 15 years ago where people just catching up. And as far as this industry, the guys in the industry know that it's a young dude that hasn't been what they've been through that had tried to point them through the wrong direction. We talking about billboards, guys want to talk about radio, we want to talk about campaigns, we want to talk about sponsorships, merches, collaborations, wholesalers, like any and everything fellas, we got resources and we got networks. Y'all are dope, bro. Everybody talk to any and everybody, bro, that needs to be spoken to on the scene, behind the scenes. And they realized I'm really here because I want to see us win.  And if we going to all talk about somebody using steroids and we all going to be on steroids and I'm comfortable to be like, yo, I'm the one, bro, I'm the home run king. And I'm comfortable in my own skin.  Y'all go listen to Dance with Me with T-Pain, hit record.  I understand the game, the concept. I know how this works. I know what works. Got relationships in all the different places you need to have them at. And I got billboard records. Now you know what I'm saying? I got Shazam charts, Spotify charts. Whatever they want, bro, as far as your qualifications, we can get those the right way, the wrong way, however they want to do it. We can do it any which way fellas. So we versatile. And Vice TV was just the tip of the iceberg fellas. We in production deals now, Michael K passed away. So I'm trying to figure out if we're gonna do black market season three. I've been compensated in ways you can never imagine. We got the book deal. We got the movie deal. We're working on a Netflix situation. All this for a guy who was a wannabe, Baltimore rapper is now, you know, is a really, really a thing, bro. And then the brand is focused music entertainment and it's a kid talking about focus like how much more positive can a movement be? And why nobody else came up with focus. And that's the one thing that you guys know get us ahead in life. So I think it all worked out at the end of the day. You know, I got the scholarship of my high school guys, my kids good, I'm healthy and ain't nobody walking around talking about I'm a sucker or I'm a snitch. You can't beat that. I love it, man. We haven't really talked about this yet on the podcast but while you're here, I feel like it's somebody who'll have an interesting perspective on it. So to close things out, man, I would love to hear how you personally look at AI and how that's about to change the game. Man, bro, I think not only is it the future, bro. I think that people better, how they say, get down to lay down, you better figure it out face. And meaning this, right? Cause y'all, you know, we content creators, right? So we know this for us editing and designing and coming up with ideas and headlines. Like we gonna have to master the technology because of people that we competing against. Well, we also gonna have to master the technology and know what's real and what's not. We wanna have to be able to point out when it's a bot and when it's not a bot. We're gonna have to be able to see those things. The other day I was using Instagram, the guy's bot was so good. I thought I was talking to a regular person. I was ready to give this nigga $1,500. The promotion was dope. The funnel was dope. And then he called me on the phone like, bro, that was a bot you've been talking to for the last three weeks. That's how good the technology is getting. Even the chatbots are becoming extremely intelligent and the customer service bots. So, you know, bro, this ain't going anywhere. If y'all see what's coming down the pipeline, I was doing this 15 years ago, bro. So I can't imagine where it's about to go at. And now everybody gonna have access to the resources. So bots ain't going nowhere. It's only gonna get bigger and better and more smart. And for us, man, I have a seat at the table, bro. We better figure out and we better continue to network with the right guys. ViceTV showed you guys, they got 16 year olds is building these sneaker bots. That young kid bot boy Nova, that's my guy. He's making $2 million a month. It's two years ago. He's making $2 million a month, bro. You can't put a pair of Jordans on the sneakers app and he not go ahead and have his team. You got a team of people that will bot your sneakers away now. PlayStation 5, your next Xbox is your tickets to concerts. Any and everything, bro, the bots is gonna be involved. All right, so whether you know it or not, whether you care or not, it's still gonna be happening. You know, and so I rather be on the right side of history, fellas. And if I was on the wrong side, I won't be on the wrong side again. I could promise you that. Amen. Chad Focus, everybody.  This is yet another episode of No Labels Necessary. I'm Brand Man Shine. I'm Kobe. And we out. Peace. Appreciate y'all, fellas.


that in a big way PS who brought up the idea that Yankees sometimes come in late make a decision Scott Boris These meetings right I was standing I was trying to get as close to Boris as possible yesterday But it was such a weird setting. He was standing near a 25 foot Christmas tree He was on a little bit of a perch reporters are crowded around him and when he was asked about the Yankees He said well the Yankees have never told me they're not interested in Harper and maybe they're telling you different things They're telling me but Brian Cashman will sometimes read you have to read the tea leaves and what he's saying now That is not his current focus. He's moving in other areas And by the way marriage should we give him a little a little grief that we had him on our set for 10 or 11 minutes? Maybe it's our fault that we didn't pull the the Death Star comment I know I know you know It's funny too. We were talking to Michael K yesterday, and he said well You know I've liked Jennifer Aniston for a long time, and she never told me. She's not interested She's not interested I don't think you have to say the words to know that the Yankees are not in on Bryce Harper right now Obviously, it's in the best interest of Scott Boris and Bryce Harper for the Yankees to be in on it And I do believe there's an element of Bryce Harper that wants to be a New York Yankee Unfortunately, that ship is sailed a year ago when they acquired John Carlos Stanton. Yeah, by the way You say Michael still wait on that phone call


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