Speaker 1: We were almost out of business, literally, like we had
Speaker 1: no way to pay the printer back. I don't think
Speaker 1: we had any employees, a couple of interns, but like
Speaker 1: that was it. We weren't going to make another issue.
Speaker 1: We couldn't.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Idea Generations All Angles, a podcast about culture's
Speaker 2: most influential brands and the teams that built them. If
Speaker 2: you're an entrepreneur, creative, or anyone interested in harnessing the
Speaker 2: power of collaboration, join me Noah Callahan Bever each week
Speaker 2: as we dissect the most dynamic companies in culture, because
Speaker 2: the only way to truly understand success is to look
Speaker 2: at it from all angles. Idea Generations All Angles is
Speaker 2: a Will Packer Media podcast. In nineteen ninety six, Adrian
Speaker 2: Mohler and Patrick Alassek published the first issue of mass
Speaker 2: Appeal magazine. In the nearly three decades that followed, mass
Speaker 2: Appeal would grow from an underground graffiti zine into a
Speaker 2: culture defining, multifaceted entertainment brand with a hand in everything
Speaker 2: from digital content to music distribution, to full length documentaries
Speaker 2: and much much more. However, the rise of Massapel has
Speaker 2: been anything but straightforward. From barely legal circulation schemes, at
Speaker 2: bankruptcy to a shocking death in the family, The brand
Speaker 2: has endured extraordinary challenges and still through it all risen
Speaker 2: like a phoenix. On this week's episode of All Angles,
Speaker 2: we talked to co founder Adrian Mohler, former creative director
Speaker 2: Sasha Jenkins, as well as current CEO Peter Bittenbender and
Speaker 2: rap legend slash partner Nas to hear the tale of
Speaker 2: two mass appeals and understand how a brand can rise, fall,
Speaker 2: and rise again thanks to an ensemble cast of elite,
Speaker 2: like minded culture creators. But before any of that happened,
Speaker 2: decades before Massapeel would release a string of smash Nas
Speaker 2: albums or produce an epic four part Wu Tang documentary,
Speaker 2: there were just two teenagers running around the streets of Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. With dreams of getting in touch with their
Speaker 2: graffiti idols.
Speaker 1: I was living in McLean, Virginia, which is a suburb
Speaker 1: of DC.
Speaker 2: This is Adrian Moehler, co founder of Mass Appeal magazine.
Speaker 1: I had a crew of my dare like friends, and
Speaker 1: all we cared about in life was graffiti, riding on walls,
Speaker 1: riding on freight trains, and during high school, you know,
Speaker 1: we would sneak out at night go paint in the city.
Speaker 1: We were like a crew of like, I don't know
Speaker 1: seven of us, and I think five of us started
Speaker 1: doing graffiti at the same time we sucked. We'd paint
Speaker 1: like underneath overpasses in the suburbs, and back then, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously there was no Internet, so we would like subway
Speaker 1: art or any kind of book or magazine we could
Speaker 1: get her hands on, and kind of quickly realized that
Speaker 1: we didn't have a lot of talent in the traditional sense,
Speaker 1: but we loved excitement and loved doing daredevil shit, so
Speaker 1: like bombing aspect of graffiti really appealed to us, being
Speaker 1: willing to be uncomfortable, risking getting in trouble and just
Speaker 1: getting up as much as possible.
Speaker 2: Pat and Adrian were in love with graffiti and the
Speaker 2: outlawed lifestyle that came with it, but they knew that
Speaker 2: where their talent might be limiting, their passion had no bounds,
Speaker 2: and they wanted to participate in the culture. So they
Speaker 2: decided to document it in a magazine, a magazine that
Speaker 2: they would call mass appeal.
Speaker 1: At that point, we had already been doing graffiti for
Speaker 1: a while by the time I graduated, I had moved
Speaker 1: to New York to go to Pratt. We talked about
Speaker 1: a little bit like oh yea, we should do magazine,
Speaker 1: but you know, it was just drum talk, like nothing
Speaker 1: ever came of it. And somehow Pat was just like yo,
Speaker 1: I yea like five grand from my grandparents. I don't
Speaker 1: know where you got it, but and he found like
Speaker 1: a printer that like it was in DC. You know,
Speaker 1: I think he said they printed like National Geographic, which
Speaker 1: in hindsight I really doubt. I used the photo labbit Pratt.
Speaker 1: They had a scanner. I would design like half the
Speaker 1: magazine and photoshop. He did a couple of pages and
Speaker 1: I still have the floppy disc that says mass Appeal
Speaker 1: on it, and then I would mail him that disc.
Speaker 1: I honestly didn't think anything would ever come of it,
Speaker 1: but then he actually got this thing printed. That's how
Speaker 1: mass Appeal one was born. We had a bunch of
Speaker 1: copies and we would just go to stores and put
Speaker 1: them on consignment and get them out there. And in hindsight,
Speaker 1: I mean, the magazine looked terrible, but it just proved
Speaker 1: us that these like kind of nineteen year old like
Speaker 1: fuck up kids could make something just by having like
Speaker 1: a magazine. We were able to get like a couple
Speaker 1: of sponsors for the next one, a couple of graffiti
Speaker 1: stores that took it, and like people were mailing us
Speaker 1: shit like that was incredible. I mean we did not
Speaker 1: put a lot of these out. Most of them probably
Speaker 1: are still in this ba you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: the other's mom's basement. But somehow it would get passed around
Speaker 1: to different graph writers and we would just get these
Speaker 1: envelopes with pictures in them, and we were like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is actually like reaching people.
Speaker 2: Despite its limited print run, somehow Mass Appeal got around
Speaker 2: and overnight the guys started receiving inbound submissions from graph
Speaker 2: writers looking to be featured in the mag With very
Speaker 2: little strategy but a lot of authenticity, Mass Appeal had
Speaker 2: found an audience.
Speaker 1: It was awesome in hindsight, I think it made us
Speaker 1: feel important. Rob from Alife said it really eloquently, you know.
Speaker 1: Mass Appeal like at the beginning was kind of like
Speaker 1: a blog or social media before there was that for
Speaker 1: that culture. There were a couple other graphmags out there,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't a ton of ways to like communicate
Speaker 1: with everyone. People really treasured those magazines. Code from the
Speaker 1: Bronx mailed us like some really nice pictures, and we
Speaker 1: always were like, how did these magazines get all these pictures?
Speaker 1: We just figured because you know, graft guys are so
Speaker 1: like secretive, nobody would like ostentatiously just mail a bunch
Speaker 1: of pictures. But they did, and we got cool shit,
Speaker 1: you know, and we were just like, dude, like we
Speaker 1: should do this again. Pat moved to New York fairly quickly.
Speaker 1: He was my roommate in New York. I had this
Speaker 1: like rent controlled four bedroom apartment at two thirty four
Speaker 1: Saint James's Place, which Biggie Small was like two thirty
Speaker 1: two or something. It was like right next door. It
Speaker 1: was this huge apartment, and I had a couple of roommates.
Speaker 1: I think my rand was six hundred bucks for the
Speaker 1: whole thing, so I literally like lived there for free.
Speaker 1: We had a little office, you know. For the two
Speaker 1: years or something, we worked out of there.
Speaker 2: As Pat and Adrian worked to keep massive Field's business growing,
Speaker 2: each fell into natural roles that suited them best.
Speaker 1: I could still picture Patt just chain smoking cigarettes in
Speaker 1: this little office. It was like boiler room I mean
Speaker 1: probably probably make five hundre phone calls today, Like he
Speaker 1: didn't give a shit. He was relentless as good as
Speaker 1: the sales stuff. But I was good at making like
Speaker 1: decks and sponsorship ideas and whatnot. That was always really
Speaker 1: good at talking to people and good at sales. And
Speaker 1: you know, his dad was always in sales and taught
Speaker 1: him a lot, always gave us great advice, and so
Speaker 1: that was just a natural thing for him to do.
Speaker 1: I had gone to art school for photography, so I
Speaker 1: love the whole creative aspect of it. The printing thing
Speaker 1: was kind of just a by product of that, because
Speaker 1: you know, I was good at doing like the pre
Speaker 1: press stuff and some of the graphic design, and I
Speaker 1: just enjoyed it too. And a big thing that I like, too,
Speaker 1: was just kind of collaborating with creative people, like in hindsight,
Speaker 1: like that was my favorite part of the magazine, just
Speaker 1: working closely with some really awesome, sometimes really wacky, but
Speaker 1: just highly creative designers, photographers, whatever, and just making cool shit.
Speaker 1: The first five issues were just really like hand to mouth,
Speaker 1: Like Tower Records would take a bunch of magazines and
Speaker 1: they would pay us like half the money for them
Speaker 1: almost like upfront, and like that check would bankroll us
Speaker 1: get like maybe ten thousand dollars in advertising, not a lot,
Speaker 1: but we don't really have any overhead, you know. We
Speaker 1: were like poor kids.
Speaker 2: As Pad and Adrian continued to drop issues, their process
Speaker 2: evolved and they found ways to become more efficient, and
Speaker 2: with the help of Pat's mom's credit card and the
Speaker 2: generous return policy at best Buy, mass Appeal was able
Speaker 2: to level up.
Speaker 1: We really lucked into the timing of that right because
Speaker 1: desktop publishing became like possible. That was kind of that whole,
Speaker 1: like Quark Express Photoshop probably one point zero, I don't remember,
Speaker 1: but we would say, Pats mom's credit card, go to
Speaker 1: like comp Usa or best Buy, buy all the shit
Speaker 1: we needed, use it for a week, and then return
Speaker 1: it all. And then at the same time, the roots
Speaker 1: were kind of spreading a little bit.
Speaker 2: As mass Appeal started to make a name for itself
Speaker 2: within graffiti culture, Adrian and Pat looked to differentiate the
Speaker 2: book within the graph scene landscape, so they avoided featuring
Speaker 2: overly wrought legal walls and made mass apeels beat high
Speaker 2: wire bombing.
Speaker 1: We were like, we're going to put more bombing into
Speaker 1: it and writers that took bigger risks. We tried not
Speaker 1: to put a ton of legal walls in the magazine
Speaker 1: and the people that we interviewed. We wanted someone that
Speaker 1: was either just put it all on the line every night,
Speaker 1: or someone that overcame a lot of obstacles and made
Speaker 1: a successful career out of it, someone like Todd James,
Speaker 1: you know, that had like an incredible amount of talent
Speaker 1: but then transcended that into a successful career outside of it,
Speaker 1: but without like turning his back on it. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we really wrote that down or anything, but
Speaker 1: in hindsight, that's kind of what we tried to do.
Speaker 1: I pretty quickly realized, like this is only going to
Speaker 1: go so far. No, like this was fun. I had
Speaker 1: to get a job. I was working for Martha Stewart
Speaker 1: Magazine for a while and using her color printer after
Speaker 1: hours to print like thousands of media kids. I mean
Speaker 1: they had this like printer like the size of a
Speaker 1: small room, and you know, I got caught at the
Speaker 1: and quit, but but literally print like thousands of these things.
Speaker 1: It kind of worked. But then like we were almost
Speaker 1: out of business, literally, like we had no way to
Speaker 1: pay the printer back. I don't think we had any employees,
Speaker 1: a couple of interns, but like that was it. You know,
Speaker 1: we weren't going to make another issue. We couldn't.
Speaker 2: Internally, the future of Mass Appeal may have been in jeopardy. However,
Speaker 2: in the streets the magazine was gaining heat, and they
Speaker 2: organically caught the attention of another pioneering publisher in their space.
Speaker 3: I did a graffiti zine when I was a kid,
Speaker 3: and they weren't many zines at the time, and maybe
Speaker 3: two or three in the entire world.
Speaker 2: This is Sasha Jenkins, who, among other things, is an
Speaker 2: acclaimed documentary filmmaker, author, and co founder of the legendary
Speaker 2: culture publication Ego Trip.
Speaker 3: So Mass Appeal was a zine that I kept up with,
Speaker 3: and I noticed an evolution. They started to have interviews
Speaker 3: with rappers and great photography, and you know, I bought it.
Speaker 2: I was a fan. Sasha kept a close eye on
Speaker 2: the landscape because in nineteen ninety as a teenager in
Speaker 2: a story queens, he self published a graffiti scene called
Speaker 2: Graphic Scenes and Explicit Language. Then a couple of years later,
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety two, he had a neighborhood friend Hajji
Speaker 2: Akabadi would co found the first hip hop newspaper, beat Down.
Speaker 2: Sasha's first projects covered what was then a novel mix
Speaker 2: of interests from rap music to skateboarding to graffiti. His
Speaker 2: passion for those cultures and independent publishing foreshadow division that
Speaker 2: he would bring to mass appeal.
Speaker 3: Beatdown was a hip hop newspaper. I started with a
Speaker 3: childhood friend and Queens who was like an aspiring producer
Speaker 3: who had worked in Marley Marl and had done things
Speaker 3: in the music industry. And I had my relationships with
Speaker 3: artists and photographers, and we came together and did a
Speaker 3: hip hop newspaper called Beatdown in nineteen ninety two. Was
Speaker 3: printed at a place right across the street from Queensbridge
Speaker 3: Housing projects where they printed newspapers, and it cost us
Speaker 3: about six hundred and fifty dollars for the first issue.
Speaker 3: I was there for about a year. We got Tommy
Speaker 3: Boyd to buy the back cover, which paid for everything
Speaker 3: for at least a year. Beatdown had done a party
Speaker 3: with KRS one and we were giving out newspapers and
Speaker 3: I gave it to a gentleman named Elliott Wilson. I said,
Speaker 3: I know you from high school, and then Hodgi went
Speaker 3: up to him and said, I know you from college.
Speaker 3: So we both kind of randomly knew him, not directly
Speaker 3: but seen him around. So he called our voicemail and
Speaker 3: said he wanted to be down with us, and Elliott
Speaker 3: Wilson got down with beat Down. Eventually, me and Hodgy
Speaker 3: had a falling out where we didn't agree on what
Speaker 3: the direction of the magazine.
Speaker 2: Eventually, Sasha would part ways with Hodji and lead beat Down. However,
Speaker 2: music editor Elliott Wilson would come with him too, and
Speaker 2: after a short hiatus, the two would secure seed money
Speaker 2: from Star Wars producer Henry Chalfont and list beat Down
Speaker 2: critic Jeffrey chairman Mao and co create a new Brandon magazine,
Speaker 2: Ego Trip.
Speaker 3: Sometime later in ninety four, myself and Elliott started Ego
Speaker 3: Trip Magazine. Ego Trip Magazine was a free magazine in
Speaker 3: New York. It wasn't all hip hop. It was skateboarding,
Speaker 3: it was graffiti. It was all of my interests sort
Speaker 3: of crystallized in a magazine. Elliott loved hip hop, but
Speaker 3: he was open to the idea of doing something a
Speaker 3: little different, and my argument was what purpose are we
Speaker 3: serving creating another hip hop magazine? What advertisers it's gonna
Speaker 3: want to fuck with us, right, Why don't we offer
Speaker 3: something that's more expansive that can get more advertisers. Maybe
Speaker 3: we'll get a skate brand, maybe we'll get a clothing brand. Right,
Speaker 3: So that's how I was thinking at the time. So
Speaker 3: at first it was myself, Elliott Wilson, and Jeff Chairman Mao,
Speaker 3: who was affiliated with a place I was interning at
Speaker 3: called Third World Newsreel. There was a magazine called Rap
Speaker 3: Pages out of California and they had a section called
Speaker 3: Underground Zine. So the Gabe Alvarez, who was the editor there,
Speaker 3: reached out to us and said, hey, we want to
Speaker 3: interview you guys about your zine. We think it's really cool.
Speaker 3: So he gave interviews us and then we fly to
Speaker 3: California to do a Cypersil cover story. We meet Gabe
Speaker 3: in person, we hit it off. We say to Gabe,
Speaker 3: why don't you move to New York and work on
Speaker 3: this ego trip thing. He decides to move to New
Speaker 3: York and he moves to my mother's house in the
Speaker 3: story of Queen's Because we didn't have that much money,
Speaker 3: but my mom was like, I'll put your boy up. Eventually,
Speaker 3: Gabe convinced or encouraged Brent Rollins, who was the art
Speaker 3: director at rad Page's, to come to New York, which
Speaker 3: he does. And then once Brent came on board, I
Speaker 3: mean he's, you know, obviously a fabulous artist, super talented guy.
Speaker 3: How brands come together is obviously the talent and the
Speaker 3: vision that everyone has, but it's also magic. It's also
Speaker 3: like you can't explain, you know. I look at Ego Trippez,
Speaker 3: a band that I was in, and we put out
Speaker 3: some great records and they stand a test of time
Speaker 3: and we move on.
Speaker 2: Ego Trip did indeed put out some classics, and I
Speaker 2: know because I was fortunate enough to be part of it.
Speaker 2: As a young intern. I looked up to Sasha and
Speaker 2: I was eventually able to work with him at Well,
Speaker 2: we'll get into that later. Meanwhile, at Mass Appeal, things
Speaker 2: were still looking pretty bleak for Patent Adrian. The guys
Speaker 2: were down to their last dollar and it looked like
Speaker 2: they had published their last issue, but with a lucky
Speaker 2: bounce and a little help from their NYC Graffiti network
Speaker 2: of writers like Saysan Ewok. Things would change overnight.
Speaker 1: Mountain dew called us and we're like, we need breakdancers
Speaker 1: to make a video commercial. Do you guys do that?
Speaker 1: And we'll like, yeah, of course we have breakdancers. Of
Speaker 1: course we didn't know any breakdancers. But it turned out
Speaker 1: that ewalkdrew out of breakdance and Pat somehow got Saysa's
Speaker 1: studio keys and we like filmed this commercial with them
Speaker 1: there and I think they paid us like twenty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for it. At that time, like we were billionaires,
Speaker 1: Like that was like more money than we had ever seen,
Speaker 1: and we were just like yes and able to do
Speaker 1: another issue.
Speaker 2: Having gotten a taste of blue chip advertiser money, Pat
Speaker 2: and Adrian had an appetite for more, but they felt
Speaker 2: that the magazines rough around the edge of aesthetic was gating,
Speaker 2: so they reached out to a Life, the independent New
Speaker 2: York culture brand to help Who's eponymous streetwear line and
Speaker 2: Rivington club sneaker boutique defined downtown cool.
Speaker 1: There was other magazines coming out and they had better
Speaker 1: ads than we did, nicer paper, all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: we're like, man, we want to step it up, but like,
Speaker 1: how do we do that and then you had a
Speaker 1: place like a life that opened up. And meeting those
Speaker 1: guys is when Massive fel really changed for the better
Speaker 1: because my vision was an experience was just really limited.
Speaker 1: I knew I liked better stuff, but I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to do it that original A Life crew they
Speaker 1: were like a generation older than me. They'd had like
Speaker 1: real jobs in publishing, could like really make shit happen.
Speaker 1: So many people I felt were just like full of
Speaker 1: shit and didn't have like the life experience to back
Speaker 1: it up, and those guys did, especially Rob. They were
Speaker 1: able to take like the Iraq crew and a lot
Speaker 1: of those early photographers and mix that up and put
Speaker 1: some dope content together. Making those guys do the creative
Speaker 1: directors of Mass Appeal at the time was awesome.
Speaker 2: With a Life in the mixed creatively, Mass Appeal became
Speaker 2: a more sophisticated product, both for consumers and advertisers alike.
Speaker 1: As soon as we made a few bucks, we got
Speaker 1: an office, and then a Life helped make the magazine
Speaker 1: cool to bigger advertisers, and once we stopped work with
Speaker 1: them at that point, we kind of had to figure
Speaker 1: it out. Been around in photo shoots and creative directors
Speaker 1: and all this stuff to figure out how to hire
Speaker 1: our own and we kind of had the recipe down
Speaker 1: and then we're like, okay, you know, we could do
Speaker 1: this six times a year. It became a little easier.
Speaker 1: At the time, there were probably like one hundred, you know,
Speaker 1: advertisers like the Stucy and the Vans that supported things
Speaker 1: like mass Appeal. I mean that's just so important, you know,
Speaker 1: because without those companies, I think it couldn't have happened.
Speaker 2: Support from other independent brands was instrumental in keeping the
Speaker 2: lights on it Mass Appeal, but they would need to
Speaker 2: start landing corporate advertisers if they really wanted to grow.
Speaker 1: We started kind of upselling it to the Cools and
Speaker 1: the Scions and the Fords, and we started getting like
Speaker 1: real advertisers. I remember when we did like a million
Speaker 1: dollars in revenue for the year, and I was just.
Speaker 4: Like, dude, I'm a millionaire, like you know, And yeah,
Speaker 4: obviously there was nothing left of that million dollars, probably
Speaker 4: less than that after paying everybody, but that just felt
Speaker 4: really really good, Like I felt like we made it
Speaker 4: on average, probably did like one hundred thousand dollars in
Speaker 4: ads per issue.
Speaker 1: We always just plow it right back in because there's
Speaker 1: always something that needed to get you know, we needed
Speaker 1: a phone system, we needed a graphic designer or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, there's always a list of shit that needed
Speaker 1: to get bought. You know that that never ended.
Speaker 2: As the overhead grew, the team found creative ways to
Speaker 2: increase their ad revenue. Going out of business was not
Speaker 2: an option. So without any other recourse, and in order
Speaker 2: to stay cash flow positive, Pat and Adrian were forced
Speaker 2: to make some ethically questionable moves.
Speaker 1: We had all these people that needed to get paid,
Speaker 1: and the only way we could bring in more money
Speaker 1: was by just saying that we printed more copies than
Speaker 1: we did. So we did a thousand copies, and then
Speaker 1: two and then five, and then we'd go after these
Speaker 1: like real advertisers and they're like, we don't advertise with
Speaker 1: anybody that prints less than fifty thousand copies. So well,
Speaker 1: we do fifty thousand, and then of course we're like,
Speaker 1: well wait a minute, if they'll pay eight thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for that, they'll pay sixteen thousand if we say we
Speaker 1: do one hundred and twenty five thousands. And then it
Speaker 1: just kept going up. And up and up, and it
Speaker 1: just became more and more unbelievable. The printer was cool
Speaker 1: as shit. You would give me like fake receipts if
Speaker 1: somebody asked for it. Forget just how many were printed,
Speaker 1: Like we couldn't even distribute that many, you know, so
Speaker 1: like Tower would keep taking you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what they took, fucking five thousand copies and send us
Speaker 1: the half of them back like a year later. And
Speaker 1: then at that point we did have real distribution. But
Speaker 1: you know, MASSI Appeal is never like a newstand magazine
Speaker 1: like it would be on some newstands and you know,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Old what was cool, Like we couldn't afford
Speaker 1: like the front window placement, and even we could have
Speaker 1: like what about it, you know, like it's like a
Speaker 1: very niche thing. I mean, that was definitely like a
Speaker 1: house of cards waiting to fall down, just because it
Speaker 1: had to keep going up because we had no other
Speaker 1: way to increase the revenue or we would have just gone.
Speaker 1: Our business.
Speaker 5: Money was always very tight.
Speaker 1: We used to have this peel box we would always check,
Speaker 1: and I swear to that it was never any fucking
Speaker 1: money in it. We'd wait in line for twenty minutes
Speaker 1: at the post office and be like, sure, you don't.
Speaker 5: Have any mail for us, and maybe a check fell off.
Speaker 1: Could you check again? And it was very stressful to
Speaker 1: make payroll and just have the cash fload. Even though
Speaker 1: we were doing good, the cash will never kept up
Speaker 1: with anything. So, you know, growing just meant that next
Speaker 1: month we have any less of the cash that we
Speaker 1: needed to run the business. So whenever we had an
Speaker 1: opportunity to kind of hustle or away into a little
Speaker 1: bit more money.
Speaker 5: We would take everything from just.
Speaker 1: Blatantly lying about how many copies we printed with the circulation,
Speaker 1: to like Scion would send us these mailers and I
Speaker 1: think at that point, I don't know how many hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of magazines we said we were printing.
Speaker 5: They would mail just like, you know, all the inserts
Speaker 5: to the printer, and the printer's like, what do you
Speaker 5: want me to do with all these things? Weally just recyclele.
Speaker 1: And so at the time, the cigarette companies were still advertising,
Speaker 1: but at the same time they had to give all
Speaker 1: this money to anti smoking causes, and a big one
Speaker 1: of those was the Truth. So the Truth and the
Speaker 1: Truth dot Com was funded by tobacco companies to stop
Speaker 1: kids from smoking.
Speaker 5: If the Truth knew.
Speaker 1: We had cigarette ads, they would never have anything to
Speaker 1: do with us again. And at the same time, if
Speaker 1: the cigarette companies knew that we had Truth ads, they
Speaker 1: would want nothing to do with us because it's like,
Speaker 1: even though they're funding them, it's kind of their arch enemy.
Speaker 1: So if we took money from the Truth, there's no
Speaker 1: way that we have money from sigare and helping.
Speaker 5: But you know, they both were like, we half down
Speaker 5: to the back cover or we're not doing it. So
Speaker 5: we printed half the magazines with one back.
Speaker 1: Cover and the other half with the other back cover,
Speaker 1: and then just prayed that they wouldn't see it.
Speaker 5: And uh, I think the statue limitations was over. We
Speaker 5: got away with it.
Speaker 2: Mats Bill was getting big, maybe not Rolling Stone or
Speaker 2: XXL big, but the book was fat with ads and
Speaker 2: its audience was growing. However, growth necessitates change, and Adriane
Speaker 2: was struggling with alienating the core graffiti guys that he
Speaker 2: had started this whole thing for in the first place.
Speaker 1: I was kind of torn between two worlds because like
Speaker 1: all my graffiti friends would be like, dude, you guys
Speaker 1: sold out. It's a fucking clothing catalog and I hated
Speaker 1: hearing that. But then at the same time, like I knew,
Speaker 1: like to grow we had to put product reviews in
Speaker 1: there and shit like that. We were also like, like,
Speaker 1: we're not in a bubble either, so we're seeing, you know,
Speaker 1: if there's advice and a fader and what else was that?
Speaker 1: Like flaunt We knew we kind of had to have
Speaker 1: our own niche, but not get like too crazy into
Speaker 1: anything else. I feel like we're good at like finding
Speaker 1: great people and then giving the trust and the autonomy
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: It, and just then quite unexpectedly, one of those great
Speaker 2: people would actually find them.
Speaker 3: So one day I just called them. I got their
Speaker 3: voicemail back when people had like answering machines, and I said, Yo,
Speaker 3: I'm a huge fan of your magazine. I think it's beautiful,
Speaker 3: It's come a long way, keep doing it.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: I wasn't expecting anything.
Speaker 2: Sasha's call would not only inspire Paton Adrian to keep
Speaker 2: pressing forward, but it would also give them a game
Speaker 2: changing idea.
Speaker 3: They called me up and said, we know who you are,
Speaker 3: and like, you know, why don't you get down with us?
Speaker 3: And I was like, you guys can't afford me, man,
Speaker 3: And it's cool. Just keep doing what you're doing. It's
Speaker 3: all good, man, keep going, And so they kept going.
Speaker 1: I knew that we did not have good writing in
Speaker 1: the magazine. He was a good writer, and it seemed
Speaker 1: like he got it them up.
Speaker 3: One day they hit me up again and they said, yo,
Speaker 3: we want you on board. And I was like, all right, well,
Speaker 3: let me think about it.
Speaker 1: We met up like just you know, here's the key, Yasha,
Speaker 1: you drive that part of the magazine and nine time.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't really even know the guy. I
Speaker 1: knew of him, and you know, Madam wants or something,
Speaker 1: but he's just one of those people that is intelligence
Speaker 1: and kindness. If you just tell like, this is someone
Speaker 1: I want to be associated with, here's somebody I want
Speaker 1: to work with.
Speaker 3: I thought about it. I said, well, I think you
Speaker 3: need someone who is you know, I wasn't that old,
Speaker 3: but I was older at that time, and I wasn't
Speaker 3: fully plugged into everything that was going on. My interests
Speaker 3: were a little bit more diverse. I said, here's what
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do. I'm gonna make myself the editorial director.
Speaker 3: And as a young man, who I think would be
Speaker 3: great for the job as editor in chief. And his
Speaker 3: name is Noah Callahan Bever.
Speaker 2: All Right, So, as I intimated earlier, I your trusted narrator,
Speaker 2: actually worked at Mass Appeal for about two years as
Speaker 2: it's editor in chief, and for several years after that,
Speaker 2: I moonlighted as editorial director while I was catching exit
Speaker 2: Vibe and later Complex. As I mentioned, I knew Sasha
Speaker 2: because I had been his seventeen year old intern at
Speaker 2: Ego Trip and he'd helped me secure my first paid
Speaker 2: job as a fact checker at Vibe back in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety seven. So when he reached out during the summer
Speaker 2: of two thousand and two and asked me to come
Speaker 2: on to run the day to day of the editorial
Speaker 2: operation at Mass Appeal, it was an absolute no brainer. Sure,
Speaker 2: they were only offering me a cool sixteen thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a year salary without benefits and essentially no editorial budget,
Speaker 2: but I was all the way in. Sasha was my
Speaker 2: mentor and the opportunity to work with him was everything.
Speaker 2: And beyond that, I was so enamored of the camaraderie
Speaker 2: I had witnessed within the Ego Trip family that I
Speaker 2: couldn't wait to emulate it and build my own team.
Speaker 2: Of course, given the total lack of resources besides the
Speaker 2: awesome art team of photo editor Angela Boatwright and designer
Speaker 2: Sally Thurr, that meant assembling an all star squad of
Speaker 2: unpaid interns. Honestly, in retrospect, the talent that we brought
Speaker 2: together was phenomenal. Acclaimed YA novelist Mary H. K Choy,
Speaker 2: genius CC Brendan Frederick, longtime Complex editorial leaders Jack Erwin
Speaker 2: and Justin Monroe, Wu Tang, doc producer Kerry Graber, Hoonigan
Speaker 2: co founder Brian Scotto, and Billboard's deputy editorial director Damian Scott,
Speaker 2: amongst so many others.
Speaker 3: What I saw in mass Appeal was what I was
Speaker 3: aspiring to do with Ego trip.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's Spike messengers and guys who sell weed and like graffiti,
Speaker 3: hip hop, clothing, all these things that are like commonplace
Speaker 3: now put together at a time before the Internet was
Speaker 3: really rocking. That was how I lived. That's how I
Speaker 3: saw the world. I didn't just love hip hop, I
Speaker 3: love punk, I loved skate, I loved all this shit
Speaker 3: that now, if you're a kid of color, in New York,
Speaker 3: it's not weird to be into it. So I was like,
Speaker 3: this is cool to be a part of this. How
Speaker 3: can I help shape it?
Speaker 1: It worked out. He ran with it, he got the
Speaker 1: writing better, improved it. Every collaborator like made it that
Speaker 1: much better. And then you know, once we had like
Speaker 1: the contributors, you know, the Rocky Owls and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and the Estevons and like that's that was when it
Speaker 1: was like tight.
Speaker 2: Yep. We reimagined the magazine, keeping its downtown New York
Speaker 2: City perspective, but with an eye for broader culture and
Speaker 2: a particular interest in emergent hip hop. And we tried
Speaker 2: to make it funny without being cynical or ironic, and
Speaker 2: we brought in a host of columnists, from Ricky and
Speaker 2: Estevan to House of Pain's Danny Boy to Ari the
Speaker 2: Rugged Man. Prophetically, our first cover would pair Nas with
Speaker 2: his estranged mentor large professor, and then we had stuff
Speaker 2: like fifty cents guide to Guns and Bad Brains, bassist
Speaker 2: Darryl Jennifer's ruminations on navigating golf courses as a black
Speaker 2: punk rock icon. Oh yeah, and we also had one
Speaker 2: of the first feature stories written on Kanye West, the
Speaker 2: story and photoshoot of which was featured in his Genius
Speaker 2: documentary on Netflix. It was an insane, stressful and chaotic time,
Speaker 2: but honestly speaking, at least for myself, it was some
Speaker 2: of the best days of my life.
Speaker 1: Things were just just just rocking, and we would get
Speaker 1: ads for the first time. We really had like budgets
Speaker 1: to do stuff, and we can pay photographers a little bit.
Speaker 5: We could have read better equipment.
Speaker 1: We always put everything right back into the magazine, but
Speaker 1: we were able to really elevate it from just like a.
Speaker 5: Magazine that had pictures.
Speaker 1: Of graffiti in it to something that's really spoke to
Speaker 1: the culture of the time. In two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: we started being ready to branch into other things. We're
Speaker 1: already starting to get a little bored just doing the
Speaker 1: same thing every day for eight years. At this point,
Speaker 1: our friend Paul paints these giant advertising murals in la
Speaker 1: and we're going to be out there for an ASR
Speaker 1: trade shows. Let's go see if something like that could
Speaker 1: work in New York. Using like the mass appeal connect,
Speaker 1: Paul learned how to paint these giant walls.
Speaker 5: For a company called Artifacts that was like one of
Speaker 5: the only.
Speaker 1: Companies that still painted these big mural advertising walls. We
Speaker 1: had this skill that was kind of like a direct
Speaker 1: next step from from graffiti, but really had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with graffiti other than that it was painted on
Speaker 1: a wall. But the graffiti writers and us could recognize
Speaker 1: that it's kind of the same thing. We just knew
Speaker 1: that if you hit a good spot like comedy, people
Speaker 1: would see it, and obviously advertising is the same thing.
Speaker 1: So we're standing at Paul's house in La getting drunk
Speaker 1: one night and we're like, dude, you should come to
Speaker 1: New York and paint one of these and I bet
Speaker 1: we could sell it to the advertisers of Mass Appeal.
Speaker 1: And he wasn't you know, that crazy about it at
Speaker 1: the beginning, but we kind of convinced him and he
Speaker 1: let us borrow one of his photo albums. He had
Speaker 1: these graffiti photo albums of you know, like four x
Speaker 1: six prints of all the work that he painted for artifacts.
Speaker 1: So we took it back, scand the whole thing and
Speaker 1: just put a colossal logo on it and pretended like
Speaker 1: it was all of art work and started sending it
Speaker 1: out to all the magazine advertisers. It was really tough
Speaker 1: going at first. Those big vinyl banners were really big
Speaker 1: and nobody was painting things anymore. But Rockstar Video Games
Speaker 1: kind of saw the light and they were like, Yo,
Speaker 1: this is really cool. Could you guys do a test one?
Speaker 1: And we just want to make sure that you guys,
Speaker 1: can I actually paint something like this. They didn't believe
Speaker 1: that that was our work. And the thing, Paul flew
Speaker 1: down painted this one all by himself and they loved it.
Speaker 5: And then we must have done like thirty of them in.
Speaker 1: Every borough of New York, all just you know, illegal style,
Speaker 1: just going to the like a building arms, giving a cat.
Speaker 1: He would paint your wall, didn't know anything about permitting
Speaker 1: or any of that stuff, and mostly got away with it.
Speaker 5: The New York Times caught windows. It did a really cool.
Speaker 1: Article on us, and you know, the floodgates just opened
Speaker 1: in a way that it never did with Maxacre.
Speaker 2: With Colossals out of home marketing angle, Adrian, pat and
Speaker 2: Paul had tapped into a new, deeper well and we're
Speaker 2: ready to run the table.
Speaker 1: Within six months, We're like, holy shit, this is the future.
Speaker 1: There's something new and cool and just this energy here.
Speaker 1: There were so many magazines out at the time. There
Speaker 1: were not any other colossals on artifacts. They only cainted
Speaker 1: for like the big entrenched companies like the Lamars and
Speaker 1: the Clear Channels, they didn't have any of their own walls.
Speaker 1: So we knew from the graffiti side of things that
Speaker 1: the locations are what's important from the very beginning, where
Speaker 1: like we have to get our own walled, and we
Speaker 1: were able to get a few.
Speaker 5: Of them, sell them, and it just it just took off.
Speaker 1: Things are going really well doing it for about eight months,
Speaker 1: and then you know, all hanging out on Paul's birthday
Speaker 1: one night, and then the next morning.
Speaker 5: I get the worst call of my life.
Speaker 2: Being a graph writer well familiar with the tunnels, Pat
Speaker 2: knew his way around the subway. On his way home
Speaker 2: from Paul's birthday, late at night, Pat found himself on
Speaker 2: the wrong side of the station, headed to Queen's rather
Speaker 2: than Brooklyn, So he decided to jump down off the
Speaker 2: platform and crossed the tracks to the proper side. Tragically,
Speaker 2: Pat missed a step, slipped and touched the deadly third rail.
Speaker 1: You just don't expect that to happen, you know, I
Speaker 1: had just never had my life turned upside down literally
Speaker 1: from like one hour to the next, like everything was different.
Speaker 1: I had to go to the morgue and that was
Speaker 1: that was fucking horrible, you know. And they didn't show
Speaker 1: me his body. They showed me a polaride of his body. Remember,
Speaker 1: I broke down crying. Like the next like three weeks
Speaker 1: or just like a blur, you know, uh, just dealing
Speaker 1: with Dad, you know, going to his girlfriends and then
Speaker 1: the funeral. I must have been uh, he was like
Speaker 1: twenty five.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to deal.
Speaker 2: On top of dealing with the passing of his best friend,
Speaker 2: Adrian also had to deal with running their shared business
Speaker 2: and what was once a fun, creative outlet was now
Speaker 2: a daily reminder of Pat's death.
Speaker 1: Once I was back in the office, having to be
Speaker 1: there with the business, like having to take over like
Speaker 1: his stuff and call advertisers, and I was like it
Speaker 1: just felt like so real to try to like sell
Speaker 1: an ad And then people would ask me, well, where's Pat,
Speaker 1: And I'd be like, he's dead, and and you know
Speaker 1: they didn't say it, but like, how are you calling
Speaker 1: me for an ad? And I didn't want to be
Speaker 1: calling him for an ad? But like like I had to,
Speaker 1: it was it was just so fucking uncomfortable and so shitty.
Speaker 2: In the years after losing Pat, Adrian also lost his
Speaker 2: passion for mass appeal. With social media and blogs providing
Speaker 2: new competition, not to mention a collapsing economy, the landscape
Speaker 2: was changing and mass Appeal wasn't equipped to compete on
Speaker 2: top of it. Colossal continued to scale organically, and eventually
Speaker 2: Adrian could no longer justify splitting his time, so one
Speaker 2: day he made the hard decision to shutter Mass Appeal.
Speaker 1: My heart was not in it as much anymore. And
Speaker 1: then we had just started Colossal when Pat died. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't anything, you know, but we quickly kind of
Speaker 1: saw that, like, hey, this has like better legs than
Speaker 1: mass appeal does because blogs were coming in. Social media
Speaker 1: was like all this stuff, like like it was very
Speaker 1: clear that print was on the way out, and you know,
Speaker 1: like there's no like riding this into the sunset, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like it's going to get ugly.
Speaker 1: And by the time I shut it down, it was
Speaker 1: time to do so. And you know, magazines were failing
Speaker 1: left and right. It's tough because I was still you know,
Speaker 1: somewhat young and inexperienced and only knew what I knew
Speaker 1: from doing this one thing. You know, I didn't really
Speaker 1: have like a big support network outside of it, or
Speaker 1: my experience of that to lean on. You know, it's draining.
Speaker 1: It's like being in like a you know, like a
Speaker 1: bad relationship or something. It stops becoming fun to go
Speaker 1: to work. And I waited too long to shut it
Speaker 1: down too, just for my own pride. So advertisers were canceling,
Speaker 1: distribution was going down. We didn't have money to print
Speaker 1: even like the like bullshit number of copies that we
Speaker 1: actually did print, you know, so that got less, you know,
Speaker 1: expenses kept going up. Like it's obviously it's clear to
Speaker 1: everybody that they're on a sinking ship. I'm proud of
Speaker 1: how how we handled that because you know, we told everybody,
Speaker 1: we're like, yo, let's put one more really off some
Speaker 1: issue out managed to so much ads for it, and
Speaker 1: we were able to pay everybody, you know, like I
Speaker 1: don't think there's I mean maybe one or two people didn't,
Speaker 1: but he don't pay the printer. And like most like
Speaker 1: when companies like shut down, there's a lot of piss
Speaker 1: off people in the wake, and we didn't do that.
Speaker 1: You know, we we didn't plan it got like super
Speaker 1: long term, but we were like, you know, let's let's
Speaker 1: let's finish this one up and make it make it special.
Speaker 1: So we did that, and then uh obviously told everybody.
Speaker 1: I feel like Colossal kind of absorbed the remaining mass
Speaker 1: Appeal staff.
Speaker 2: Adrian focused on Colossal, Sasha pursued documentary filmmaking, and the
Speaker 2: descendants of my administration eventually all dispersed, and the mass
Speaker 2: Appeals we knew it was no more. Sasha, now a
Speaker 2: free agent, partnered with a production company called Roadside and
Speaker 2: began to cut his teeth in documentary filmmaking. However, after
Speaker 2: a few years, he got the hunger for more and
Speaker 2: contemplated his next chapter.
Speaker 3: I got to a point with Roadside where I was
Speaker 3: becoming antsy, and that usually comes every ten years. I
Speaker 3: want to try to do something else. So there's a
Speaker 3: guy named Philip Leed's former graffiti artist, hardcore dude, hip
Speaker 3: hop guy. He approached me. He was like, we should
Speaker 3: start a creative agency or something. Let's figure something out,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, I'm open to that. It's like, you
Speaker 3: should meet my friend Peter, He's got a company called DCON.
Speaker 2: The Peter in question was Peter Bittenbender, the proprietor of
Speaker 2: the agency and record label DCON, a hip hop obsessed
Speaker 2: creative entrepreneur who in the decade previous had grown DCON
Speaker 2: from a decad a dream into a thriving operation. Peter
Speaker 2: had actually started his career going in a completely different direction.
Speaker 6: I went to school for restaurant hotel management, trained chef,
Speaker 6: had zero intent of ever entering the entertainment industry. My
Speaker 6: last year of NYU, I made a film that was
Speaker 6: called One Big Trip that ended up becoming quite successful.
Speaker 6: It was a DVD on one side and a CD
Speaker 6: on the other, and we got music from like Hieroglyphics,
Speaker 6: it was Direct Classic five, it was Dilated Peoples, etc.
Speaker 1: And before we know.
Speaker 6: It, like this thing became the sort of like cultural
Speaker 6: touch point with this doc and this soundtrack. But before
Speaker 6: we put it out, I had to come up with
Speaker 6: a name for a company. And my business partner at
Speaker 6: the time, Jason Goldwatch, who directed that film, he was like,
Speaker 6: let's call a deconstruction company. But people just kept referring
Speaker 6: to us as DCON basically for about ten years Decon
Speaker 6: operated working with artists, whether it was Farrell or Kanye
Speaker 6: or Ludacris, doing two things, either helping artists produce content
Speaker 6: or helping them put out their music. At some point,
Speaker 6: brand started to take notice of what we were doing
Speaker 6: and they're like, oh, if you're making content for this artist,
Speaker 6: we want to do stuff similar to that, so let's
Speaker 6: hire you. So like the Microsoft's of the world and
Speaker 6: the video game company started hiring us.
Speaker 2: Besides the advertising work, Decon would more its branding culture,
Speaker 2: releasing revered records by Alchemist, Rock Marciano and perhaps most significantly,
Speaker 2: Jay electronicas Exhibit A and Exhibit C.
Speaker 3: So I mean, Peter, hey, man, you don't know who
Speaker 3: I am. So I know you are. You know what
Speaker 3: are you guys trying to do it? But we're trying
Speaker 3: to start this agency. He's like, listen, man, I got
Speaker 3: you by five years, Like, why don't you just join DCON.
Speaker 3: You save you some time and some effort. We can
Speaker 3: crush it if we get together. I was like, all right,
Speaker 3: fuck it. I wound up coming to DCON, which at
Speaker 3: the time was a record label and a creative agency,
Speaker 3: and they had done a few videos and some commercials
Speaker 3: and stuff, and we started to do stuff in TV.
Speaker 3: You know, me and Peter started talking and he's like,
Speaker 3: what's up with mass Appeal?
Speaker 2: After laying Dorman a few years, the mass Appeal name
Speaker 2: had becomes something of legend. With Adrian's blessing, Peter and
Speaker 2: Sasha decided to resurrect it.
Speaker 1: Sasha just hit me up out of the blue and
Speaker 1: was like, hey, uh, if I ever want to do
Speaker 1: mass Appeal again, do I have your blessing? And I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, of course, man. You know, I think
Speaker 1: I still have a couple of hard drive sitting around
Speaker 1: or something. And then I guess he talked to Peter.
Speaker 1: I thought nothing would ever come of it, and then
Speaker 1: a couple of months later he's like, yo, I got
Speaker 1: this thing going, and really.
Speaker 2: Mass Appeal was up and running again, but with a
Speaker 2: refreshed approach thanks to the help of Peter's agency experience.
Speaker 2: The initial plan was to relaunch the magazine and website,
Speaker 2: as well as to rebrand Decon's existing assets under the
Speaker 2: Mass Appeal moniker.
Speaker 6: It was just an obvious thing, like let's change the
Speaker 6: name overnight to mass Appeal because it's just such a
Speaker 6: stronger consumer facing brand.
Speaker 2: But there was a final piece of the puzzle that
Speaker 2: would take the reborn Mass Appeal to the next level. Nas,
Speaker 2: a Grammy Award winning musician, entrepreneur and friend of Peter
Speaker 2: and Sasha, who had actually appeared on our first cover,
Speaker 2: caught wind to the brand's revival. At the invite of
Speaker 2: the duo, the former Mass Appeal cover star decided to
Speaker 2: get on board and help ID eight and create a
Speaker 2: new and evolved vision for Mass Appeal.
Speaker 7: Peter anew from hanging out in New York. I always
Speaker 7: liked them is where a chill dude, but had this
Speaker 7: I or the tiger type of spirit to go get
Speaker 7: it and do great things. And Sasha for years and
Speaker 7: we grew up in the same area in Long Island City.
Speaker 7: We come up in the same place. I knew where
Speaker 7: their hearts wat when it came to the art form,
Speaker 7: to what they felt about pop culture, what they felt
Speaker 7: about people, what they felt about hip hop, and they're
Speaker 7: my kind of guys to get into this with. I
Speaker 7: think we have a synergy and people can check the
Speaker 7: pedigree and see that we're concerned about what's really happening
Speaker 7: in real time and what's pure and what's honest. And
Speaker 7: people that moved the needle on things in major ways.
Speaker 6: NOAs that I had known each other for a few
Speaker 6: years prior to relaunching Mass Appeal, and we've been talking
Speaker 6: about stuff to do together when we ultimately partnered. The
Speaker 6: reason it happened is Kasasha respected the work we've been
Speaker 6: doing at Decon, and so did NAS because I'd done
Speaker 6: a music video for him and I shot some other
Speaker 6: content of a record label and we have relationships with
Speaker 6: artists and we have NAS. But let's keep the core
Speaker 6: of what mascacill stands for, which is storytelling, but let's
Speaker 6: do it in the ways more traditional. So let's have
Speaker 6: a magazine, let's have a website. For the first couple
Speaker 6: of years we produced the magazine, I was so proud
Speaker 6: of it, like as somebody who loves the graphic design
Speaker 6: and loves like printed materials. We brought back the magazine
Speaker 6: that didn't end up working out, which was a good
Speaker 6: thing because that wasn't our path. At some point we realized,
Speaker 6: like the brand is more of a storytelling vehicle. Let's
Speaker 6: be less boxed in and how we tell those stories.
Speaker 6: And that's when we started to pivot more into content.
Speaker 6: Let's work with brands et cetera.
Speaker 2: As Massi Peple moved into longer form content, they secured
Speaker 2: partnerships with CNN Films, TBS, Netflix, and Showtime to produce
Speaker 2: documentary films and series. These included Fresh Dressed, a documentary
Speaker 2: about hip hop fashion, Rapture, a multi part series that
Speaker 2: profiled a swath of budding MC's, and an epic four
Speaker 2: part docuseries about the rise of Wu Tang clan of
Speaker 2: Mikes and men.
Speaker 6: Let's bring in some directors and some creatives that we
Speaker 6: really like and let's become that engine. How are these
Speaker 6: stories that led to us producing like Rapture, where we
Speaker 6: developed a bunch of directors that we still work with
Speaker 6: and you know it. Frush Dressed, which was his first documentary,
Speaker 6: which took us to Sundance and kind of taught us,
Speaker 6: I guess, sort of the ins and outs of the
Speaker 6: content business. But this was his first time like directing
Speaker 6: a project in us, like producing something of this scale.
Speaker 2: As the team's film division started to make some noise,
Speaker 2: it enticed Nas to deepen his involvement and try his
Speaker 2: creative hand in a new discipline, starting with Your Watching
Speaker 2: Video Music Box, a doc celebrating Ralph McDaniel's pioneering rap
Speaker 2: video show and then Supreme Team, which examined the infamous
Speaker 2: Queen's drug empire. NAS rebranded himself not only is one
Speaker 2: of the top five lyricists of all time, but now
Speaker 2: as an acclaimed documentary filmmaker too.
Speaker 1: He was excited.
Speaker 3: He had ideas, he wanted to do it, He wanted
Speaker 3: to be involved, He want to talk to Route and
Speaker 3: so it just made sense. And same with Supreme Team.
Speaker 3: Like he's referenced Supreme Team in his rhymes. He grew
Speaker 3: up in Queens. He understands the weight of the story.
Speaker 7: From unsung heroes to the most popular cats out there.
Speaker 1: We're very interested in their stories.
Speaker 7: We're interested in and Ralph McDaniels because how important he
Speaker 7: is to the culture. And he's the first person bringing
Speaker 7: New York City the faces of the artist they loved.
Speaker 7: The kids were not seeing these people until Ralph McDaniels
Speaker 7: put them on Public Assets Channel. It just felt like
Speaker 7: a match made in heaven. I was honored.
Speaker 3: You know, he's someone that those folks and I put
Speaker 3: in quotes. Trust you know, you're not dealing with like
Speaker 3: regular people on the street. You're dealing with serious heavyweights,
Speaker 3: and I think that because Nas has referenced them with
Speaker 3: a level of respect for distance. At the same time,
Speaker 3: I think they appreciated his reporting. He's being a documentarian
Speaker 3: in his rhymes, mentioning these folks talking about their legacies
Speaker 3: and their dynasties. So that's another project that simply just
Speaker 3: made sense that he was enthusiastic about. So I think
Speaker 3: he himself is surprised, but he's surprised in a way
Speaker 3: where he is really happy with this new direction that
Speaker 3: he's been, you know, messing with.
Speaker 2: As mass Apeel looks to the future, they continue to
Speaker 2: seek ways to expand their impact. Kicking off at the
Speaker 2: end of twenty twenty two, Mass Appeal began a multi
Speaker 2: year celebration of hip hop's fiftieth birthday under the title
Speaker 2: hip Hop fifty, orchestrating a litany of content and irl
Speaker 2: activations that have only just started to be revealed. So
Speaker 2: hip Hop fifty is a.
Speaker 6: Global movement to celebrate the fiftieth aniversi of hip hop.
Speaker 6: The goal is that this becomes that large scale global
Speaker 6: celebration of hip hop culture that lasts for multiple years.
Speaker 6: So we launched it last year and it's dozens of
Speaker 6: different partnerships with different companies that have either historically been
Speaker 6: deeply connected to hip hop or we see as a
Speaker 6: great extension like Carnegie Hall, for example, isn't a brand
Speaker 6: that's been connected to hip hop culture, you know, but
Speaker 6: they're a place that hip hop should be celebrated.
Speaker 2: Another brand extension the team is focused on moving forward
Speaker 2: is broadening their global flop print. Mass Biel has begun
Speaker 2: to look to open offices outside the US, with an
Speaker 2: eye on Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, and India, with ambitions
Speaker 2: of sourcing local musical talent.
Speaker 6: At some point, we realized we cannot truly be one
Speaker 6: of the voices of hip hop if we're just thinking
Speaker 6: about hip hop from a New York's sensibility. Had to
Speaker 6: look at telling stories that were bigger than just in
Speaker 6: our backyard. And when we started to talk about different
Speaker 6: places we could park the mascil flag, one day, I
Speaker 6: just suggested India because we got a script for this
Speaker 6: movie called gully Boy, which is the story of this
Speaker 6: artist Divine, who ended up being our first artist we
Speaker 6: partnered with in India. But it's kind of like the
Speaker 6: eight mile of India, Rags to Rich's Super aspirational story
Speaker 6: of this artist, Divine, who came from the slums of India.
Speaker 6: It came in because Nas was his favorite rapper, so
Speaker 6: they wanted Nas to ep the film we partnered with.
Speaker 6: Divine started partnering with other artists and India very quickly
Speaker 6: and went from like where do we go?
Speaker 1: What are we doing? To like India.
Speaker 2: Today, mass Peel drastically different from the downtown graffitisine it
Speaker 2: started as, but even as the brand branches out into film, television,
Speaker 2: and music, it's commitment to telling authentic stories rooted in
Speaker 2: hip hop culture remains the same.
Speaker 3: We do film, we do TV, we do podcasts, we
Speaker 3: do marketing, we do advertising, we do a bit of everything,
Speaker 3: and it's become a brand that has real legacy.
Speaker 1: I think it's awesome. I'll be watching Netflix like one
Speaker 1: in the morning and see a fucking massive heel logo
Speaker 1: and the show that I had no idea what was
Speaker 1: going to be there, and fucking puts a smile on
Speaker 1: my face like a proud parent. I think it's awesome.
Speaker 3: For the longest time, we didn't have people who could
Speaker 3: advocate for certain stories, and I feel great about what
Speaker 3: we've been able to do. In terms of telling these
Speaker 3: stories at a high level, real polished, real thought, real
Speaker 3: art direction, real consideration, great archive bal like I think
Speaker 3: we brought that to the game, and I don't know
Speaker 3: who else is really doing what we're doing.
Speaker 2: For more than twenty five years and over its many iterations,
Speaker 2: Massapeel is retained at potent through line a reverence for
Speaker 2: documenting outsider culture and investing in the most dynamic creators
Speaker 2: of tomorrow. From the days of celebrating their graffiti gods,
Speaker 2: to birthing a definitive canon of documentary films, to developing
Speaker 2: a roster of musical talent, to now spearheading the fiftieth
Speaker 2: anniversary celebration of hip hop and taking the brand global,
Speaker 2: Massafield remains dedicated to finding culture's most important, untold stories
Speaker 2: and platforming them with care and consideration. When Adrian and
Speaker 2: Pat titled the magazine way back in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: they did so with tongue in cheek, an ironic nod
Speaker 2: to their fringe Passion project.
Speaker 1: But over the.
Speaker 2: Years, from Sasha opening the editorial aperture to Peter and
Speaker 2: NAS's work securing broadcast deals around the world and blasting
Speaker 2: the content to every home. Together, the team has willed
Speaker 2: mass appeal in all its authentic glory, from the tuose
Speaker 2: recesses of downtown Cool to today earnestly living up to
Speaker 2: its name. And so now not only is the money,
Speaker 2: but also the fame and the respect growing like mass
Speaker 2: appeal from Idea Generation. I'm Noah Callahan Bever and this
Speaker 2: is the All Angles Podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode,
Speaker 2: please don't hesitate to like comment DM or tell a
Speaker 2: friend to tell a friend about Idea Generation and the
Speaker 2: All Angles Podcast. We can't do any of this without
Speaker 2: your help, and honestly, your support means everything. We do
Speaker 2: this for you, and we can't do it without you.
Speaker 2: This episode was brought to you by Will Packer. Executive
Speaker 2: produced by John Valachick and Helena Ox. Original music by
Speaker 2: Valentine Fritz, Edit and sound mixed by Nonsensible Production, and
Speaker 2: hosted by me Idea Generation founder Noah Callahan Bever. Idea
Speaker 2: Generation's All Angles is a Willpacker Media podcast