Speaker 1: Couest. Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: All Right, well, ladies and gentlemen, this is a special
Speaker 2: episode of Court Love Supreme, as all episodes are special
Speaker 2: episodes of course Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: No seriously, for a long time fans of the show.
Speaker 2: Who already know like how nerdy and informative we are,
Speaker 2: or at least that we strive to be at least
Speaker 2: and putting you on game. This is probably why our
Speaker 2: guest today is the perfect example and know how having
Speaker 2: one foot being a well effective suit in the business
Speaker 2: while equally having his other foot deeply rooted in creativity.
Speaker 1: It's really rare to.
Speaker 2: Meet someone on the other side of the camera that's
Speaker 2: as much of a creative as artists are, but still
Speaker 2: in the mode of being a suit. He is the
Speaker 2: president of Live Nation Urban and as a business manager
Speaker 2: for the last twenty years, he's literally guided the careers
Speaker 2: of a bajillion acts from Jill Scott, Scott.
Speaker 3: Storch, Lil Wayne, j Colen, Nicki.
Speaker 2: Minaj, even a certain unnamed presidential candidate Slash Nuisance, not
Speaker 2: to mention Philadelphia's finest.
Speaker 3: The legendary Roots Crew.
Speaker 4: Hello.
Speaker 2: Hello, but you know pretty much if you've been head
Speaker 2: scratching for the last ten or fifteen years, wondering how
Speaker 2: in the hell does Questo? How can Questo match a
Speaker 2: triple platinum artist going buff for buck with only a
Speaker 2: single going gold in silent?
Speaker 1: This man is really fully responsible.
Speaker 2: Uh he can answer that question because lord knows, I've
Speaker 2: been in the game since nineteen ninety two and there's
Speaker 2: not many of us left here still swimming and thriving.
Speaker 2: If you will, and we owe that to our guest.
Speaker 2: I promised no inside baseball talk. This is supermanager, Sean guest, super.
Speaker 3: Thank you, brother, thank you. I'm waiting for my supreme
Speaker 3: y y you'll do that practice last night.
Speaker 4: We can do it on zoom.
Speaker 3: We can't do it on COVID nineteen.
Speaker 5: But if we had about it that name, I'm like,
Speaker 5: we can get a feature.
Speaker 3: Then, you know, break it down.
Speaker 4: His name was Sean G I think that's what it was.
Speaker 3: Was your.
Speaker 6: No, I don't know, you tell us please, lets you
Speaker 6: can start there the story, all right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, Seawanz's rap name was MC two cool mellow
Speaker 2: cool cool cool mellowy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sean, Sean is really responsible. I guess you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's no secret.
Speaker 1: Shawn and Tarika cousins.
Speaker 7: And I guess a lot of people don't know that.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, again, no inside baseball from question treating you
Speaker 2: like a regular ask guest. Yeah, and so I guess
Speaker 2: the legend is that the sibling rivalry nature of their
Speaker 2: of their childhood. You know, Sean was like the star
Speaker 2: of the family because he had a twelve inch single
Speaker 2: that was popular Philly and you know that that really
Speaker 2: lit a fire into Tarik, like you know, wait, do
Speaker 2: they get a load to meat like that? That sort
Speaker 2: of thing, and that's you know, so Sean is responsible
Speaker 2: for really putting the fire under.
Speaker 5: Hold on, I see what's about to happen here, you
Speaker 5: go ahead.
Speaker 7: Okay, IM about to say so.
Speaker 3: So Tarika and I our cousins. Black thought is my cousin.
Speaker 3: We were sort of raised more like brothers because his
Speaker 3: mother was my first cousin, so he was my second cousin,
Speaker 3: but we were obviously around the same age range.
Speaker 4: And you know his mom, you know.
Speaker 3: He's always stayed at the crib like my mom was.
Speaker 3: The was the aunt was the South Philly aunt who
Speaker 3: moved to Mount Airy where all of the entire South
Speaker 3: Philly family would come up and hang and drop their
Speaker 3: kids off. And Riek was always at the crib, always
Speaker 3: at the crib. And from the time we were four
Speaker 3: or five six years old, we were super competitive in everything, right,
Speaker 3: whether it was riding our bikes, whether it was drawing,
Speaker 3: like Trek is a super dope visual artist. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm the older cousin. I'm two years older than them,
Speaker 3: so I I especially in those at that time when
Speaker 3: you were younger, two years is a big difference. So
Speaker 3: I was able to muscle him. I was able to,
Speaker 3: you know, verbally muscle him, physically muscle them like yo.
Speaker 3: So you know, we would have drawing contests, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, and we judge each other's picture and
Speaker 3: you know, his pictures looking super dope in minds, looking
Speaker 3: like stick figures. But I'd like, I want, I want,
Speaker 3: you know, So you know I used to always be
Speaker 3: able to frustrate them and in different ways. And music
Speaker 3: was another passion of us, like we you know, grew up.
Speaker 3: You know, I got my first record that I bought
Speaker 3: was you know, the Fat Boys but a stick them,
Speaker 3: you know, from Sound of Market, you know, brought it
Speaker 3: up to the cribe, was at the crib. You know,
Speaker 3: we're playing a record. So you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: the experiences that I had being the older cousin, I
Speaker 3: would come back and and explain or talk to him
Speaker 3: or about it, and he would sort of live vicariously
Speaker 3: through me. And then, yeah, it got to a certain
Speaker 3: point where you know, I started rapping and and I
Speaker 3: started to get a rep in Philadelphia, and I used
Speaker 3: to travel around the city and got a record deal
Speaker 3: quote unquote and put out a single. And at the
Speaker 3: same time, you know, REP was always an artist, you know,
Speaker 3: whether it was a visual artist, whether it was a poet, writer,
Speaker 3: a rapper, you know, a singer. He could do it all.
Speaker 3: And I got to a point where, you know, I
Speaker 3: also played basketball in high school and I was shooting guard.
Speaker 3: I had a record out and I was on a
Speaker 3: basketball team.
Speaker 1: Played basketball then.
Speaker 3: No, no, not at all, not at all, not at all,
Speaker 3: but but basketball basketball took me away from from hip hop,
Speaker 3: like basketball took me away from because it was like
Speaker 3: I started getting college scholarship offers and things like that.
Speaker 3: So I stopped. You were that good, Yeah, I got
Speaker 3: I got scholarship division too. I mean I wasn't. I
Speaker 3: didn't know that you were in that Villanova you swhere,
Speaker 3: But yeah, I got I got a college Scouts, I
Speaker 3: got the ball, like yo, google me though, like.
Speaker 7: I got to be a mayor me Sean.
Speaker 3: Know that's I'll send you some clippings, like you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know that life.
Speaker 5: So twelve grade year, I put numbers the way Sean,
Speaker 5: you basket forward and can we take it back, like
Speaker 5: take it back to like the kind of house that
Speaker 5: you grew up in, like what your what your parents did, and.
Speaker 3: Oh we can start there. We can start there. So
Speaker 3: so my entire family on my mother's side, I was
Speaker 3: really close, you know, to my mother, and father was
Speaker 3: in my life, but my mother raised us.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It was a household where you know, my father was
Speaker 3: in and out. You know, he was in my life.
Speaker 3: I'm not I'm not the one who's got it. He
Speaker 3: was in my life, but my mother raised it. She
Speaker 3: was She was the visionary, she was everything. And my
Speaker 3: mother grew up in the projects in South phil projects.
Speaker 3: I have three siblings thirteen, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years
Speaker 3: older than me. So they're much older than me.
Speaker 4: Oh they were.
Speaker 3: They were born in the projects in South Philly. My mom, uh,
Speaker 3: she dropped out of high school in tenth grade. She
Speaker 3: was pregnant with my sister when she was in tenth grade,
Speaker 3: so she dropped out of high school in tenth grade.
Speaker 3: Her my dad got married. They had two more kids,
Speaker 3: living in the projects. My entire mother's side of her
Speaker 3: family is from South Philly, Fifth Street Projects of Seventh Street.
Speaker 3: You know, South Philly is fifth Street of seventh Street,
Speaker 3: and you know that was the sort of pre showing
Speaker 3: existence was all South Philly. My mom was a hustler,
Speaker 3: you know, she worked two three jobs. She saved up,
Speaker 3: she bought real estate, and her dream was to get
Speaker 3: her children out of South Philadelphia and she did that.
Speaker 3: She bought a house in mount Airy and my closest
Speaker 3: sibling was twelve years old, and they moved, and we moved.
Speaker 3: They moved to mount Airy and I was born in
Speaker 3: a mount Airy So I I was born on Sharpenext
Speaker 3: Street in mount Airy with my entire family living in
Speaker 3: South Philly for the first six years of my life
Speaker 3: because my mom was working a couple of jobs, my
Speaker 3: dad was working, you know, and my kid, my brother's
Speaker 3: and sisters in school and we was ground and they
Speaker 3: couldn't keep me. So my first six years of my life,
Speaker 3: I lived in South Philly with Tarik's grandma, so until
Speaker 3: I became until I was able to get become school age,
Speaker 3: I stayed during the week in South Philly with Tarik's
Speaker 3: Grandmam and my other aunt who lived like two doors
Speaker 3: from each other, my Aunt Many and my Aunt Blanche,
Speaker 3: until I turned six, when I was able to go
Speaker 3: to school. That's when I moved to Mount Airy with
Speaker 3: my mom and my family for the entire you know,
Speaker 3: all week. So that was sort of my my early
Speaker 3: existence was jumping between South Philly and Mount Airy during
Speaker 3: the week and then you know, sort of staying with
Speaker 3: my parents and my family on the weekend.
Speaker 7: Which at the time was like the first right was.
Speaker 3: The hood and the burbs. It was absolutely one thousand
Speaker 3: percent this was this was mount Airy at the time
Speaker 3: where there were white people there, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: it was, it was, it was predominant. It was predominantly
Speaker 3: white when my mom moved there. I mean, now you
Speaker 3: know that that doesn't exist, but that's that's the Mound
Speaker 3: area that we moved to when it's predominantly white. But again,
Speaker 3: my existence until I became six and went until I
Speaker 3: became school age. Was still in South Philly because my
Speaker 3: mom and dad didn't have you know, didn't have no
Speaker 3: home health care, you know, kid money, money to.
Speaker 2: Put me in some sort of some sort of you
Speaker 2: know care. Wait, so I have a question that Trica
Speaker 2: is going on record to tell the story. But were
Speaker 2: you there in South Philly during the infamous fire episode?
Speaker 3: So the fire episode? All right, So I moved When
Speaker 3: my mom moved from South Philly, she moved to a
Speaker 3: house on Sharp Next Mount. That was the house she
Speaker 3: saved up. You know, she saved two jobs. She bought
Speaker 3: that house again. My mom was a hustler. Let me
Speaker 3: tell you one more thing about my mom. My mom
Speaker 3: was death So she lost her hearing at sixteen, so
Speaker 3: she dropped out of high school at fifteen, lost her
Speaker 3: hearing at sixteen, and had three kids by the age
Speaker 3: of twenty. But she was a hustler and super smart
Speaker 3: and understood how to make moves and under and had
Speaker 3: a vision for her family. So she got us out
Speaker 3: of South We moved to a house on Sharpnext Street.
Speaker 3: We were there for about I think four or five years.
Speaker 3: Then she saved up and bought another house on Hoarder Street,
Speaker 3: which is the street around the corner, and kept the
Speaker 3: sharp Next Street as a rental property. Right, so we
Speaker 3: moved around the corner, kept the sharp Nextreet as a
Speaker 3: rental property. One of the first tenants in that Sharp
Speaker 3: Next Street property was Tarik and his mother. So the
Speaker 3: infamous house burned down story was the house that my
Speaker 3: mother owned. Oh and it was in Mount Airy, not
Speaker 3: in South Philly. So the story is Tarik lived in
Speaker 3: this house. Tarik and and and his mom and his
Speaker 3: brother lived in this house. I was over there. I
Speaker 3: was there. We were hanging, we were playing. We were
Speaker 3: being cousins or whatever. And then I bounced and we
Speaker 3: were playing. I don't know if y'all remember these little
Speaker 3: green army men.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was that was our thing.
Speaker 1: That was our thing.
Speaker 3: We used to set them up all around the crib
Speaker 3: and you know what I mean. And again I'm the
Speaker 3: older cousin. I'm like, wow, wow, wow, I killed you.
Speaker 3: I killed you. You know what I want. But we
Speaker 3: we we, you know, we got into the game and
Speaker 3: I bounced and he continued playing, and you know, evidently
Speaker 3: the story is he found a lighter and you know,
Speaker 3: the army men were stuck in one particular position. You know,
Speaker 3: that's the position you bought the man, whether they're on
Speaker 3: their knees shooting or on the ground shooting. Te you know.
Speaker 3: Being the intelligent kid that he was, he said, I
Speaker 3: think I can if I burned this army man, I
Speaker 3: can change his position, because it's going to be you know, yeah, exactly. So,
Speaker 3: you know, he clicked the lighter, old school lighter, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, clicked the lighter was burning the
Speaker 3: army man. Of course, the lighter got hot and he
Speaker 3: flicked the lighter down, and before you know it, you
Speaker 3: turned around and the curtains is on fire. And he
Speaker 3: runs downstairs and tells his mom, and then the whole
Speaker 3: upstairs is on fire, and then the house is so, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the that's the that's the that's the ultimate story.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mere the house that the house that
Speaker 3: caught on fire was actually my mom's rental property. Oh okay,
Speaker 3: how those ladies in that house?
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: He tells the story that he just ran downstairs like
Speaker 2: like you smell something burning, not at all, that's when
Speaker 2: it happens.
Speaker 8: So when you question, I had just about your mom
Speaker 8: and she lost the hearing. Did you learn how to
Speaker 8: sign to that?
Speaker 4: Like, how did y'all?
Speaker 3: That's the crazy shi? It is so here. So let's
Speaker 3: you know, again unpacking a little bit. So my mom
Speaker 3: lost her hair in at sixteen, her sister, Tariqu's grandma.
Speaker 3: It was hard of hearing from the time I knew her.
Speaker 3: I mean, she could hear when you like yell. Our aunt,
Speaker 3: Dot was death. Dot had two kids that were both deaf,
Speaker 3: and my middle brother was deaf. You know, So we
Speaker 3: had all of that in the family. And I just
Speaker 3: don't understand why I don't know silent you know why?
Speaker 3: You know why because my mom didn't learn silanguage. My
Speaker 3: mom read lips. Wow, I mean, my mom never learned
Speaker 3: silentuge she and what I did. I was her communicator.
Speaker 3: So my early business days was while she was doing
Speaker 3: and building her real estate business. You know, I was
Speaker 3: this eight year old on the phone translating with the
Speaker 3: electric company or translating with the contractor. Like Mom, he said,
Speaker 3: it's going to cost you know, six hundred dollars to
Speaker 3: put this hot water heater in, and she'd be like, Sean,
Speaker 3: get the fuck out of here. Time. It don't cost
Speaker 3: me four hundred dollars and I'd be like, sir, and
Speaker 3: she'd be like I heard her, but tell her we
Speaker 3: could do four fifty. And I'm like, mom, he said
Speaker 3: four fifty, She's like, no, four hundred, and that's it,
Speaker 3: you know, okay for it. So I learned my first
Speaker 3: sort of negotiating and and just handling business and understanding
Speaker 3: the rhythm of those conversations because business right, yeah, over
Speaker 3: my mom handling buying houses, buying property, negotiate with contractors.
Speaker 3: I was the one doing it because she couldn't hear,
Speaker 3: so she never really learned sign language, but she obviously
Speaker 3: knew how to communicate. So I think because of that,
Speaker 3: I never learned sol What was.
Speaker 5: The height of her number of properties at like.
Speaker 3: Her height, I think we had. I mean she used
Speaker 3: to buy and sell, so it was never like a
Speaker 3: buy and hold, like oh my mom had fifty properties
Speaker 3: all over the city. It was it was a buy
Speaker 3: and sell thing. But I mean I think she probably
Speaker 3: you know, across my through my high school years, it's
Speaker 3: probably like ten to fifteen you know, properties around the
Speaker 3: city that she's either bought held, So whatever.
Speaker 1: Are you still in that business or have you just
Speaker 1: let them all go?
Speaker 3: No, I know I still have. I still I still
Speaker 3: got some property. And so you know I'm still likes.
Speaker 1: Great because that'll call your parents in case some shit
Speaker 1: happened to me.
Speaker 4: Are your parents to they still alive?
Speaker 1: Shot?
Speaker 3: My mom passed away young. She was sixty four when
Speaker 3: she passed. She passed away fifteen years ago. My father's man.
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, gotcha.
Speaker 1: So you also attended Millersville? Correct?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, all right at the university I got Are you
Speaker 3: the one that introduced Malkan to read to each other?
Speaker 4: Or yes?
Speaker 3: It was so I did. You're asking this question. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: So it was me. It goes back to me and
Speaker 3: Tarik being competitive, right, so like I was saying, basketball
Speaker 3: took me away from him, Like you know, he wasn't
Speaker 3: making no money back in the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. I was doing.
Speaker 3: Shows at the Why out fifty second Street. You know,
Speaker 3: that was my trap.
Speaker 1: That was the house of the Why Circuit.
Speaker 3: I did the Why on Christian down South Philly, Why
Speaker 3: on fifty second Street.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: I always wanted I always wanted to be jazz j
Speaker 3: just see, like that was my goal in life.
Speaker 7: Right, what is that record deal with Sean?
Speaker 3: It was with a company called Payhill Records with the
Speaker 3: label was The label was a joint venture between mc
Speaker 3: breeze and balally B.
Speaker 1: Again where is all right?
Speaker 2: So for those that don't know, like balawie B is
Speaker 2: like mid hip hop period, like between eighty five to
Speaker 2: about ninety one. Blii B was like a legendary Philadelphia
Speaker 2: label CEO, Like what was I always heard his name?
Speaker 2: But was he like our was artists.
Speaker 3: So it's funny because the label was you know, this
Speaker 3: is his dude name was Jim Hill. He was like
Speaker 3: your traditional you know, corporate guy, non musician, non you
Speaker 3: know probably what what what y'all thought I was when
Speaker 3: you first met me, you know what I mean, like
Speaker 3: corporate shoe, no, no creativity. So it was his label.
Speaker 3: He did a deal with mc breeze, who was an artist.
Speaker 3: This combobulated later and and and you know all of that,
Speaker 3: and Breese did a sub deal with balally B, who
Speaker 3: also was an artist. So my label was run by.
Speaker 2: Two artists and production deal exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: I'm like, where's my royalties?
Speaker 1: Dog?
Speaker 3: I'm about to about to hit you up for that,
Speaker 3: but but yeah, so so so you know I had
Speaker 3: that then I started playing ball. College, just start calling.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about life. I'm like, let me take this
Speaker 3: college scholarship. You know, I stopped rapping and I start
Speaker 3: playing ball, so I go up to military. But I'm
Speaker 3: you know, you still rap. You're still freestyling, right, You're
Speaker 3: still in the car. Bea come on, you still you
Speaker 3: never stopped fucking rapping when you rap? And you know,
Speaker 3: I come home Thanksgiving of my sophomore year, and you know,
Speaker 3: reeks over the family. We have our Thanksgiving dinner. You know,
Speaker 3: we're in the basement or whatever, and me and we
Speaker 3: always battle. We always battle, always used to battle. And
Speaker 3: when I was younger, you know what I mean, I
Speaker 3: would kill him. I mean yeah, I wouldkill him. He
Speaker 3: was younger. I would muscle him right, like, even when
Speaker 3: I lost, I won. But he's just start getting fucking bad.
Speaker 3: It was like right around the time he met you
Speaker 3: and me were like, you just start getting better and
Speaker 3: better and better. And when I came home from college,
Speaker 3: we was in the basement and he was like, yo,
Speaker 3: you want to battle. And I was like you go first,
Speaker 3: and he was like all right, and whatever he said.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh no, I don't rap no more.
Speaker 3: That shits the sucker, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 3: I said, but listen, but I said, look, you might
Speaker 3: be good, you might be better than me. But I'm
Speaker 3: playing ball man. I said. There's this dude up Miller's
Speaker 3: named Malik. Like, Yo, you can't fuck with Malik B.
Speaker 3: You can't. He was like who. I was like, Yo,
Speaker 3: he's from Philly, he from westsel Wayne. You cannot touch
Speaker 3: Maliku B. And you know, that was it. That was it.
Speaker 3: That was Thanksgiving dinner. I said that to him, and
Speaker 3: that was it. Fast forward. He's a senior in high
Speaker 3: school at this time. Fast forward, him and a couple
Speaker 3: of his homies from high school ended up going to
Speaker 3: Millersville and they ended up, you know, applying and getting
Speaker 3: accepted to Millersville. They go into the summer program. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm up there working in the summer. I want the
Speaker 3: first weekend that they're up there, I go to the
Speaker 3: you know, off campus party or whatever, and they're like, yo, yo,
Speaker 3: I just met your cousin. Your cousin go here. I
Speaker 3: don't know you had a cousin here. I just met
Speaker 3: your cousin. I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's all good. He's like,
Speaker 3: he's in the kitchen. I'm like, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: He back there rapping and I'm like, all right, cool.
Speaker 3: So I walk in the kitchen and it's Tariq and
Speaker 3: Malik battle and Malick says to me, like, yo, your
Speaker 3: cousin came in a party and asked who I was,
Speaker 3: so Tarik in his mind, you know, from the time
Speaker 3: when I said, yo, you this kid Malik and Millersville,
Speaker 3: You're not better than him, it was like a missile.
Speaker 3: He was like, let me find this kid mal like
Speaker 3: Moseean's talking about. And from that they literally battled the
Speaker 3: entire It was like a two and a half hour battle,
Speaker 3: just back and forth. From that point they were bonded,
Speaker 3: you know, from from a rap perspective, that was that's
Speaker 3: when the you know, that st that portion of the
Speaker 3: roots were formed in that kitchen that summer in Millsville University.
Speaker 1: Wait, there's the question.
Speaker 2: You You'll be the perfect person to answer, because normally
Speaker 2: our guests are New York UH based guests and they
Speaker 2: always have a Latin Quarter experience. However, the Philly Latin
Speaker 2: Quarter was a spot called after Minon and I never
Speaker 2: had a guest on the show that could really explain
Speaker 2: why the after midnight was so important? Even though I'm
Speaker 2: of age, I was not allowed to the after midnight?
Speaker 1: What was? What was it like in there? Now?
Speaker 2: I know after Midnight's building as the Spaghetti Warehouse because
Speaker 2: it shut down, But like, what was was the after
Speaker 2: midnight the pinnacle or the top place where you could
Speaker 2: see hip hop shows at that time? Was that our
Speaker 2: house of blues? Was that our or was it the
Speaker 2: fifty second Street?
Speaker 1: Why? Like, where was Philly besides block parties?
Speaker 2: Where was Philly in terms of seeing a show that
Speaker 2: wasn't at the spectrum?
Speaker 3: Right? So there was sort of two levels to it.
Speaker 3: You know, you had your sort of i'll call it
Speaker 3: the local regional level, but for certain shows you still
Speaker 3: had some national acts. But that local regional level, which
Speaker 3: is mean which means you can on any given Thursday, Friday,
Speaker 3: Saturday and Sunday you can go to a party. Right.
Speaker 3: You had the YMCA's, you had the out in Winfield,
Speaker 3: You had Circus City. You know, there was this circuit
Speaker 3: of clubs that rock every week. But you got to
Speaker 3: understand that Philly back then, the stars wasn't the rappers.
Speaker 3: The stars were the DJs, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: So when you got the Flyers, you weren't going to
Speaker 3: see you know, Prince Will Rock. That was Fresh Prince's
Speaker 3: name before Fresh Prince Prince Will Rock. You know, you
Speaker 3: were going to see DJ Jazzy Jeff, you were going
Speaker 3: to see DJ cash Money, you were going to see
Speaker 3: Lightning Rich, you were going to see DJ Spinbad. Like
Speaker 3: those were the names on the flyers. And when at
Speaker 3: all of these clubs, those are the people who sort
Speaker 3: of made those rounds, and as young teenagers, we were like,
Speaker 3: we gotta go see the DJ. It was almost like
Speaker 3: a you know who cared who was actually rapping for them.
Speaker 3: Like Jazz Jeff said earlier, I always wanted to be jazz.
Speaker 3: Like Jazz Jeff is a god to me, Like it's
Speaker 3: amazing that I can call him a friend. But because
Speaker 3: when I was a kid, you know, I was like
Speaker 3: following Jazzy Jeff, like you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 3: he was an icon and during the time he had
Speaker 3: Rock well he had I see, he had all these
Speaker 3: random m seeds, but it really didn't matter. So you know,
Speaker 3: you had your DJ circle in Philly around all of
Speaker 3: these clubs that all of the DJ's were the stars.
Speaker 1: What's that well, Grand Master Vict Victor do play.
Speaker 3: Absolute you know, yea Master Vic and the super m seeds,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like he was he was
Speaker 3: a he was a star, you know. And Vic actually
Speaker 3: went to my high school. So I would go see
Speaker 3: him at parties on Saturday, him and and his two mcs,
Speaker 3: and I come back and he'd be walking through the
Speaker 3: halls in high school and I'm like, oh, shoot, that's
Speaker 3: Master Vick, you know. But yeah, So it was just
Speaker 3: sort of energy in Philly around the DJs. And this
Speaker 3: was and that was the club circuit, but after Midnight
Speaker 3: brought was this sort of national u look from a
Speaker 3: national recording artist perspective. All of the New York people
Speaker 3: came down to play after midnight. You know, you gotta
Speaker 3: figure even on the club DJ circuit, it was still neighborhoody.
Speaker 3: Right when you went to the fifty second Street, why,
Speaker 3: ninety percent of the people was from West Philly, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. When you went to you know
Speaker 3: what I meant, the Christian Street wid ninety percent of
Speaker 3: the people in South Philly. When you went to the
Speaker 3: after Midnight, it was people from all over the city,
Speaker 3: and you had performers from that you were listening to
Speaker 3: on Ladyb's Hip Hop Show and Memi's Hip Hop Show
Speaker 3: and DAS. So it was like that was like our
Speaker 3: house of blues. That was where the national acts would
Speaker 3: come and play and you would see all of the
Speaker 3: people in the audience from all over the city at
Speaker 3: one place where we would all congregate.
Speaker 7: Would your life be in danger?
Speaker 5: Likely?
Speaker 7: Latin Quarter?
Speaker 3: Yeah, your life in danger at all of these places.
Speaker 3: You know, that's just part of that's part of the culture.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, girls, girls would get there
Speaker 3: snatch and you know, guys will get there. You know,
Speaker 3: the six's jackets taken and you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: their name belts and all that ship. But yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean that's you know, that's that's that's that goes along
Speaker 3: with with the culture. You don't want if you don't
Speaker 3: if you don't want to experience that, stay home. Okay,
Speaker 3: I did anyway?
Speaker 4: Wait what weren't you allowed to go?
Speaker 1: I don't understand that. Yeah, come on, I.
Speaker 2: Did it the first route show of Princess Lounge.
Speaker 1: I wore burking Stocks. Now you got anyway?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So okay, Now how you entered my life was
Speaker 2: you you started my first ever bank account, Like, at
Speaker 2: what point are you realizing that that basketball might not
Speaker 2: be your future? And when does finance enter? And when
Speaker 2: you were entering finance, were you thinking of entertainment finance
Speaker 2: or were you just thinking like, I'll be a professional
Speaker 2: and you know, make low six figures a year, get
Speaker 2: a BMW, nice job and you know, wife or two
Speaker 2: kids in mount airy life, Like, where was this paradigm
Speaker 2: shift in your life where it's like, Okay, money might
Speaker 2: be in my future.
Speaker 3: Well, what you doing?
Speaker 5: I was I was looking and laughing in my mind.
Speaker 5: Sean was just about to say, Darren, but I'm gonna
Speaker 5: exactly what I'm going to say.
Speaker 3: That basketball stopped becoming important my freshman year when my
Speaker 3: girlfriend at the time and at Millersville told me she
Speaker 3: was pregnant. And at that point I had to grow
Speaker 3: the fuck up. So it was yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So I had November of my sophomore year, my oldest
Speaker 3: son was born. I was nineteen years old, a father.
Speaker 3: I was a quote unquote statistic, a teen age father
Speaker 3: who wasn't supposed to make it. And you know, you're
Speaker 3: supposed to drop out of school, and you know, all
Speaker 3: of your dreams are over and just support your kid.
Speaker 3: But again back to my mom and actually her mother,
Speaker 3: her mother and father. They both looked at both of
Speaker 3: us and said, all right, cool, you know y'all got this,
Speaker 3: but we're gonna take care of this for the next
Speaker 3: couple of years. We're gonna take care of this kid
Speaker 3: for the next couple of years. Y'all both gonna graduate,
Speaker 3: and that's one thing that's not gonna happen. Y'all not
Speaker 3: gonna drop out of school. So that support a lot.
Speaker 3: But but also my mom said, but you're gonna get
Speaker 3: you know, I was always a worker anyway, but you
Speaker 3: know you're gonna take care of them too, Like this
Speaker 3: isn't all on us, So you make sure you get
Speaker 3: your answer job or two if you need it. You know,
Speaker 3: you know you got you gotta take care of it.
Speaker 3: So at that point I stopped playing ball. Stop playing ball.
Speaker 3: I literally worked two jobs for my sophomore year to
Speaker 3: to my senior year. One one was at a bank
Speaker 3: in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. One was at Kellogg's facility up there.
Speaker 3: On the weekends, I would they would shut down the
Speaker 3: the cereal uh whatever that is not treadmill, what do
Speaker 3: they call the assembly assembly shut down the Cereal assembly line,
Speaker 3: you know, on the weekends, and they bring people in
Speaker 3: and all we do is clean. We cleaned from ten
Speaker 3: at night to ten in the morning, twelve hours, two
Speaker 3: days a weekend and get paid doing it. So I
Speaker 3: had two jobs up at school and graduated in four years.
Speaker 3: I was an accounting major, so you know, I didn't
Speaker 3: know what the funk I wanted to do. Like, it
Speaker 3: wasn't like I was like, I want to do finance.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 3: I was an accounting major, so I you know, it
Speaker 3: was like, all right, you know, let me, I guess
Speaker 3: numbers are are where I'm where I need to be.
Speaker 3: I started working for the phone company. It was Bell
Speaker 3: Atlantic at the time, but it's it's Verison now, uh.
Speaker 3: And you know, it just was like going through life
Speaker 3: not knowing where I wanted to It was eliminating things
Speaker 3: that I didn't want to do, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So worked in the finance department with the phone company.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, this is where I'm supposed to be.
Speaker 3: Once I got in there, I was like, oh, no,
Speaker 3: this shit ain't for me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: After the finance department of the phone company was like, oh,
Speaker 3: people are going to get their NBA, Like, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a I can get another degree and that's going
Speaker 3: to help me make more money. Let me go get
Speaker 3: my MBA, you know. So I went to move to Washington,
Speaker 3: d C. I went to George Washington University full time.
Speaker 5: While wait wait wait wait wait wait, so you'll parents
Speaker 5: are still like, okay, so you want to get your NBA.
Speaker 7: Sorry, Sean, go ahead and move to d C.
Speaker 3: I moved to d C, but by that time I
Speaker 3: had graduated college. She had graduated college. Darren was living
Speaker 3: with her and her parents, but he was with me
Speaker 3: every weekend. Wow, So I was traveling to get them
Speaker 3: even when I lived in DC. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I would drive up to Blancaster, pick them up, bring
Speaker 3: them the DC. He'd be with me on the weekends,
Speaker 3: I take him back drive back to d C. So
Speaker 3: he was with me pretty much every if not every
Speaker 3: other weekend. But yeah, she was living with her She
Speaker 3: was living with her parents at the time. So you know,
Speaker 3: went got my degree, MBA and finance and investments. You know, Okay,
Speaker 3: what are you supposed to do with that? You either
Speaker 3: go consulting or you go Wall Street all right, let
Speaker 3: me try this Wall Street thing, you know, went up, started,
Speaker 3: got a job at City Bank, moved to New York.
Speaker 3: I was a private banker at City Bank, you know,
Speaker 3: working with high networth individuals. I had an office in
Speaker 3: New York. I had an office in Zurich, Switzerland. I
Speaker 3: was spending probably two weeks out of every month in Europe,
Speaker 3: two weeks out of every month in New York living
Speaker 3: the dream, right, I didn't know, but I quickly realized
Speaker 3: I wasn't living my dream, you know again, eliminating shit
Speaker 3: that I didn't want to do. That's that was my
Speaker 3: that point in my life. That was four or five years.
Speaker 3: It was less about finding my direction. It was more
Speaker 3: about eliminiting things that I didn't want to do. Again.
Speaker 3: I was spending two weeks in Europe, and I had
Speaker 3: a son in Philadelphia. Like, I'm like, yo, I'm trying
Speaker 3: to be with my kid, Like, this ain't the life
Speaker 3: that I want to be, that I want to have.
Speaker 1: What year was this?
Speaker 3: This was ninety seven into ninety eight, So you were.
Speaker 1: In Europe from the time when we were grinding.
Speaker 3: I was in Zurich. Yes, I was in Switzerland.
Speaker 4: Damn.
Speaker 3: Okay, I was in Switzerland. I mean, did you see it?
Speaker 3: We were there two weeks out of two weeks out
Speaker 3: of every month. No, we never it never it never,
Speaker 3: you know, so that we never connected.
Speaker 7: Are you are at this time?
Speaker 5: Are you talking to to y'all, like talking about your lives?
Speaker 3: And then yeah, I mean I mean an American attest
Speaker 3: to this, like during this point in the Roots career,
Speaker 3: Like I was the cousin that would come around and
Speaker 3: hang in the dressing room and drink up they liquor
Speaker 3: and eat their food and hang.
Speaker 1: But then I was mail D call the original mail
Speaker 1: D coll.
Speaker 3: But I would bounce because I had to work in
Speaker 3: the morning, you know what I mean, or I had
Speaker 3: school in the morning. But you know, yeah, I was
Speaker 3: definitely you know, still communicating and and and you know,
Speaker 3: I always say I was because of that, because of
Speaker 3: me and Tarik, because of the Tarik Malak introduction, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, all of that I was. I was.
Speaker 3: I'm a root, you know what I mean, I was
Speaker 3: a root at that point. I just was a root
Speaker 3: in grad school and the root in Wall Street.
Speaker 1: Well, I think we we met.
Speaker 2: I think the first oh distortion, I forgot you're the
Speaker 2: eye in distortion and static.
Speaker 3: Yes are you not?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: I am. I was the star. I was the star
Speaker 3: of the first two routes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I forgot about distortion.
Speaker 2: I know you were in proceed, but I forgot that's
Speaker 2: eye is the eye.
Speaker 1: That if you just.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: I totally forgot that joint. So okay. So at the
Speaker 1: time when.
Speaker 2: Me and Tarique are sort of elevating this thing past
Speaker 2: just being a high school rap group and name only
Speaker 2: and trying to get joints at the gallery, yeah, making
Speaker 2: like the early organic shit?
Speaker 1: Are you taking at seriously?
Speaker 2: Like when Tarik's playing you like past the popcorn and
Speaker 2: like early organics things. Is is there anything sparking in
Speaker 2: your head, like all right, he's doing something or did
Speaker 2: you just think like, uh they corny? Nah?
Speaker 3: Absolutely taking it seriously, you know, absolutely taking it seriously.
Speaker 3: When Tarn told me he was gonna drop out of
Speaker 3: school and and come back to Philly with you and
Speaker 3: concentrate on this group and he's taken malk I was like, yo,
Speaker 3: go you.
Speaker 1: Know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Because again, for me, a part of me wanted to
Speaker 3: be that like you know what I mean, Like you
Speaker 3: remember in high school I was rapid, but it was
Speaker 3: at a time where nobody wasn't making money and it
Speaker 3: wasn't no traveling. It was just like, you know, a
Speaker 3: professional hobby for lack of a better term. So for
Speaker 3: me to see y'all at that point, you know, focus
Speaker 3: and commit and elevating, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 3: was the one on the phone fucking calling Kobe at
Speaker 3: powernighty now like why don't you play the roots? Why
Speaker 3: don't you play the roots? Why you know I work
Speaker 3: with y'all, you know what I mean? So it was
Speaker 3: I was I was absolutely taking it seriously and I
Speaker 3: was absolutely sort of believing in you know, the future,
Speaker 3: the vision, you know what I mean of what y'all
Speaker 3: were forming at that time. Okay, so what did you
Speaker 3: have to do?
Speaker 2: Because I'm trying to get into how you got into
Speaker 2: the profession that you are right now?
Speaker 1: So I know that my correct. Are we your first client?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean I can tell you.
Speaker 1: I'll give you two mess worry at the time when
Speaker 1: you came.
Speaker 3: Afore words words as to how I got into this business,
Speaker 3: the words are Richard Nichols.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: So while I'm being the cousin that's smoking up, y'all,
Speaker 3: weed and drinking y'all liquor, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Me and me and Rich on the side, and a
Speaker 3: relationship because I'm also the cousin that's in grad school,
Speaker 3: and you know, I mean handling his business, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. So Rich as all of you who
Speaker 3: know Rich as a you know, he was a visionary
Speaker 3: and he could see things before you could see him.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So I think during those times where I'm building, I'm
Speaker 3: just in the back and we're just talking and arguing
Speaker 3: about shit, and he's schooling me about life and you
Speaker 3: know why, you know, nbas don't mean shit in the
Speaker 3: real world, and you know all of Rich's philosophies. You know,
Speaker 3: he's really he's really testing me, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: He's really testing me. And I remember it was nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety eight. I was at the bank and he called
Speaker 3: me and he was like, Yo, where are you at?
Speaker 3: And I was like, I'm at the band, I'm at
Speaker 3: my job. He was like, YO, come by the studio
Speaker 3: after he was at some MEMBERSNY Studios is on fifty
Speaker 3: fourth Street. My bank was on fifty third and Alex
Speaker 3: So I walked up there, walked in the studio with him,
Speaker 3: and I think it might have been like Axe or
Speaker 3: somebody back in, one of the engineers.
Speaker 2: Actually, and he had, you know, two bottles of red wine,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: We sat there, drank a little bit, smoked a little bit,
Speaker 3: and nobody else was in there. I think he was.
Speaker 3: He was He was mixing like a jazzy fa nasty
Speaker 3: song or something like that, and uh, he was like, yo,
Speaker 3: I hate this ship. And I was like, okay, what
Speaker 3: you what do you what do you hate? And he
Speaker 3: was like it is fucking managing this ship, like I
Speaker 3: hate it. And I'm looking at him, like what is
Speaker 3: he talking about? And he was like, you know, just
Speaker 3: dealing with the agents, dealing with these dudes in their money,
Speaker 3: you know, dealing with the record label and budgets and
Speaker 3: and all of that ship. He was like, I fucking
Speaker 3: hate it, Like that's the part of my job that
Speaker 3: I hate. And anyone in those rich you know was
Speaker 3: He's the ultimate visionary, the ultimate creative, you know, the
Speaker 3: fifth beetle to you know, to to to to the
Speaker 3: really the you know, the third and fourth beatle to
Speaker 3: Tarik's first and second from a creative perspective and a
Speaker 3: visionary respective and what he was saying to me was
Speaker 3: this part of my job is weighing me down. So
Speaker 3: I just was like, how can I help you know
Speaker 3: what I mean? He's like, all right, that's what we're
Speaker 3: gonna do. You know, he gave me Carol Lewis's number.
Speaker 3: I remember he gave me Caro Lewis's number. He gave
Speaker 3: me somebody's number at the label, and and and and
Speaker 3: he gave me Miyoshi's number, and and he was like, YO,
Speaker 3: call these three. I'm gonna tell him you calling them,
Speaker 3: and then you can take this shit over. And I
Speaker 3: was like, but Rich, I don't I got a dog.
Speaker 3: I got a job, Like I got a real fucking
Speaker 3: job down the street, you know what I mean. He
Speaker 3: was like, don't worry about you gonna figure it out.
Speaker 3: You're gonna figure it out. I literally left the studio,
Speaker 3: as you know, Rich's partner that night. And you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't know shit about the music business. But you know,
Speaker 3: I knew finance, right, and I knew business, and I
Speaker 3: knew the rhythm of back to my Mom right. I
Speaker 3: knew the rhythm of a negotiation and the rhythm of
Speaker 3: a conversation. And I work at the bank, and I
Speaker 3: know how to deal with these white folks, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. So there's no different than you know,
Speaker 3: someone I'm dealing with the bank and someone I'm dealing
Speaker 3: with the label. So I sort of fell back on
Speaker 3: the experience that I had my entire life, and Rich
Speaker 3: gave me the opportunity to figure it out. And it
Speaker 3: was months of me figuring it out right. And you know,
Speaker 3: at a certain point it went from me doing two
Speaker 3: hours of root work and ten hours of bank work,
Speaker 3: and then at a certain point, I you know, be
Speaker 3: in my office to ten at night and realized, like,
Speaker 3: you know, I haven't done shit for my bank, Like
Speaker 3: I just wanted the phone negotiating tour deals and figuring
Speaker 3: out you know, mileage from from London to you know whatever,
Speaker 3: you know, what's the mileage and what's the gas called.
Speaker 3: You know, I've been doing that. So I got to
Speaker 3: a point where I was like, yo, I again going
Speaker 3: back to my earlier point. I found what I'm supposed to.
Speaker 3: I've eliminated all of these things that I wasn't I
Speaker 3: wasn't interested in, and I finally found my passion, or
Speaker 3: I should say my passion found me. And I had
Speaker 3: to make a decision. You know, I was making six
Speaker 3: figures at the bath. I was twenty this is ninety seven.
Speaker 3: I was twenty five years old, twenty sixty, twenty five
Speaker 3: years old, making six figures at the bank.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: And but I went talked to my mom again, you know,
Speaker 3: my my rock, and I said, Mom, I'm I'm gonna
Speaker 3: work with I'm gonna work for Tariq and his group,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. My mom was like, oh really,
Speaker 3: and she's like, it's a yeah. He's like, what you
Speaker 3: gonna do? I said, I don't know, Like you know,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be richest partner and we're gonna figure this out.
Speaker 1: And you know, my mom, being.
Speaker 3: An entrepreneur that she is, she was like, look, as
Speaker 3: long as you can take care of that boy talking
Speaker 3: about Darren, as long as you can take care that boy,
Speaker 3: you can pay your rent, go ahead, do you you know?
Speaker 3: So I said a prayer and jumped out on face.
Speaker 3: And I remember my first year I was making six
Speaker 3: figures with in the bank, and my first year with
Speaker 3: the Roots, I made twenty seven thousand dollars and uh,
Speaker 3: you know, took a huge break, but I always appop
Speaker 3: last day that I worked the last day that I
Speaker 3: worked in my life. The last time I worked the
Speaker 3: job was that last day at the bank. You know
Speaker 3: what I mean, Like, that's the last job I've ever had.
Speaker 3: The last day I woke up and said I have
Speaker 3: to go to work was that day in April of
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety eight when I left the bank.
Speaker 2: The thing is, is that, all right? Can you explain
Speaker 2: to our listeners what does it entail?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: I'll give the pre story at least with us, the
Speaker 2: way that we were living very hand to mouth. You
Speaker 2: would do a show nine times out of ten. You know,
Speaker 2: we get paid in cash, even though our system was
Speaker 2: a little bit different. It was more of a socialist system,
Speaker 2: like you get to repeat, you get to repay, you
Speaker 2: get to you know that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And had like a little talance.
Speaker 2: But you know, the first time I got my advance,
Speaker 2: you know, you would have killed me, Like I spent
Speaker 2: that shit in three weeks my van. Do you get
Speaker 2: what you get about? Let's see seven thousand dollars worth
Speaker 2: of records. Yeah, a bunch of pumas.
Speaker 1: You know. I was, I was Billy Jean, I was I.
Speaker 8: Was about say when I sorry, you say he was
Speaker 8: giving booms money.
Speaker 2: It was like a hundred bucks trying to watch it
Speaker 2: joynts like glow in the Dark, Like I was just
Speaker 2: you know, Sean hates this story, but that.
Speaker 4: Look he's pissed. He's already.
Speaker 1: Man, Man, it's the truth.
Speaker 3: Like thirty years later, thirty years.
Speaker 2: Later, right, you just you don't think about like I
Speaker 2: wasn't thinking about like am I Like back in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three, Like nineteen ninety nine seemed like the future.
Speaker 1: Like oh we won't be here that.
Speaker 2: That's thet I think, you know, even coming back from
Speaker 2: the proceed video, my dad was still like you got
Speaker 2: to get a real job. Like I didn't see this
Speaker 2: as a sustainable future.
Speaker 7: So curious how he tuned it up. Yes, can you.
Speaker 2: Explain how an organization with at least thirteen people because
Speaker 2: we rolled like you know, there's a band, there's you know,
Speaker 2: staff and all those things. Can you just basically because
Speaker 2: a lot of people do want to know how the
Speaker 2: Roote's been able to be a thing, drive and be
Speaker 2: a thing when on paper we technically should.
Speaker 7: Now yeah, like what was those first changes that you made? Sean?
Speaker 5: Like you came in he was like, oh no, we
Speaker 5: gotta do this, we gotta I.
Speaker 2: Mean well, also would threaten to fire me if I
Speaker 2: ever fucked up. I don't know if we'll go into
Speaker 2: his clients that have no if you I mean shor
Speaker 2: want to ask me shell shock, Like if I spend
Speaker 2: anything over like my nineteen ninety nine budget, I'm still
Speaker 2: like can I buy this bicycle? Or you know, I'm It's.
Speaker 3: Because again, coming into this business, I didn't I didn't
Speaker 3: grow up in this business, so I didn't know the
Speaker 3: norms and the roles and the titles and the things, right.
Speaker 3: So when I started working with rich you know, I
Speaker 3: remember we had a conversation. We were in the studio
Speaker 3: one day and I asked him, I said, you know,
Speaker 3: what's my title? And he was like, I don't know.
Speaker 3: You know, He's like, what's my title?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: And I was like true, I was like facts, And
Speaker 3: we sort of settled on these titles of creative manager
Speaker 3: and business manager, right, but it extend My role extended
Speaker 3: beyond what a traditional business manager did. Like a business
Speaker 3: manager in the business is pretty much your accountant, you know,
Speaker 3: or your financial advisor. That person builds your financial team.
Speaker 3: It's the hub of your financial team. So that person
Speaker 3: is the one who interacts with your tax account and
Speaker 3: interacts with your investment team, and interacts with your insurance
Speaker 3: team and your bank and you know, all of the
Speaker 3: financial activity around your business. He's your CFO. For me,
Speaker 3: that was an easy sort of title because that is
Speaker 3: the that is similar to the role that I played
Speaker 3: at the bank as a private banker. That's what I
Speaker 3: was doing behind network individuals. I was the hub of
Speaker 3: all of their financial activity and using specialists in the
Speaker 3: bank and bringing them in. So I was like cool,
Speaker 3: But my role with the roots or was more. You know,
Speaker 3: I was also the person that was responsible for touring,
Speaker 3: you know, tour strategy, toard budgets, toar execution, you know,
Speaker 3: every aspect of a tour.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: Rich sort of handed that to me. And again that
Speaker 3: that's not your traditional business manager, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: it's sort of part of the management job. So where
Speaker 3: me and Rich sort of had our delineation was all
Speaker 3: of the business aspects of management, dealing with the label,
Speaker 3: Like most business managers don't deal with the label, but
Speaker 3: I was dealing with manager recording, budgets and and and
Speaker 3: that type of thing. While Rich was dealing with making
Speaker 3: the records.
Speaker 4: He was in the studio, you know.
Speaker 3: So so those first couple of years was a period
Speaker 3: of adjustment for both of us because I came in
Speaker 3: on my flat shoe, ignorant to the business shit. And
Speaker 3: Rich although he was the you know, upon first sight
Speaker 3: or if you get in an argument with him, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, you think he's the roughest, toughest,
Speaker 3: you know dude in the room, Rich was a softy
Speaker 3: like Rich was like doctor, yes, Like anybody can get
Speaker 3: anything out of Rich, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 3: for me it was like I was like, Doug, why
Speaker 3: do we have all of these people around? Like He's like, oh,
Speaker 3: because we're developing this and this and that and this
Speaker 3: and that. We literally argue back and forth about the
Speaker 3: usefulness of individual or why are we paying this out
Speaker 3: of the roots tour money? Like why is this person
Speaker 3: getting their rent paid out of the roots tour money?
Speaker 3: Like are they not self sufficient? Like is this? Do
Speaker 3: we have a deal with these people? So I came
Speaker 3: in and sort of instituted traditional business structure in a
Speaker 3: non traditional business, or at least tried to institute traditional
Speaker 3: business structure and a non traditional business. And it was
Speaker 3: the yin and yang of Rich's creative vision as well
Speaker 3: as socialist mentality mixed with my or capitalist mentality and
Speaker 3: hardcore vision that sort of formed this nice sort of
Speaker 3: pocket that we ended up in. Right, We ended up
Speaker 3: with the Roots Crew, but I also made sure that
Speaker 3: the roots were cool, you know what I mean. If
Speaker 3: we just would have went with the Roots Crew, the
Speaker 3: Roots probably wouldn't be here by now. So I made sure, like, yes,
Speaker 3: we got the Root Crew, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, planting seeds for a lot of
Speaker 3: other people. But I'm gonna make sure that the roots
Speaker 3: are cool as well, because that is the bus that
Speaker 3: we're all riding. And it was that sort of that
Speaker 3: back and forth up front, which was a lot of
Speaker 3: back and forth, that allowed us to build the foundation
Speaker 3: I'd say, by like two thousand and two, two thousand
Speaker 3: and three, when we start sort of rolling post post
Speaker 3: things fall apart, post Grammy, that sort of allowed us
Speaker 3: to take this, you know, this, this beautiful journey that
Speaker 3: we've been on for the last couple of decades.
Speaker 5: Did you know you'd be the bad cop to Riches
Speaker 5: good cop. I'm sorry, I'm here.
Speaker 3: I mean at times I was most of the times
Speaker 3: I was the more. I was the financial bad cop
Speaker 3: to Riches good cop, but I also was the creative
Speaker 3: and business good cop sometimes to Rich's bad cop. Like
Speaker 3: we played ying and yang really well, especially with you know,
Speaker 3: the the label side or promoters or you know, creates,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. We played we played our
Speaker 3: good cop backcop really well. But definitely because of my background.
Speaker 3: You know, I played the financial bad cop and and
Speaker 3: and Rich played the good cop just because he was doctor.
Speaker 3: Yes a lot of times. But but we we we
Speaker 3: we balanced each other well. And I think you know,
Speaker 3: at the end, we at the end, we you know,
Speaker 3: we were both managers, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 3: I I just said business manager without knowing that business
Speaker 3: manager was actually a role in the music business. I
Speaker 3: just like, Okay, I have the business handle of the creator,
Speaker 3: so I ran with that. But I think that that
Speaker 3: that's the reason why we were able to lay the
Speaker 3: foundation for the roots and and and and I said
Speaker 3: this before another in the in other interviews. You know,
Speaker 3: we were we were also realistic, yea, Like at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, our goal was can these guys
Speaker 3: make enough money so that they don't have to go
Speaker 3: get a day job, you know, and and and make
Speaker 3: money and live off of their art, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. That was our goal. It wasn't like let's
Speaker 3: let's let's make sure that a mirror can drop around
Speaker 3: in the maybox and Tarik can have twenty five cribs
Speaker 3: around the country. It was like, Yo, can they pay
Speaker 3: their rent? Can they give their mom some money when
Speaker 3: she needed for a light build? Can they take a
Speaker 3: lady out on a date, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: And and then can we go and do it all again?
Speaker 3: So it was like having realistic goals, understanding the what
Speaker 3: a blue collar musician is I mean, because again rich
Speaker 3: come from Rich came from that jazz world where it
Speaker 3: was you know, blue collar musicians, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So understanding that, you know, a blue collar musician is,
Speaker 3: you know, living off of his or her art and
Speaker 3: they're enjoying that versus going and having a substitute teach
Speaker 3: and you know, playing the jazz clubs at night when they.
Speaker 1: Can you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So it was that that sort of mentality that we
Speaker 3: always had, and obviously those goals increased over the as
Speaker 3: we got more successful, you know, those But we've always
Speaker 3: even to this day, you know, I'm you know, it's funny,
Speaker 3: I'll be in these rooms and I love the roots.
Speaker 3: I really do love the roots. And I'm like, name
Speaker 3: fucking three root songs. You love the concept of.
Speaker 1: The reats, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Three root songs? You know what I mean. But again,
Speaker 3: for us, that's always been our goal was, how can
Speaker 3: we take these virtuoso you know, performers, you know, Tarek
Speaker 3: and a mirror, how can we make sure that you know,
Speaker 3: they can they can create a living off of their
Speaker 3: talent because they're super fucking talented and there's nobody out
Speaker 3: there better than them. They may never create a hit
Speaker 3: record ever in life, but that shouldn't define, you know,
Speaker 3: their future and their ability to earn a living off
Speaker 3: of the.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so you mentioned the socialist system versus the capitalist system,
Speaker 2: of which you know, I think people think I'm super
Speaker 2: exaggerating when I said, like we we really didn't start
Speaker 2: as far as me and Tarik like really put ourselves
Speaker 2: on payroll until like later later or later in life,
Speaker 2: whereas absolutely before were it was very socialist, like okay, again,
Speaker 2: your RNK gets paid and your car bill gets paid
Speaker 2: and that's how and you kind of came in and
Speaker 2: cleaned up shop, like, okay, well why are we So
Speaker 2: do you, in hindsight do you feel as though that
Speaker 2: I think the socialist position sort of kept us pure.
Speaker 1: But did you agree with it? Because the thing is that.
Speaker 3: I agree with aspects of it, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: I agree with aspects of it, but I think I
Speaker 3: think the way that things were set up, people were
Speaker 3: taking advantage of it, and people were taking advantage of
Speaker 3: Rich and I think he and I think he realized
Speaker 3: that too. I think that's why I got that call
Speaker 3: that night from the bank. But I agree with aspects
Speaker 3: of it. I agreed with the sort of creative community
Speaker 3: that was being built. And for any community, the one
Speaker 3: thing that in any creative community, any you know, sort
Speaker 3: of a musical movement, you know, whatever you want to
Speaker 3: call it, you know, the one thing that's needed in
Speaker 3: order to breathe life into it is infrastructure. Otherwise it's
Speaker 3: just some one off musicians and artists, fucking you.
Speaker 1: Know, creative.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's just doing it right. It's not a community
Speaker 3: or a movement without any infrastructure. And what Rich had
Speaker 3: was the vision to say Okay, we're going to provide
Speaker 3: that infrastructure, right, and without that creative infrastructure, Without that infrastructure,
Speaker 3: the community slash movement, slash everything that was happening that
Speaker 3: beautiful times that we all had from you know, ninety
Speaker 3: seven to two thousand and four where all of this
Speaker 3: ship you know, really sort of took off. It wouldn't
Speaker 3: have it wouldn't have existed without Richard Richard Nichols pre
Speaker 3: you know, creating that infrastructure. However, the problem when you
Speaker 3: have you know, infrastructure without structure is that infrastructure would
Speaker 3: have would have eaten itself alive because there would have
Speaker 3: been too many people eating at that same apple, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. At some point you got to
Speaker 3: be like, I'm cutting this apple in half, Tarekan the mirror.
Speaker 3: This is your half, everybody else, this is y'all hair.
Speaker 3: If y'all can't survive off of this, oh so be it,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So that's where, you know,
Speaker 3: the the balance of being rich at least in that
Speaker 3: time was was that I provided the structure for the infrastructure.
Speaker 3: But if if it were just my way, it probably
Speaker 3: wouldn't have survived either because I was too hardcore. You
Speaker 3: know this is about Tarekan the Mirror, and I think
Speaker 3: that that without the commun I think y'all thrived off
Speaker 3: of the community as well.
Speaker 5: Think about that, there would have been no Black Lily,
Speaker 5: And think about all the people that.
Speaker 3: Black Lily know, even the you know, the whole you
Speaker 3: know tele comment like all of all of that, Not
Speaker 3: that they were core, but they were part of the
Speaker 3: the orbit that that everybody sort of you know, revolved around.
Speaker 3: So I think, you know, to your point of me,
Speaker 3: I think this. I agreed with a portion of you know,
Speaker 3: the socialists you know ideas, and I think they they
Speaker 3: were part of the reason why we've been able to survive.
Speaker 3: But you know, if we just would have stuck with that,
Speaker 3: I don't think we'd be where we are to that.
Speaker 2: Okay, can you talk about the growing I guess the
Speaker 2: first two ventures that we really put our eggs into
Speaker 2: those baskets was okay, Player and Black Lily.
Speaker 1: Now remember the beginning.
Speaker 2: I think I had to really sell you and Rich
Speaker 2: that this was going to be the future. I don't
Speaker 2: think Rich really saw, you know, what the hell me
Speaker 2: and Answer was doing, you know, in the bedroom.
Speaker 5: Trying was the easier sell Emir, which was the easier sell.
Speaker 2: Where because you know, I I was done before it
Speaker 2: was Black Lily was the Jam Sessions, and so you know,
Speaker 2: the second third week, you know what I'm saying, Like, really,
Speaker 2: I'm not exaggerating, like Beanie Seagulls putting out blunt ashes
Speaker 2: on the floor like everyone in the room is a
Speaker 2: bona fide celebrity.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Music really was the pizza guy,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: But just at the time, they are regular people using
Speaker 2: my living room.
Speaker 1: As their hub.
Speaker 2: And I got to live on the block of neighbors
Speaker 2: looking at me like I'm crazy, Like why y'all jam
Speaker 2: until two in the morning, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So I you know, I went along with the.
Speaker 3: Jam checked out. He checked out of the Jam Sessions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I call the police on us.
Speaker 2: So my heart was with Okay Player simply because like
Speaker 2: I just envisioned a future where there was a virtual
Speaker 2: playground that I could contact.
Speaker 1: And so, but it was a hard sell for Rich
Speaker 1: and Sean.
Speaker 2: And there have been many times where like they were
Speaker 2: just like dog, let's just go, like let it die.
Speaker 2: And so at what point did you get that this
Speaker 2: might be something futuristic?
Speaker 3: So we're talking. Okay, player, we're talking Black Lily. Which
Speaker 3: want you to talk first?
Speaker 1: Either or because I feel like that's so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so for let's talk Black Lily first.
Speaker 1: Black Lily.
Speaker 3: Amir told the story one thousand percent correct. Like Black
Speaker 3: Lily started off as the Jam, the Roots Jam Session.
Speaker 3: The Roots Jam sessions are epic, you know, have been
Speaker 3: done for years, you know, in various places. Started in
Speaker 3: the Mirror's living room and you know sort of grew
Speaker 3: from there when the Roots Jam Session started happening in clubs.
Speaker 3: I forget the club that Malik Gioba used to have
Speaker 3: in New York. Remember we did that club the second
Speaker 3: forty second Street. You know, we went from there then
Speaker 3: we went down to to the Wetlands and but the
Speaker 3: problem was it it became all fucking male rappers, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. It was like a line at
Speaker 3: the side of the stage of you know, dudes trying
Speaker 3: to get.
Speaker 1: Up and spit.
Speaker 3: And you know, in the community that that that the
Speaker 3: Roots had formed, you know, there were female artists, most
Speaker 3: notably the Jazzy Fantasties, and they would either never get
Speaker 3: an opportunity to get on stage, or they'll get on
Speaker 3: and you know sing you know, four bars of a
Speaker 3: hook while some random rappers you knows, or they'd get
Speaker 3: on at the end of the night after four hours
Speaker 3: of energy gone and people were leaving, right, So Rich
Speaker 3: and Mercedes and Tracy, you know, came up with the
Speaker 3: idea of doing their own jam session. And you know
Speaker 3: Black Lily. I remember it was you know, sort of
Speaker 3: a play on Lilla Fair because Little Fair was that
Speaker 3: thing back then. It was sort of on Lilla Fair
Speaker 3: that they came up with the name and the Jadge
Speaker 3: and Fantasy was also signed to the Rooch label Mode
Speaker 3: of Records and rather than you know, and it wasn't
Speaker 3: a huge like marketing budget that that that they were
Speaker 3: given at that time, so you know, they came up
Speaker 3: with the idea of saying, you know, rather than randomly
Speaker 3: spend our money on you know, radio promotion, which who
Speaker 3: knows what that actually gets you, especially when you're an
Speaker 3: emerging artist, how about we pull this money and again
Speaker 3: back to the C word, create this community. You know,
Speaker 3: let's build this this this brand, let's build this event.
Speaker 3: This weekly event that started off in New York, this
Speaker 3: weekly event, so you know, called Black Lily, which builds
Speaker 3: from the energy and style and and and and aura
Speaker 3: of the root Jam sessions. Right, so Black Lily was
Speaker 3: built off of that. It was, you know, here is
Speaker 3: the next iteration of the root Jam session. And it
Speaker 3: was funded by initially by the Jazzy Fat Nasty's marketing budget.
Speaker 3: And I remember that first that first event we had
Speaker 3: was at the Wetlands and it was probably like fifteen
Speaker 3: people there, you know what I mean. But it was dope.
Speaker 3: It was dope, you know, and we just continued on
Speaker 3: the weekly basis and the crowd started coming and people
Speaker 3: heard about it was free. That was that was the
Speaker 3: other part of it. Early on, it was free, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. We just had the martest pre
Speaker 3: social media. It's like market you know, to get people there.
Speaker 3: But it was free. And that free event just started
Speaker 3: started growing and then it, you know, eventually moved from
Speaker 3: New York to Philly to the five spot, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera, and you know, it grew to become you know,
Speaker 3: what people know is Black.
Speaker 7: Lily, but never more than ten dollars.
Speaker 3: It still never was more than ten dollars, and it
Speaker 3: became and it became you know, at a certain point,
Speaker 3: so post Jazzy Fat Nasty's budget funding it. You know,
Speaker 3: Richard Nichols commissions were funding it. Because again you got
Speaker 3: to realize this is the post, this is post Shawn
Speaker 3: g coming into the fold, right, So it wasn't like
Speaker 3: when we ain't using this Roots money to fund this
Speaker 3: Black Lively thing, you know what I mean. You know,
Speaker 3: we got enough, We got enough things that the Roots
Speaker 3: money is funding over here. So you know, rich you know,
Speaker 3: mainly rich quite honestly was using the commissions that he
Speaker 3: was making off of the Roots to fund that five
Speaker 3: spot version of the Black Lily. And to your point,
Speaker 3: like we would you know, we charged at the door
Speaker 3: ten dollars, but that was barely you know, covering back line,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So it was a we
Speaker 3: lost a lot of money, but you know a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of big musical movements if you look
Speaker 3: at him in history, you know, they didn't make money,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. They created, they created culture,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't it wasn't a profit center.
Speaker 7: It's like we got Jazmine Sullivan.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely so, so that that's the
Speaker 3: history of sort of black Absolutely, they held us down,
Speaker 3: like yah is the family soul. We went on the
Speaker 3: Okay Point, so Black Lively was poppular. Then we built
Speaker 3: an Okay Player too, and we took all of the
Speaker 3: Black Lily artists on the Okay Player tour. So then
Speaker 3: what happens to Black Lily when they're all out on
Speaker 3: the road for two three months kindred the family soul
Speaker 3: between in Asia and their band, which you know, at
Speaker 3: the time, again they ain't had no money at the time,
Speaker 3: so they just picked musicians that were passionate about the
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And at the beginning, you know,
Speaker 3: I remember me and rich will look at him like
Speaker 3: they sloppy as ship, like not for teen and Angel,
Speaker 3: but their band, it was just sloppiness. But after four
Speaker 3: or five, six, seven, ten weeks, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: everybody comes back off the road. They owned Black Lily.
Speaker 3: They defined Black Roots would come and perform at Black Lily,
Speaker 3: and people would be like, oh, that's cool, that's cool.
Speaker 3: Where it's where's Frendrick? You know what I mean? And
Speaker 3: they still I mean again, shout out to both of
Speaker 3: them because they still one of my fas groups, like
Speaker 3: I love I love them. But yeah, so that's that,
Speaker 3: that's the Black Lily story. I mean, Okay Player, you're
Speaker 3: right you when you and an Chad division. I stepped
Speaker 3: in early on because I just wanted to make sure
Speaker 3: there was some business structure there. Again, I didn't want
Speaker 3: this to be Okay a mere starting this business in
Speaker 3: his bedroom, and you know, he's going to eat into
Speaker 3: our roots profits and we won't be able to pay
Speaker 3: for our tour bus on the next tour because you know,
Speaker 3: he's buying everybody computers, you know what I mean. But
Speaker 3: what y'all built was immediately special. Again, the community that
Speaker 3: that that that that that formed around Okay Players absolutely absolutely,
Speaker 3: and and the relationships and the music and the artists
Speaker 3: and you know, I think Will I Am was like, yo, y'all,
Speaker 3: would y'all were the first Facebook?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Like he said something like that, y'all were the first Facebook.
Speaker 3: It was it was all about the community. It was
Speaker 3: less about you know, artists websites like That's how we
Speaker 3: went into it, right, it was like, let's build this website,
Speaker 3: let's build that website. But yeah, you know you and
Speaker 3: you and Ange your participation in Angie's you know sort
Speaker 3: of vision and and craziness, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Were able to were able to attract this sort of
Speaker 3: community that that that you know has has continued to
Speaker 3: grow and build.
Speaker 2: So how did what were the first steps into you
Speaker 2: really building coming outside of just keeping us, you know,
Speaker 2: keeping the lights on for us and then you And
Speaker 2: there's two there's two phases. Yeah, your your empire at
Speaker 2: least as far as tour managing other artists, like what
Speaker 2: was your first rate and tour managing artists that weren't
Speaker 2: roots bas so so.
Speaker 1: A business man, I don't again, I don't.
Speaker 3: And this this is and this is a study in
Speaker 3: my life. Like the title, you know, my title, I
Speaker 3: don't know what it is. Like I call myself a manager,
Speaker 3: you know, that's what I say, a manager because people
Speaker 3: kind of understand that, but I do more. You know,
Speaker 3: it's it's not your traditional man. Anyhow. My second client
Speaker 3: was a young lady out of Philadelphia that I've known
Speaker 3: since high school by the name of Jill Scott. Jill
Speaker 3: and I went to brother sister high schools. I went
Speaker 3: to Central, she went to Girls High. I knew her
Speaker 3: in high school. We uh, we went on a we
Speaker 3: went on a we even going a prom together.
Speaker 5: But yeah, okay, because she's already told this story so
Speaker 5: that we needed to sound the same.
Speaker 3: Y'all went to She went on a prom with a guy.
Speaker 3: I went on a prom with.
Speaker 1: A young lady.
Speaker 3: After the you know how after the prom you go
Speaker 3: to Great Adventures, right, So we were all at the
Speaker 3: prom together. Then the next day it was like four
Speaker 3: couples that were supposed to go to Great Adventure together.
Speaker 3: It was the three couples in me. My date didn't
Speaker 3: go with me, so it was, you know, I was
Speaker 3: the third wheel or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 3: So you know, we hung out then, and you know,
Speaker 3: I sort of lost touch with Jill after high school,
Speaker 3: like you know what I mean. She was the girl's
Speaker 3: high jone.
Speaker 1: And I remember.
Speaker 3: Having a cassette to giving me a cassette with the
Speaker 3: original You Got Me beat and hook, and on the
Speaker 3: cassette was written the Jill song. I don't remember this
Speaker 3: on here. We used to be called the jail so
Speaker 3: the Jil song R it was, And you know I
Speaker 3: just ignored. I was like, oh, the Jill song, Yo,
Speaker 3: that Jill song, banging like yo, that Jill song. You
Speaker 3: gotta do that Jill song. Anyhow, at a certain point
Speaker 3: we were on tour and we were at whatever that
Speaker 3: venue that is across the street from Fenway Park in Boston.
Speaker 3: You know that little club Fante that's right across the
Speaker 3: street from Fenway Park.
Speaker 4: But it's not that it's not the Middle East.
Speaker 3: It might have been a Middle I don't know what.
Speaker 3: It's right across a Frienway Park, but I remember we were, Yeah,
Speaker 3: we were in bound Chack and I heard this voice
Speaker 3: from the stage and it was Jill singing you do
Speaker 3: you got me hooked? And I walked out and I'm
Speaker 3: looking at her and she's looking at me, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: Jill Scott, like you are the Jill song and she
Speaker 3: was like showing you know what I mean. And that
Speaker 3: was like the first time we connected was at soundcheck
Speaker 3: when she came out, you know, doing some doing some
Speaker 3: shows with the Roots. And you know, her husband or
Speaker 3: ex husband now was managing her at the time, and
Speaker 3: she had her and her lawyer had to negotiate with
Speaker 3: me the deal terms to get on that tour. And
Speaker 3: you know, I think she had, you know, a lawyer
Speaker 3: that was like, you know, she was a lawyer, but
Speaker 3: she wasn't an entertainment lawyer. It might have been her
Speaker 3: girlfriend or something, you know what I mean, that happened
Speaker 3: to be a lawyer, and she was asking for all
Speaker 3: kinds of shit Like I was like, yo, sweetheart, like
Speaker 3: do you understand what this is? Like I'm gonna give
Speaker 3: you this amount of money and this is how we try,
Speaker 3: like you know what I mean. She's like, well, she
Speaker 3: needs to fly between each other. And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're playing House of Blues, Like what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: But because Jill was my friend, because she was my
Speaker 3: friend or you know, I had an own her, I
Speaker 3: called her and Lizell and said, Yo, I'm just gonna
Speaker 3: give you a piece of advice. Like this lawyer she
Speaker 3: has no idea what she's talking about, and she may
Speaker 3: ruin relationships. Like if it wasn't me, if it wasn't me,
Speaker 3: I would be like, fuck this girl. Let's just you know,
Speaker 3: we'll figure out how we do this. This girl is crazy, right,
Speaker 3: So I think her and Lizel appreciated that, and you know,
Speaker 3: a few months, you know, then you know, Jill became
Speaker 3: you know, she started putting her record together and Touch
Speaker 3: of Jazz and you know, all of that, and her
Speaker 3: record came out July of two thousand and July two
Speaker 3: thousand and I think later in the fall, like she
Speaker 3: would you know everything, she was grinding or whatever, and
Speaker 3: they called me and was like, Yo, can you come
Speaker 3: be a part of our team? And I was like,
Speaker 3: what do you want me to do?
Speaker 1: Again?
Speaker 3: It's almost like a Richard Nichols call. I was like,
Speaker 3: what do you what do you what do you want
Speaker 3: me to do? And they were like, you know, I don't,
Speaker 3: we don't know, we don't know what we're doing. You
Speaker 3: know you work with the roots. You know you know
Speaker 3: what you're doing, and we trust you. That was basic,
Speaker 3: the basic premise of our relationship. Needed the call and
Speaker 3: the start of our relationship. So again I came in
Speaker 3: leveraging what I knew finance, so you know, I stepped
Speaker 3: in and looked at the money and tried to make
Speaker 3: sure everything was structured right business wise. I came in
Speaker 3: and immediately took over all the touring because I was
Speaker 3: the roots guy. We were doing two hundred shows a year,
Speaker 3: like this is how you organize your touring, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And I just came in playing my roles again.
Speaker 3: I never had a title with Jill. We always called
Speaker 3: ourselves business partners because you know, she went through a
Speaker 3: couple managers and then she's like, this managership ain't working
Speaker 3: for me. You know, me and Sean we just rock together.
Speaker 3: We're business partners. But people call me a business manager early,
Speaker 3: people to this day called call me her manager. But
Speaker 3: we're just business partners. We just we just build right,
Speaker 3: we build together. So Jill was my second client, and
Speaker 3: you know, thankfully, both the Roots and my first two
Speaker 3: clients I always say will be my last two clients,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, We've been together, you know,
Speaker 3: multiple decades. My third client, though, is the one who
Speaker 3: sort of set my trajectory to where you know, the
Speaker 3: next phase of my business was. And that was you know,
Speaker 3: me getting a call from Don de West in two
Speaker 3: thousand and four when Kanye had college dropout and wanted
Speaker 3: to do a tour. You know, he wanted to do
Speaker 3: a tour. He wanted to do a college tour, and
Speaker 3: nobody on his team had ever worked with a tour
Speaker 3: touring artist. You know, his managers at the time, Gee Roberson,
Speaker 3: Who's hip hop, ol Branch hip Hop, they all at
Speaker 3: that point, they all they managed was producers. They had
Speaker 3: just Blaze. They had Yay. You know, remember Yeay was
Speaker 3: a superstar producer before he became an artist, so they
Speaker 3: were like the managers of all the superstar producers, so
Speaker 3: they ain't no shit about touring. The business manager that
Speaker 3: he had, Kellogg and Amberson, I believe, was the company
Speaker 3: in LA. They were filming TV. You know, they didn't
Speaker 3: have any music folks, so they didn't know much about touring.
Speaker 3: And his agent was a lady named Karen Lewis, and
Speaker 3: Kar told them you need to talk to this guy,
Speaker 3: Sean G. Because he can organize, strategize, he'll have your ship, right,
Speaker 3: So they flew me out to LA interviewed like three people,
Speaker 3: and they hired me on the spot.
Speaker 2: Can ask but be cause you mentioned that we did
Speaker 2: two hundred shows a year, where was that common knowledge?
Speaker 2: Like was that common knowledge in the business of like
Speaker 2: how the roots keep like able to you know, is
Speaker 2: that normal for a music act to do that many shows?
Speaker 2: Like what does a normal act do in terms of
Speaker 2: like what is it what does a gang start doing
Speaker 2: that time period?
Speaker 3: So so you got to think about the time period
Speaker 3: that we're in and the time period that we're in
Speaker 3: touring wasn't sexy, you know what I mean. Touring wasn't
Speaker 3: a thing, especially in black culture. You know, in the
Speaker 3: in the alt rock world, which is you know, alt
Speaker 3: rock slash jam bard world, which you know, a mirors
Speaker 3: was our model. That's the model that me and you
Speaker 3: rich In Tarik sort of built around. Was like, you know,
Speaker 3: the alt rock or jam band model, and fifty doing
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty two hundred shows a year was
Speaker 3: normal with that world because number one, these bands grew
Speaker 3: up as fans of bands, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: So it was part of their culture, their favorite bands
Speaker 3: when they were growing up and playing that guitar in
Speaker 3: their garage or wherever the fuck they learned their music,
Speaker 3: their favorite bands they experienced live, so it was live
Speaker 3: was part of their culture, our culture, you know, as
Speaker 3: as consumers of black music, you know, especially hip hop.
Speaker 3: Live wasn't a thing. So we were a huge anomaly
Speaker 3: within hip hop by doing all those shows. You know,
Speaker 3: hip hop tour was you know, uh uh bad boy
Speaker 3: versus you know what I mean, whatever, You know what
Speaker 3: I mean, it was if you're not in the big
Speaker 3: arena with with with Pyro and all of that, you're
Speaker 3: not really touring. You know what I mean. You're going
Speaker 3: after fresh Yeah, you're going after your big publishing checks.
Speaker 3: Are you going after your Adidas deal? Are you going
Speaker 3: to get another advance from a label? That's how you
Speaker 3: made your money, Like you weren't making money on the road.
Speaker 3: Who did that? So for us, we were an anomaly
Speaker 3: in hip hop. We were anomaly in black music by
Speaker 3: doing all of that. So from a from an overall
Speaker 3: artist perspective and fan perspective, they probably didn't recognize it,
Speaker 3: but the business people in the music industry recognized it.
Speaker 3: The label heads, the label execs, the agents, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, they all realized, like, oh ship the roots,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, they're doing their thing and
Speaker 3: they're a live bang like you know. So that's how
Speaker 3: I was recognized through Karen Lewis to be recommended to
Speaker 3: Kanye because of the business that we built by doing
Speaker 3: two hundred shows a year and making sure it's organized,
Speaker 3: making sure we're you know again, simple shit, we're on time,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. We perform, you know, we
Speaker 3: collect our money, we pay our bills, and we wake
Speaker 3: up and do it another day, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: That's sort of back to the blue collar, that blue
Speaker 3: collar musician, you know.
Speaker 1: I asked one more question inside of this question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, again, like if you look at marketplaces and maybe
Speaker 2: this is more of an agent question.
Speaker 3: Maybe this is the Caroll Lewis episode. I don't know, but.
Speaker 2: If, as far as I know, there's really around the world,
Speaker 2: who would you say that there's maybe at the most
Speaker 2: twenty three markets.
Speaker 3: For us for the for the roots use us as.
Speaker 1: An example, like how many marketers are there?
Speaker 2: And people to the past, like is it normal for
Speaker 2: an artist, because that's the thing I want to convey
Speaker 2: to people.
Speaker 1: Is it normal for an artist to play New York.
Speaker 2: City seven times a year and still sell out?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: How are you?
Speaker 3: I just had this conversation with I had this conversation
Speaker 3: with an agent because again, you got to think about
Speaker 3: the time frame that we were in versus the time
Speaker 3: frame now like right now, it you know a lot
Speaker 3: of and because you know, I'm sure we'll get to
Speaker 3: the live nation side of my life. But because I'm
Speaker 3: working with artists from a different perspective, you know, it
Speaker 3: is short term gratification. It is Yo, I played the
Speaker 3: House of Blues last tour. Why aren't I playing you know,
Speaker 3: Hammerstein Ballroom this tour, and I want to be in
Speaker 3: Madison Square Garden by my next album, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. And I'm like, yo, y'all tripping like happening. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you we from a roots perspective. We played the House
Speaker 3: of Blues for fifteen years and we're happy about it.
Speaker 3: In Halloween World, yeah, we increased all the financial was
Speaker 3: instead of trying to reach too far on venue size,
Speaker 3: we would just increase the ticket price, every ticket paying back,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So that's how we went
Speaker 3: from ten thousand dollars a show to twelve five.
Speaker 7: Better save it at New Year's Even show.
Speaker 3: So so that so that part of it, I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, we don't you know we there are there
Speaker 3: are probably you know, a good thirty to thirty five
Speaker 3: cities if you're a popular hip hop artist in the
Speaker 3: US that you can play. If you're if you're if
Speaker 3: you're Drake, you know, you can go into going to
Speaker 3: Des Moines, Iowa, and Eugene, Oregon, and you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, Tallahassee, Florida, and you know you can you
Speaker 3: can hit those forty and fifty you know, tertiary or
Speaker 3: whatever is beyond tertiary markets but for most successful artists,
Speaker 3: you're between twenty five and thirty markets in the US.
Speaker 3: In Europe, you know, you have multiple markets in the UK,
Speaker 3: you know, depending on again how big you are, from
Speaker 3: a from a from a pop culture perspective, from a
Speaker 3: pop culture perspective, depending how big you are, you have
Speaker 3: multiple markets in the UK. And then you have a
Speaker 3: handful in continental Europe, you know, in the continent. Like
Speaker 3: it's not like you're going too deep. You know, you're
Speaker 3: basically one city per country, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: You're doing Amsterdam, you're doing.
Speaker 4: You might hit like Helsinki, like you might see you know.
Speaker 5: What I mean.
Speaker 3: Germany you can hit two or three cities, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, And you.
Speaker 8: Got motherfucking uh like maybe kind of went up last
Speaker 8: time I went, but like you got that Berlin can
Speaker 8: go Berlin.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So so you know it's there's there isn't a ton. Now,
Speaker 3: what's what's open the market? It's festivals, because you have
Speaker 3: festivals in these secondary cities in Europe now where you
Speaker 3: can go to Leon or whatever and they or you
Speaker 3: can go to to Portugal, you know, where you can't
Speaker 3: go do a hard ticket date there. You can go,
Speaker 3: So that's opened up. The amount of markets is the
Speaker 3: sort of festival economy over the last decade. But you know,
Speaker 3: there is a limited amount of markets. And for us,
Speaker 3: what we did is we continue to just go back
Speaker 3: and play markets because you build that audience one show,
Speaker 3: one fan at a time, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: and when it's time to grow, You'll know when it's
Speaker 3: time to grow.
Speaker 7: And it should be noted by this time.
Speaker 5: By the time you get to Kanye, you're not a
Speaker 5: one man band, right Like, there's like the office.
Speaker 7: Maybe you've got some help, but are you.
Speaker 3: Still yeah yeah, yeah yeah, right around Jill, Right around Jill.
Speaker 3: When I picked up Jill, I started, you know, I
Speaker 3: hired two people, you know what I mean. I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: now I got Now I got a company. You know,
Speaker 3: when it was the roots, it was just me. I
Speaker 3: was just trying to figure out what the hell I
Speaker 3: was doing. When I got jail, I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I got a business. I got two clients. You know.
Speaker 3: By the time I got to Kanye, you know, I
Speaker 3: never I never really stacked up to you know, a
Speaker 3: thousand people in sixteen offices. There's always been a pretty small,
Speaker 3: pretty small operation. But but but yeah, yeah, so by
Speaker 3: the time I got to Kanye, you know, I had,
Speaker 3: I had, I had some folks to it.
Speaker 2: Okay, so in building your clientele, which you know Drake
Speaker 2: is well, I mean more than that, I who name
Speaker 2: all your clients because I know Latifa And again I
Speaker 2: know you don't have a title, but as far as
Speaker 2: I know, if money is coming down the pike to you,
Speaker 2: you are in some You're under that management Unbroke.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. It was. So that's why
Speaker 3: I say so with Kanye, I had this weird role
Speaker 3: of I wasn't as manager. I wasn't as business manager.
Speaker 3: I wasn't his agent, I wasn't as all of that.
Speaker 3: I was just a consultant in touring. So I you know,
Speaker 3: I worked with him. We we we worked on that
Speaker 3: very first college tour, which was the School Spirit Tour
Speaker 3: from college dropout. And you know, and when I say worked,
Speaker 3: I mean I felt it was more tour strategy. Like
Speaker 3: I hired the tour man, I hired the production manager,
Speaker 3: I hired the whole team, and I worked with the
Speaker 3: agent and worked with ya on the overall strategy. And
Speaker 3: you know, I started with him on colleges. And I
Speaker 3: think the last tour I did with him was Watched
Speaker 3: the Throne, you know, with with with with him and Jay,
Speaker 3: and you know, I sort of took that trajectory went
Speaker 3: from with him. I went from clubs to theaters to
Speaker 3: amphitheaters to arenas, the stadiums, you know. And I learned
Speaker 3: the big business of touring through my experience with Kanye West.
Speaker 3: As I started building that reputation other and building my relationships,
Speaker 3: other artists started coming to me for that work. So
Speaker 3: Ge Roberson, his next client after Kanye in two thousand
Speaker 3: and seven was Lil Wayne. And again this is two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven, two thousand and eight. Lil Wayne. You know,
Speaker 3: he releases Carter three, the biggest record in the first world,
Speaker 3: a million of first week. So he's no longer some
Speaker 3: some hood as hip hop artists. He's a driving culture.
Speaker 3: But his touring was on some hood shit, like he
Speaker 3: was still getting brown paper bags from the ship clubs,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So G was like, Yo,
Speaker 3: my guy just did the glow and a Dark tour
Speaker 3: with Kanye. We need to bring him over here. So
Speaker 3: G and Cortes hired me. Again, I wasn't Wayne's business manager.
Speaker 3: I wasn't Wayne's manager. I was just this guy who
Speaker 3: came in and built his touring business and we went
Speaker 3: from you know, strip clubs and brown paper bags to
Speaker 3: you know, I AM Music Tour, which was the first
Speaker 3: tour and we did I Am Still Music Tour after
Speaker 3: he got out of jail, and we've done America's Most
Speaker 3: Wanted and you know, built that up on that first
Speaker 3: tour with Wayne. You know, he had a bunch of
Speaker 3: artists that he was developing on this random tour bus.
Speaker 3: And on that bus was Drake, a young young gentleman
Speaker 3: by the name of Drake, a young lady by the
Speaker 3: name of Nicki Minaj, amongst others. So, you know, I
Speaker 3: started working with g and Cortes and I started working
Speaker 3: with Drake early on and built the sort of infrastructure
Speaker 3: for him and for me. My role was touring, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, And I helped, you know, build
Speaker 3: with his agent, Rob Gibs, helped build his early touring career.
Speaker 3: I think the last tour I did with Drake was
Speaker 3: Club Paradise when I had you know, just just how
Speaker 3: the puzzle works. On the first European tour that I
Speaker 3: did with Drake. Drake chose an opener by the name
Speaker 3: of J Cole. You know J Cole and his management team.
Speaker 3: I had knewest management team. They knew my wife through
Speaker 3: the business and you know, on that Europe tour we
Speaker 3: built and they called me in in in London, they
Speaker 3: called me in there in their dressing room. Was like, Sean,
Speaker 3: I need you to help us. You know what you're
Speaker 3: doing with Drake, what you did with Wayne. I need
Speaker 3: you to help us. So I worked with Cole from
Speaker 3: the Friday Night Lights period on up through his first
Speaker 3: arena tour. I mean a lot of the roles that
Speaker 3: I played with artists because I'm building their touring, I'm
Speaker 3: also educating their team. So I sort of worked myself
Speaker 3: out of a job at certain points and times, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. You know, when when Drake's contract
Speaker 3: was up with with with Cortez and Gina Man's company,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And his management team who
Speaker 3: came on is as bright eyed, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: sort of naive Toronto kids, but super smart, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. They come ask me questions. They see
Speaker 3: how the ship run like it's it's not rocket science.
Speaker 3: It's like if you're smart in your attention, you pay
Speaker 3: attention to detail. You can do this right. So at
Speaker 3: a certain point they're like, all right, cool, Sean, I'm good,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. J Cole, same same thing.
Speaker 3: J Cole's crew. I love them, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: I love them because they were super smart. They thought
Speaker 3: out of the box. They were always individuals, never really
Speaker 3: followed a pattern. Eve and Adam we would always talk
Speaker 3: about touring Envision and Rob Gibbs again their agent, and
Speaker 3: you know, at a certain point they were like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, your resources are my resources now right. I
Speaker 3: know I know a rigor what a riggor does, and
Speaker 3: I know I can call the rigger, you know, who
Speaker 3: hung my light's last tour, So I don't need you know,
Speaker 3: But I don't mind that because I think that's part
Speaker 3: of you know, i'll use the L word, but it's
Speaker 3: part of sort of my legacy in the business. Is
Speaker 3: I am joy, Yeah, I am. I am teaching these young,
Speaker 3: you know, super smart future executives the touring game. So
Speaker 3: I went from Cole to Nicki, Wayne Cole, Nicki Drake,
Speaker 3: you know, and a few others.
Speaker 8: But that was sort of and also I think that
Speaker 8: you're is you teaching them how to do it for themselves,
Speaker 8: not by themselves, but you know, teaching them like, yo,
Speaker 8: you can do this for yourself.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying, with the resources that are available.
Speaker 2: To you, absolutely now without it being all got you
Speaker 2: journalism disc.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no no this.
Speaker 2: What can you talk about managing expectations? You can actually
Speaker 2: use me as an example. I mean, I would like
Speaker 2: to think that you know, you've only had maybe two
Speaker 2: or three of those.
Speaker 1: Four m a mirrorphone calls of what the fuck? All right?
Speaker 2: One time I misread a price on a ay on
Speaker 2: a particular or on a simple item a mattress and
Speaker 2: a mattress, Well, I okay, I graduated from the W mattress.
Speaker 3: Oh ship no rich put me.
Speaker 2: On to Hastens on a Hastens mattresses and they're extremely pricey.
Speaker 2: The thing was, they saw me walking in the door.
Speaker 2: They must have thought it was a football player played
Speaker 2: with the.
Speaker 1: Giants or whatever. I don't know. And you know I
Speaker 1: came in like I will be the first to.
Speaker 5: Tell you shut up, sorry you got a king, because
Speaker 5: I'm just looking at a queen and I'm like.
Speaker 1: Got that right? So they take what kind of kind
Speaker 1: of when you go into Hastins, they.
Speaker 2: They they they you're supposed to They're supposed to you
Speaker 2: try one bed, and I still feel like they lied.
Speaker 1: I feel like they lie.
Speaker 2: To you and make that initial cheap bed so uber comfortable.
Speaker 1: Then your mind's like, hey, let me try that one
Speaker 1: over there. What's that over there?
Speaker 2: And you're like, oh, this is sud you know, maybe
Speaker 2: two hundred more and you're give that one, and then
Speaker 2: they got you.
Speaker 1: Then they're like, all right, let's go to the next one.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the next one.
Speaker 2: These motherfuckers actually just brought me to the top of
Speaker 2: the line. Joined I didn't look at the price because
Speaker 2: again Rich is like, yo, I think, I think you'll
Speaker 2: you know, you have better circulation for your legs and
Speaker 2: d D d D if you get this Haystens bed.
Speaker 2: So I got in the bed, fella stick like you
Speaker 2: lay down for ten minutes and then I say, yeah,
Speaker 2: I fell asleep. Okay, great, I'll take it, and here's
Speaker 2: my office number, and I'm thanks. And I never looked
Speaker 2: at the price because you know, at that time, getting
Speaker 2: a W Hotel bed was a big deal because W
Speaker 2: Hotel beds were like seventeen hundred bucks again, which was
Speaker 2: expensive for w Hotel bed. I didn't realize that I
Speaker 2: just purchased a six figure bed.
Speaker 1: I got a hundred thousand dollars. I didn't look at
Speaker 1: the price.
Speaker 4: This is the whole night. This is bed, like the frame,
Speaker 4: everything has over the egg. That's all you.
Speaker 5: Get.
Speaker 2: Visit Monday right again, Babe Bill said that Hastings has
Speaker 2: two dots over.
Speaker 3: Two dots.
Speaker 1: J Z like j.
Speaker 4: That's all you need to know.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get charges out. It's like a white person dots.
Speaker 4: There's like ship like whoa.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So cut to.
Speaker 2: Eight o'clock in the morning the next day, yeo, you
Speaker 2: would have thought I ran everybody's mom over with the
Speaker 2: car the like really, it's come to this now, like
Speaker 2: we we give you an inch and this is what
Speaker 2: it is, Like did.
Speaker 7: You get to what the buck calling me?
Speaker 1: And like come on, no, they were it was he.
Speaker 2: The thing was is that Seawan's had some other clients
Speaker 2: that he's not naming right now that have done that
Speaker 2: shit like you get your check and you want to ball.
Speaker 1: The fuck out.
Speaker 2: And fifteen minutes into this curse out, I realized that
Speaker 2: oh shit, I just brought a one hundred thousand dollars bed,
Speaker 2: my bad and of course I got the price I
Speaker 2: can afford, or that they told me where my budget was.
Speaker 1: But the whole point was how do you manage expectations?
Speaker 2: Because you are managing acts and dealing with their money
Speaker 2: post two thousand, you know, it's way it's way past
Speaker 2: that baller stage. How are you Are you having conversations
Speaker 2: with them at the top of your business relationship? Will
Speaker 2: you tell them like if you color within these lines
Speaker 2: and live you know, da da da da da or
Speaker 2: you or is it just like you just get the
Speaker 2: Evans money from you know, Cincinnati, Ohio, and that's it.
Speaker 1: I'll see you later, Like how do you manage?
Speaker 3: Managing expectations is one of the key things to being
Speaker 3: a manager, a successful manager in music. I'm sure it's
Speaker 3: in film and TV or or in any sort of
Speaker 3: creative genre, right, you know, because when you're dealing with
Speaker 3: creatives and but and again, I didn't come in knowing
Speaker 3: this shit, like I've just learned it, you know, on
Speaker 3: the backs of my clients, like dealing with you and
Speaker 3: dealing with Tariq and dealing with Jill. You know, just
Speaker 3: understanding the motivational aspects, the aspirational aspects that each of
Speaker 3: you have, What inspires you, what motivates you, what buttons
Speaker 3: can be he pushed. It's psychology, right, It's all psychology.
Speaker 3: That's that's the most important part of being a manager.
Speaker 3: That's the most important part of being in any relationship, right,
Speaker 3: is understanding the give and take of psychology. So that's
Speaker 3: whether we're talking about a mattress or you know, we're
Speaker 3: talking about you know, damn I wish emir ended the
Speaker 3: show with this song versus that song, Like how can
Speaker 3: I have this conversation with him knowing that this is
Speaker 3: his world and his baby, but I know I'm in
Speaker 3: the crowd and you know what I mean. So it's psychology.
Speaker 3: It's understanding the give and take. It's compromised. Like one
Speaker 3: lesson that I learned and Kanye taught me, and I've
Speaker 3: taken this throughout my career. So again, this is you know,
Speaker 3: two thousand and six, I think seven whenever that year
Speaker 3: whenever we started to Glow in the Dark tour, and
Speaker 3: again I'm four years in with Kanye at this point,
Speaker 3: we've done three or four tours together.
Speaker 1: You know, what I mean.
Speaker 3: We have a level of trust. He knows me, you know,
Speaker 3: meaning how I think. So we're going on this this
Speaker 3: big tour, biggest service career, biggest tour of my career,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And I go out and
Speaker 3: specifically go and hire the sort of logistics team. I
Speaker 3: put an all star team together of people. He had
Speaker 3: all his creator I ain't touched none of his creator shit.
Speaker 3: But he allowed me, as did Wayne and others, to like,
Speaker 3: all right, give me the team that's going to properly
Speaker 3: execute this. So I go out. I hire Curtis Battles,
Speaker 3: who number one is black and number two is what's
Speaker 3: Eminem's tour manager. And at that time two thousand and six,
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven, Eminem's on fire, He's on stadiums
Speaker 3: and shit. So I'm like, I got the top black
Speaker 3: tour production manager. I bring in the tour manager. I
Speaker 3: bring in all of the tech teams. I'm hiring all
Speaker 3: of the logistics. He's dealing with the creator. At a
Speaker 3: certain point, I start calling people. I'm putting it together,
Speaker 3: my budgets, going back and forth with the agent, you know,
Speaker 3: doing venue deals, calling the venues, arguing with him over
Speaker 3: you know, our point, and everybody went dark on me,
Speaker 3: like literally nobody would return my call. Curtis didn't return
Speaker 3: my call, Yay didn't return my call. Like nobody fucking
Speaker 3: return my call. And I'm like, what is going on?
Speaker 3: And it was like a two week period. I'm in
Speaker 3: the middle of planning. I can't get any information. I'm calling,
Speaker 3: you know, Miss West.
Speaker 1: His mom.
Speaker 3: She's like, hey, Sewan, now I don't know. Everything seemed
Speaker 3: cool to me. You want me to ask around. I'm like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna get you into it. Let me figure
Speaker 3: it out. After a two week period, Kanye calls me.
Speaker 3: He's like, Yo, can you come to La tomorrow. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I fly to La, go to his crib,
Speaker 3: sit in the living room. He's on his computer and
Speaker 3: he turns the computer around and I'm like what's this
Speaker 3: And he's like the tour, this is the creative what
Speaker 3: do you think? And he walks me through it and
Speaker 3: I'm like, Yo, this shit is crazy and I'm like, yo,
Speaker 3: but what the fuck? Like how much is this cast?
Speaker 3: Like I haven't talked to nobody like and he was like, yo,
Speaker 3: I called everybody and said if you talked to Shawan
Speaker 3: g you're fired, and I was I was like why.
Speaker 3: I was like, why'd you do that? And he said,
Speaker 3: because I know. If I wasn't able to get my
Speaker 3: full creative vision, I would have talked to you along
Speaker 3: the way. You know, I would have made a left
Speaker 3: turn and I would not have been able to get
Speaker 3: my full creative vision out because you would have been,
Speaker 3: you know, asking me how much things cost and how
Speaker 3: are we gonna move this? And I got my full
Speaker 3: creative vision out. Now, now tell me what you think
Speaker 3: about it unless And it taught me like that was
Speaker 3: a really deep lesson on how to work and deal
Speaker 3: with creatives, because at the end of the day, y'all
Speaker 3: are the motherfucker you know, a mere fonte to reak.
Speaker 3: You know, whoever it is, y'all are the ones that's
Speaker 3: driving this car, you know what I mean. I just
Speaker 3: gotta yeah, yeah, exactly. I just got to make sure
Speaker 3: that it got gas in it, it got oil in it,
Speaker 3: and it's gonna get to where it needs to get
Speaker 3: to and it ain't gonna break down. And when you
Speaker 3: get there, you got some money in your pocket.
Speaker 4: Right, So, because the show is they're not gonna holler Shanji.
Speaker 3: Exactly. Or even if the show is good and you
Speaker 3: weren't able to do what you wanted to do creatively,
Speaker 3: you're gonna be unfulfilled. And who you're gonna blame for that?
Speaker 3: For being unfulfilled, You're gonna blame Sean g You know
Speaker 3: what I mean, you didn't let it out. So that
Speaker 3: lesson that I did with Kanye, that lesson that Kanye
Speaker 3: taught me I've taken throughout my career and working with creatives.
Speaker 3: It is managing expectations, but it's also a balance in
Speaker 3: making sure that look, I mean that not that matchless.
Speaker 3: But we could tell other stories here where you know,
Speaker 3: there have been things that you needed or you wanted,
Speaker 3: and you know, we talked about it, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: you know what, this is what this motherfucker work is
Speaker 3: ass off for. This is why he's up twenty three
Speaker 3: hours a day to be able to do what I
Speaker 3: think is dumb shit, but it's aspirational shit for you.
Speaker 3: So I can't I can't give you know, I can't
Speaker 3: overlay my thoughts on you know, your creative vision and
Speaker 3: what I just to put the barriers up, both creatively,
Speaker 3: business wise, money, whatever it is I got to put
Speaker 3: the barriers up so you don't fall off the highway,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. But you're driving the car,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Hey, Sean, can you tell us the time, like when
Speaker 5: it comes to the roots in jail, what was the
Speaker 5: deal that you've made that really made you take a
Speaker 5: step back and like past yourself on the shoulder or
Speaker 5: really go fuck yes, Like I'm finally doing what I
Speaker 5: feel like is fulfilling them, and like we we've done
Speaker 5: this ship. Nobody else has done this ship. Like this
Speaker 5: is fucking phenomenal.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's you know, I don't. I don't
Speaker 3: think there's one deal, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 3: I don't think there's there's not like one big branding
Speaker 3: deal or one even the Tonight Show deal. Like I
Speaker 3: don't think there's one. What I get it? What I
Speaker 3: you smile? I thought? I mean even the whose picnic?
Speaker 3: We're not there. Like the thing about the Roots is
Speaker 3: the thing that keeps us going is we never fucking arrived,
Speaker 3: Like you know what I mean, Right, We've never like
Speaker 3: arrived to whatever that mythical place is that you think
Speaker 3: you need to get to. We're we're always motivated to
Speaker 3: either do more or diversified, you know when I.
Speaker 5: Say right, But they still had to be a moment
Speaker 5: where you went they didn't think we could do this,
Speaker 5: and we did that ship.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, okay, gotcha for the Roots. It was the
Speaker 3: Roots pet in New York. Okay, it was when we
Speaker 3: did when we did, when we did Bryant Park. I
Speaker 3: I I literally stood at the back of the park
Speaker 3: we were on with Wu Tang and you know, I
Speaker 3: looked up in the sky and I shot the rich
Speaker 3: and I was like, yeah, look, look what the fuck
Speaker 3: we did? You know?
Speaker 8: Because again I remember that night. Man, we talked that night.
Speaker 8: Uh you know, we I think I don't think w
Speaker 8: was on, but it was. Somebody was on. But we
Speaker 8: was talking and you was kind of giving me time.
Speaker 8: You was like, yeah, man, like this ship was work,
Speaker 8: like he was on, like you was. You was giving
Speaker 8: up like that.
Speaker 4: So I remember that being a big moment for y'all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Ruth Picnic New York was probably that moment.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Again, it wasn't a deal, but it was that moment
Speaker 3: where it was like all right, you know what I mean, like, okay,
Speaker 3: you know we're there. But again, I think. You know, overall,
Speaker 3: it's the constant it's the constant growth, like the it's
Speaker 3: the what's the tortoise versus the hair mentality that we
Speaker 3: have that I'm happy when I'm happy when Alicia keyes
Speaker 3: twenty years into her career makes a fucking song called
Speaker 3: Jill Scott, you know what I mean. Like that makes
Speaker 3: me happy because that shows all of the work that
Speaker 3: Jill put in and I was able to assist. You know,
Speaker 3: it's being recognized. I'm happy when you know Questlove is
Speaker 3: DJing the jay Z and Beyonce Oscar party and killing it,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And everybody there is like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I'm twenty five, thirty years in Like
Speaker 3: it's just a constant ascension of people that you know,
Speaker 3: over the years, everybody always turned it. You know, who
Speaker 3: are these guys? What's up with her? The girl from Philly?
Speaker 3: You know, but you know they at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, as long as we constantly ascend creatively, as
Speaker 3: long as we diversified business wise, and we can make
Speaker 3: sure that we follow our own dreams and every time
Speaker 3: we achieve a goal, reset and go for more goals,
Speaker 3: you know it's gonna work out.
Speaker 2: All right, So I guess for you and me personally,
Speaker 2: you know, twenty fourteen was definitely a turning point once
Speaker 2: Richard died of of chemia, yep. And you know I
Speaker 2: definitely was going out my mind during that time period,
Speaker 2: and you know, I realized that it was just it
Speaker 2: was going to be a shift for all of us.
Speaker 3: You know, I was like, well, damn right now.
Speaker 2: You know, any creative musical creator, like usually I always
Speaker 2: have Rich to bounce off of, and there's always that
Speaker 2: eight am phone call that you have with Rich which
Speaker 2: is weird because Rich had am phone calls with everyone.
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to have am phone call every day
Speaker 3: were Rich. I don't know how he did this.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, Like in my mind, it's like Rich wakes
Speaker 2: you up at like eight seventeen and then you're off
Speaker 2: at eleven.
Speaker 3: But everyone has and so what in.
Speaker 2: My mind, I was just like, well, shit, like Sean's
Speaker 2: the suit to Rich's creative. Now Sewan's going to have
Speaker 2: to be a creative and I'm going to have to
Speaker 2: do things that I hate doing, like vocal takes and
Speaker 2: like sitting there patiently, like putting stuff together. So talk
Speaker 2: about the shift that because I guess that's the period
Speaker 2: in which you made the decision to I mean, at
Speaker 2: that point, you would you were you were developing sports
Speaker 2: Entertainment or s C s CFTE. Yeah, you had you know,
Speaker 2: basketball players, yet you were managing business, managing all these people.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about the transition from sort of amalgamating
Speaker 2: your your company into Maverick, which then goes into Live Nation,
Speaker 2: like how does it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yep. But before doing that, I want to
Speaker 3: talk about twenty fourteen because you're right, you know, at
Speaker 3: that moment when we all realized that Rich was was
Speaker 3: was on his way out. The first thing is Rich
Speaker 3: being rich, you know he was he was prepping me
Speaker 3: for it. You know, Rich was prepping me for for
Speaker 3: years just you know, thinking back on it, just the
Speaker 3: conversations we were having and and you know, ship that
Speaker 3: we were talking about, and responsibility that were normally his,
Speaker 3: and the creative side that he would be like asking
Speaker 3: my opinion, and I'm like, you really want you want
Speaker 3: my opinion?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: You know he would always say I was wrong with that.
Speaker 3: I gave my opinion, but he was just asking my
Speaker 3: opinion and things that you know what which photo looked good.
Speaker 3: I'm like, you want my opinion on that, you know,
Speaker 3: but he was prepping me for twenty fourteen. And I
Speaker 3: don't know if you remember, I had a conversation with
Speaker 3: you and Tarik. You know, I said, look, I'm going
Speaker 3: to step up and do a lot of shit, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. But I am not going to
Speaker 3: step into the shoes of Richard Nichols. You know, from
Speaker 3: a creative perspective, I can do a lot. Then I
Speaker 3: can build this and you know, tours and festivals and
Speaker 3: ideas and hire people to come build your dreams. But
Speaker 3: I can't. I can't make reference. I can't do vocal takes.
Speaker 3: I can't. That's just not who I am, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. And you guys are going to have
Speaker 3: to step up as well. It's not just me stepping up,
Speaker 3: So you're going to have to step up because this
Speaker 3: is a big ass void that we both got film
Speaker 3: and I think it is it is that sort of
Speaker 3: combination of my growth in the two of you individually growing.
Speaker 3: That is the reason why you know, six seven, eight,
Speaker 3: hopefully ten, fifteen, twenty years after rich you know, we're
Speaker 3: still sort of building, growing and driving. But as far
Speaker 3: as you know where I was business wise. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's funny because twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen was the year
Speaker 3: that I sold my a portion of my quote unquote
Speaker 3: management business into Live Nation, into Maverick, you know, and
Speaker 3: Live Nation was building this mega management company called Maverick
Speaker 3: and Guile Siri was the head of the Guile Siria
Speaker 3: the manager of You two and Madonna. He brought in
Speaker 3: Clarence Faulding, who was the manager of Jason Alden and
Speaker 3: Rascal Flats and Shanaia Twain. They brought in Adam and
Speaker 3: Larry Rudolph, who managed at the time Miley Cyrus and Britney.
Speaker 3: So you had black folks, yeah and and yeah. So
Speaker 3: at a certain point, at a certain point, these were
Speaker 3: all the deals that were done. And I guess someone
Speaker 3: within Live Nation said, you got a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: white men. You know what I mean, I got white Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they went after my partner, Gie Roberson, Remember Gie
Speaker 3: Roberson from Kanye I walked in, I met him with Kanye.
Speaker 3: They went after him and said, okay, you managed Kanye West,
Speaker 3: and you managed you manage uh Lil Wayne, like, you know,
Speaker 3: let's do a deal a little bit of a sidebar
Speaker 3: all of these tour deals that I was doing, you know,
Speaker 3: Kanye Wayne dre Nikki. I was on the other side
Speaker 3: of the table from a company called Live Nation, So
Speaker 3: I was doing these deals from with Live Nation, so
Speaker 3: they knew me as the manager, the black dude that
Speaker 3: did all of the big black tours. The guy who
Speaker 3: I was negotiating with on the other side was a
Speaker 3: gentleman by the name of now Hayman and the most
Speaker 3: successful black concert promoter in the history of the game
Speaker 3: bar none, and he sins right now. Managers Floyd Mayweather,
Speaker 3: and he's the most successful boxing promoter in the history
Speaker 3: of the game, bigger than Don King and Bob Aaron
Speaker 3: and all of them right now.
Speaker 4: To this Haman was he the one? Was he the
Speaker 4: one behind the.
Speaker 3: Superfess Rick James Michael Jackson like.
Speaker 1: Mary J.
Speaker 3: Blige, I mean, he's he's he's the guy.
Speaker 7: So let's get him on the show.
Speaker 3: Se so so, so I'm negotiating these big deals with
Speaker 3: al Owl's on the other side of the table, Like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this little motherfucker knows what he's talking about, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, because you know he's like I never
Speaker 3: dealt with a young black man who knows touring like
Speaker 3: you do. So back to the Maverick thing. When Live
Speaker 3: Nation Slash Maverick goes and tries to buy gro Risin's company,
Speaker 3: Al Hayman tells Live Nation, Well, Gee Robson is great,
Speaker 3: but this guy showing g over here, he's the operator, you.
Speaker 1: Know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So if you're going to because at this time, me
Speaker 3: G and Cortes had similar clients, but we had three
Speaker 3: different companies. She had Hip Hop's in nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 3: I had SEFG. Cortes had Bryant Management. So you know,
Speaker 3: in order to sort of complete that purchase, they said, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're going to buy Gee Roberson's company. We're going to
Speaker 3: buy Cortez Bryant, We're gonna buy Sean G because that
Speaker 3: is the machine that makes all of this work, and
Speaker 3: we're going to merge them together and then put them
Speaker 3: under Maverick. So that was that deal in twenty fifteen
Speaker 3: where I brought they brought into my car, sold half
Speaker 3: of my company to Live Nation.
Speaker 7: Are you interested in bedfellow Sean, I'm sorry, I was
Speaker 7: just thinking.
Speaker 5: I was like, so you got management mixed in with
Speaker 5: live shows and production, just production.
Speaker 7: I'm just thinking like Live Nation again.
Speaker 3: You mean from a Live Nation perspective, I mean said
Speaker 3: Michael Rapino is one of the smartest executives in the business,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. For him, he calls it
Speaker 3: a flywheel, and for him it is. You know, when
Speaker 3: he started, when he took over Live Nation, Live Nation
Speaker 3: was a bunch of individual regional promoters, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. You had your guy in New York, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, and he had his company. You
Speaker 3: had Electric Factory concerts in Philly, you had cellar door concerts,
Speaker 3: and these were just the independent individual companies. What Repino
Speaker 3: was able to do was merge all of these business
Speaker 3: It was. It was actually Clear Channel prior to Repino.
Speaker 3: But you know what came out of the Clear Channel
Speaker 3: Divester was this merged entity of all of these individual
Speaker 3: regional promoters that created this one mega promoter business. But
Speaker 3: what a lot of people don't understand on the promoter
Speaker 3: side from the live show you you don't make no money,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. From a margin perspective, the
Speaker 3: artist makes all the money, right, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: If I have Fonte come in performing, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, and I do a deal with him. Ultimately
Speaker 3: in success, he's gonna walk out with eighty five ninety
Speaker 3: percent of the money, you know what I mean. The
Speaker 3: promoter margins are five to ten percent. So what what
Speaker 3: Rapino did, which was intelligent, super super genius, was he said, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna build a flywheel around the shows. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: have shows which are the volume business, low margin but volume,
Speaker 3: thousands upon thousands of shows. But I'm gonna have venues
Speaker 3: and when you pay for parking and peanuts and popcorn,
Speaker 3: you know, at the shows, you know, I'm gonna make
Speaker 3: money off that. I'm gonna have media and sponsorship that
Speaker 3: sells sponsorship at the venues. I mean. So he's built
Speaker 3: a flywheel of business.
Speaker 8: It's that almost like McDonald's, like you know with famous
Speaker 8: McDonald's quote, he's like, I'm not in the hamburger business.
Speaker 4: I'm in the real estate business business, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 3: But the Hamburgers is would bring you in, right, the
Speaker 3: shows bring you in. Yeah. So so so to your point,
Speaker 3: like you know, it's your hand is in different areas,
Speaker 3: but it's all sort of a flywheel that works together
Speaker 3: and you know that. But again I came in under
Speaker 3: the austices of ge Roberson's partner, and that was that
Speaker 3: was Maverick management. It's funny because you know, I can't
Speaker 3: guy about this, but you know, when I came in
Speaker 3: with the Roots and Jill Scott, we were like the
Speaker 3: folks that didn't belong, you know what I mean. Every
Speaker 3: artist was an arena artist. Every single artist in Maverick
Speaker 3: was an arena artist, except the Roots in Jill Scott.
Speaker 3: But over time, you know, they start just like you know,
Speaker 3: just like I said earlier, like over time, you know,
Speaker 3: the managers started to respect you know, oh ship the Roots, Yeah,
Speaker 3: oh ship Jill Scott, and you know they start calling like, hey,
Speaker 3: can I can cuss a lot coming help produce this
Speaker 3: or you know when I think the key that that
Speaker 3: the pinnacle of that sort of disrespect at the beginning
Speaker 3: but ultimately led to respect, was when you two called
Speaker 3: an ascid the Roots can open for them, or no,
Speaker 3: if the Roots can guess on their set at Madison
Speaker 3: Square Garden and you know they came out right in
Speaker 3: the middle of Madison Square Garden of course. So uh
Speaker 3: but yeah, so I mean that was that's how I
Speaker 3: got into a lot of nation. It was through you know,
Speaker 3: y'all need some black managers. And these are the three
Speaker 3: that you got to buy out. Though Jill.
Speaker 2: Uh sells out Madison Square Garden, does she not? I
Speaker 2: mean that's one of the like we have.
Speaker 3: We have sold out Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 2: Yes, but you know what I'm saying from that, Neil
Speaker 2: sold class of two thousand.
Speaker 3: Jill, Erica and Maxwell and Mary are probably the three
Speaker 3: and and and believe it or not, you know, Kim
Speaker 3: are probably the four miles.
Speaker 1: You know they're strong.
Speaker 2: But even man, you know, if tickets are going on
Speaker 2: cell not for look, Erica is you know, I've been
Speaker 2: down from day one. But Erica isn't going to sell
Speaker 2: out Manson Square Garden by herself.
Speaker 3: Or maybe we've never sold out by ourself. It's all
Speaker 3: about strategic packaging. We sold it out with Maxwell, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Jill and Maxwell. We did two
Speaker 3: Knights of Madison Square Garden together, all right. Maxwell and
Speaker 3: Mary sold out Madison Square. So it's about you know,
Speaker 3: part of part of the touring is strategic packaging. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we sold out Amphitheaters with Sugar Water with Jail, Erica
Speaker 3: and and and Latifa. You know, Erica sold out Barclays
Speaker 3: last year was Erica, Anthony Hamilton and I forget who
Speaker 3: else it was. You know, again, strategic The the beauty
Speaker 3: about that that world is you can strategically package and
Speaker 3: one plus one can equal three or four, and that's
Speaker 3: where you get to fifteen, sixteen, seventeen thousand. On their own,
Speaker 3: they're all probably like five six thousand, but when you
Speaker 3: put them together, it becomes an event.
Speaker 5: Didn't that line of thought kind of lead to why
Speaker 5: there needs to be a Live Nation Urban?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, you know, once I was in Live
Speaker 3: Nation officially, you know, with the venture on management, I
Speaker 3: just I just air beat them.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I was like, yo, you know, y'all not really fucking
Speaker 3: with Black culture. You know, like at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, Live Nation at that point did big really well,
Speaker 3: meaning you know, Drake blows up, he goes to arenas.
Speaker 3: No one does big better than Live Nation. You know,
Speaker 3: jay Z, Beyonce doing stadiums, they do big very well.
Speaker 3: But incubating culture, building partnerships, building festivals that are curated
Speaker 3: for specific audience, i e. Black audience, they didn't do
Speaker 3: that at all. So after about a year meet Air Beaten,
Speaker 3: you know, the CEO and the chief strategy officer at
Speaker 3: the time. They, you know, gave me an opportunity and said, okay, cool,
Speaker 3: you want to do this. You know you think there's
Speaker 3: an opportunity. You're an entrepreneur. We respect you. We already
Speaker 3: have a deal with you. Go build it.
Speaker 2: And besides the roots picnic, what did you build?
Speaker 3: The first three deals that I did. The first deal
Speaker 3: was I flew to Dallas. I sat with a gentleman
Speaker 3: by the name of Kurt Franklin, and I said, Kurt,
Speaker 3: you are the jay z of gospel music. Why don't
Speaker 3: you have your own event? Why don't you have your
Speaker 3: own festival? Why don't you have your own series? He said,
Speaker 3: because no one's ever asked me. So we that year
Speaker 3: launched the Kurk Franklin Exodus Music and Arts Festival, which
Speaker 3: is the biggest, most successful gospel music festival in the country.
Speaker 3: And I and I say gospel because I mean Bishop
Speaker 3: Jakes has you know, the essence of gospel. But it's
Speaker 3: bigger than music, you know what I mean, It's it's everything.
Speaker 3: So his is much bigger. But you know, we've had
Speaker 3: every you know, we've had you know, all of the
Speaker 3: who's who of gospel has performed on it. And next year.
Speaker 3: This year we were supposed to but next year we're
Speaker 3: going to expand it to It's in Dallas now, but
Speaker 3: we're going to expand it to multiple markets. So that
Speaker 3: was deal number one. Deal number two is I called
Speaker 3: a fellow Philadelphian by the name of Troy Carter, who
Speaker 3: was running Spotify at the time. Spotify had this playlist
Speaker 3: called Rap Caviar, which was driving you know, I mean
Speaker 3: at that point, rap Caviard was what Mike Show DJs
Speaker 3: were to us back in the day, where it's like,
Speaker 3: this is how rap artists get broke. You know, you
Speaker 3: got to get on the Rap Caviar list they had.
Speaker 3: Troy was running the company and Tumabasa, good friend of
Speaker 3: mine was was he was Rap Caviar, he was the curator.
Speaker 3: So I went to them and said, you know, you
Speaker 3: are the new radio and really the only self sustaining
Speaker 3: profitable model in the radio space is radio shows, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, the summer jams and the powerhouses.
Speaker 3: So let's build the live iteration of your playlist called
Speaker 3: Rap Caviar Live. So we built that fifty fifty venture
Speaker 3: between Melivenish Urban and Rap Cavit and in Spotify, and
Speaker 3: we took and built that music series. And the third
Speaker 3: deal that I did is I identified these two young
Speaker 3: brothers in DC that you know, had their finger on
Speaker 3: the pulse of culture. Had like this many sort of
Speaker 3: smallish festival that they did, did like seven eight thousand people,
Speaker 3: and it was called Broccoli City Fest Broccoli City. And
Speaker 3: you know, I came on my radar because as I was,
Speaker 3: as I booked the Roots Picnic every year, of course
Speaker 3: I'm on my own shit. I'm like, I'm the best curator,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean in this in the space,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And agents and artists started saying, well,
Speaker 3: I play the Roots Picnic as long as I could
Speaker 3: play Brocoli City. So I went on a mission, like
Speaker 3: what the hell is Brockley City? And I went and
Speaker 3: met with the two brothers Marcus and Brandon too, really
Speaker 3: smart young brothers and from North Carolina. I'm both from
Speaker 3: from Yes, that's the homie.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I invested in them, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I didn't try to take over. I didn't try to
Speaker 3: make it Nation Urban Festival. I said, look, you guys
Speaker 3: got a vision, you got a finger on the pustal culture.
Speaker 3: You know your audience. What I want to do is build, put,
Speaker 3: get invest, and build the infrastructure for you so that
Speaker 3: you can grow and scale. And we went from seven
Speaker 3: eight thousand people to thirty five thousand people. I moved
Speaker 3: into RFK Stadium and built.
Speaker 1: And grew and this year we didn't go down.
Speaker 3: We probably would have had fifty thousand. It's the largest
Speaker 3: gathering Black millennials in the world because I'm the oldest
Speaker 3: person there by far. It's it's eighteen to thirty, eighteen
Speaker 3: to thirty, you know what I mean, period. And so
Speaker 3: that was the third That was the third thing. I mean.
Speaker 3: Since then, I've partnered with her Gabby, with the artist her.
Speaker 3: We built a festival called lights On Festival in the
Speaker 3: Bay Area. You know, We've I've taken a start producing
Speaker 3: the Miami Jazz and the Gardens Festival, and.
Speaker 4: In d C.
Speaker 3: I've do some you know, smaller emerging artists platforms you
Speaker 3: know Audio, Mac and others. But those are the first,
Speaker 3: Those are the first three deals that I did. Was
Speaker 3: were those three?
Speaker 2: Can you explain how you build a festival from the
Speaker 2: ground up like one of the one of the times
Speaker 2: where I dread the most as a Philadelphian, it's usually
Speaker 2: around March because that's when everyone starts hitting.
Speaker 1: Me up, like yo, can I get them with Roots Picnic?
Speaker 2: Can get And I'm like the oh, we start building
Speaker 2: the picnic two months after the Roots Picnic like August.
Speaker 2: So can you just explain what goes into building a festival,
Speaker 2: like the calls you have to make, the like this
Speaker 2: is done ahead of time?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: How do you how hands on is it for you?
Speaker 3: I mean it never stops. It's twelve months a year,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. You know, if you talk
Speaker 3: about the Roots Picnic, if you talk about Brocoli City,
Speaker 3: if you talk about some of the some of the
Speaker 3: events that we have that that that I have, it
Speaker 3: it there. There's a there's a process to it where
Speaker 3: it goes from like you said, ideation. You know, let's
Speaker 3: say a festival starts in the fall. I mean I
Speaker 3: mean festival plays in the summer usually you know, late summer,
Speaker 3: is you know ideation sometimes actually ideation takes two or
Speaker 3: three years, you know what I mean? Like for the
Speaker 3: Roots Picnic, most headliners we've talked about two years prior,
Speaker 3: Like we talked about Pharrell two years prior, and it
Speaker 3: took us two years to lock in the deal, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. Same thing with Usher, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, we talked about So so you know,
Speaker 3: that ideation process never stops, but you know, it starts
Speaker 3: soon as the previous year ends. Then you go into
Speaker 3: the booking process because as the festival economy and market
Speaker 3: has gotten bigger, there's more competition in the space. When
Speaker 3: we first started Picnic, we were we were the only
Speaker 3: ones that were looking for sort of alternative urban black
Speaker 3: R and B hip hop like nobody else, no other options,
Speaker 3: So we can you know, call and be like, what's
Speaker 3: up you want to play it? But now you know,
Speaker 3: between the sort of regular mega all things to all
Speaker 3: people festivals like the Bonus and the that yeah that
Speaker 3: are that are now being tinted black, between those and
Speaker 3: then the other you know, sort of culture facing festivals.
Speaker 3: Now it's a lot of competition. So you start that
Speaker 3: booking process, you know, nine ten, eleven months in advance,
Speaker 3: and you need to have you know, I got a
Speaker 3: I got a team of young people that have their
Speaker 3: finger on a postal culture as you know, a mire,
Speaker 3: I send out a group text to our entire team.
Speaker 3: Who y'all listening to? Who y'all want to? Tell me?
Speaker 3: Who you want? A mir Tell me who you want?
Speaker 3: You know, Dawn, you know anyone that's like, you know
Speaker 3: out there, like talk to me, send me main, send
Speaker 3: me videos, send me clips. Because you almost have to
Speaker 3: be a predictor of what's going to be hot at
Speaker 3: two periods, A when your tickets go on sale and
Speaker 3: B when you play, and those.
Speaker 4: Are two different periods.
Speaker 2: Probably your two story was napping U I'm gonna things.
Speaker 1: What's his name?
Speaker 3: Nack Lamore?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got back Lamore right in the nicked time
Speaker 1: of Like I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of stories like we got kid Cuddy,
Speaker 3: like you know what I mean, super early weekend, you
Speaker 3: know the weekend. Yeah, I mean, but again, that's a
Speaker 3: team that's a team based effort. It's not just Sean
Speaker 3: g or Meir Thompson sitting in our rooms, you know,
Speaker 3: saying this is hot. It's a team based effort, both
Speaker 3: official people. But then also you know, the last three years,
Speaker 3: my son has booked four or five of these acts.
Speaker 3: You know, my fifteen year old I'm like Sean who
Speaker 3: popping like, oh, you gotta get young boy. You got
Speaker 3: to get this person. You got to get that person,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Because it's a balance.
Speaker 5: So being a sons, can you just a quick callback
Speaker 5: because we talked about your first son, but can you
Speaker 5: just tell people what your your first son is doing now?
Speaker 3: Darren Darren's a sports agent and c.
Speaker 7: There you go living your dreams.
Speaker 3: Just moved to l a wow.
Speaker 7: From a baby having babies.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's it's a never it's a NonStop processing there.
Speaker 3: It's just you know, it never stopped because once you book,
Speaker 3: then there's the marketing, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 3: you got to put the marketing plan together. You got
Speaker 3: to understand what the marketplace is saying. You gotta understand
Speaker 3: how you hit your audience. You got to understand how
Speaker 3: to break through the clutter. You gotta understand when other
Speaker 3: festivals are announcing. And then you know, once you get
Speaker 3: out of the marketing phase, hopefully you sell tickets quickly.
Speaker 3: And then is execution. You know what I mean. You're
Speaker 3: you're you're you're transforming empty fields into concert venues, into experiences.
Speaker 3: So it's more than just the stage it's the creative
Speaker 3: concept that goes along with how do you want these
Speaker 3: people to interact with all aspects of your site? Like
Speaker 3: it's not just who you put on stage, it's who
Speaker 3: are your vendors, where are you going to place your vendors,
Speaker 3: what are your prices? Who are your marketing partner, your
Speaker 3: brand partners? What are your activations?
Speaker 5: So Sean, doesn't all that go out the window now
Speaker 5: because uh, for twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: I mean, hell, yare for twenty twenty, but no, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one, we'll be back yep.
Speaker 2: Okay, well all right, so it's April, Nah, it's May.
Speaker 2: It's May of twenty twenty. Like how much gray hair
Speaker 2: are you getting.
Speaker 1: During this people?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 3: I mean? And you know, with the Roots picnic, how
Speaker 3: much work we put into that second day like we
Speaker 3: had the first day, which we booked the shit out
Speaker 3: of Because part of the strategy for us and The
Speaker 3: Mirror has been driving this for years, is how do
Speaker 3: we get the Roots out of the headlining slot because
Speaker 3: if we ever want this to be Lallapalooza, we need
Speaker 3: the Roots to ultimately play the role of James addiction.
Speaker 3: You know, Perry Felt, you know what I mean, like,
Speaker 3: how do we get the roots out of it? So
Speaker 3: we finally figured a way to get the roots out
Speaker 3: of the headlining slot while still keeping them in the festival.
Speaker 3: We were selling tickets like hotcakes on our one day festival,
Speaker 3: and we Tarique Emir myself. We spent six months negotiating
Speaker 3: with Missus Michelle Obama to come and headline our day two.
Speaker 3: We were about to shock the world with that. So
Speaker 3: we finally had it deal done, putting together the creative
Speaker 3: and COVID hits, you know what I mean. And so
Speaker 3: it wasn't just the roots picnic. I had Broncoli City
Speaker 3: Festival sold out. It was sold out two months in advance.
Speaker 3: I had Miami Jazzmine Gardens that weekend in March when
Speaker 3: everything shut down, headlined by Mary J. Blige, Jill Scott,
Speaker 3: Anthony Hamilton, Charlie Wilson.
Speaker 1: It was live Crew, y know.
Speaker 3: We were we were we were better than essence. We
Speaker 3: were better than essence that you know. But again we
Speaker 3: had to stop. So I had a ton of festivals
Speaker 3: that got shut down, and you know, ship, I was depressed,
Speaker 3: dog like, I was fucked up, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Because I spent I spent the first four to six
Speaker 3: weeks of COVID undoing my last ten months of work.
Speaker 3: It's like building a house and you get to the
Speaker 3: front door. All you got to do is put the
Speaker 3: front door in and then the bulldozer comes and knock
Speaker 3: knock it down. Was like fuck, you know, I just
Speaker 3: eight ten months building and ship. So it was it
Speaker 3: was super super you know, sort of depressing. You know,
Speaker 3: I was. I was depressed. I was upset, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. I was, I was hurt, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. It was all types of emotions.
Speaker 7: When did it change? When did that change?
Speaker 1: When spirit?
Speaker 3: I'll be real when we don't in with the route
Speaker 3: we dove in on our on our YouTube page, you know,
Speaker 3: we sort of we sort of rolled up our sleeves
Speaker 3: and and and got creative and started coming out Quest
Speaker 3: Love Supreme Live, Quest Loves DJ, you know everything that
Speaker 3: you know Tariq's you know, the Thought Interview, you know,
Speaker 3: our our emerging artist platform, like like we got the
Speaker 3: creativity is the thing that that sort of was like,
Speaker 3: oh shit, Okay, this isn't the time to be depressed.
Speaker 3: This is the time to roll up our sleeves and
Speaker 3: we become entrepreneurs again. Like I I talked to Tariq
Speaker 3: a Mere Jill More during that period because you got
Speaker 3: to realize, like it was like a well we machine.
Speaker 3: With my management client, it was like, Okay, we got
Speaker 3: tonight's show. I'm going to stay six months ahead of
Speaker 3: the guys, you know what I mean. I got an
Speaker 3: execution team keeping feene Teina Faris Monir, I got a
Speaker 3: team that handles the day to day. My job is
Speaker 3: to stay six months ahead so that when we get there,
Speaker 3: it's something there. So it was sort of like a
Speaker 3: well oiled machine. What this did for us was it
Speaker 3: forced us to become entrepreneurial and creative again. And this
Speaker 3: shit's been fun as a motherfucker. I'll be real with you,
Speaker 3: all right, So what does that future look like now?
Speaker 3: And I know people talk about, man when we get
Speaker 3: back to normal, but it's like, okay.
Speaker 1: So when so all right?
Speaker 2: So when when when the the line finally gets flattened
Speaker 2: in the United States and there's we're COVID free?
Speaker 1: Am I still.
Speaker 2: Going to blah blah blah club to DJ YadA YadA YadA.
Speaker 1: You know, what do I do with the thirty thousand?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Audience members that I've gotten on these six platforms, virtual
Speaker 2: DJing yep, Like is that a monetary future?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: How absolutely?
Speaker 1: I think you go back? Or do you stay the course?
Speaker 3: We will never in the live music space, in the
Speaker 3: live entertainment space, we will never return to February of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty. Okay, that won't happen. That won't ever happen again.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 2: What that means is like the way that the Roots
Speaker 2: Picnic look when we last did it for the Things
Speaker 2: for All part twentieth, what would be different? I mean,
Speaker 2: I think Live Picnic twenty twenty two, Lite will return
Speaker 2: and Live will return at scale.
Speaker 3: I think that part of it is going to be
Speaker 3: driven by science and governments, you know, mainly science meaning
Speaker 3: you know, whether it's testing vaccine, whatever that ends up being.
Speaker 3: You know, you can't replicate the emotional connection of being
Speaker 3: in an audience and watching your favorite artists. And I
Speaker 3: think that will return. But I think the difference is,
Speaker 3: you know, COVID was the symptom, but what the live
Speaker 3: music industry is actually going through, It's not COVID. It's
Speaker 3: a technological disruption we're going through. This is the first
Speaker 3: true disruption of technology for live music recorded music went
Speaker 3: through it from LimeWire to Napster to that ended up,
Speaker 3: you know, that sort of six to eight year process
Speaker 3: of disruption ended up with Spotify, Apple Music title where
Speaker 3: we are now, right And if you guys remember that
Speaker 3: was a really fucking uncomfortable time when Napster was in
Speaker 3: and live people were like, the industry's gone. Record labels
Speaker 3: are never going to happen again. Why are we doing this?
Speaker 3: These consumers will never buy anything because they can trade
Speaker 3: files for free, all of that. But what ended up
Speaker 3: happening was the industry embraced technology at the end of it,
Speaker 3: and the business is bigger than ever right now. And
Speaker 3: that's the same thing that's going to happen live. What
Speaker 3: we're seeing with these live streaming platforms. We're seeing with
Speaker 3: the consumer engagement. If you think about the level of
Speaker 3: digital engagement from music consumers when Fante, if I told
Speaker 3: you you were going to be sitting on your fucking
Speaker 3: couch for two hours watching Patti LaBelle and Gladys Knight
Speaker 3: play music and enjoy it, if I would have told
Speaker 3: you that in February, you'd have been like, what.
Speaker 8: Nigga, my my moment for that was versus was the
Speaker 8: primo and uh, and.
Speaker 4: That was the moment where I was like, yo, the
Speaker 4: world has changed.
Speaker 8: Forever like these but that engage my house watching two
Speaker 8: dudes play record and that's the most important in the
Speaker 8: world right.
Speaker 3: Now, and enjoying it and looking forward to it. So
Speaker 3: that level of consumer engagement, which probably would have taken
Speaker 3: a decade for us to get there, happened in six months.
Speaker 3: That's going to transition out of COVID, and you're going
Speaker 3: to see cottage industries that become major, cottage companies that
Speaker 3: become major companies that are building companies around that digital
Speaker 3: distribution and digital engagement. That's not going to take live away.
Speaker 3: It's going to add on to the live economy and
Speaker 3: you're going to now see a bigger industry. The pie
Speaker 3: is going to get bigger because now you have brick
Speaker 3: and mortar lies, remember Blockbuster and h and I mean,
Speaker 3: what's the what's tower record? You'll have You'll still have
Speaker 3: brick and mortar line. Now you want to have virtual
Speaker 3: line and together you're going to twenty twenty five, the
Speaker 3: live music industry is going to be two three times
Speaker 3: the size that it is now. Just like recorded music
Speaker 3: is bigger than it was, you know during the during
Speaker 3: the Limewires. It's what Eric, It's going to be a
Speaker 3: point it's going to be a point of uncomfortable. It's
Speaker 3: about to say that two or three years where you're
Speaker 3: going to see big major players like Tower. You're going
Speaker 3: to see big major players that were the ship in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen and twenty in early twenty twenty in the
Speaker 3: live music industry. If they don't adapt, they're gonna be gone.
Speaker 5: So Sean, is what Erica did recently during the COVID
Speaker 5: is that the future the whole subscription live show thing.
Speaker 3: You think the beauty about it is. I don't know
Speaker 3: the future. I say it's fun ship. That's the fun part.
Speaker 3: The fun part is we are in the Wow wild
Speaker 3: West with Ship. Erica came out and said, well, all
Speaker 3: of y'all platforms, I'm gonna build my own platform. Is
Speaker 3: that is that going to be? Is Erica gonna end
Speaker 3: up being Spotify? Or is she gonna end up being LimeWire?
Speaker 3: You know, I mean, I don't know, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean? Like like Twitch, Twitch is you know, it's
Speaker 3: a huge gaming platform now has a music strategy. Are
Speaker 3: they gonna end up being Spotify orre they gonna end
Speaker 3: up being Napster. I don't know. But that's the great part.
Speaker 3: And again depending on how I came up, and this
Speaker 3: I always and you know what I mean. I'm not
Speaker 3: just saying this because you're on the phone. I say
Speaker 3: it in meetings with CEOs and presidents. I'm a root,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. I came in this game
Speaker 3: of route and we figured out how to make this
Speaker 3: ship work. We figured out how to make a twenty
Speaker 3: plus year, thirty plus year career off of one and
Speaker 3: a half hit songs. When when it's time, when it's
Speaker 3: time commercial right there, you know, when it's time to
Speaker 3: roll in the sleeves and figure some shit out. In
Speaker 3: a period of time where it's discord and everybody's confused,
Speaker 3: you know, some people are gonna fall off the wayside.
Speaker 3: I'm having fun. I'm coming up with ideas, creativity. Let's
Speaker 3: figure this ship a Mirland. Why don't you dj? And
Speaker 3: you know from your barn in New York, you know
Speaker 3: to why don't it? It's this is the part here
Speaker 3: that it's fun because I don't you don't know what
Speaker 3: the future is, but you do know, it's not going
Speaker 3: to be where we were on February twenty twenty.
Speaker 8: And you get to create it. We're essentially absolutely absolutely
Speaker 8: and the.
Speaker 3: Winner might be some kid that's sitting in you know,
Speaker 3: his bedrooms homeschooling right now, Like he might be the
Speaker 3: next Steve Jobs of the next you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And it ain't gonna be somebody that's the CEO or
Speaker 3: somebody that's the president right now. There's gonna be some
Speaker 3: kid that's sitting there doing virtual school right now, and
Speaker 3: that's going to come up.
Speaker 4: With the answer.
Speaker 1: All right, man, did I just hope?
Speaker 3: I just hope your Roots fan, whoever he is the Roots?
Speaker 1: So did I?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: Wait, I forgot there's one thing that we forgot to
Speaker 2: mention you also going to a foray of developing with
Speaker 2: two one five Entertainment.
Speaker 1: You know, actually, like what what is I find myself.
Speaker 2: Trying to step away from platforms and get less and
Speaker 2: less jobs. But now that I'm listening to this story,
Speaker 2: you're actually quest low like just between lot Nation two
Speaker 2: one five Entertainment us developing these these movies, these plays,
Speaker 2: these television shows. I mean, at what point are you
Speaker 2: going to Chef Gordon the thing and just be like
Speaker 2: all right, Alice Cooper, let's just right off into the sunset.
Speaker 2: And you know, do you have do you have a
Speaker 2: master plan written out in which you just like all right,
Speaker 2: I'm cool, or you let your.
Speaker 1: Son take over? Or for me, is he is he
Speaker 1: on that level yet where it's like.
Speaker 3: Which which on the music side? You know, yeah, like
Speaker 3: it's my it's shown, it's my fifteen year old. Like
Speaker 3: he's he's he's built for this and he's he's telling yes,
Speaker 3: he's telling me about you know, this person doing his
Speaker 3: bundle and you know how it's super creating because everybody's
Speaker 3: bundling with their T shirts, but he bundled with this
Speaker 3: and that, and you know, we look at the numbers,
Speaker 3: look at the streams. He's he's not not not a
Speaker 3: proactive thing for me teaching him. He's just I see it.
Speaker 3: I smell it like Darren. I smell sports Like Darren
Speaker 3: wasn't into music and this my business. He took what
Speaker 3: he learned from me, what he saw. He's took my
Speaker 3: hustle and my grind and applied it to his passion.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Sean is absolutely built for this music game. Like that's
Speaker 3: that's you know, I see it. I'm like, all right, dude,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be working for you, so you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. But yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't have a I don't you know, I don't
Speaker 3: have an exit plan meaning exit plan from a you know,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go get my house in Hawaii. Like for me,
Speaker 3: it's about passion, Like if you all the things I'm
Speaker 3: involved in is because I'm passionate about it. Like their
Speaker 3: clients that have fired me, you know, like I said earlier,
Speaker 3: because I sort of worked myself out of a job,
Speaker 3: their clients that I fired. Like if I don't fucking
Speaker 3: wake up and inspired by you or you know, every
Speaker 3: day isn't gonna be inspiration. Some days I wake up
Speaker 3: and be like, man, what the fuck I'm here? Come
Speaker 3: on dog?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: So when's the first phone call start? Like, when's the
Speaker 2: first like when does your phone start ringing? Obviously you
Speaker 2: have a rule in the house that no more phone
Speaker 2: calls after black blah black out, because I could be
Speaker 2: imprisoned somewhere and I know you ain't gonna pick up
Speaker 2: the phone.
Speaker 3: But that's part of that's part of hiring a team
Speaker 3: like you call near, he gonna pick it up. But
Speaker 3: years but fifteen years ago, I was that dude that
Speaker 3: picked up their phone, you know what. You know, I
Speaker 3: was the one riding up when somebody got locked up.
Speaker 3: But now that's part of growth. It's like, all right,
Speaker 3: y'all do that. But it's funny my phone calls, you know,
Speaker 3: now that I live in La I usually start my
Speaker 3: phone calls around seven. But when I'm being creative and
Speaker 3: my team, you know, always jokes to me. Sometimes that
Speaker 3: last email comes from me at three or four in
Speaker 3: the morning. Like my mind. As I've grown in this business,
Speaker 3: my mind has started to work more like an artist,
Speaker 3: unless like a suit Like I know, y'all always used
Speaker 3: to say, like, you know, creativity don't start until after midnight,
Speaker 3: and I'd be like what y'all talk about? Like you
Speaker 3: got to sleep. But as I've gotten older, that's when
Speaker 3: my creative ideas come because during the day, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm doing phone calls and zooms and shit like that,
Speaker 3: so I'm able to.
Speaker 8: You gotta wait to everybody else's asleep so you can
Speaker 8: really exact exactly.
Speaker 3: But yeah, my day usually starts at seven. You know,
Speaker 3: seven seven thirty with calls, and you know, especially during COVID,
Speaker 3: I'm able to work from home, so I you know,
Speaker 3: between calls and my kids, you know, the balance is good.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I'll be hitting you about adding more
Speaker 2: acres to my property and.
Speaker 7: Oh shit, and you gotta battle Jeff more acres, more acres.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I'm about to sun Jeff in the second.
Speaker 2: And anyway, no, I think you know, I had to
Speaker 2: learn some shit. And you know we've been.
Speaker 1: We've been business partners for what twenty plus years already.
Speaker 5: Ye, we can definitely name this episode the lesson like
Speaker 5: there's there's some lessons in him.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, all right, well you know, Sean G. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'll be bugging you later tonight.
Speaker 3: Oh good, Well, make sure y'all send me that edit
Speaker 3: because you know I ain't signed that so I can
Speaker 3: should tell y'all any time.
Speaker 9: Than let us never about the career of Davy l Yes,
Speaker 9: so fine, anyway, all right, and I just say, and
Speaker 9: I'm so.
Speaker 8: I told you this before, I told both you and
Speaker 8: me this, but it really is inspirational to just to
Speaker 8: watch and see what y'all brothers are built over these
Speaker 8: decades man, and you know, and I just think you
Speaker 8: for the opportunity, you know, for bringing me into this
Speaker 8: and uh, you know, you hit me. And it was
Speaker 8: just like, hey man, the mirror is doing this thing
Speaker 8: you on in And I was like, all right, I mean,
Speaker 8: you know what the ship was gonna be. But but
Speaker 8: you know, I just I just you know, ad my
Speaker 8: work ethic in the hustle, and you know, for I
Speaker 8: know how hard it is to build something on your own.
Speaker 8: So I was gonna just you know, salute you man,
Speaker 8: and just give your flowers and just say yeah, Sean.
Speaker 3: Definitely appreciate it.
Speaker 7: We all have our own Shan stories.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't have got my own radio show back in
Speaker 5: Philly fifteen years ago if Kobe Cole would asked.
Speaker 7: Sean ge who he was the host for this show?
Speaker 1: Wait what?
Speaker 5: Yes, That's how I got Sunday Morning Soul because Kobe
Speaker 5: was on the call with Sean and he was like,
Speaker 5: I want to do this specialty show about soul, and
Speaker 5: Sean he was like, who'll be a good hell Sprach.
Speaker 7: And how yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I thought.
Speaker 7: You know, me and Sean had many a morning conversations
Speaker 7: on the way to work and stuff like that, like
Speaker 7: it was a bill.
Speaker 5: Yes, And he finally told me when I was able
Speaker 5: to have my allowance to buy my weed, which was
Speaker 5: also very exciting. I remember the day when he said, like,
Speaker 5: you can now put some money aside weekly for weed thinking.
Speaker 1: And I regret telling the story because now you that
Speaker 1: was great.
Speaker 3: That great.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna stop talking about you.
Speaker 7: I would have love for you to say I took
Speaker 7: it back, but that's.
Speaker 1: Fine, dots, No, I did take it back.
Speaker 7: Okay, okay, good, all right, dude.
Speaker 1: Sure this has been the more more informative that so.
Speaker 2: I already learned from Alan Weeds that managers aren't going
Speaker 2: to do the tail all ship on the so you know,
Speaker 2: I feel that this show is effective enough without talking
Speaker 2: about you know, artist fuckery that is going down.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't serve the episode a great way to build.
Speaker 1: I never say this enough you.
Speaker 2: You definitely take on the gray hair that I successfully
Speaker 2: avoided right now, and I have.
Speaker 4: A lot of it.
Speaker 1: Anytime I see my my my barometer for how.
Speaker 2: My life is going is based on how much gray hairs.
Speaker 2: Right absolutely, I'm like, all right, all right, it's a
Speaker 2: good month. I'm amazing all right, well on behalf of
Speaker 2: the team, Sugar Steve. We still FLI Chustine right now, Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: I see you, I see you. Pay bill and take
Speaker 2: a little and all right, yeah, thank you showing ge
Speaker 2: uh this appreciate and signing and off we will see
Speaker 2: you next week when the next Joe around request Love Supreme.
Speaker 4: Thank you, yo, what's up? It's a sponte.
Speaker 8: Make sure you keep up with us on Instagram at
Speaker 8: QLs and let us know what you think and who
Speaker 8: should be next to sit down with us.
Speaker 4: Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast, all right peace?
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