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Speaker 1: You're a new album. Wild, Yeah, question one, what makes

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Speaker 1: this different? And when you're doing an album, you come

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Speaker 1: up with the bee first, or you come up with

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Speaker 1: the song first.

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Speaker 2: So Wild for me is what makes it different is

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Speaker 2: just where I'm at in my life.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: I think my goal with every album is just to

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Speaker 2: accurately capture where I'm at on my journey at that point,

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Speaker 2: and where I'm at now is sort of just you know,

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Speaker 2: in the past, I've really resisted the unknown of life,

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Speaker 2: and I've always tried to micro manage everything in my

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Speaker 2: life so I could control the outcome, and it just

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Speaker 2: makes for like an exhausting experience and just so stressful.

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Speaker 2: And so now on a spiritual level, I'm just trying

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Speaker 2: to get to this place where I'm just I'm actually

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Speaker 2: having faith.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: Fact so many people talk about faith, but like, and

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Speaker 2: I've talked about it in past songs, but I never

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Speaker 2: had it because I would say I had faith, but

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Speaker 2: then I wouldn't truly let go and trust that things

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Speaker 2: were going to work out. I would micro manage my manager, driver,

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Speaker 2: with micro manage anything everyone because God forbid, I allow

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Speaker 2: God to like have a hand in the situation. You know,

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Speaker 2: it's like I didn't trust anyone but myself, including God.

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Speaker 1: You know. So twenty big streams.

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Speaker 2: Wow, what it is now?

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Speaker 1: Yes?

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Speaker 2: Crazy, still going, So it's twenty bill streams. Sounds yeah,

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Speaker 2: it sounds right.

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Speaker 1: All right. So what song sparked your success?

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Speaker 2: It kind of came in stages. The first one that

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Speaker 2: like did real damage for me was a song called Goodbye,

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Speaker 2: which off camera we were talking about you know, you're

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Speaker 2: using civil war she used Goodbye. It's a good one,

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Speaker 2: but yeah, it was a song called Goodbye. That was

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Speaker 2: the first one that got like one hundred thousand views

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Speaker 2: and listens. And then the two that kind of popped

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Speaker 2: off at the same time for me were losing control

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Speaker 2: and what they want. Those went crazy like twenty sixteen.

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Speaker 1: So a lot of independent artists when they get big time,

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Speaker 1: they look for the major deal. Made you say, you

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Speaker 1: know what, I must stay independent the whole time. I

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Speaker 1: do it myself. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So in twenty after I did like, you know, a

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Speaker 2: song a week on SoundCloud for two and a half

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Speaker 2: years and eleven projects. I partnered with a major label

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Speaker 2: for three years four years, but I kept my entire

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Speaker 2: back catalog. They didn't they didn't own it, so they

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Speaker 2: just we just split the money on like three albums

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Speaker 2: and then I just went back fully Indian twenty twenty.

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Speaker 2: It was like a very like rare situation to be

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Speaker 2: able to do that, and I bought myself out the

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Speaker 2: deal at the end, Can I say how much?

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Speaker 1: I yeah?

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Speaker 2: No, yeah, okay that one point five. My manager gave

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Speaker 2: me the going.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: But I bought myself out the deal and I went

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Speaker 2: back fully Indian. For me, it just got to that

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Speaker 2: point where I realized, like, you guys aren't doing anything

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Speaker 2: I can't do myself, so I would rather just you know,

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Speaker 2: keep all the fruits of the labor. It's I think

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Speaker 2: artists don't realize that that the label is not going

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Speaker 2: to do anything that you and your team aren't already doing.

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Speaker 2: They're just there to react to what y'all are doing.

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Speaker 2: And so a lot of artists get screwed because they

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Speaker 2: show up and they think that, like the label is

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Speaker 2: going to be on some right, we'll take it from here.

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Speaker 1: No, they're not.

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Speaker 2: They're waiting to see what y'all are doing, you know.

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Speaker 2: So for me, it was like I'm already doing everything

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Speaker 2: and I don't need like y'all have a button that

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Speaker 2: you can push, which is just money. But I have money,

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Speaker 2: so I'll push the button and stop breaking y'all off.

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Speaker 1: I like how you give artists information? Yeah, question, Like

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Speaker 1: you know, back in my day, you would sell albums

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Speaker 1: and you go platinum. You go go and you get

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Speaker 1: the status. Is it the same way with stremes? And

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Speaker 1: how many streams is platinum?

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Speaker 2: No? I mean yeah, back then it was just physical,

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Speaker 2: you know, so it was just one to one. You

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Speaker 2: sold one album accounted as one album. Right now, on

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Speaker 2: an album, you need to do fifteen hundred streams for

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Speaker 2: it to count as one sale, which is just like

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Speaker 2: an arbitrary number. That Like who came up with that?

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Speaker 2: Why isn't it twelve hundreds? You know what I mean?

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Speaker 1: So you need to listen to my song.

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Speaker 2: A song is different for song, it's to one hundred

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Speaker 2: and fifty, So you just divide by like ten. So

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Speaker 2: for example, you see a lot of artists like kind

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Speaker 2: of gaming gaming the system, which I'm like, all four.

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Speaker 2: But what I mean by that is, let's say you

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Speaker 2: have four songs out and they're all platinum, right, they're

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Speaker 2: all a million. Well, if you put all four of

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Speaker 2: those on an album. That album has now sold four

98
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Speaker 2: hundred thousand. You see what I'm saying because your four

99
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Speaker 2: singles are four million, but when you put them on

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Speaker 2: an album, you got to divide it by ten. And

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Speaker 2: so now this album has done four hundred thousand. But

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Speaker 2: really it's like did the album do four hundred thousand

103
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Speaker 2: or did those four songs do that? But it makes

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Speaker 2: it look like the album is this like super successful.

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Speaker 1: So you said you said platinum, So million streams is platinum? No?

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Speaker 2: No, no, you need one hundred and fifty million streams in

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Speaker 2: the USA goddamn And it's US only.

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Speaker 1: That's that's all.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because when you're when you see people like,

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Speaker 2: oh I went platinum, people don't understand like ri double A,

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Speaker 2: which is the company that certifies platinum, is just US.

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Speaker 2: So you see a lot of artists who just are like, man,

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Speaker 2: I got two hundred million streams, How am I not platinum?

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Speaker 2: It's like because one hundred million of them came from Malaysia,

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Speaker 2: you know what I mean? Like you have to get

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Speaker 2: a one hundred and fifty million in US to go.

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Speaker 3: Why don't Malaysians count?

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Speaker 2: They do for Malaysian certifications. So like every country has

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Speaker 2: their own threshold for what quantifies as gold and place,

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Speaker 2: so you can like, you know, go gold in Canada

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Speaker 2: with less or you know, platinum in France with just

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Speaker 2: doing ten thousand sales in France. It's all based off

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Speaker 2: of like population, and you know, it's crazy.

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Speaker 1: That's why.

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Speaker 2: I also when you see like so and so has

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Speaker 2: so sold whatever worldwide, No they haven't. There's no way

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Speaker 2: to determine that unless it's just straight up physical, Like

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Speaker 2: if you've sold twenty million physical records, you can count

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Speaker 2: that up, but you can't count up like well, because

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Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty million streams in the US is platinum.

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Speaker 2: If they did one hundred and fifty million in the Philippines,

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Speaker 2: they're double platinum. No, the Philippines has a different thing.

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Speaker 2: So there's no way to know based off streams what

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Speaker 2: everyone's doing worldwide, money paid tweets, and how do you

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Speaker 2: make moneyney owning the streams, by owning the music, and

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Speaker 2: just catalog and volume. It all adds up. So for me,

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Speaker 2: like I got five hundred songs out, I always tell

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Speaker 2: people it's like you don't need one song to do

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Speaker 2: one hundred million streams in a month. You can have

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Speaker 2: a hundred songs out and they're each doing a million

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Speaker 2: streams in a month. That's a way like easier mountain

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Speaker 2: to climb. So for me, I just like one. From

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Speaker 2: an artistic standpoint, I just like making songs and I

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Speaker 2: like shit in them. And then from a business standpoint,

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Speaker 2: I'm like, it takes the pressure off of each individual

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Speaker 2: song because I don't need all of y'all to go

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Speaker 2: out there and be the biggest in the world. I

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Speaker 2: can have five hundred songs that are getting a million

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Speaker 2: streams a month, and that's five hundred million streams a month,

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Speaker 2: you know.

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Speaker 3: I think, Shaq, one of the things I love about

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Speaker 3: Russ's story is he is constantly creating. You're constantly making, yeah,

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Speaker 3: And that's why I feel like as fans, like myself,

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Speaker 3: we have seen this constant evolution where there's never I

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Speaker 3: felt like been a time off. When you close your

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Speaker 3: eyes and you think about like the hardest part of

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Speaker 3: the journey.

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Speaker 1: Visually, what do you see? What room are you in?

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Speaker 3: Like, what what part are you And then for that

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Speaker 3: person to look at where you are now, what is

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Speaker 3: that cenisation?

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Speaker 2: Like visually, where am I in my room? That's the

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Speaker 2: room I'm in. It's just the heart. This moment is mental.

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Speaker 2: It was nothing that had to do with like industry stuff.

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Speaker 2: It was all like me versus me. That's the battle,

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Speaker 2: you know, is wrest like as a as a musician

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Speaker 2: when you're making the kind of music that I like

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Speaker 2: to make where it's like authentic and you know, it's

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Speaker 2: my real life. So it's just wrestling with everything I'm

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Speaker 2: talking about. You know, it's this is like my audio diary.

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Speaker 2: So the toughest part is going through that is making

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Speaker 2: the music.

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