J.R. McKee Interview: "10 Artist Commandments"

Every time I post about this book it sells. When I don't post about this book, guess what? It doesn't sell. Music is the exact same thing. If you don't post about your song, it's probably not gonna stream. I'm absolutely overjoyed to be welcoming in on the One More Time podcast. You know him from Shark Tank. It's Damon John. Yeah, yeah. That's one of my one of the people I look up to. That's kind of perfect. That does work actually on a couple levels. Maybe like a Dame Dash. I don't know. Just going with like the bald head. No, I really look up to him. Like I really try to model a lot of the stuff I do online after him. He crushes. Yeah. He was on TikTok early too, actually. I remember seeing his shit popping up early TikTok, like entrepreneur talk. Yeah, for sure. No, we have co-founder of MPR Global. We have one of the music businesses streaming wizards. Yes, sir.

We got content creator, we got author now. I mean, yes. What other like titles do you want me to include here? Father. Okay. Father, yes. Definitely for sure. Father. That should have been number one, but father, co-founder, um entrepreneur, author, um, educator. Educator. Educator. Yes, okay. I love that too. We got J.R. McKee on the podcast. JR. For sure. And I swear, y'all are gonna soak up so much fucking game from this guy. And right after this, you better go follow his page and shared information. Is his uh other page that he posts to, yeah. And it's doing exactly what the name fucking says. He's sharing information for you all, just like we are here on the podcast. Kind of the perfect guest. It's literally, it's up there, like so. You know, we just had Amber Grimes, who was like in my mind, kind of like prototype. Yeah, like the prototype, like the elite guest of, you know, everyone's like, Oh, don't you want to interview like Drake and the biggest rappers? Yes. yeah, of course. Of course. But like, we're also here to educate, yeah.

And like, so I think that you are really perfect for our audience. So I really appreciate you coming on, man. So right there on the shelf for those that can see in the wide view, editor, make sure we cue the uh zoom in on the on the book on the shelf. I wouldn't say I don't know how good it's gonna look. Well, it's okay. Okay. We'll make it happen, right? But imagine this Put an overlay if we have to for our audio listeners also. Imagine this. I'm a whole one. Yeah, yeah. Yes, please. Perfect. One up top. Yep, that's perfect. You're good. What are these blunts? Yeah, yeah, you're good. Shout out King. Palm. You can leave those there. Yes. All right, yes. Here we go. This is the 10 Artist Commandments by JR McKee. We are in the presence of a published author. Yeah, actually, bestselling. Oh my gosh. It's The number one best-selling book in the music business. Um, not only the physical book, but the ebook is number one, the physical book is number one, and the audio book is number one. All three formats are the number one book in the music business right now. Congrats. Did you just come for Donald Passman's spot? Actually, you know what's crazy? Because he is like the predominant music business book.

He's so when I passed him, I was like, oh, we did it. Yeah, we did it. Like we, you know what I mean? It's it's official now. So I'm excited for that. And I hope that I can have long-term success like he's having. Because right now I've been out for four weeks and I've been number one a whole time. That's crazy. But you know, Donald Passman has been out for what, 10 years. There's a lot of additions. For people that don't know, it's it's um everything you need to know about the music industry. Is that what it's called? Music business. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, if I can look up in 10 years and somebody's trying to compete with me to be number one, that'll be something. You know what I mean? Literally, you'll like pat that author on the back who who steals your number one spot for a few weeks, you know what I mean? So that'll be something. So yeah, hopefully I can have longevity like him. Yeah, for sure. So I don't know if you're comfortable doing this. I was asking Henry, I was like, I don't know if he'll want to do this or if this is something where like you gotta read the book, but like, can you give us the high-level 10 artist commandments real quick? Can you like rattle them off? For sure. So And to the tune of crack 10 crack commandments by Biggie, if you don't mind. All right.

So this book is basically the 10 principles that you need to be successful. I'm fortunate enough that I've been in the industry 19 years now. Wow. You know what I mean? I started when I was 19 years old. Um, I broke in so many artists, it's it's crazy. The thing that most people don't realize is probably 90% of music executives have never broken a single artist. Yes. You know what I mean? And so we're we're sitting, you know, at least 10, 160 million records sold over 19 years. And so it's just uh a big, big blessing. But the thing about that that that makes me in this book special is because I got to see different people do it in different eras. Like right now, the kids that are watching, they only know the TikTok era. Yep. They only have seen that. But I've seen the MySpace era, I've seen, you know, the Facebook era, I've seen the radio era, I've seen the 106 and Park era, I've seen so many eras. And so it's like over that time, what did the people do that made them successful? Like, if you don't know anything about TikTok, how do you become a successful artist?

You know what I mean? If you don't know anything uh uh about Instagram, how do you become a successful artist? And so you need principles. And I looked at all of the artists over my 19 years and I said, what are the principles that made them successful? Forget about the era. Because TikTok era is almost over. We're finna go into a whole new era. What are you gonna do then? And so you need principles to become successful. So no matter the era. these are timeless. These are timeless principles, no matter the era, for you to be able to figure out how do I win in this game. And so that's what I put together, man. And the response has been incredible. Yeah, you know what I mean? Um, I mean, the number one kind of says it all. The number one kind of says it all, but but I I think the fact that people are are reading it, and I actually got this one voice note that this guy sent me out, the guy I never met. And he was like, Man, this book is so much more than the music industry. He was like, This is this is a book for human life. That's what he said to me. I'm not making it I should play y'all the listening. Honestly, we had. And I was just like, yo, that's crazy.

Like, but I get why he said that because now going into your question, some of the some of the some of the commandments. The first commandment is tell the truth. You know what I mean? And it really has, it really has everything to do with artistry, but it's more so in the effect of how do you be the best version of yourself? How do you attract more people to you that are like you, that are like minded. And the only way to do that is be authentic. Be authentic, be vulnerable. You know what I mean? So whether you're trying to sell music or a podcast or a t-shirt, you're looking to attract people who think the way that you think, who have been through the things that you have been through, or or at least are maybe um can relate to the things that you've been through. And so you have to tell the truth, and then you go on to the next one and just put yourself out there. Commandment number two is put yourself out there. Well, that goes that goes way beyond the music industry. Anything that you're trying to be successful in, you have to begin to take the steps of putting yourself out there. Closed mouths don't get fed. You know what I mean?

And so I don't know, man. I hate talking about myself, but just read the book. Well, that's why that's why we got you here. I was like, you better get comfortable. Hopefully, you'll at least do it for another like 45 hour. I don't know. But yeah, just or else it's the shortest episode that we've ever had, folks. I I feel bad. You know, I don't I don't I don't like to like big myself up, which is you know, why the book is there, so the book can do it for me. That's a good teacher, I think. No, I'm glad that you at least gave us two because I think the authenticity uh aspect, the fact the fact that it's number one, like guys out there, like please, if you don't take anything away from our platform as a whole, and clearly his book with it being number one, like you have to find what it is that makes you you. Yeah, you you definitely have to, man. Um even even like so. When I start working with an artist, the first thing that we talk about, you know, isn't their music. The first thing we talk about is them. Yeah, I want to know who you are, I want to know where you come from, I want to know what your goals are. You know, I I need to know these things.

I need to know what you stand for. What are your values? You know what I mean? Because that's the only way I can get people to attract you. You gotta understand streaming is all about audience. And so, how do I go out there and I find your audience? I can't do that if I don't know who you are. Forget about the music. I need to know who you are because I'm trying to attract people to you. You know what I mean? If I if I try to build this house on your songs alone, it's like the three little pigs. If I build the house on the songs alone, that's the straw house. That's the straw house. If if I build the house on, you know, something simple like, oh, I'm an artist and I love fashion, that's a house out of sticks. But if I build it on your values and your purpose and what your and what your mission and your goal is, that's the brick house. All white bricks. Exactly. Jeez. And so that, and so the first thing I do with artists is I figure out what I need to build that brick house. And it has nothing to do with the music. Yes. Yeah, that's good. No, that's oh man, like that's another theme. That's why I'm so excited to get JR on.

Because I was like, I was scrolling through his page and I was like, we've talked about that. We've talked about this, we've talked about that. So it was actually reaffirming for us and like the guests that we've had prior to you, that like there are common themes of like people that are successful in this shit, which like we're trying to only speak with people that have like reached some degree of success that can share knowledge with our audience. Right, there's recurring fucking themes, y'all. Like, this isn't like there's principles, man. There's principles to these things, and that's why I feel like you probably wrote the book because it was like shit. Like, I've been doing this a while. I've been doing it with street rappers to RB female artists. Yeah. So it was like, why do they both work in their individual things? I think a big part of it is that some people don't think that they have that or that they need a certain type of quality. Something that's really important to me is everyone understanding that everyone has something that makes them them. You have something. There is something there. Everyone has a story, everyone has a background, everyone has beliefs. There's something that makes you you, and accepting that, even like the awkward thing.

I love the awkward things about people. Those tend to be the things that like they're self-conscious about, but it's kind of your superpower because people relate to it, they see like you know exactly. You you have to show your vulnerabilities. Like, yes, the thing that makes people attract to you. nobody wants to believe you're perfect. They want to know what makes you human. Because if you show them what makes you human, that's how they relate to you. That's why they say, Oh, okay, this person is like me. And now I look at them and I'm like, man, well, if they had that same, you know, flaw that I have, and they made it, okay. Well, now that gives me hope. And so that's what you're looking to do as an artist. You're looking to give people hope. And I I just think artists don't understand that music is probably one of the I don't want to call it the least important factors, but it's one of the smaller percentages to success. Yes, No one wants to hear that, but God damn it, it's kind of the truth, man. So, how do you feel about that being true? Like, does that upset you, or is it no? Because I I I it's just like um when you tell a basketball player to shut up and dribble.

Like I want life to be bigger than music. You know what I mean? I I want my artist's life to be bigger than music. You you're here for a purpose, and it's not just to sing songs. You know what I mean? And so I want you to inspire people with your personality. I want you to inspire people with your life story. Always tell people like if you haven't figured out what your gift is yet, nine times out of ten is what you've been through. It's your story. If it's like, man, I don't feel like I'm great at this, I don't feel like I'm great at that, but my life been so hard, boom, there it is. There's your gift. Your gift is your story. And so, you know, I think that's huge because I think that a lot of artists, the the fatal flaw is that they think like, oh, like my music should be enough, and like my music should be with all they care about, and like just focus on the music and like the music, the music. And it's like yes, the music needs to be there, and the music can accompany all these other things. Right. But don't like look down on the fact that your personality, your interests, your story all matter. Yeah, it all matters.

And your music should should be a focus for you as an artist. You know what I mean? You definitely want to create great music that's gonna have a lot to do with how long you last. Yeah. You know what I mean? So the quality of the product you're putting out matters tremendously. I'm not, I don't want to take away from that, but I what I need you to understand as an artist is they'll never hear it until we focus on what really matters. Thank you. I think I think artists still are stuck in the pre social media era, because that that is, you know, that you could be the mysterious artist that didn't have to share, and you could get popular then. But now we like knowing everyone's story. We like seeing what you had for lunch. We like knowing what books you're reading, what sports teams you're supporting, whatever. Like, right. Well, see, the the difference there was that was possible when we controlled the media. We are in the social media era. Yes. I'm sorry, we're in a social media era. We're no longer in where in the music business where I control 106 in park, I control the radio. You know, as an industry, we had full control of it.

So all you have to do as an artist is make dope music show to the video shoot. And now I can make sure every night at 6 p.m. every kid in America sees you. I can make sure the radio station is playing you 24 times a day. So in that in that moment, of course, all you have to do is make great music. You know what I mean? Because me as an executive, my job is just to make the best product to put in front of the people. Yes. But now as an executive, I have zero control over what these people choose to see. Because they have choice now. They can they can swipe right past whatever I want to put out there. Gone. You know what I mean? So now that they have full control over that, it's like they want to know way more than the music. They want to know, like you just ran off your list, what you ate for lunch, what's your son's name, what happened between you and your baby mother. Yes. They want to know it all, but they they the reason that they want to know that is because they want to know whether I should support you or not, whether I should be a fan of you or not. Because now it's like people are very fickle. You know what I mean?

It's like, oh, they're a vegan. I don't know. That's what they're doing. You know what I mean? Fuck the vegans, bro. Whoa, whoa. They're trying to tell me how to eat. I don't want to listen to their music. Right. You know what I mean? So this but but the beauty in that is like because the internet is eight billion people, you can find the amount of people you need to find to make a living. Yes. You know what I mean? Just but you can be a vegan that only likes dogs and hates cats and has two kids, and you know, whatever your story is. People are afraid to niche. And it's like, even if you're super, super niche down, there's still millions of people. millions of people that are just like you. Yes. You know what I mean? And so that's that's why we've been so successful in this era because we recognize that early. Yes. We recognize that no matter what the artist is, like, that's like even, you know, this past weekend, I was having a conversation up in DC with a group of artists, and we were talking about image. And I told them, I said, the image doesn't even matter anymore because you're gonna find people that look like you. You know what I mean?

Like, they're not gonna have any issue with how you look. What they care about is your story. They want to know can they relate to your story? You know what I mean? And so that's what matters no more. It's not even even age, like, man, can I be a 40-year-old rapper? Why can't you? Yeah. That's the story. You know what I mean? That's the story. That's the story. Yeah, and so I just saw a post about the amount of uh artists who break after 30 now. It's crazy. Like it's super common now. It used to be like non-existent. I think it I think it has to do with what you're talking about, is that like there's no controlled media that's like oh, you're too old. Yeah, exactly. Fuck that. If people want to like an old rapper, they're gonna like them. And no one has anything to fucking say about it. No one has an issue about it. The people that are gonna like it are gonna like it, and the people who aren't aren't. That's that's all that matters. That's so true. And not only is niching down, you know, are there still a ton of people, but it makes the job of finding those people way easier. Yeah. Holy shit. target your ads, like yeah, you gotta understand your brand, you know, and that's a lot of things. Another thing that artists uh skip over.

If you understand your brand, then you understand what content to put out. Yes. Because uh a big problem with artists is they're just putting out random content, but it's not niched down enough to their brand to for people to be able to find them. Yes. Like I'm easy to find. You're looking for music business, you're looking for, you know, family, you're looking for entrepreneurs, uh, entrepreneurship information. I'm very easy to find. If you go on my page, you're only gonna get things that apply to my brand. That's why we found them, I think. Well, so I think the biggest um fear, I would say, I don't know if that's the right word, you know, for it, but I think that artists, I think artists are nervous, they're reluctant to maybe just lean into because you know, you kind of just gave the big three for your page, if you will, right? Right. And artists love to say this type of thing where they're like, but I'm so much more than just those three things, right? So like so you know, how do you address that when an artist says, like, well, I don't want to just post that those three types of content. Well, uh, again, it it goes back to your brand.

Like, you you have to build your brand on something. Yeah. You know what I mean? You can't you can't be everything because then people then you're hard to find. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like your, your, your, your brand has to be targeted. Your content has to be targeted. Everything has to be posted with intent. Without intention, you you're never gonna find the people that that are gonna attract to you and stream your music or buy your music or or buy your merch. Then also at the same time, the beauty of social media is okay, you think you're these 10 things, let's test all 10 of them. And whatever the people attract to, that's what we're gonna pick. Respond to what works. Yeah. And so when we test these 10 different types of things, the the top three that get attracted to, the top three that does the best, okay, this is your brand. This is who this is what people want to see from you. We're gonna focus on these three things. And so when people come in there and they like that, you know, it's a very easy test. Okay, you think you're A, B, C, D, F. All right, let's test all of them.

And let's find what people are attracted to, and then we're gonna stick to that. Do you create avatars ever? The whole avatar exercise where you like give the potential target person like a name and a job and an age No. And ethnicity. Like no, no, because I don't I don't run ads. Like, if I if I ran ads, maybe I would do that. Yeah, yeah. But I have an ad buyer. And so I just, hey guys, this is what we need to do. Okay. You know what I mean? Remember when I came and you asked me about a team, I definitely have a team. Gotta have a team. I definitely have a team. Don't ask, don't tell, out of sight, out of mind. He's like, I don't know. I mean, I just tell them this is what we want to spend. This is what we want to do. Boom, run it. Yeah. But it goes back to self-awareness though, and just knowing what you like to do, what you're good at, and then what you know, the stuff that annoys you or like you stress out about doing the most is probably the team member that you need to bring on first. So I'm gonna give another book recommendation. First and foremost, my book, right? 10 Artist Commandments by Jeremy Keaton. Now the second book recommendation is a book called Who, not how. Every artist should read, every person should read this book, but it it is stresses about finding people to do the how.

You know what I mean? All I have to do is say, okay, this is this is what I'm trying to, this is what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to run ads. Who can do that for me? Now I say to my ad buyer, listen, I want to run ads on this. I let him worry about the how. I don't I don't think about the how. If he can't do it correctly, then he's the wrong person. It's just a different who then at that point. And so all I worry about is the who's and I let them worry about the how. You know what I mean? I found an ad buyer. If his ads started to fail, he's the wrong who. And I'm gonna go to the next who and I I but I'll but I'll never ask how. Long as I all I'm looking at is the results. You know what I mean? And so that goes for pretty much everybody on my team. The people who that make my content, that goes for them. Like I never tell them how to do it. I hate, man, I need to promote the book. Here's some content I shot, you make some content, put it all together, send it back to me. Let's put it out. You know what I mean? I let them do the how. Boom. Yeah, and so read the book. It's called Who Not How. Who not how? Yeah. That's tough for me, man. I'm not gonna, I'm hearing the advice and I'm like, yeah, but like I kinda like, I kinda like why. You have to, it's it's the 80-20 rule.

Yeah. I'm sure you've heard this. Yep. If you can find somebody to do it at least 80% as well as you could, then you should let them do it. Yeah. That way you can focus on something else. You know what I mean? You need to be focused on the top of your business. You are the CEO, you're the big idea guy. Yeah. You know what I mean? So all you need to think about all day is the big ideas. The execution stuff should be hand handed to somebody else that can do it either at least 80% as well as you, if not better. Yeah. You know what I mean? But do you have a basic understanding on how to do the thing? Because I think it's hard to, like it's hard to you can't find the person if you don't kind of know how to do it yourself. And so this is going back to artists, like, uh, but but anybody, you have to start doing it all on your own. Because if you don't know how to do it first, then somebody can rob you. Yes. Somebody, you know what I mean? They'll say, oh man, that costs 25 dollars a post. When I man, no, it cost this. Or, you know, I need this graphic made. Oh, they charged 200, man. I done got that graphic made for 20 dollars. You know what I mean? So you you have to know what you have to know the ins and outs. That's also in the book, it's

one of the um commandments. Um, but you have to know the ins and the outs before you go out and hire somebody else, because otherwise they can take advantage of you, they can do all kind of stuff. Like, you you really need to know your own business first. Yes, you know what I mean? So you start on your own. Yeah. And and just knowing what good looks like, also. Yeah, right. Because it's like, how do you even know that they're the right who if you don't even have a baseline for like how should the ad be performing? Oh, this ad reached 10,000 people. That sounds great. But then someone just steps in and it gets 25,000 people. It should be a million. Yeah, exactly. Whatever. Well, everything is results driven. You know what I mean? Everything is results driven. So if you're hiring somebody, you're looking for results. Yeah. If They aren't delivering the results in the time frame that you need them to deliver it, then you know that's the wrong person. But it and that also goes into another thing that you have to understand is to sink or swim. You know what I mean? Like you can't micromanage. Like I can't tell you I need the content made and then try to tell you how to make the content. You know what I mean?

I struggle, I struggle with this. Yeah, that's micromanagement. But he knows he's our content guy, and I'm all up in the fucking title text and all up in the fucking edits. Let me tell you, so that the reason that that you don't do that is because you want to know if this is the right person or not. Because if you carry him, you're just gonna be carrying him the whole time he's working for you. Yeah, but if you let but if you allow him to swim, let me spread my wings, yeah. Let me fly, god damn it. Then you know he has it. But if he but he if he's failing, then you can cut him off fast, not you. He can't cut me off. It's actually impossible. I was loving him saying like my power was way higher than it is, you know. I was like, oh shit, I can't fire this motherfucker. Get off my cell. But I'm saying you're gonna have someone like him. If they if they sink, you want to get rid of them sooner rather than later. Yeah, you know what I mean? So if you micromanage, you're just carrying the weight with you the whole time. When really it could be somebody that could swim on their own, or if they're gonna sink, let them sink and get them out of there. Yeah, yeah.

No, it's it's so true, man. And yeah, everyone, just for the record, I love Henry's content. All right, I'm just a fucking psychopath. I mean, I looked at the page doing very well. It is, it is, it is. Yeah, it's doing very well, so he's doing a great job. He is, for sure. I appreciate your input as well. Thank you. Get that on the record. So I hate you again now. Let's start that. We can keep moving on. So, you know, what was the actual process of writing a book like? Man, because it sounds like, yes. Oh, of course. Like, I've it's your first book. This is my first book. Like, oh, I've been doing this 19 years. Just have all these ideas and just like. I basically I basically wanted to summarize my knowledge of the industry. Yeah. You know, I I knew that I'm I'm basically, you know, at the tenure of my career by choice. Like there are other things I want to do in life. Like, I don't want to be Quincy Jones. I don't want to be 60, 70 however old he is. Still a thousand years. Still in the studio. And like, like, you know, for me, it's like, man, I get this one life. I want to live different lives.

I spent 20 years in the music business. By the time I'm pretty much done, it'll be 20 years. I want to spend 20 years doing something else. Yeah. And then another 20 doing something else. Do you know what you want to do next? Um, TV and film, probably. TV and film. Um on TV and film or like producing it, or I don't know. I I like acting. I actually started, um, I went to Cleveland School to Arts for Drama. So my high school career was acting. Oh, wow. So I like acting. Um, I um I'm in a fortunate position to be able to produce my own stuff. So I don't know. We'll we'll see how that goes. But not only that, I really love educating. You know what I mean? And so I don't know how long I spend doing that, but I I've started educating artists, as y'all can tell on my Instagram, and like I've started a community um to help educate artists. So I like that too. So I don't know exactly what we'll do next, but I know that you know, my time signing artists is is closing. So this book was like, okay, let me give you everything I've learned. Um, but I don't feel like that was a question. The question was something else. No, I mean the process.

I'm sorry, the process. Of writing a book. But it's also crazy that like one year into his company, he wins a Grammy and he's like, I'm probably just done signing artists. Yeah, that's the shit. Had fun. Yeah, no, but because that that's not my first success. It's like and it's like, how many times am I gonna repeat the same process? You know what I mean? Platinum records get old, guys, apparently. I'm really enjoying this. I have 160 of them. If I see another royalty check, I swear to God. Yeah, so it's like, how many I'm I'm repeating the same process at this point. I get it, I get it. And so it's like, man, like I'm young, I want to try something different. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I have new kids, and this is just a personal thing for me. It's like I got to see my parents go from nothing to something. Yeah. My kids missed that. I'm already something. Yeah. You know what I mean? So it's like you got youngins. Yeah. And so it's like, this is gonna sound so funny, but I want to I want them to see me struggle at some. I want them to see me try something from scratch.

Do y'all remember dad's first movie? Holy shit, he was bad. I was terrible. They dropped it on Tubi. It was a mess. Yeah, do y'all remember when daddy used to be on Tubi? I think he just dropped it on Instagram, actually. I don't even think it made it anywhere. But no, it's it's true. Like, I I want them, I want them to know what it looks like to build something from scratch. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because I got to see that with my family, and that gave me the confidence to go do what I do. What did your parents do? Like, what did you see? Oh, so right. So my my family, we grew up in the projects, and this sounds so crazy because y'all probably have heard that before, but this is this is our what happened. My entire family was raised in the projects, Cleveland, Ohio. I was born in a project. You know what I mean? I live in a project. Yeah, Cleveland, Ohio. I lived in the projects my whole first seven years until my mother moved me to Mississippi. Okay. Um, but nevertheless, I watched, and so when I say my entire family, I mean a huge family. Like my grandparents had 16 kids. Holy shit. Yeah.

Your grandma was fertile as fuck. Yeah, and so, and so but you blow your nose too hard, she gets pregnant. Yeah. Hilarious. So the thing about that was though, we lived in a two-bedroom apartment. And so when I say my whole family, I mean a lot of people. Yeah. In a two-bedroom. You know what I mean? And so I saw that and I watched, they use education to get out. So they all went to school, became nurses, doctors, et cetera. Yeah. And so I remember there to everybody in the suburbs. And so I saw that whole struggle. You know what I mean? And so I'm like, and that gave me confidence. Like, oh, you can do anything. But see, my kids, they don't see no struggle. No. Like, like they literally, like, man, it's so sad. You know, you know what you gotta do, right? You don't give them any money. They've had iPads since birth. They've literally had You gotta not give them any money. When you see them around other kids, you can see the air of elitism. Yes. Entitlement. Yes, you can see it. And I'm like, man, like dang.

Like, I gotta, you know what I mean? It's important to me to show them building something from scratch. Yeah. You know what I mean? Um, rather than just showing them success success. Now I know this just probably sounds so funny to people, but I have enough money. You know what I mean? Like, I we're not going broke. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so I think my kids' future is more important than me continuing to stack that money. Yeah. You know what I mean? That makes sense. So basically, um, once I knew that I wanted to write this book, I wanted to like give away everything that I had learned. Um, I mean, I just looked at like, you know, what would be the wise way to go about that? And I was like, I need to pick a number. I need to like, I know I want to have like seven lessons or whoopty whoop this. And so, you know, I I can't, I landed on 10 artist commandments, wrote out the 10 things that I knew were the most important factors to artists blowing up. And then from there, it was writing and research. Oh, it took about 18 months. To like decide on the 10. Oh, no, that was quick. Oh, really?

Yeah, but it was like blatantly obvious that these are the 10 principles. You've been doing it for 19 years, man. Yeah, I've been doing it for so long, and I've done it successfully so many times. It's like I get it. It's almost like you were already living your life by these 10 artist commandments, or like having your artists. I was already there. Like I get it. I know what to do. So you weren't just like staring at a blank word document, like no, no, what do I write? It the quick part was that. The quick part was 10 artists commandments. The 10. And then what pertains to the longer part were the interviews, um, the editing, um, finding the the book. Like it, that that was the long part. That's that's why we went uh almost 18 months before we got to the point where we were ready to release it. Yeah, you know what I mean. But the the the initial 10 commandments and like what they stood for, that was easy. Okay, but then you know, we we did so many interviews for this book. Um, artists, writers, producers, um, lawyers, you know what I mean? Cause because it can't just be from my perspective, you know. what

I mean, I don't think that would be wise. Like, I need I need other people to weigh in on this. Um, I needed great examples. Um, I had a phenomenal editor, her name is Kim Green. She helped out with this tremendously. Like, she she she did a lot. You know what I mean? Shout out Kim. Shout out to Kim, yeah. So me and her um did it together. That's awesome. And then from there, you know, I just made sure I did what I tell all my artists to do. I I documented. I had so much footage. And so that's that's a big part of the reason the book is number one because I've been able to put out so much footage on making the book. You know what I mean? You followed your own commandments for the release of the book about the commandments. Exactly. I I followed my own rules. genius. You know what I mean? And so and so that's the the book has gotten so much light because of all of the content that we had from the actual creating of the book. I'm still not, I still have more content. We a month out, and I still have more content that I haven't posted from the making of the book. I mean, this was your album. Oh, it's my album, man.

This was basically, I mean it's selling. We know speaking of speaking of hits, this is the zenith, if I may. I've never used that word, but Yeah, we number one. This is zenith. Don't use that again. Zenith? That's a crazy cool. word. And it's like a one-time thing now. I used it one time, so yeah, here we are. I think you've hit your zenith quota, my friend. Um, all right, so you know, moving back to kind of the Grammy winner in less than a year of existence. So NPR Global, Mm-hmm. Explain exactly what the role was of NPR Global in the money long uh hours and hours. Hours and hours, Grammy winning hits. Yes. Okay, so NPR is a company that I started with my partner Drew DeLeon. Yeah. Yeah. So myself and Drew were working at Alamo at the time. Mm-hmm. not the time that, well, whatever. We were working at Alamo at the time. And so basically, what I realized from breaking Rod and Dirk, it was all content. You know what I mean?

Like it was like Rod was like the perfect content creator because he documented everything. But the difference was he was doing it for YouTube. He was putting it in his music videos. Like Rod never really shot a music video. All his music videos was was just vlogs, like vlogs, nicely edited. Yeah, they were they were basically vlogs, but the beauty in that was it was right when TikTok was taking off. And so Drew would just take the the long form and chop it in the short form and post it on TikTok. Because Drew was over marketing at Alamo. So Drew was head of digital marketing, I was head of sales and revenue. Exactly. You know what I mean? So you were clearly closely aligned with how are we using marketing and content. marketing to drive revenue. To drive sales and revenue. Exactly. Exactly. So I mean, me drew the product manager, my guy Dharmik, shout out Dharmik. Me drew the product manager, um, and uh JJ, who is uh what's the name of JJ's company? It's a distribution company. Uh I'm so sorry, JJ. I can't think of name of the company at that point.

We love you, JJ. We love you, JJ. But so, so the distribution company that we were using, because we weren't using Universal, because Alamo has a deal where they can do, you know, their own independent and then they can upstream it to uh Universal. Oh and so Rod, we weren't using Universal. His name is slipping my mind. But anyway, so it was really just us four, you know, breaking, breaking Rod Wave. And so when I realized that, I'm like, man, like we didn't need a major, we didn't need anything, like Rod was like the top five rappers in the game. Yeah. And it's like we never touched Universal's System. It was four people, you know. And I'm like, I'm like, yo, like, Drew, like we should, we should just go do this on our own. Like, like, like, why don't we? And so in in the in talking through that, Dirk happened. You know what I mean? And I was like, oh, Drew, like, bro, like if we did this, imagine us owning it versus just working. You know what I mean? So Dirk was also Alamo? Yeah, yeah, Dirk was Alamo. Yes, same, same process with Dirk that we did with Rod. Yeah.

You know what I mean? It's The same thing. And so when we left, um uh we signed Money Long in May of 21. We put out her first project in July of 21, and by December of 21, we had the number one song in the world. But was that a label deal? No, so so I started a distribution company. Okay, so that was it was distribution. Yes, distribution. So for money long. I use, I use the term distribution because the term label has a stigma to it. Okay. But it's it's a it's basically a label. Sure. But I say distribution because we're artist friendly. Yeah. Like, you know, we don't sign away to masters or anything like that. So it's kind of like how you have empire distribution. It's independent distribution. Yeah. You're taking a percentage. But our our situation is the label because we're paying for everything. Like I put like 800,000 into Money Long. Damn. Wow. You know what I mean? So it takes $800,000 to get a Grammy, folks. That's all you need. At least. That's all you need, folks.

It's not bad. So if you got a line around. It's not bad. I mean, I got that under the mattress. We can raise that, I think. Well, so I had done so much in the industry at that point that when I started NPR, I just raised the money to start it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Just went around to friends and family. Guys, it's me. Yeah. Look at the track record. We've done this. Give me the money. And you know, five months in, we were number one. Yeah. You know what I mean? So, so what were some of the, you know, I know every artist is different, right? But some of the principles and just some of the tactics probably are consistent. Like, you know, what were some of the actual components of the marketing plan and the strategies that that you can do? Well, so our initial right, so money loan specifically, right? Yeah, yeah. Our initial strategy was to put out four EPs in one year. You know what I mean? Because basically when, when you look at Rod, like, I I remember at one point, Rod, we had dropped his album, and I looked up the next month, and he had already put out three separate singles. Damn. And I'm just like, bro, like he just will not stop. You know what I mean? Like, if anybody ever thought that was a label, no, that's Rod. Like Rod, he's going to drop when Rod wants to drop, whenever, however, right?

And so I'm like, man, like, you know, I I talked to them and I'm like, she's a songwriter. She has hundreds of songs. Like, we need to turn her into the RB version of Lil Baby. Like, she needs to constantly be dropping. So our initial goal was four EPs in one year. You know what I mean? And so she had already put out the first one before we signed her. Um, because I was working with her on a consultant basis before I signed her. And so she already put out the first one. Um, and that one when I when I met her, she had it ready already. She was like, hey, I'm about to put this out. You know what I mean? Can you help me put it out? And so we put the first one out. But the second one, I actually A&R'd. You know what I mean? From that point, from the from the second one on, I was actually in the studio helping her create these records. And so we just talked about, you know, how do we relate to the going back to the beginning of this conversation? How do we talk to your people? You know what I mean? When you're talking to your friends, you know, what what is your word play like? what, What phrases are you using?

You know, what you know, what cuss words, like, how do you answer the phone? What do you say? And so we talked about that type of stuff and said, okay, now our records need to be that. You know what I mean? Like, this is this is how we need to talk in our records because we're trying to find that target demographic, you know what I mean? And so from there, we started putting out the projects, um, put out a second project, and with that, I think we put it out in July. By October, we found the right piece of content. Because in today's day and age, even way more so back then, it was like content led everything, you know what I mean? Um, and so we found the right piece of content. The content went, I won't call it viral, but it did very. It was a big it was a big spark for us in October. So it came out in July, didn't get a spark to October. Off of that spark, we just put out the next project immediately. We're like, okay, we're gonna ride this wave and put something right on top of it, we put out the next project. Um, and the next project had hours and hours on it. And so hours and hours wasn't the initial focus track, it was actually a song called Time Machine, which also um I think is platinum now. Um, but yeah, so Time Machine was the focus track, but hours and hours, like two, because I think we put out on a Wednesday.

Um, yeah, like by Friday, we were looking at the analytics, and it was obvious that hours and hours was gonna be a hit record. Because 99.9% of the time, if you put out a song, the streams go like this on day one, and then from there on they're going down. You know what I mean? That's that's standard. Like that, it doesn't happen any other way but that. So if you see a record come out the first day and go up, and then the second day go up and the third day go up, that's a smash. Like, so you shift your focus immediately to that record. And that's exactly what we did. So instead of we had we had all the music videos ready. So instead of putting out the time machine video, we put out that video. Yes. Um, and then from there, her friends actually did a montage of like their love. They like their engagement video. And I saw the montage, and I'm like, man, this could be a great trend. And so I basically just reached out to every influential couple I knew. You know what I mean? I'm like, hey, you know, I have this record, J&B, on speed dial, right?

Well, I was DMing them. I was DMing them. Yeah, and I'm like, I'm like, yo, I got this record, it's working really well. I sent them the montage. I'm like, can you do something like this uh, you know, as a couple with with your footage? Because it was all old footage. It's like not like they had to go shoot anything. And so most of them said yes. The people who didn't say yes, I made it. I went to my team, I said, yo, grab all the footage of them offline, make it. So some of them said yes, posted on their own. some of them didn't respond. I sent them the footage they posted. The people who I sent the footage, they didn't post it, I paid to have it post, like the Lil Durk one. I paid to get it post on academics. Um and then Lil Durk commented and he posted that. So we got two for one. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so like basically, I just went after every influential couple, and I either had them do it for free, made it for them, or made it for them and paid to post it. Okay, let's just pause for like five seconds. here, JR. Oh my gosh. Okay, hold on. Hold on. Hold the fuck on, JR.

Okay, so just for everyone who just needs, I mean, maybe just rewind but I'll go ahead and summarize. We're gonna make a clip out of that too. Hitting up influencers, a lot of them will, because they're always looking for content ideas. Yeah, they will do these types of things sometimes for free. Well, it was people I knew too. But sure, but just in general, there are people out there that micro influencers. I would say like 80% of them did it. Majority of the people I hit did it. Sure. Yeah. So A, befriend fucking influencers so that you can hit them up for these types of. things. Even small ones. Even small ones. Okay. But number two, if they weren't initially responding to your request and posting it, you literally took it out of, took the time out of your own day or your team's day. My team, yeah. To basically chop up footage for them, make a clip that you think they would like to post, right? That fit the trend that you wanted to do. And you had them post it. Yes, that's exactly what happened. So even if they don't post it, you can post it. Yeah, and even if they didn't post it, I would just pay to get it posted. Sure. And then if they don't, you pay to get it posted.

And if they don't, you pay to get it posted. It's amazing. Yeah, so like the ones that didn't post, I would like I would pay spiritual word or pay. It depends on which like Dirk academics made sense. Like some of them spiritual word made sense. Academics loves Dirk. Yeah, and so like best buds now. So probably because of that. Yeah. So I I I just made sure it was everywhere. And of course, from that, everybody else started doing it. The normal people, the everyday people started doing it, then more celebrities started doing it. And it just became like the biggest moment of that year. You know what I mean? It was everywhere. And then Drew, man, Drew was so much responsible for so much great stuff that people don't know. He needs to do podcasts too. But we'd love to talk to Drew. He was one of the first people that I even found and hit up. Yeah. It was during the pandemic. I was just starting to be in music, like managing artists and producers, whatever. And I hit up like everyone that I found that was like a badass executive, and he was actually one of them. And yeah, shout out to Drew. I'd love to talk to him for sure. So after that had been going for a week or maybe two, you know, Drew was like, man, like we need something else.

And so he came up with the um the hours and hours singing challenge. And so what he what he what we had was singers come on and sing hours and hours. And then that took on the life as its own. And that that helped boost it. Um, and then we start focusing on the second verse because the first verse like was so well known. It's like, okay, second verse great too. So we started doing the second verse. And you know, it it just was, you know, the biggest, it was the biggest moment that year for sure. You know what I mean? Um, became the number one streaming song, number one everywhere. Eventually went on to win a Grammy. Um, and you know, it was it was great. There's another gem that he kind of brushed over earlier that I want to. I don't know if you saw the video of Offset. Offset did a video recently about people spend too much time trying to pick their own singles. When in 2023, the audience picks the single. You guys were sure that this song was the one. We're gonna put all the effort into this.

You dropped the project, and this is why paying attention to your analytics and data is so huge. They recognized that after one, two, three days, yeah, that this one is the one that people are choosing, and they immediately shifted their information to take it from JR that they won a Grammy because of that. So like that's huge. We immediately shifted. I mean, it was an easy call. Like I I look at analytics all day long, you know what I mean? And so our target audience is like you know, independent artists that might not even know they don't even have Spotify for artists downloaded. Yeah, like Jesus. So I use Spotify for Artists, we gotta break it down. And so I look at them pretty much every day. Um, and and what you're always looking for is that that growth, you know. what I mean, if you see your streams begin to grow, um nine times out of ten is because of a piece of content that was posted. Whether you posted it or a fan posted, you don't know, but your job is to go find it because you need to repeat it. So, how do you find it if you didn't post it? Well, so searching your name or something.

Search. Because now anytime a song is used, it gets tagged. Or the sound, okay. You can like look at the videos from your sound. You look for the sound, and then you look through the videos and see which one's popping. You try to match the date. You know what I mean? Yeah, you try to match the date, like okay, if the if it grew on the 12th, I need to go find a video that was posted on the 12th or maybe the 11th. You know what I mean? Um, and so once you see what that is, it's like, oh wow, this is what worked. Okay, number one, I'm gonna do this. Number two, I'm gonna post this video. I might even run ads against this video, and I'm gonna send to more influencers so they can do videos like this. You know what I mean? Game. And so that's that's how I began to grow those streams. Like, so I mean, 2023, this year, top of this year, we just did the Justin Scott record. Okay, um, we took that record, Platinum's about to be two times platinum, but that record was eight years old. And so this goes into working catalog, right? It there's no such thing as an old record anymore due to streaming. Yes, you know what I mean. Any record can be a platinum record. That's why I tell artists like your whole catalog probably has some platinum records sitting in it. But you got to work those records.

Yeah. You got to start creating content those records right now because you never know. Justin Scott, an eight-year-old record that, you know, I think before the trend started, you know, couldn't have been doing more than 2,000, 3,000 streams a day, and they went up to doing a million streams a day. Damn. You know what I mean? Damn, bro. And so God, yeah. Yeah, so we literally talked to Amber Grimes about the Hey Mickey record. Same thing. It was six or seven years old or whatever. Yeah. And so, same idea, you got to treat your catalog like a gold mine because it is. Yeah. You got to start working those records now. Damn, bro. Oh my God. All right. So I I feel like a lot of artists don't understand like how the Spotify algorithm, for example, works. Like, is there anything that a lot of independent artists like don't know that it's just something you know that they should know? Right. Well, I mean, the algorithm on Spotify used to be a lot more important because it was people were going to Spotify to discover music. But right now that's just not the case.

They're discovering their music on social media. Okay. And so whereas we used to cater to the Spotify algorithm, now I don't pay it much mind. Oh, interesting. Okay, so it's changed. Yeah, because again, because with content, I don't, it doesn't have to be a new song. You know what I mean? So I I don't focus on new music, new music, new music. I focus what's in our catalog? You know what I mean? How many great songs are in there that's one piece of content away from going platinum? That's that's my focus, you know what I mean? And not to say that I don't put out new music, of course I do, but I don't put it out in the sense of catering to Spotify's algorithm. Like when I'm looking at monthly listeners, you know, what I mean, the reason they put monthly listeners front and center, they got tons of Statistics, right? They got tons of them. Why did they put that front and center? They did that because they know if you don't put out music, it's gonna go down and that's gonna increase your anxiety. And so you're gonna say, I need to put out new music because that's what feeds them. Oh that's what that's what feeds Spotify. Holy shit, bro.

Damn. That's the most obvious sounding thing that I've never given any thought. It's not yearly listeners. Yeah, it's monthly. It's not total listeners. It's literally within the last 30 fucking days, how many people gave a shit about you? They're gonna change it to weekly soon, probably. No, no, but no, but I think it's to your point. It doesn't matter if it's for a new song or an old song. Yeah. That well, I mean, it doesn't matter to me at all anymore. Like, like that, even thinking about signing artists, monthly listeners used to be an important statistics to me too. Cause I'm like, you know, how many people are engaged with them? But now I don't care how many people are engaged. I can look at your catalog and listen to it, and I'm like, yo, it's some hits in there. So you can have a thousand monthly listeners. If you got three hits sitting in there, I want it. Yeah. And you're probably getting it for cheap. And I'm getting it for cheap. You know what I mean? It's almost better. Yeah, and so it's like slower. And so it's like, yeah, I want it. So I'll I'll sign that catalog. You know what I mean? And we'll begin working at music. Damn.

Wow. Oh, JR, holy shit, bro. I knew I knew this was gonna be. Y'all, are y'all listening out there? Hello. God damn, bro. This is inspiring as fuck. All right, can't help it. So I was in the studio uh with a past one more time alumni. I'm not gonna name his name, but why you gotta call him out like that, bro? Is this a bad story? I mean, it's just a debate we were having, or just like a thought-provoking conversation we were having. Um, I basically was on his ass about like content. His output is in my mind for an artist that I really love, who's got great music, he's got great industry connections. He's signed a Def Jam, he's been on tour with JID, he's been on tour with whoever, right? Um, I just don't think he's he's doing enough when it comes to content. I was like, bro, like what are you doing? Um, what do you say to someone? He basically told me this. I don't want to be annoying by posting too much. That was like a summary of his comment. Like, what's your response to that?

I mean, that's just cool. You're not gonna sell. You know what I mean? That's just bullshit. You're not gonna sell. Like, I know because it's streams, people, I don't know if for some reason don't equate it to sales, but it is sales. You know what I mean? And so it's just like this book, like literally, every time I post about this book, it sells. When I don't post about this book, guess what? It doesn't sell. It doesn't sell. Music is the exact same thing. If you don't post about your song, it's probably not gonna stream. You know what I mean? And every time you post about it, what's gonna happen is your streams go up. 10 minutes ago, we were just talking about finding that piece of content that grew to streams, which means what content grows streams. So if you want your music to stream and or grow, you have to post content. And you have to do it every day. Like every time this book sells, let's say I make $10, right? Well, if I want $10 today, guess what I gotta do? Make a fucking post. Gotta make a post. And so artists had to think it's a business.

Yeah. If you don't post, you're not gonna make any money in your business that day. And so what kind of fool wouldn't post every day, multiple times a day? You know what I mean? How else are you gonna make money in your business? Oh my god, we just had this. All right, so for all of our audio only listeners, Henry and I do basically like internal episodes where it's just him and I. We're talking about shit that maybe we've been talking about with the guests that we want to further unpack, or like shit that we've just been talking about amongst ourselves, or with artists like Swave, for example. And we just talked about this. We have an artist friend who basically typically averages like 5,000 streams per song or like 20,000 streams per song. Is this a day or no? This is just like just an independent artist. It just like gets maybe 20,000 streams on a song, right? Okay. Yeah. He has some work to do. Yeah, he does. He does. But but you know, I think that he he he released a song and he put his heart and soul into the content marketing of this song. Like he was posting daily for like weeks. Um, like no one was gonna like stop him from posting about this song, right? And it was like 100,000 streams.

Immediately, like 20x. 20x is average, right? So once again, yes, we'd love for him to be in the millions. Like some artists are at one monthly listener and they get one stream per song. So like it's all relative. But the point is is that to your exactly what you're saying, content grows streams. Exactly. So it's like it's so obvious almost when you really think about it. It's like your song is not gonna just be top of mind for these people when they're like, what should I listen to today? It's like, oh, I'm scrolling TikTok, I'm scrolling Instagram. This song came up as a sound. Oh, yeah, I like that song, or oh yeah, I've never heard that song. And that's what you're listening to today. That's what you're gonna fucking listen to, right? I mean, it's this the music discovery is the artist discovery, like you you need it. You know what I mean? And so I don't know, just artists that that don't do that, they are very frustrating. But that's what being an exec is great. You get to choose which artist you work with. So, how big of a criteria is that with how comfortable people are at making and posting content? Is that like they better be fucking comfortable?

Man, it's so crazy because I I told one of one of my guys who runs Interscope, he's the head uh over there at Interscope. Not Tim. I'm not gonna say his name. Oh shit. Oh my god, sorry, Tim. I don't we don't even know I don't even know him personally. I know of him because he's right, a goat in this shit. Not necessarily, But you know what I told him. I I said, man, you have to stop signing artists and start signing content creators. Yeah, man. He didn't like that. You know, he didn't fucking like that. You know what's crazy is this was this was probably two years ago. Well, he didn't like it then, and he sure still doesn't like it now, probably. You have to sign content creators because the thing is they make good music. Yeah, that's the second criteria. Yeah. So it is second. Yeah, it's there, it exists. Yeah, but the first criteria is content, because I don't care if you Kendrick Lamar in 2023, Kendrick Lamar level making music. Nobody will hear it if you don't make content. It's impossible.

You know what I mean? That's that is the number one form of discovery. You know what I mean? And so, what good is me signing an artist that's as dope as Kendrick Lamar if nobody ever hears it? You know what I mean? And so I need to sign a content creator that is as dope as Kendrick Lamar. And they exist. That's man, everybody's an artist. So that means there's some great ones out there, there's some shitty ones, and there's some great ones. You have to find the great ones. This is a great content. So my artist, Manny Wells, he's that. He is a great content creator and a great artist. And the thing about that frustrates me so much when I talk to artists is content is is just pure creativity. So if you're a great artist, why wouldn't you be a great content creator? The same energy, the same creativity, the same mindset that goes into making music goes into making content. Because you're not bumping content in the car. I mean, yeah, it's exactly what we've talked about. It's literally an art form. Yeah. And like it's not as cool. Why?

But I think it is. It can be. Because if you're one of the top content creators, I mean, boy, you're making a lot of money. More money than just Yeah, exactly. I agree. That's pretty cool. I agree. I'm just trying to like play devil's advocate. Understand why people don't understand this. I'm on the same page here. But are you? Yeah. Are you on team content? Oh my god. Sadly. Chief editor. Um so on on that note, like the quality versus quantity debate when it comes to content, like which which side are you on, or like how do you approach that whole So I'm never on anybody, any size, right? I'm with what works. You know what I mean? And so there was a great moment where quantity mattered much, much, much, much more than quality. But because everything moves in cycles, where we are right now, the personal iPhone content, which is everything goes viral, is gonna be that, right? The personal iPhone content is so oversaturated. The way to stand out now is produce content.

And so you can slow down now and make better content and do better. And so that's where we are right now in this moment. If you want to stand out, then that produced content is going to be the way to do it. Now, don't mistake that and say you can only do produce content because you won't be able to keep up. Because produce content takes time, you know what I mean? That's the problem. And so what I like to tell artists is when it comes to your music, produce it. When it comes to your brand and your personal life, it needs to be that personal content because that's all you're gonna have to have a mix of both in order to keep up with the demand you need to be able to be a brand that matters. You know what I mean? And so when it comes to your music, produce that content. But when it comes to brand, personal lifestyle, you still need to give them that personal content. And that can be the iPhone, not as highly produced, exactly. That can be shit that you can pop off way more quickly. You need that to keep up with the demand. You know what I mean?

Because you can't, you can't go and oh, I I produced it, but I only can post once a week. You're dead. Yeah. You know what I mean? It has it has to be, you know, several times. I I always say twice a day. That's my favorite. That's what we do. That's what our metric is. Yeah, I always say twice a day. So it has to be that. So, you know, that that would be the balance. But you want to stand out, you use that produced content, but that can't be the only thing you do. I'm literally sending this just like clip to Swave because that that was that was his, you know, his response was I do want to take my time and be creative and execute like a very highly produced uh piece of art that is like a short form piece of content like for his music. And I was like, uh yeah, like I didn't want to tell him like, nah, fuck that. Like just you know, lower the quality, really. What are you worried about? So I think that that's the perfect uh answer. It's a happy medium of let's use that for your music stuff, okay? Where it's you performing or like you in your exact music element, and let's maybe up the quantity of personal brand, like shit lifestyle, all the stuff that complements the music. Exactly.

And let's not care, let's not be so fucking, let's not overthink that shit. Yeah. Selfie style, bro. Put the camera, yeah. Like that's you. You need that because that's the way that people are used to consuming. Yeah, you know what I mean? And so they want to they want to be able to know that personal side of you, and they can tell when it's you know overproduced. And so that's why I only like really producing music because that they can consume that pretty good. But it like I don't want to be like uh overly produced like lifestyle stuff, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, unless it's pictures, because pictures are always great, yeah, for sure. So so this is you know something that we've talked about a lot. Like how much content should go, and and keep in mind, our artists are trying to build audiences, trying to build fan bases, right? They don't necessarily have a die hard audience yet. Um, so how much content should be going into their uh music pre-release? AKA the song's not out yet. How much content should they be putting out that has to do with a song that's not out? I mean, teasing music is great because it saves you money, you know what I mean? It saves you time.

Like imagine I have this whole album ready. You know, the worst mistake I can do is pick a single and you know, and then put all my money into that single, and then when the album comes out, oh, they like track nine, and I've been pushing track three. You know what I mean? So instead of doing that, I always tell people to just tease the music until something pops. You know what I mean? And and by by pops, let me not use the word pop until until you get an outlier. Like if you're teasing music and they usually get 10,000 views, but then one of them gets a hundred thousand. Okay, now let's put this out. You know what I mean? But should you be ready to put it out pretty much? Yeah, you gotta be ready. Like immediately. I actually had an artist tease uh a clip from the studio, and I can't even call it teasing because it wasn't a song. It was just a fresh demo. It was it was just content from her in the studio, and she did this run and it went viral, and we had to go make it a song. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like uh Lil Yachty's Poland. He did that kind of as a joke, and then uh it got leaked, and then people were obsessed with it, and he was like, God damn it, I gotta put this out now. And so, and so that's when it comes to new new music, my method is always tease until something works.

There's no there's no point in putting something out that is not already moving. Interesting. Yeah, I think I like that. I've I've always been team have the song be out because any piece of content that you're putting out needs to be able to drive traffic to the actual product. That's not wrong. That's that's not wrong. That that's also a smart way to do it. But you said starting from scratch, like these are new artists, right? Yeah. And these new artists don't have money. You know what I mean? If I was a major artist like Beyoncé, that's exactly what I would do. Yeah. I would put I will put the whole thing out. Yeah. You know what I mean? But if I'm a new artist, it's like I don't have the money to spend like that. So I'm I'm going to just tease until we get something. But if I'm a more established artist, yeah, but I want to know what a single is. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just drop the project. That's one of the ways I can go about it. I don't have to do that, but that's one of the ways I can go about it. Because I do think it's wiser to have it out and put out that content versus not having it out. But if I if I'm in a situation where I don't have the biggest budget, I'm gonna tease these records until you show me that something's gonna work.

See, I I like I like the way you're putting that. I've never thought about it exactly that way. Is that they're testers, every artist thinks that like this is the one, this is the one, but like you we just have too many examples of like, no, that's not the even the time machine versus hours and hours. Like a Grammy winner had an example hit her in the face of like, damn, we thought time machine was like the one, and it fucking wasn't, you know, like it still went platinum. Okay, but relatively relatively speaking, relatively speaking, okay. Our audience isn't Grammy winning yet. Okay, they will be though. Um, but yeah, JR, I know that we could just, I mean, God, I don't know what time it is. Yeah, I don't even think I got to everything, but we have entered a final segment of the podcast. Okay, and then I know you have like multiple listening sessions to attend, and so we'll get you out of here, man. But luckily, this last session is fast. It's called the rapid fire rampage. Well, if I don't if you shut the fuck up, if I don't, you know, You tend to chime in. It's a three-part segment though.

Three short segments. We're gonna start with the short answers. Here we go. Can I just get the really difficult, crazy, kind of deep questions out of the way. Mm-hmm. How are you? I'm great. Moving on. JR, you have $500 to roll out a single. How would you spend it? I wouldn't spend any of it at first. I would post the content until I get something to work, and then I would probably take that money and put it into ad money on a piece of content that worked. Huge. God. JR, what's the last song that got stuck in your head? Oh my goodness. So I had this community. I know this is supposed to be short answers. I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead. You're allowed to do this. I can't. Yeah. He'll cut he'll literally mute my mic. So I have this community. Um it's called Shared Information Community. Actually, you know what? By the time this comes out, it'll be rebranded. I'm about to rebrand it to the 1%. So I have this community called the 1%. Um and it's basically where I'm training artists to be the top 1% artist in the music business. Okay.

Um so definitely hit the link in my bio, join the 1%. It's free. Anyway, in this community, I put out a weekly class. So every class, I I mean, every week I make a class of about 10 to 20 minutes of just what these people need to know right now. And so the last class that I did, I took their songs and I made content for them because I'm teaching them content right now. And so one of the guys, he has this song, it's probably like 10 years old, but it's called Two Left Feet. His name of the artist is Dan Exactly, and I swear to God, I've been singing this song for a week straight. I've been singing it for a week straight. And I told I I told him in a class, I said, Man, I would not be shocked if this song blows up. It's like 10 years old, but you know that can happen now. And so it's Dan exactly two left feet. Wow. One of those earworms. Oh my god. I love that. We're definitely listening after this video. Definitely figure that out. JR, you can only eat one meal for the rest of your life. Sea bass, Chilean sea bass.

Fryer. Ooh. Yeah. Hell yeah. It gotta be the it gotta be the uh the ginger soy sauce, uh Chilean sea bass with the fried rice. God, I'm hungry now. I haven't eaten dinner. Get some Chilean sea bass after this. Okay, do you know a spot? JR, when what is the last time that you did something for the first time? Hmm. I put out a book. Ooh. for the first time, 10 Artist Commandments. Should have saw that coming. First time author. It was on the love seat. Very good. Okay, last one of the short answer. This is called Ideal Audio. We're gonna craft the perfect song. You're gonna AR, the perfect song. Any artists, producers, engineers, writers, whoever you want, alive or dead, just put together a little group of people. Who would you put on this song? On this song. Um how many people? As many or as few as you'd like. All right. Do you work better with boundaries? Nah, I definitely, I definitely want Jay-Z, Rick Ross. Oh.

It's a boss entrepreneur type line. Um I can't do the whole Nipsey Hussle. Yes. Damn. And Biggie. Fire. Any produced by any? I need that to be produced by man. What's the guys that do all of the Maybach musics? My, my, my, my, my, my, Maybach music. Whoever, whoever the people are that do the Maybach musics. The early, early Ross kind of thing. Yeah, I need I need them to do it. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. That expensive sound. Yeah, luxury music. Yeah, it's not Justice League, is it? Yeah, yeah. I think Justice League did a lot of Ross. They did some Ross. Yeah, so we got Nipsey, Biggie, Ross, and Hov on some luxury music. Love that. Yeah, okay. Fire. Okay, moving on. That was a great part Damn. Man. This next section is called the this or that. I'm just gonna give you two choices and you pick one. Mm-hmm. Starting with books or podcasts. Podcasts, because I listen to them every day. But I I think books are more important.

Well, I don't think I know that books are more important. He doesn't mean it, folks. Keep streaming. One more time. Podcast. New episodes weekly. One more time. Hard work or talent? Hard work. Call or text. Text, please. Yeah, seriously, I ain't got time for all that. Smooth jazz or folk. Folk. Ping pong or pool, aka billiards. Pool. Don't aka pool. They might have thought I meant like go swimming. I don't know. I just put that in there. Well? Ben, I'm gonna turn your mic off. I swear to God. Fine. A million dollars or the ability to fly. I'm gonna take the money because I I'm scared I'll crash. Like I was gonna like fall out the sky. That's an accident waiting to happen. It might be. He assumes he'll fly incorrectly. I think I can make a million off my flying, but now I'm scared. So yeah, true.

Grow two extra ears or a third testicle. Neither. The game is not this, that, or neither. Have to pick one. I mean, I guess I can hide the third testicle. Yeah, it's I think it's kind of a flex, too. Your wife would be, She'd have to get used to it. I mean, I don't know. But like. You probably have twins or triplets at that point. I don't know if that's how that works. I don't think so. Okay, and the last one, JR. I have a magic coin. I flip it. Heads. Your book goes New York Times, number one, best selling book of the entire world. Over Harry Potter. Oprah book club. We're talking like, this is the book. Tails, you go blind in one eye. Do you flip the coin? Hell no, I don't flip that coin. He's already got the number one. Definitely not. Maybe I should have said your next book. Because this one's already final. Yeah, definitely not.

I'm straight, man. I'm gonna keep my eyesight. You wouldn't rock the eye patch, maybe. Nah, not at all. Not at all. All right. Maybe, maybe rework that one, man. That was a test question. It's like a stand-up comic, kind of working out his bit right now. Yeah, yeah. It didn't. No one's laughing. No one's laughing. Alright. Um, the last part is the word association. JR, I'm gonna say one word. You just give me the first word that you think of right back off the top of your head. Think as little as possible. Here we go. Let's go. Starting with Mm-hmm. Hip-hop. Biggie. America. Uh oh. You know the Eminem song White America. Is that what you thought of? That's the first thing that came in my head. Yeah. Great song. It could be one of your kids? White America. I love that song. I'm just playing America. You know I love you. Okay. Blunt. Roll. Addiction. Wheat.

Salt. And pepper. Z. Like the letter. Zenith. Oh, we brought Zenith back. How have we used Zenith twice in one episode? We brought it back. Because it was top of mind. This is fucking terrible. That's why you make content for your music. And now so it's top of mind. If Zenith was a single, It got multiple streams. We are way over our zenith quota for the episode. Moving on. Yep. Fight. Tekken. Hard. Marketing. Me. Giraffe. It got real serious, and then we went to giraffe. Pussy. Higher than giraffe pussy. Oh, okay. That's a wane bar. But I was that was way over my head. That's why I explained it for you. Yeah, thank you. No problem. Because I was like, what kind of fucked up guests do we have on here? Going straight to the giraffe's pussy. What is JR into? Man. He's got three testicles and now he's Oh, my God. just making fuck giraffes? It's a lie, man. It is. Sure.

You can hear music just comes to my head when he says he's clearly. Yeah. sure sure. All right, just a few more here. Uh-huh. Op. I don't know, Dirk. TikTok. Isabelle, my homegirl who runs it. Lil. Wayne. And then I was I was gonna go shared. Information. But now I'm going with the one. Yeah, the one percent. Let's go. Holy shit. We should have charged y'all for this episode. Don't take my lines. So I think I said it first. Regardless, so much fucking game. Please rewatch this. And after you rewatch it, please like, comment, and subscribe. Leave us a five-star review. Follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever it is that you enjoy your podcast. And please, for the love of God, go buy the 10 Artist Commandments by J.R. McKee. Seriously. It's available on Amazon right now. Ebook and audiobook. I mean, this is just a taste, you guys. Seriously. That was amazing, man. Appreciate you coming on. Like, this is huge for our audience. Appreciate y'all, man. Until next week, what are we doing, Henry? Getting

out of here. Get the fuck out of here. Peace, y'all.