Lil Yachty & Karrahbooo Situation: What Every Artist Can Learn

One more time. One more time. One more time. Spend it, rock. Spend it, one more time. Baby, baby, one more time. In this case, the chicken had a pretty legitimate reason to cross the road. God damn it. Welcome back, y'all, to another episode of the One More Time Podcast. Welcome back. I figured we would use this time, Henry, to talk about the thing that everyone seems to be talking about. What is everyone talking about right now? Man, Everyone's talking about Caribou. Oh man. Is no longer a member of the Concrete Boys. Ex concrete boys. He's an ex-concrete boy. And there's been a lot of talk and a lot of speculation as to what's going on, what's happened. And y'all know us. We're not the tabloid platform. We're not gonna talk about, you know. We're not academics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not gonna get into the gossip side of it. But as I was kind of dissecting the situation and looking at all the different uh things that were at play, I was like, you know what? This is actually a pretty good opportunity for some lessons learned, I think, for our our artist community out there. There's some lessons. There's some takeaways from this situation that I think all of you guys can at least give some thought, right? So I wanted to kick it off with, you know, first and foremost, should artists, and I think we made a piece of content about this actually.

First and foremost, is it real? It's a is if it's fake. Fake beef for publicity, right? Is that where you're going? She's gonna join the concrete boys back again next month. Yeah. No, no, that's not where I'm going, Henry. Okay. Um, but I think we talked about this before. Kind of like the pros and cons of signing to an artist. So if I'm an artist, like should I sign with another artist? Because on paper, it seems like a pretty great thing. Like this person is an artist, they understand the plight of an artist, they'll hopefully, you know, have an artist's uh best interest in mind versus automatic cosign. Right, right. Access to fan base. Like there's all these. Give me a feature, you know what I'm saying? Uh-huh. Producers, they know. Versus a businessman who maybe is just looking at you as, you know, a cash play, trying to maybe extract the top value out of you. So it seems good on paper, but I guess it hasn't actually worked out well a lot of times. Is that where you're going with it? I don't know. I mean, like, I think there are pros and cons, right? I just think that everyone should be pretty um, you know, mindful before they just like enter into an agreement with another artist. Um, because a lot of times that artist is gonna clearly prioritize themselves.

Sure. Right. So I mean, you're gonna run into you know, this at another label that's not owned by an artist, right? Where you're fighting for priority. Is that any different than a label prioritizing their biggest artist? That's what I'm saying. It's like you're gonna run into this at any institution, really. Yeah, but I think that, you know, an artist, even if like you're maybe taking off more, they're gonna still probably just like selfishly speaking, like it's gonna be tougher than to put you over them. Right. Whereas the label's gonna put gas behind whoever's got the most motion. You know, what I mean, they're a little bit more, you'd think they'd be a little more unbiased, a little bit more objective as far as like what's going on here, versus an artist, you know, they get caught up in their own thing, they're doing the artist thing, and maybe maybe they weren't cut out to be the CEO of a record label, right? I think typically, I mean, you have some rare examples, you know, the Jay-Z's, and whatnot, but everyone loves to use those as like the I can be a CEO of a label because I'm an artist. Yeah, like be an artist. If you're creative, like there's a good chance that you're not just an insane business mind, also.

Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, and like no, no shade about that. Find someone to run your business, yeah. Like, you know, yeah. Yeah, for sure. So just you know, be mindful of the whole signing to a big rapper thing, because obviously this one has played out, you know, the way that it's been playing out. So I hope you guys are enjoying the conversation. I want to take a quick moment to tell you about our pals at DistroKid. You can't get your music onto streaming platforms without a distributor, and DistroKid is an excellent choice to handle that for you. For the ridiculously low price of $23, you can upload unlimited music for an entire year that is less than two dollars a month. I tripped on two dollars walking down the street earlier. They have countless features to help you out on your musical journey. One of my favorites is splits. Instead of my collaborators hitting me up all the time saying, Where's my fing money? I can input everyone's percentage when I upload the music, and DistroKid will handle it. I've personally used DistroKid for many years and can genuinely recommend them as a great tool to get your music out into the world. And if you sign up at omtdistro.com, you'll get 30% off an already insanely low price. This is absolute peanuts for unlimited uploads yearly.

We wish you the best with your creating. Let's get back to it. One thing that Yachty has been very vocal about is how much money he spent on Caribou's career. 900k in debt. 900k in the hole, baby. And so I think that this is an opportunity for everyone to remember that certain expenses, when you are signed, whether it's to an artist who has a label or to a you know label in the traditional sense of it, um, these are recoupable expenses, or you need to be very clear about what is a recoupable expense. Right. What do you have to pay back versus what is just a gift out of the kindness of Yachty's heart, right? He mentioned all the clothes that he's bought, mentioned jewelry that he's bought, um, all these other expenses that he's now basically dangling over her head as far as like you owe me $900K. Yeah, and we all know how hard it is to make money in this shit. Yeah. So she's gonna be working a long time to pay back Yachty if those are legitimate recoupable expenses. That's the whole thing, too.

Is do we even know what you know the what the contract says? No clue. Right. And maybe Yachty's, he's a very good talker. Sure. Maybe he's you know, you know, building this hype and maybe it's not gonna actually play out in a court of law. But it is something for our artists, you know, community to think about, right? Get a lawyer. I mean, after talking to Ryan Schmidt Esquire, go check out that video maybe over here if you're on YouTube. It might be over my head. Put a card over here. Maybe put it over mine. Yeah, I think it goes to the top right, actually. It's gonna be over here. Um yeah, we just learned the importance of like getting things in writing and make sure making sure you're covering your bases. Even if you think it's too early for you, like if you have some type of budget, some lawyers are actually more affordable than you would think. Uh man, it's just worth spending that now than losing out on the big big bag later. Because Caribou might have accepted those clothes, might have accepted that jewelry under the pretense that this would not be something that could bite her in the ass. Right. Right. And so hopefully she's lawyering up, which I'm sure she is, to defend her, you know, case when it comes to like are these expenses something that she has to recoup against, right? Um it's the classic, just give the artist some flashy, nice things right now, and then own their masters and take the money from them forever.

Yeah. It's insane. Absolutely. All right. Then the you know, the next thing that I want to talk about is Yachty's been pretty vocal about the fact that he's written a lot of caribou's songs. Right. He even leaked a reference. he's doing the most, like, right now. He did leak the reference. He leaked a reference track for her on the radar freestyle that went like stupid viral. Kind of started off her whole run. It really it really put the to you know, put the limelight on her for sure. Um, she had had, you know, a little bit of motion, but that uh live performance video for sure kind of like cemented her no pun intended. Ah concrete. Okay, come on, come on. I'm here all day. This is what happens when we shoot during the daytime. I'm Chris. You're Sharp. I'm sharp as a fucking axe, bro. Nice. but no, I think you know, he leaked that reference. And I just wanted to get your take. I think we've also, you know, some of these things we've talked about before, but I think they're they're really good topics of discussion. Is like, so what? Yeah, in my mind. Yeah. So the fuck what?

Like rap is the only genre where it matters where there's such a weird stigma around songwriters. Like, who the fuck cares if Yachty did like write some of these earlier tracks? Like maybe she's just developing herself as a songwriter. And you know, right now she had references that were die, you know, that were dope, and she delivered them flawlessly, obviously. Yeah, it's like an actor is not writing their own lines. They're not the screenwriter. Yeah, it's a separate job. It's this is a very typical thing in entertainment. Yeah. But in hip hop, it seems to be weird. And I think the reason it became a big deal is I think he was kind of embellishing a little bit, took it a little far, like talking about she's never written a song ever, and she came back and like you know, circled her top two songs on Spotify and said, Oh, I wrote my biggest two songs. So I think he was kind of taking it a little far, but but yeah, the idea that you have to write everything. I mean, I think hip hop, just by nature, is a little more personal. There's typically more words, you know, you're it's it's real story-based, so pulling from your own experiences does seem to be the natural way to kind of get the best product.

So when Drake comes along and has Quentin Miller, you know, start writing for him. This is kind of when Drake was turning a little more pop. And I think pop music is extremely accepted, where these hooks are kind of, you know, lots of different artists could fit in, right? And take this reference and create a song out of it. But so I kind of see where where people get upset just because hip-hop is this personal thing, and you you're supposed to be writing about your life, and your trials and tribulations and whatnot. Yeah, but like what yeah, but but what about a genre like country, bro? Yeah, they're talking about heartbreak, they're talking about things that feel super personal, even though they've got writers. Yeah, and no one cares. What is it? Yeah, it's it's almost us as fans that are the problem, too. We've also put a pretty big, like, oh, those aren't his bars or those aren't her bars. Like, yeah, what the fuck do we really care? Who I just want the best song, bro. Yeah. And I want to be able to believe that it's coming from a place of like, you know, um, truth, right? So maybe that, but but it's weird, like I don't listen to the country artist's song and be like, did they really break up with their girl and cry about it and drink a bottle of Jack Daniels?

And doesn't it seem like there's way more just like there's way more words, first of all, but also like flows and intricacies and rap. And it's like it's kind of harder, I think, to like fake that just because of the nature of the complexity of how raps are written. That's my only like guess. Does that make any sense to you? I don't know, bro. I think we're like, I think we're just making up excuses. I'm trying to understand why this is the perception. I'm not saying I agree with it. I've been scratching my head on this for a while. Ever since I even learned that there were songwriters, like even just coming into the music industry green, I was like, wait, every artist doesn't write their own song. Like, did you have that? Did you ever have that like revelation? Do you remember like that first time realizing like oh fuck, like yeah, other people write songs for people? Yes. What does that even mean? Like, yeah, I think it really cemented for me when like Spotify started getting big because I I would check the credits on a lot of songs, and when you start seeing six, seven, ten writers on a song, you're like, what did all these people do? Yeah, yeah.

No, I definitely like I remember still remember the day being like, yo, like there are songwriters that just aren't artists and just write the songs, like that's crazy. so what is our lesson? Maybe don't like worry about it if you're in hip hop. I just think the goal should be the best song possible. Yeah, always. I just think the goal should be whatever the song needs and calls for is the thing. So if someone brings you a song, don't let your ego like if if Yachty brought a song to caribou and she was just like, nah. This is a hit, but I don't want I didn't. write it. Yeah. I'm good. Yeah, I'll just write my own. And then, like, just think about how much longer it might've taken her to develop that craft. I'm not saying like don't work on it, right? If you're an artist who wants to be someone who writes their own songs, I think that you should always be like striving for that. But if you're not necessarily there yet, and you get you know in a studio session with a writer who's giving you something that you feel really confidently that you can deliver, you know, a performance against that you know you're an artist and you're a dope artist. Why the fuck not?

Yeah, so I just think being open to I'm just all about collaboration, bro. Like, I think we live in a world where I mean I checked the credits on some hit recently, and it was like five super producers that I, you know, either know directly or like know of, of course, because they're famous, and I was like, did they really need to all be there. you know? I was like trying to understand it, but it's like maybe they maybe they did. And also, they might've just all been in the room, one person might've thrown out one idea, you know, and those types of environments that just they just give everyone credit who was there, which is nice. Yeah, but same thing. If if another artist is in the room and they're throwing out bars and they're dope, yeah. Oh, well, you didn't write it, yeah. He's in the room. Yeah, it's like, well, why not just cut it? You know what I mean? So drop a comment down below if you think that writing other people's bars in hip hop is acceptable or not. Yeah. Or just like, why do we care so much? I'm just like, or if you do care, tell us why. Yeah, I really want to know the psychology of like why we're so intense about that within the hip hop space and not as you know, and we're a little bit more lackadaisical about it when it comes to other other genres. But I think you hinted at this before, but it's like this is really good press.

I mean, this is just great publicity all around. Yes. I mean, once again, good press, bad press. I just wanted to bring up the topic of like, is all press is all press good? I mean, like, is having eye is having eyeballs on you, yeah, is it a good thing? Because I mean, Caribou's, she's under fire right now, bro. Yachty is coming in hot. Like the dude is not letting this go. Like, I thought he would have gone away at this point. He is still pushing the gas on this, right? Yeah. Um, you know, even to the point of like people are are showing footage from some of her shows where there hasn't been like huge crowds, at least like the way that the videos look. So I guess from your perspective, like, is every bit of press that like and a developing act can get, like, is it is it good? Pretty much. Um, I think I think your name just being in conversation, you know, we're here we are doing a podcast about them when we wouldn't have before. So that's already more exposure. Obviously, all press is good. Press is a little extreme.

If it's like, you know, if you're in the news for committing a crime or like beating your girlfriend or something, it's probably not great. probably not. But uh, I think of I think about uh Corey Michaels from our Discord. Oh. Who uh yeah, has gotten a lot of hate for uh he's a gay man and he had he reflects that in his uh music videos lately, and he's been getting and his content has been getting a lot of hate. Um and he's trying to decide, like you know, some of our other members in Discord are saying, like, hey, well, this is helping the algorithm, you know. Any comments are good comments, but he's kind of struggling with the yeah with it. So it's like I think everyone kind of needs to decide, like, can I even can I handle this? Is this okay? Oh, yeah. You know, first and foremost. That's a whole tangent, but like even as content creators like us, bro, we've had to be able to accept some degree of you know, criticism. And it's not always that armor.

It's not always the most constructive criticism on the internet. Typically not. Pretty wild out there. Um, so yeah, no, I think that's a really good example. All right, I just want to wrap it up with. I mean, just the concrete boys, bro. What what do you think the future holds for the group, the concrete boys? Well, they're all actually boys now. Maybe that was the plan all along. If someone had to go, it was the non-boy. It's messed up, man. Sorry, Caribou. It's messed up. Yeah, I think they need to get a new girl. Not a very inclusive name, if I'm being honest. Yeah. Um, but yeah, no, I mean, just groups in general, bro. Like, do you think they're gonna last? I mean, it's tough out here. It's hard group, bro. I love a group dynamic. It's so fun to be a fan of a group and then like get in conversations with your friends about like who's your favorite member. Like we always had the Migos conversation, like offset though, his verses, yeah, but Quavo's hooks, but take off be snapping and it's like that kind of stuff is fun. It's like a little situation going on within a situation.

It's fun to like break that down. But uh in practice, man, they they don't seem to play out very well. People just grow up and get different tastes and want to go different directions, and they feel tied to this thing that especially if it's seen some success, I think it's a lot harder to break away from it because you have this name as a group, but you know, people grow up and change and they want to be able to have the freedom to do whatever they want to do, and group could hold you back. I think there's two main reasons that groups struggle to work, right? I think to your point, um, number one, really personalities. Uh the you know, the artist dynamic, you guys have very strong personalities, and you have very strong creative uh tastes and creative visions, and to your point, your personal taste and vision might evolve, and it might be different than your uh groupmates, right? And it might be different than what maybe the group's vision should be, right?

Because maybe you were successful for a certain thing and people want to you know keep hearing more of that, and you're just not on that type of time, right? Um, and then I think ego's getting the way too. Uh so I think you know, there's always gonna maybe be a standout member of a group. You take a D12 from the old days, it's obviously Eminem, right? Was the front runner, even though we all kind of liked our you know, supporting cast members back in the day. You take a you know, a Wu Tang, had Method Man going crazy, exactly. If they didn't have the RZA to kind of wrangle them all in and calm them down, yeah. That probably never would have worked either. for sure. And then you take, you know, even like an ASAP mob, yep, Rocky obviously, you know, kind of like rose to the top, and of course, like uh, you know, Ferg, you know, was doing his thing and they kind of split off, right? Golf wing, yep, yep, exactly. Tyler holding it down, yep, yep. Um, and so I think that that's that's one big part, and then just the money side of it, bro. Like, right. I mean, we're uh we're a music business platform. I think y'all have heard us talk enough about like it is difficult to make a living off of music.

So when you start having multiple artist hands in the pot, let alone all the other fucking people that are you know dipping into the pot, managers, agents, lawyers, producers, engineers, whatever, right? Um, you take multiple artists. I mean, you gotta be make if it's a five-member group, you have to be making five times as much money as a solo act to make it make sense financially. I thought it was funny. We were at a concert recently and watching a band perform. One of the first things you say is, damn man, like all those guys gotta split what like one rapper with a playing a two-track on a laptop would get. It made me want to cry, bro. I went to another show uh uh this past weekend, and it was like another full band, one of the best shows I've ever been to. Shout out Arkose, A R K O S E, holy fuck. Some of the best live performances I've ever seen in my life. But still, again, through my head, I was like, holy fuck, I'm counting the people in the room, I know the ticket price, I know the venues cut, I'm doing the math, and it's annoying.

I can't even fucking just watch this show. I'm literally like, wow, this beautiful music, they're not getting paid shit. Like, you know what I mean? I was just like, this is fucking sad. So I think, yeah, like the you know, the financial dynamic is also like a big stressor on people, bro. That like eventually, yeah, like it's gonna come down to it, and it's gonna be a tough, you know, pill to swallow as far as like when you start divvying up the you know the money, to be honest. But I don't want to say like never form a group ever. Some of the most legendary. I mean, every band is a group. Every like some of the there's some great groups, man. I just don't know why they don't play out that well. But I think there's exceptions to every rule, so don't be afraid. Just understand what comes with it. For sure, bro. But yeah, anyways, these are our takes on why the caribou and Lil Yachty situation is something that you guys can all take away from. Uh once again this wasn't meant to be, you know, was Yachty trying to get at caribou and like shit. You know, we weren't trying to speculate any of that. Yachty's on a run.

I gotta respect it. I'm fucking with what Yachty's doing right now regardless. So are you fucking with caribou? Hell yeah. Shout out K Boo. You know? We'd love to have you on the podcast. Damn for real. Until next time. See ya. Peace.