Inside the Studio [Entire Talk]

Who you are defines how you build. Sycamore and I both come from hip hop culture, and in hip hop culture, we place a premium on freshness, right? Like, somebody could say a rhyme one day, and it's incredible and it blows everyone's minds. And then if someone else comes and says the same rhyme the next day and thinks they're going to get the same reaction, and everyone's like, that's whack. I heard somebody else already say that. Like, I'm not impressed. Same with graffiti, same with dance moves. It's like the premium has always been on innovation in hip hop culture. And there's also often a competitive spirit to it. So I've studied every interview that you've done at Harvard, at ucla, Rap radar. And my goal is to be fresher and get all new content, all new stories, like, ask different questions and just make it a whole new. A whole new thing, you know, that.

Kind of sparked the story. Your freshness sparked a story on. Is that echo sparked a story on. When I was in eighth grade, everybody was having, like, a freestyle competition, right? And I probably went to school maybe like, three blocks from my house in Brooklyn, and maybe like, four guys went and they did their rhymes, right? So I'm not a rapper. I wasn't back then, I'm not now. But I really wanted to get into it. But I knew rap really well. So I went up and I said, I got a verse and I said like, this old Busta Rhymes verse that from, like, an album that, like, maybe was out for a week, but I knew nobody knew. And I said the verse and I spent it, like, double time. And then I went in for, like, 32 bars and the whole crowd went crazy, like, oh. And everybody comes to. Oh, my God, that was Randall. That's my government name. That's what it was, Randall. That was Randall. And after that, I was like, oh, yeah, I want to be in hip hop. Like. Like, this is whatever that was. Like, the moment I decided, like, oh, this is gonna be kinda like my life, where I wanted to go. Cause before that, I wanted to be in sports. I wanted to be a sports agent. But, like, there's nothing like hip hop culture, you know? Cause, you know, like, it's hip hop. Everybody heard, like, hip hop versus rap. Rap's something you do. Hip hop's something that you live and something cool about hip hop. It's like, it's not really about how much money you have. It's really about, like, where you came from and where you made it to. You know, so it's like, if you really started high and you made it even higher, there's no real clout with that, you know? But if you really came from nothing, you made something else. You could. There's bragging rights in every little part of hip hop.

So let's talk about that piece of flipping something out of nothing, which is in some ways, like, one way, you could just define what hip hop culture is in whatever creative medium, whether it's rap, visual art, entrepreneurship, because it's so related to what creativity is. And in my book, I have a quote from a philosopher named Nelson Goodman, and somebody asked him, can you teach people to be more creative? And he said, yes. And they said, how? And he said, give them harder problems. And I've always felt like hip hop, like, embodies that. And at the same time, Ra Goddess talks about how we can't make it seem like you have to be suffering and struggling to be creative. Like, there has to be a place for you to be able to eat and be healthy and still be really creative. And I'm curious about how you view that tension within hip hop culture and within creativity, especially as you work really hard to support artists and make sure they have an abundance and make sure they have all the things they need to be comfortable, but you still want them to have that creative edge.

Yeah, I think my main role with artists is, like, I really help artists finish their projects and get out their albums, get out their films, you know, some of the artists I work with, like YG and Travis Scott, are probably the two examples I'm going to use the most, because I work with them the longest, about three albums each, and I did a short film with yg. Me and Travis have artists together, like Sheck west. So it's really about protecting their idea. Because at the beginning of it, it always starts with an idea like, hey, I want to come up with an album about a day in the life in Compton, but I want to do it different than Kendrick. Or I want to do an album about Reclaim, recreating my hometown theme park that was destroyed. But I want to do it musically, you know, and you lock in to this concept for months, years, you know, every single day. And my whole role is to get the right people in, get. Keep the process going. That's why I really. That's why the design school, the D school, is so interesting to me, because it's like new ways and new processes of how to do things, you know, and that's all I'm about, especially when you have these new cutting edge artists, they want to always find an edge, you know. So one of the things that I always. That's really been hitting home is like spaces, you see. So like right now everybody knows the studio. That's like the basic thing. You go there, you stay there for 12 hours, you record as much as you can and you leave. So there's always tips, there's old school tips about that. Make sure you write before you get to the studio. And when you get there, it's the idea for productivity. But the next level of it has been the home studios. One thing I like about the D school when Bob gave me the tour, is that you could come in here 24 7, you could come in here at 3 o' clock in the morning, and that's the best place to make music. Because if it could. If I have an idea to make an album and I have to leave at 12 o' clock and I have to come back the next day, 12 hours later, I gotta drive home, I gotta fall asleep, I gotta wake up, I gotta go back, I gotta get myself in gear, I gotta get to the studio, then I gotta smoke, Then they gotta watch, play some video games. I gotta play two Kanutary. It's a whole. It's a whole process, you know? So if you could just live in the house. Like that's the one thing that Travis used to tell me. He said, look, when we first started working together, if I could just. I lived in one of those entourage kind of places with like two other guys, you know what I mean? It's like, if I could just live in a house like yours and I didn't have to leave, I could finish my album. So it was about finding a space, finding a house with different rooms, adding different producers in there. Like we got people like a Metro boomin or FKI and maybe eight, nine producers is like the producer Olympics, you know, and have them all living in one space that they could always be falling asleep, working, still playing 2k play, still smoking, but still staying in one spot and never having to leave. It's kind of like a heaven for artists. And you can stay there for months at a time until the idea is complete. You get way more productivity out of the situation, you know? And so now I'm, you know, along with Skyler, I've been really obsessed with finding new age spaces and spaces that foster this level of collaboration and creativity. And if you could take this same kind of design thinking and really improve business, improve design, imagine what it could do for the arts. You know, if you really start taking that and imagine what it could do.

For your overall projects, it's really interesting because I think design thinking borrows a lot from artists and has turned that into a set of processes, Processes and abilities and mindsets that now you're taking back into the art realm and there's like a cycle to it. So with a project like an artist coming to you and saying, the theme park concept, what is your role in making that a reality? Because it's not just putting anybody in that house. You have to be really thoughtful about how you curate, who comes into the space, what pieces of inspiration are there, the duration of time, how the space is set up. Can you just walk us through the process from the point where the artist comes to you and says, I'm thinking this theme park concept might make sense and you feel like that idea is working, like how you take that to the point where I'm picking up the album or streaming or start to be exposed to the content itself.

Okay, so the hardest part is like the goal, right? Having the people who like just knowing what that concept is. About 80, 90% of a lot of creative projects, people kind of say, I'm just going to start and kind of figure it out from there. But the project doesn't really start until you have an idea of what you want to do. The name could change, what it looks like at the end could change, but the idea doesn't really change. It kind of like manifests and takes form and then you have to kind of build a team. So like in music, the first thing we have to do is find like a solid engineer. The engineer is kind of like an offensive lineman or he's the person who's going to be able to keep track of all the music, you know? You know, then come up with like a laundry list of producers that we want in the studio. And I kind of break it down into four quarters, you know, like football and basketball. The first quarter, like there's nothing wrong. It's almost like a two year old child. Everything is great. Everything they write on a piece of paper is great. Oh, that's nice. Everything. More ideas, more and more and more. Oh, that's nice. Everything goes in the fridge, you know. And after the end of the first quarter, you start looking back like, okay, cool, now I at least have something to play with. Now I have about 5, 10, 15 ideas that are pretty decent. And we could really go for then. The second chord is exciting because now you have a bass and now you start working on more Stuff. You start bringing people in the studio, they start giving you feedback. And you start thinking, oh, you have the greatest album ever. You know, like, everything's perfect, everything's done, you know, and. Exactly. That's how I feel too. And then you're about halftime. And around the third quarter is usually like a song or a moment that happens in the studio that you're like, okay, cool, it's time to finish this up. Because this is the moment where, you know, we gotta get this out. Cause music especially is about timing. You know, I think about film. A lot of it is. I mean, some films are timely, but it's people who could work on a film. You hear stories of people moving around a script for 20 years until it gets married with the right person. And they really nail it. Music's not like that 100% because music's like a collective thought. Like, you ever go to the club, you go to a party, and it's like, you, man. Oh, all these beats sound the same. It's like everyone's listening to the same thing at the same time, you know, so you kind of have to like time it. And it's based on what people are wearing, you know, what kind of alcohol they're drinking, what kind of other substances you're using. And, you know, that's why I like, in the 60s, everything was like really psychedelic because everything was based on psychedelics. In the 70s, things started moving faster. A lot of that was cocaine. And things started slowing down in the 80s a little bit. And right now the music started getting slower. That's because of the opiates, you know what I mean? Everybody started doing things. So a lot of, I'm not going to lie to you, a lot of the influence in music really comes from other things. You mix that with like just the different. The different rhythms that are happening and you have to time it. So if you do a great song, if I put out a Before I Let go, it's an all time great song. It might not be a big, big song right now. Because what he's saying, the time, the slang, everything about that moment was from that year. So you have to also get the music out in a certain period of time. So after you get to that third quarter and you're like, okay, cool, like things are happening now, you start sharpening up ideas now. You start going in on each song. Let's do like two more sessions on this one song. Let's do five more sessions on this other song. Let's start locking in this concept. And on the fourth quarter is the process I like to call killing your babies. Because let's say you have an album and you have 20 songs that you absolutely love that you can't live without. So what we do is it depends on what kind of album you're making. If you're making a linear album like a Kendrick Lamar or Good Kid Mad City, then everything has to kind of fit in the story. If you're making more like of a Vibey album, like think like a Drake or Sade or a Future, then you kind of those albums, you can have more of the same type, but you want to make sure everything kind of fits in that vibe. And things that don't fit that you must have been. You must have loved since the first quarter of the project might not fit the overall body of work.

So that's so interesting because we talk a lot in the design thinking process about prototyping and failing forward and learning from quick, like scrappy. Put together a scrappy prototype, see how it plays, and then learn from that. Would you say, like the leaked track? What are the equivalents of that in your work?

The thing that's different. I had dinner with a guy from an advertising guy, right? And he kept using, he kept trying to take the advertising principles into the music space. And he kept telling his big example is Starbucks Blonde. He says, you see how Starbucks Blonde is. You could put out blonde and. And you can market it and it'll blow up and everybody wants blonde, you know, And I was telling him, like, the difference between blonde and the artist is a blonde. You know, blond doesn't have a mind, doesn't have a Twitter. It doesn't have to go outside. So if somebody doesn't like blonde, blond doesn't have hurt feelings, you know what I mean? Blonde doesn't have any emotions. This is a product. So I think the biggest difference between designing and marketing a product or business versus like putting out a real person with feelings and, and real art, whether it be a photographer, musician, clothing designer, you got people there who really care. And I think sometimes that gets kind of lost in translation.

I also think the audience and fans can be kind of unforgiving about what artists do. We get really attached to an artist off of one project, and then if they start putting out something that's different in some way that doesn't resonate with us, I think sometimes the like, especially with social media, like, it can be a little hard to like, back out of that. I don't know if you've seen that or if you feel like, social media.

Has impacted that, but yeah, no, it's 10 times worse. You know, like, it's like sports. If you have a bad game now everyone's tweeting at you, they're adding you, they're putting like the Michael Jordan face on Joel Embiid.

Right? And somebody has that four second clip of what you did and like, they keep putting memes to it.

Yeah, you don't get to escape it. You know what I mean? It happens in real time, so. But the opposite happens in real time. If people like it, you get instant feedback right away, you know, so it works both ways, but it kind of is a price you pay when you want to be a professional artist. You know, if you want to go buy the promenade and play your guitar and have anybody just drop some money in your guitar booth, then that's cool. But as soon as you say, you know what, I want you to buy my album, I want you to come pay for my record, I want you to pay for my T shirt. No, now you're a professional, you're a professional artist. You know what I mean? You have to take it seriously and you have to take the pros. That comes with the cons. And that's the feedback. Now what you're talking about, the success is really the hardest part. Like, after you fail, there's no real expectations. You could go like, we're going to shock the world with this next album or this next project. People don't really get the response that I wanted. But after you have a hugely successful project, the pressure is 10 times greater because this thing is like, you might have made this project to like, get back at like your ex boyfriend, or you might have made this project to like, because you've been working on it for eight years. But when it's time, after you have success and you tour it and you travel the world and people know you for something and then they want you to do the same thing, it gets tough. You know, I think it was. I think it was Henry Ford. If I missed the quote, mess me up. If it's not Henry Ford, don't kill me. But I think he said, he said. What did he say? He said, if I wanted. If I gave the people what they wanted, faster horses, I would have gotten faster horses. You know, it's the same thing with music. The best example I see in recent time was Kanye West's fourth album with 808 and Heartbreaks, because he. After his first three albums. Do we have any Kanye fans here? Old Kanye. Old Kanye. Graduation. Graduation. Well, that's the point. I was talking about Graduation, because the first three projects, I think Kanye and Outkast had the best five album run in hip hop history. You know, some people could argue Tribe Called Quest, I wouldn't, you know. And especially the first three albums were perfect, like College Dropout, Late Registration and then Graduation. They were like almost like masterpieces. And then because, you know, the passing of his mother and everything that was going on, he went and made like his. Because everybody was waiting for the album Good Ass Job, which was supposed to be more in line of Kanye, but he went totally left and made this very ambitious singing kind of sad. 808 on Heartbreaks that really got mixed reviews at the time. People were really confused, but it hit. Not the people, critics were really confused, but it really hit a nerve with the people who were actually buying public. And now when you look back, that might be, if not his most influential album, one of the most influential albums. And we wouldn't have a lot of people like Drake and a few other people who just came from that one pocket. Yeah, I give a lot of, a lot of props to Kid Cudi too, who helped, like, curate that sound. But that's an example of somebody taking a major risk in their prime in a career. Another older example is like David Bowie one time bumped into. Who's the guy? Not just dance, Famous guitar player in the first song, He'll Come to Me. No, what's his name? Man, he has dreads. He was in a song with Daft Punk, Nile Rogers. He bumped into Nile Rogers in a club in Berlin and he's like, man, I want you to work on my next album. He's like, why? Have you heard my music? You know, why do you want to work with me? And he said, because you make hits, you know, and it takes, it takes, it takes a strong creative to be able to take a risk after you had success. It's easy to take a risk when nobody knows you. But it's really, really hard to take a risk after you have any level of success. You can have like, you know, your Instagram going on. You might not want to mess up your feed by throwing a different kind of picture. As a photographer, anything could throw you off.

So you've now worked with artists who have been in this kind of fortunate predicament of having had pretty major success and needing to follow up on it. How do you work with that artist? How do you support them in sort of getting releasing that pressure and feeling confident to explore new terrain? Even at Wall all those eyes are on them.

You gotta find a concept that you guys can lock in that has nothing to do with just like the commercial success. So if you say like, okay, cool, we're gonna make this Day in the Life album, it's gonna be good. So I can give you an example of yg, right? So when I started working with YG at Def Jam as his A and R, the big thing was like to make people forget about Tooted and Booted, you know, because all success isn't equal, especially in art. You know, you can have, you know, I don't know how many people here like paint or do photography, do anything besides music, you know, you ever put something out, however you put it out can be in a gallery or whatever. And the work that you probably spent the least amount of time on got the best response. And like, man, I spent fucking four weeks doing this. And you like this. Like, you know what I mean? And then people now you have to force to make more stuff in that world. Cause then maybe you have a gallerist who wants you to do a whole show in that space, or you want people more posting there. And everything you post is not like that. It's like gets less likes or whatever. It's a mind trip. So after the first album, we had a lot of success. We had big hits with My Crazy Life, but it happened from a great place because it was a concept album. And we really wanted to create this 24 hours in the life in verse of Good Kid Mad City. So when we came back with the second album, it was a tougher record because he had like, he just had a falling out with his core producer, DJ Mustard. He got shot in his music studio, so nobody really wanted to keep him in the studio. So he made like this more darker still concept album. But it did well. But it didn't do have the success of the first album. And then after two hours late after that, then we hit like a crossroad. Then it's like, yo, like he was like, yo, F. This concept stuff. I want to make hits. And then it's kind of like a mentality you are as a creative, you know, because when you shift into that zone, it's hard to kind of shift that, you know, because it's like, all right, if I'm not doing it for like a higher goal, it could get tricky fast, because then you'll get it hit, but then you'll start losing kind of like the critical stuff and it starts coming about money. And they say if you do stuff for Money, God leaves the room. That's what. Especially creative things. And I really believe that, you know, so that was kind of like a tough moment for me, trying to like, balance somebody's commercial success with their artistic success.

And have you found a way to do that? Have you found a way? Because I feel like part of being an A and R, from my understanding, is you're constantly in that balance because you've got the label on one side or whoever that's really concerned about completion, that's concerned about budget, that's concerned about all these things, and you're trying to almost protect the artist and, and really create the space for them to work. So it seems like you're often in that position of having to hold both realities.

I think initially I went with the belief that if you do your best work and you really put the right hours into it and you have the right intention, you're gonna have success. So initially I used to get in a lot of fights with the label about being over budget or why is something taking so long or different views of success. But what's happening is if you do things the right way, and I have. We'll talk about it later, like have like a seven step process of it, I really believe that you're going to get the right result. It's the second that you start doing things for the wrong reasons, the results go bad. So now recently, with the new artists I'm signing or the new projects I worked on, I kind of have like, what happens if you, like, if you bet on your creative space and you don't compromise and you have success? It's the best space to be in because then people leave you alone and they kind of overfund you. You know, that's the space you want to be. It's true. It's because it's like, because now it's like, all right, they're looking and they like, they're like, leave Alexa alone, man. She's just gonna, like, she's got it, you know, I mean, like, like a Frank Ocean. Frank Ocean fan too. So like Frank Ocean, right? If Frank Ocean doesn't drop an album for another six years, right? Would you not, would you, would you not listen to it when it comes out? You're like, nah, it's gonna be the greatest album. It's Frank because that's his process. You know, he gives you these big bodies of work. Then he'd give you like a whole magazine that he shoots himself with the music or Beyonce. He'll give you a whole film and then work on a performance for eight months and then work on a Netflix documentary for a year. I think people really appreciate the time he put into something, you know, And I think, like, you got to figure out what kind of space you want to be in. Even when you're in designing, you know, you want to do. You want to be in, like, a space where, like, you're really going for. Going for something. You want to be in a space where you have a commercial success. There's nothing wrong with, like, Fast and Furious, and there's nothing wrong with Roma. You know what I'm saying? It's like. But you got to pick one. You got to know what you're doing. Because if you're, like, in Fast and Furious, you're trying to make $250 million, it's good, but just know you're not trying to win, like, Academy Award. And if you go aroma, you just know you're probably not going to feed the family for the rest of your life, but you're going to have your props, you know, and it's cool to pick your space, you know, just. Just. But just. The problems start when Fast and Furious wants to be wrong.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's when people start getting it wrong, because then the goals are shifted. You can't compromise in each one. Just like, if you're going to do it, just do it. You know what I mean? But don't, don't, don't, don't. You know, they say the horse by committee is a camel. You know, it's like that kind of. That theory. It's the same thing in the creative process.

So you were talking about Kanye and what he did with 808s and heartbreak. The next album, he did something really different. And have you listened to the podcast Dissect? So it's this dude who breaks down albums. He actually did Frank Ocean, and he spends a whole season of the podcast just getting into, like, every track. Each episode is one track. And so he did that with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. And he was talking a lot about how they created that album, renting this house in Hawaii, bringing all these people in. He had engineers 24, 7 in suit and tie just like there, in case anybody needed to come in. And he breaks down the rza. Actually, there was an interview where he was talking about coming down and being a part of it and the schedule they were on. It kind of reminds me of what you were talking about about your schedule in Atlanta when you were there working on. Was that my crazy. But one of the things that Bob was really excited about when we were talking about doing this was understanding how you build around a particular project, a temporary organization. And there's all sorts of chemistry that has to go into that of the right people, the right place. Maybe you could walk us through with a particular project, how you pulled that together and dismantled it in the effort to produce something that. A really great creative product.

I'll do two simultaneously. So I'm not putting two pressures on. One, I'll do YG's first album, My Crazy Life, and Travis's last album, Astroworld, at the same time, because the same basic principles of both happened. You know, the first thing that was identified is, like, the concept, you know, I think Travis had a stronger concept with AstroWorld. He knew he wanted AstroWorld to be his concept for his third album before his second album came out. You know what I'm saying? So before Birds in the Trap came out, he had Astro in his head. So the whole process with that was two and a half years while YG and I were talking. And my favorite song for yg, Anybody like yg? Okay, cool. So, like, my favorite song on YG was a song called Bompton. When I met him, I was like, I love this song. He's like. I was like, that's my favorite song. Yours? He's like, yo, that's my favorite song too. So we decided to create, like, a. A concept, a story about, like, how you can still be hard and do it, you know, but the tough. There's always challenges. So the challenge with YG was just the people in the studio, because, you know, like, I don't know how many people from LA like, la. La for real. So, like, anytime we go to the studio, the studio sessions would start, like, around 2, 3 o'.

Clock.

Be really productive. Then the homies would start coming in and five and six o', clock, and a few people coming in and everything started talking about, like, gang politics and who shot who and who did what, and da da, da, da, da. And I was like, yo, you gotta get out of here, man. Like, we gotta go somewhere. So we decided to go to Atlanta because Young Jeezy was there, you know?

And what was the Young Jeezy connection?

He was executive producing the album, and.

That was already established at that time.

And the label at the time, they felt like YG was like a local artist. They never felt like he'd be bigger than la. They felt like him and mustard sounds were very localized, and they were like, okay, just get the album out. They really Wanted me to start expanding his sound. You know, have him work with different New York producers like DJ Premier, and just stuff that didn't really make sense. So we went over there and we said, we're going to make this do the opposite. We're going to make a super west coast album, and we're going to lock in here for the whole summer. And we went for the whole summer of 2013 and said, we're going to go on a schedule. So it was like a job. So from Monday to Thursday, we lived in apartments. I lived in the second floor, corporate apartments. He lived in the fourth floor. We'd be in the studio from 6pm to 6am Then around 12, 1 o', clock, we'd go have lunch. We'd go over the songs we did before. We'd have a whiteboard with the structure, the songs, and what went where and who did what, and we'd go back to the studio. And then from Friday to Sunday, I'd tell them, you gotta go live life. Go do shows, go travel, go have something to rap about. Because if you just lock in on a project every single day, after a while, you start losing sight unless you step back a little bit. So, like, anybody tells you, like, I've been working on this 30 straight days, tell them, get the hell out the house. Because you need to have more of a view on things. So that was the process, and that was what we committed. And it's really important that you commit to a time frame. You know, Skylar always says, you know, deadlines are your friends. You know what I mean? Like, deadlines are important because you need to know, like, this is going to end.

So you.

So that was our goal. While Travis is like, okay, cool, we're gonna work on this project with unlimited time, but we're gonna work on this for years, right? And we've been working on this project and working on it and working on it every day in New York, in LA and touring and working on this chipping, chipping, chipping away until finally it was like, time to finish it. And I was like, okay, where are we gonna actually go back and focus and finish the album? And that's when you know. Cause my dark twisted fantasy, we say, you know what? That was made there. So why don't we go to Hawaii?

Oh, wow. So it was inspiration off of seeing the process and the kind of temporary structure that Kanye created that brought you all to Hawaii.

Yeah. Because one of the things between Hawaii and Atlanta, they were both out of the artist's comfort zone because they Both lived in la. One's from Houston, one's from la. But we needed to get out to your zone. So that's a very important part of the process is getting out your own space. You know, you gotta make yourself a little uncomfortable and it's gotta be a place that's like. It's like you don't have that much to do. Like, Hawaii is nice, right? But it's like, what else can you do? You go to the beach, you could go have a drink of coconut or whatever and a daiquiri and there's nothing else to do, you know what I mean? So you might as well work. And the same thing with Atlanta, you could go out, but no one's really like, I've been running since like 6pm so nothing else to do. So you got to give yourself, like, you got to give yourself a place where, okay, I'm gonna lock into a space. Then you gotta figure out who you're after. You worked on a project for a while, and both projects we worked on for a lengthy amount of time. We identify who our strongest collaborators were. So whether it be DJ Mustard or whether it be Mike Dean, you know, we like, okay, cool. Let's make a list of people who are gonna come out with us than have them in a schedule. So what happens then? It's like.

And what was the criteria for how you picked who was part of that team?

Remember, like the first two quarters, the first three quarters. Whoever worked with us the best in the first three quarters. It's like sports. Like, we want to put your A team in for when it's crunch time, you know, and like, you know who's like, you know who's going to fold, you know who's like mid missing shots and you know who's going to be there. And sometimes not the people you think is going to be there. It might be somebody you just met, might be the person locking on your team. Just have one of those moments. So that was like really our criteria after the first three quarters. We go into the fourth quarter. Who are we going this fourth quarter with? Who are we going to finish this game with? Who are we locking in with? So that was really important and kind of going with a goal of what we need to finish, whether it be like the track listing, the structure, the mixing, you know, like all that process. So that's like a big part of that process.

And what was your role in like balancing all the personalities and all the, like getting. Everyone has to do their best at their role and work together really well, is that like, are you like the coach in that scenario?

It's kind of like a coach, yeah. You know what I'm saying? And it's like, it's like, overall, it's like, do you ever see those big movies where you see a lot of big name actors and you're like, no way they could have got paid full rate for this. The way that they do that, if they know that they're gonna be part of a successful film, they'll take less money. They'll take whatever the basic rate is in film is as an actor, and they'll go and sign up because they say, okay, cool. This is Quentin Tarantino, man. I always want to be part of this film. So especially in art, like, when you start coming to people and you start pitching them based on, like, money, like, I can pay you for this. Da, da, da, da. Subconsciously, it's like a little bit of a turnoff, you know, because people. People don't really, like, artists don't really become artists for money, per se. They need money to continue being artists, but they don't become an artist just because of that. Like, they would become a banker or something that's guaranteed your stockbroker or, you know, whatever. So you gotta kind of sell people on this project. So when you call them, you have to make the call like, look, man, you know, we're going to Atlanta for two weeks. You know, we really think there's three parts of this song that you're going to be great of. This is the overall concept. You show them that they're a sum of bigger parts. Like, it's a bigger goal. And this is how they fit. They're like, cool, sign me up, you know, so like, and then. And then you also want places like destinations like Atlanta, Hawaii. So people really to want, want to go. And when you go, then you pick people. You also have to give them very clear direction of what you need them for. So you have to pick specialists. Like, if I need you just to play keys, I want you to collaborate. This is going to be your space. And it's very important that people have their own spaces to work, you know, and it's also a place that they could come through at the end and, like, mesh the ideas. So in both places, we would have. In Atlanta, we would have two studios going at the same time, with about six. No, three studios going at the time, same, same time, two big studios, one small studio, and about three or four communal areas. So people would go, disappear and come back. One of the best Stories I have from. It was one time we put DJ Mustard in this really small room, you know, And Mustard hates small rooms. He likes big rooms, you know, and he was in a small room, and he was mad. He didn't say anything about it, but he could just tell. He was, like, fuming a little bit. And all these other producers were around. He's used to being, like, YG's only producer, so he was just. We didn't hear from him for, like, it was one day. We didn't hear from him for, like, six hours. We could see him because it's like glass. I was, like, looking at somebody right there. But he didn't come out that room. And then he just walks in the studio one day. He just steps in. We're talking, we're playing music. He just cuts the music off that we're working on, drops his laptop, plugs it up, and he plays the beat for who do youo Love. And it was just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it was. And we were all like, wow. He still didn't say a word the whole time. And at the end, like I told y', all, I slammed the laptop and walked out. And then we knew that beat was a hit, but we didn't know what to say on it. So it was about 20 to 30 more sessions. Just with that one song, it probably took us, like, four to five sessions. First, the name of the song was called a song called Hit a Lick. And it was like, Tory Lanez and the hook. And it's like, hit a lick, hit a lick.

That's cool.

Then YG came up with, like, who do you love? And we're like, okay, this one's gonna stick, but we need something in those open spaces. Then we had about 12, 15 more sessions trying to figure out different things in the open spaces. So finally we said, you know what? Maybe we just leave it open. And that's how it happened. And Drake wanted to be a part of that movie, too. He's like, oh, I see what you guys are doing. This is going on.

So how did he see what you were doing?

Drake's like, the best A and R in the world. You ever notice that? Drake's always, like, on the right record at the right time. He has that mind. He's like, okay, cool. This is going on. I'm about to get on this one. You know what I mean?

But was he, like, physically there? Like, how did he come to know to hear the beat? Because it wasn't out yet.

He asked. He was Hitting YG up. And he's just, you know, somebody he knew from around, he just said, like, hey, what you working on? I heard you working on some things. Because another good thing too, when you start doing good work and it's like collaborative with different people, people start to talk, you know, especially creative people. And the people that you trust start telling you that great things are happening. It starts getting around, you know what I mean? And the word around the industry, like, oh, they're making this great thing. So it's like, I'm making this great album, you're making this great film. And he got in, he just reached out and he said, can you send me like a couple options? And we sent them two songs. And he sent back that song. It was that one we sent him that and a song called I Just Want to Party. But he wanted to get on who do youo Love? And like I said, Drake's the best A and R. So he knew which one to get on. Yeah, he knows the hits.

Do you feel like the. The energy is different? Like when someone. When folks are working like in a house, the way you were doing in Hawaii or Atlanta versus Drake, sending a.

Verse from remotely, it's a little energy because it's more tailor made to the project because you feel the essence of it. You know, you start being able to say things that you can feel just being there, you know, like, while Drake first took us over the edge, it was almost like in that kind of like movie that we were speaking about. You know, so many people just come through with like a random cameo at the end that was like the Drake cameo. But like Ty$sign would be like on three or four songs in the project because he was all the way there. So there's people who are the core of the record and then there's people on the peripheral that you need to kind of like make the whole thing complete. Yeah. You know, I think with the Travis record, some of the core people were like this guy named Alan Ritter, you know, the engineers, Mike Dean. And then some. Somebody will come in like a gunner at the end or some other people come at the end and just add a little bit of sauce. But it's almost like you have to be a director. And Travis is an incredible director. So he's like, yo, I need you to rap right here in this part, but I need you to rap like you rapped on this particular song. I need you to do it like this.

Okay.

And he's like the ultimate director in that sense and curator.

How do you Handle creative conflict.

Creative conflict's good. You know, it's actually what you want. Because if you're in a space where no one is disagreeing and everybody's having the. Everybody's having the similar ideas, and there's no conflicting ideas, you're probably not making something great, and you probably don't have the right team. The right team kind of, like, challenges you and pushes you, you know, I think something that Kobe Bryant said once is, like, anytime the Lakers had a fight in the locker room, they won the championship. And anytime they didn't win, that's when everybody was cool. You know, you need somebody. You need a little bit of angst. You need a little bit of Kevin Durant and Draymond Green fighting. You need.

That's kind of the mustard laptop story.

You need a little mustard laptop.

So do you purposely cultivate. Did you put him in the small room because you knew it was gonna.

Like, lead to the. It kind of happens itself. Because everybody has egos.

Yeah.

You know, so, like. And then my job is to make sure everybody sees the higher purpose. You can't let anybody's ego win. So I do a lot of time, like, taking people to the side, talking to them about stuff, tell them what their role is, why they're here, so on and so forth. Those conversations are never really about money. It's about time and space and not getting enough time in the thing, you know? So it's like creating a flow. So it's about having a place where everybody could come to drop their stuff and do it. And it doesn't happen right away. It happens after, you know, like, third, fourth quarter. That's when the flow. Flow really starts happening in the third quarter. You start seeing some signs of happening early, but the magic really starts happening in that third quarter. Some of the things that are important, like these schools having, like, collaborative space. I walked upstairs, and I saw, like, there were whiteboards everywhere, but nothing was, like, closed. You know what I mean? You could go in almost anybody's room. Me and Bob just ran into some people who had a conference call going on. We just ran. We went to Rock and all of them. But, you know, it was cool, though. He was really cool about it, and it was like, you need spaces like this, so you can always just drop in, because, you know, especially when you have a fresh idea, you want to be able just to tell somebody. Right now, you're like, look, this is what it is, especially while you're excited about it. So the ideas can, like, mate and become, like, bigger Ideas. So you need that kind of collaboration and you also need, again, you really need a time frame. Because when people. I need a time frame for multiple reasons. But you ever notice, like, you ever hear stories like, oh, the last song on the album was the biggest song. And it's not a coincidence. It's because when you're close to the end of a project and you're finishing up a show for a gallery, or you're finishing up anything that you're doing, any kind of creative project, you know what you're missing at the end. So you go back with an extreme focus at the end of the fourth quarter that you didn't have at the beginning of the first quarter. You know, you're like, okay, I really need an up tempo song about my mom or something. I need something. I need a picture here that's full color and wood framing. I need this on this spot. So at the end of the project, you're always going to know exactly what you need. And usually when you go in with that level of focus, it could be your biggest work.

So that's interesting because I often think that when you get down to that point in the creative process, it's almost like a Rubik's Cube. Sometimes you work yourself into a corner where you've got all the other pieces where you want them. And then finding that perfect last piece can be almost the most challenging because every time you try to move to get to it, you're messing something else up.

But at least you have four sides done, you know what I'm saying? It's like the first, when you first have that Rubik's Cube, it's like, oh, you know what I mean? Like you're just doing this for days, you know what I mean? So when you get to that last part, at least you know the end is near. And then you have a laser like focus to get those last greens, you know what I mean? You're not gonna move from that point. It's easy to put the Rubik's Cube down when you only have like a half a side.

Have you ever had a project that got to the third quarter and then it just, it didn't make it.

Did I have that project? I think so. And there's two projects in particular. I won't put the names out there, but I'll tell you, both of them, you know, one didn't make it because they didn't see it all the way through. He ended up just leaking the whole thing as a mixtape. So they didn't have like, the real promotion, you know, it's like, why work on this film? I like to compare it to films a lot because it's like, a complete idea. Like, why work on this film just to, like, leak it online? So, like, I don't know. Limewire, wherever you download movies right now, you know, that was really frustrating. And the second one was where I got that example of, like, I dealt with this singer from Chicago, and we had. We had. We pretty much had the album finished, you know, and at the end, he didn't want to shoot the video. He didn't want to do anything, and he put the album out, like, a year later pretty much in its entirety with two songs. We eat the same artwork and everything. So the trick with the difference between films and movies is, I mean, films and music is if you don't put something out for a year, a lot of the ideas you had are out. You know what I mean? They're out in the universe. So he had a point where he was the leading person in music in R and B, and then everybody started taking a little piece and taking a little piece. So by the time he put it out, he wasn't like an original anymore, even though he had the music ready. That's why I say timings tough. And the hardest part for an artist to do is somebody be like, okay, cool. It's time to finish. You know, it means I'm impressed. Send. It's time to let it go. That's really the. That's the toughest part of artistry, you know, and if you can convince somebody to do that, then somebody like you, this is out. Then you're a producer.

So we're gonna open it up for a Q and A from the audience in a minute. But you've. You've been working on sort of a formula for creative process or creative confidence that. Yeah, I think it's the next slide in the. Right there. And I'd love for you to share with everyone, including myself, how this formula works and, if possible, to kind of attach it to a particular creative process. And one thing that we haven't really spoken on is we've talked a lot about your work as an A and R, but we haven't actually talked about. Talked about your previous life as a mixtape DJ or your current sort of other life as a photographer or any of your other creative endeavors. So feel free to connect it. Not just to. I mean, you absolutely connect it to music projects, but if there's other creative endeavors that illustrate it, please bring those in too.

All Right.

I get really excited about this. I'm going to stand up. All right, so I've been working on this concept for about two years now. And basically, like, I feel like anyone could be creative. Like, anyone could be healthy. Like, a lot of times, you know, to be healthy is really hard. You start eating veggies, you start working out, you start watching your carbs, counting your macros. You know what I mean? It's like, it's a process. And I think it's the same thing with creativity. And a lot of times I meet people and they say, like, look, I'm not creative. I'm not a creative person. Creativity is not me. And I don't believe that. I just feel like people. I think the problem with creativity is no process for it. Like, in school, it's easy. Like, you know, I work hard, I take my honors classes, I do an application, I get into Stanford, 120 credits. I get my GPA up, I graduate. You know, I could go to masters grad school. It's a system. It's an easy system you put in here. You go to the army, you start as a private, a general. You can move your way up corporate America, same thing. I'm an intern. Assistant manager, director, senior director, vice president, senior vice president, executive vice president, president, CEO. You know, if you work in sports, you know, high school, JV, varsity, I make the team, college, get drafted. NBA, 82 games, preseason NBA games. Four out of seven. Four out of seven. Four to seven. Four to seven. I'm a champion, right? It's an easy process. But being a creative, it's not like that. No one can tell me my step by step process of how to be, like, an incredible artist. And that's the tough part. So what I try to do here is show people a way that you can structure yourself. So I think we talked about it a lot. Sam is a goal, right? And you need, like, a big goal that's gonna wake you out of bed. It can't be something small. It has to be something that's huge. And I know everybody. I see some people with paper. So if you have like a piece of paper, like, just write down, like, what your biggest creative goal is. You know, it could be like to win a Grammy, to, like, do a tour, to do a gallery show, an international gallery show. It's like whatever your biggest goal is, just write it down. It's really for yourself, you know, I mean, just. I just wanted to show something. And the second thing is the intent, the intention behind your goal, you know, Everything is done with intention, you know, And I think, like, why do you want this? You know? And usually if that goal has something to do with money, you're probably not going to get there, you know, because the money comes in different ways and fast. And sometimes, you know, and when it happens, it's like, do you not care about the goal anymore? Like, you know, it's weird. It's weird. The art and money, it seems like it's there, but it's not. It's a. It's a. It's like, has a magnetic pull that doesn't really attract it. But if you don't chase the money, you chase the art, you can get more money ever. So try to keep your intent away from your actual goal. And what's your intention? It could be because you want to put your hometown on. It could be, you know, you want to make your parents proud. You know, I was trying to sign this artist right now, whose dad was. His dad is a singer or used to be a singer in a huge band from, like, the 70s and 80s. But he wasn't the original singer. He was like the, you know, when they replaced the lead singer, like, after the prime. So he used to get treated bad. So the artist that came in, he said, like, he wants to be on next level. He wants to be better than his dad. That's like serious intention, you know what I mean? Because there's a lot of things that they play there. It's like family. It's like goals. You know, you need these people, have some real motivations out here with people who are training for this. And because you don't get medals along the way, it's harder to stick with it, Especially society. When you're a kid, it's easy. Like, remember we were talking about the fridge? Like, oh, everything's nice. Everything goes in the fridge. By the time you're like 14, 15, 16, stuff stops going on the fridge. You know, they're like, hey, did you apply for that college yet? Did you, you know, did you get a job? How's that internship going? Like, people, the conversations change. And, you know, when you start getting in your 20s and, you know, people stop. Stop looking at your goals like that, your artistic goals. So it's really going to come down to you. And that comes down to the third part is your sacrifice. What are you willing to give up to get the goal? Is anybody here not from California? Okay, so everybody here knows what. That's a sacrifice. You know, you could have went to your home school. You know, it would have been a lot easier to go to your state school, you know, to a school in your local city. But you wanted to get the hell out of there, you know what I mean? You wanted to make a sacrifice and come here to one of the hardest institutions in the world to make it in. And that's a huge sacrifice. And sometimes it's about traveling, you know. Were you saying the story last about the guy who took a first class flight?

Yep.

What was it you told him?

I think it was in this book, Deep Work, that my colleague here, Lara, gave me, that he was talking about how hard it is to focus with social media and everything. And you may know who this is, Bob.

I don't remember.

It was an executive somewhere, but he booked himself a business class seat to China and back just to be somewhere where he couldn't have cell phone or Internet and to write his book. And that was his way of like hacking the world we live in now to have the creative space and the focus to do that deep work.

Yeah, that's like a sacrifice. Like going to Atlanta, going to Hawaii, separating stuff. I remember I interviewed Travis for the Grammys or something, and I asked him this question, like, what was your biggest sacrifice through the whole process of making the album? And he was like, you know, not seeing my newborn baby. Like, I had a newborn at home and like, I never really had to. I go home at 11, 12 o' clock and it was a big sacrifice. And I'm with him every day and I'm like, man, I don't even think about this. You know what I mean? I don't think about, like, you know, a lot of times having a newborn is like the biggest thing in somebody's life. They shut down, they go on maternity leave and he's in the studio every day, you know, and that's like. So you got to figure out what you're willing to sacrifice. And we were saying before is the faith. Like, you know, when the stuff stops going on the fridge and people don't like your pictures, soundcloud's not going crazy, like. And you got like, you need a faith that's kind of like bigger than yourself. Cause that's the part where most people quit, you know. Cause enough people kind of like stab at you as the worst. I remember one of the worst feelings I had was when I remember one time I went home and I went through like a real dark rut in school. Not school, like in music. And it wasn't going well. It was before all the good stuff started happening. It was between when I was like in mixtapes and before like the YG album, I had like a four year gap there where it was real shaky for me. And my mom was like, hey man, you think you should get like a job or do that? You know, and it's like, it's one thing when like the rest of the world says when your parents say something to you, it's like a whole nother level of like shaking belief, you know? So you gotta like really find out what your faith is and what really gives you your faith, you know, whether it be like religion, whether it be like meditation, whether it be a family member. Sometimes it's like one person happens in sports a lot. You got one person who just really believes and really push, like really lean on that person to get their faith. Because everyone's faith gets tested. And the only way you're going to really get there is if you're able to shake past that moment. And then after you get the goal, you have the right intent, you made the sacrifice, you're getting your faith from somewhere. That's when you start to get in the flow. And before you get in the flow, you need a routine. The best book that I've seen about routine is the Power of Habit. So if anybody hasn't read that or need that, it's a great book on how to build a routine. And building a routine, all the stories I was telling, was really about the same thing as God. Going to the same spot every day, going to the same goal, doing it over and over. Because it's not going to happen the first few weeks, maybe even the first month you start, but after like the first month or two, then the magic starts happening. You start staying in the D school for a long time. Then it's like after six weeks, like, oh, now we're really cooking with gas. And that's when all the serendipitous moments start to happen and things start to really cook, you know, so that's when, like the flow hits. And after the flow hits, that's when the magic starts to happen. And you really make that work. You really have that breakthrough moment. You know, probably the label calls you, who wants to sign you, you start getting your first gallery show, you get representation. Like, that's kind of like the magic. And you kind of the problem with the magic step that. Because when I first started this, I only had five steps. I didn't have faith and I didn't have legend. Like, when I did this at Harvard, I only had five.

See, you got seven here.

And I came up with Legend because I realized that the magic's like driving like.

Those.

Fast cars, like an F1 car, like Formula car, you know, it takes a long time to be able to learn how to drive it. But the second you start thinking, not doing everything you're supposed to in a car and taking the eyes off the wheel and showing off, the second you crash, and that's like being in the Magic. That's being like in that quantum field. When everything starts happening, you can't take it for granted because you got there from steps one through six. So that's when most people go bad. You know, I always use the example, like Tiger woods, because usually when, usually when it stops, when you break out of this, it doesn't end good, it ends bad. Like, for Tiger, it ended with like his wife chasing him out of the house with a golf club, you know, because he started taking steps one through six for granted. You start forgetting the goal. You start forgetting why you did it. You start forgetting the sacrifice you put in. You start losing your faith. You know, you're not doing the routine anymore. And it takes so long to get back to the magic that sometimes you never get back there. And you live your whole life thinking about those moments when you had it and you had to stay locked in and you didn't or you had it for a moment. That's why you see a lot of one hit wonders. That's why you see a lot of people who did one great body of work and they don't know how to do it again because they're not willing to go through the hard steps it takes to go through one step one through six. So let's say you do everything. You do steps one through six and then you do it again for another project and do it again for another project and you do it again. So I got a timeline on this. And me and Sam disagree on this step a little bit. But I think after about 10 years of consistently doing something, that's when you can start talking about the legend stuff. And I think, like, I was using an example, like, of sports. I love sports, as you can see. And it's like Paul Pierce, he plays for the Boston Celtics. He gets in a lot of trouble talking about if he's better than Dwyane Wade or whatever. And Paul Pierce is a really good player, and he probably had like eight NBA all stars. He might make the hall of Fame, but he's not like a legend. Dwayne Wade's like a legend. You know what I mean? He's somebody who's like all time. Like, Kobe's like a legend. Like, Jay Z's like, a legend. You know, some people are getting there. Like, I feel like I love Tame Impala, but they probably got like five more years before they become like, legendary. So it becomes like a consistency that you have to hit over and over. So I give it about 10 years or maybe like five projects on a big scale before you're like an absolute legend. You can do it over and over. And, and legend doesn't just mean commercial success. It can mean, like, it's like kind of like. What's that? Searching for Sugar, Man. You ever seen that documentary? Who's seen that one? Sugar? Yeah. So I didn't see it. I just know the concept of it. But the concept is he's in Africa, right? Where is he? I think he's in, like. So the story is this guy, he's making this music somewhere and he comes to legend. Everybody wants to go there and try to find him and, or even somebody could be in your neighborhood who's been doing it for a long time. That level of consistency for doing it for a long time is what takes you over the top. So that's kind of like the seven steps that I put together. I'm really happy with the seven steps. And I think that anyone, if you follow these seven steps, can really take your creative goals to the next level. And you can use this as a check mark for your creative goals. You can't use it for everything, in my opinion, but definitely for any kind of creative project. I'm going to sit back down.

Beautiful.

Thank you.

So we can do this forever. And we were doing it last night, this morning, and we'll keep doing it, but we only have a few minutes with you all here. So I'm going to stop being selfish and open it up. And I think Bob is going to.

Help us a bit with the Q and A. Yeah, let me, let's.

So I, I, I thought that the person we should start with to ask the first question is Skyler, because he's like an insider. And so, so after hearing all this, what's your, your question?

I'm curious. So the faith part's new. I'm curious a little bit where that came from. And also in line with faith, how do you sort of measure your progress along the way with something as ambiguous as a creative project? So the first part, the faith part happened, actually happened here in the Bay. I was working on this project with Skyler, actually, and I was raising money for something. For, like, a new project. And the day of the project, like, it had this big meeting right here in San Francisco. Everything started going bad. First, like, the big talent of the project said they couldn't make it, they were going to make it. Then everyone had to fly to sf. And the second thing that happened was the manager went to the airport and his flight got canceled. And he couldn't get on because it was a bad thunderstorm. And Skylar was supposed to come, and his flight, he was stuck in the airport for, like, eight hours. And so I was the only person who made it. And it was pretty bad. It was just like, all right, I'm just going to go by myself. So I went there early. I met with the people. I told him I'm the only one who made it. They were pissed. They're like, where's everybody at? You should have told them, da, da, da, da. So I just sat there in the meeting. The meeting was supposed to look like this. It probably just looked like the first row because everybody didn't show up. But I sat there and I still did the presentation, and I felt really good about it. And I still have a really good relationship with the people up to this day. And when I went home that night, I was like, you know what? I'm on the right path. I'm supposed to do this. I'm not gonna let this kind of shake me. And I wanna make sure this goes all the way. And then ended up working up really well from there. And I was like, oh, this was a lesson like, God kind of put me, the universe put me in that as a lesson that you have to have faith, you know, and really have faith in yourself when everything's going wrong. And that's kind of like the moment when I realized. And when I started talking to more people about it, I realized how much faith plays a factor in so much success. Because if it wasn't for faith, most people wouldn't be here. Most of us wouldn't be in this room right now. If it wasn't just have faith. You know, there's a lot of people probably told you probably never get into this school. You couldn't afford it, or you can't get into this program or whatever. Like, you know, but you made it here, and you made it here mostly of faith and maybe faith of you, faith of your family, faith of your friends. And that's how the faith one came out.

All right, another question. All right. Oh, way up there, and there's one.

All the way in the back.

Okay. I'll get the one in the front alley. You get the one in the back.

Back.

Wait.

Oh, here we.

Yes.

Hi. Sorry, I'm kind of losing my voice. But my question was. So I know in record labels, I, I used to work at one and it's like there's the artist facing people and the kind of like consumer facing people. How do you make sure when you're working in the framework of a record label, if you want to be like working with the artist and really serving the artist's interest, like, how do you navigate that in the space of that organizational structure?

I believe with my mentor, he always taught me to believe that record labels work for the artist that's their customer, no matter what the record label tells you. And I believe that, you know, they think you're booking studio time, you're marketing them, you're promoting them. They kind of flipped it to make it think like the artist works for the record label, but it's not the purest record label is supposed to work for you.

You.

It's supposed to be a service based. And I think that's more where it's going. That's why you see more aggressive deals where artists are becoming more partners with the labels versus be like, I'm assigned to this. You know, there's certain smaller labels who are more incubators, who do more things like the classic, like Motowns or like the current, like TDES or Excel Recordings, who do more a sense of artist development. But to answer your question, I'm more artist based and I really fight for my whole organization to be more artist based. You know, like I had, I was getting into something with somebody who worked under me, like a junior A and R. And she like was like checking out at the project because she felt like the artist wasn't listening to her ideas. And I was like, well, she doesn't have to. You know, you're supposed to listen to her ideas and you're supposed to just help build on her ideas. Like, this is not. You don't. She doesn't work for you. You know what I mean? We're trying to help her get out her thing. So I think, I think it should be. I think the best labels are artist driven because the artists really work from kind of like the fans, you know, that's their checks and balances. They have to go on Twitter and they have to get the feedback. They're putting out the risk. Nobody cares that Interscope put out an album. They care that, you know, Kendrick Lamar or Lady Gaga put out an Album. They're the ones with their name, face on it, and they're the ones who risk it. So I feel like the record label is work for the artist that's their customer.

Let me ask one question. One thing that you said repeatedly in multiple ways the best was that when people start talking about money, God leaves the room.

Yeah, I got that from Quincy Jones.

Who'S a really rich guy, by the way. Right. So how do you do. It's an ambivalence or a duality. So how do you deal with that?

When I say God leaves the room is when you start making the art thinking like, this is gonna go financially. Like, I'm gonna make this song because it's gonna do well on the charts versus, like, I'm gonna make this song because people are gonna love it. Like, I'm gonna make this song without like a function. Like if I'm gonna make this song. Cause I think people are really gonna dance, slow dance to this one. That's like a real intention. I'm gonna make this song because I think it's gonna make me a million dollars. It's probably not gonna be a good song. And you could always identify the songs in the album that are like the straight shots that people are taking the risk. They usually don't fit in the rest of the body of work. Or, you know, it's something that like the gallerist told somebody. Like, you know, it's really hot right now. Like, I don't know what's like a hot thing in art? It could be flowers, move more flowers. People love flowers. It's the best thing that they sell. So like. And then it doesn't sell. Like, man, I listen to this guy. But it's not his art. So that's what I mean about the money. You need money for a booking studio, you need money to do shows. Artists get paid. Obviously I'm talking about the intention of the actual pieces of work.

So we had in our class on Monday, our visitor was Ed Catmull, who ran Pixar, started Pixar and hardly talked about money at all and just kept arguing quality is the best business plan. If you just. Because it's funny we heard this from you almost exact same sort of thing. So kind of cool.

This is true. In the background. Hi, my name is demarcus. Excuse me. And streaming is definitely contributing to, I think, artists ability to put out art just almost instantaneously. But with that being said, I think it's contributing a lot to just the number of art or the amount of art that is out there. So how do you think that longevity looks for the industry today? Because now people are becoming more forgettable or art is becoming more forgettable just because the sheer amount that we receive on the daily basis. Do you mean how the long term in the business side or the art part? I feel like now they kind of go hand in hand. Like, in order to be an artist with longevity, you kind of have to be a business man or woman or. Yeah. So does that make sense? Like how. Basically, how do you create a art that lasts? Is that being the most honest that you can be, or is it. I don't know. Basically, that's my question. I'm a firm believer in putting out the best art that's like, closest to you. Because then you could always build like a real fan base from there. Like, it is better to have like a small, strong fan base than to have like a fan base that you get overnight that might not be there. Like, what's the guy? Lil X Nas.

I knew you were thinking Old Town Road.

Yeah, I'm sure he's a good guy. Anybody like fans of him though? Like, as an artist, it's tough to be too, because it happened so quick for him. He went to the top so fast without building like a strong core fan base. So now everybody knows who he is or they know his song, but he doesn't have a core. And because streaming because of the narrative, it blew him up. But now he's gonna have a really tough time not being like the Old Town Road guy, you know, and having to build a thing. So that's why it's better to kind of like build your fan base. You almost don't want your first project, your first song to be successful. Cause it'll haunt you for a long time. I remember I always see Trinet James and you know, he's doing good now as like a songwriter. I think he might have won a Grammy the last year writing something, but his first mixtape had like nine songs. It was like his first nine songs that he created. And one of them is all gold, everything. And it was tough for him to ever live that down. So it's better to like have a strong base that you can build for time. And if something hits, it's cool. But you always have your base versus like something going really fast. And you know, like Dave Chappelle quote, you know, you see what he said about famous versus infamous. You're like knowing you can't get unfamous. You just get infamous. You know, it's like, it's like, oh, is that little X Nav? What's your name again? What are you doing, man? You still around? You don't want to be like that. You rather be somebody who's consistently doing things for a long time. So I think in a sense of streaming, streaming kind of hurts. This is my argument against the art of streaming. I think it gives people. People don't commit as much anymore. Everything is kind of like, oh, this is the project. Oh, I just worked on this. They keep giving themselves a creative out because it's so easy to upload, so you get a lower quality of music. Not because of the platform. It's because of people kind of cheat themselves. No one commits and says, no, I put my all behind this album, you know, because they can just upload it really quick, so they cheapen themselves in the art. So that's what I don't like about streaming. I love that anyone could put out music from anywhere. You know, Skylar put me on to, like, the Alti movement in legos, and I think that's an incredible movement. But they're very committed. They don't take half steps. You know, I don't like people who just come and talk to me about the music, and they're like, well, you know, this is the project. But I just worked on this for a week, and you kind of like it, so if you like it, cool. But if you don't like it, you know, I don't like that. I like people like, nah, this is it. I work my life into this.

Hands up. All right.

How do you know? How do you know when a project is done? I heard Kendrick say this once, and I kind of just go with this. The exact quote was, I know my album is finished when I start fucking with shit that don't need to be fucked with. Which means, like, if you start at a certain point, you're gonna start messing it up if you keep playing with it. You know what I'm saying? So, like, you just gotta let it go because you'll start ruining and overproducing. You know.

I'll get the hand up here. But it's interesting when I work with PhD students, when they start going back to the same problem over and over again, and it's not gonna be any better. They're just making the same mistakes. It's time to ship. There was a hand here. Oh, yeah.

Hi. So I recently watched the Defiant Ones, which is that really great Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine documentary on Netflix. I don't know if you've seen it. But so basically the documentary kind of follows their individual journeys and then talks about how they kind of came together, did the Beats and Apple merger, which obviously was like a monumental event in hip hop and in tech. But there's this really interesting quote that Jimmy Iovine says, which is culture and product co evolve. And he also goes to say that you can't spend any amount of money to create culture, and in that, it's brought to product. So first, I guess I want to ask you if you believe that, and secondly, if so, how has our current culture and kind of our generation impacted the products that you create now?

So the question was how can you say the question again? Just a question.

You can't culture and product co evolve, and you can't spend any amount of money to create culture, right? So in terms of how you create your own product, how has our current generation and the values and things that are going on in this world right now, how does that impact the product that you make? How does culture complement product that you make?

I'm learning a lot about design thinking. I've been building up a new venture, and I've been studying a lot versus product versus business and business models. And the best thing I've read about it so far is I've learned about os, you know what I mean? And how you build an OS and kind of build the business model later and the product later if you have the right concepts. So something like. Like Travis and like these sneakers, right? Like, if I get one more phone call about people hitting me about these sneakers, I'm just gonna change my phone number. And it's like. And it's like. But the good thing about it is he did something great in one space. And you kind of know what his OS is. So it translates into his shoes. So his shoes sell, and that's how you sell the product. Or Dr. Dre has such a quality for music that it kind of translates into his headphones. So you're like, okay, cool, this makes sense. It's his headphones. You know, it's not really about the sneakers or it's not really about the headphones. It's really about what that person and what they represent in their music and the level of quality they put in there, you know? So I still think it comes down to nothing really happens until. Nothing really happens until you make that quality and you're true to yourself. And then you can kind of like sell anything you want after it, but you need to still get that core, that core creative down first. And need to get that out first before you even think about product. So I agree. Like, you can't buy culture, but you can create culture. But it's just very hard. It's not a dollar amount that creates culture.

You have somebody in the back there. Oh, Emily, hi.

I was wondering if you could talk.

A bit about your process for creating the visual aspects of an album. So, like, the album cover, the music.

Video, what goes into that?

Well, you kind of got the concept of the album and you kind of want everything to match, you know, so after, you know, the idea, if you're doing like 24 hours in a day or you're doing Astroworld, like your Shek's album was called Mud Boy, you know, then you have to find the best creators in that space who really understand the best way to do it is to get people involved before the project is finished, you know, like, so they can feel a part of it.

So they.

So you can kind of be creating it with them. You know, I know Travis brought in. Why is his name Blanket? The photographer? No, the big one, David LaChapelle. And he came to the studio and he listened to the album, he heard the concept, and he came up with that inflatable head concept. So we had that concert before the album came out and worked on that cover simultaneously while working on the album. So that's something like, you really want to get different creators and partners in earlier rather than later for your process, you know, especially, like, and everybody needs, you know, everybody needs partners, you know, so if you're doing a photography show, you might want to get the framer involved early so you know what photos you're going to pick that's going to match the frames. You know, if you're not thinking about that and you wait till the end, you might change the whole lineup. If you want to change, like, your album, you want to make, bring photographer in and get everybody in. The best thing to do is get people in on the ground floor, especially in that fourth quarter. So you don't want them in too early because it's not. The idea hasn't formed enough. But if you get them in the fourth quarter and you get the other creatives but before it's finished, that's probably like the magic sweet spot to get the other creatives in early. But you want to start expanding your team around the fourth quarter.

Alexa, I'm going to get to you next. But I have an interesting. Because you keep talking about this, the time rhythm in the fourth quarter in particular. And since a lot of your job is to keep things on track. What's the sign to you? You're in the fourth quarter, and things aren't going right, and you got to do something.

It's when they rush the finish line, you know, it's. Everything's like, okay, now it's done. You know what I mean? It's just like, you can't. You can't just cheat. I don't want to just put stuff out. Like, it's all about presentation. I had a mentor who always used to teach me that. He said, you know, what's the problem with your generation? There's no presentation. You know what I'm saying? That was his big thing. And he's right. You know, everybody wants to just put a SoundCloud link. Like one of my. We talked about a lot of good things about Kanye. One of the things I really hated was his rollout for his last album. Yay. You know, he was like, I made this art on the way to the party. And that's like, the stuff that I hate about. Just do it right now stuff. You know what I mean? It's like a cheat code. Like, you didn't want to work that hard, you know? So when you're in the fourth quarter, it's supposed to be tight. It's supposed to be aggressive. It's supposed to be ideal. It's supposed to be bouncing. It's supposed to be really well thought through. You can't rush that process. And why I work so hard for three and a half quarters just to rush it for the last six minutes. It doesn't make sense.

Then you see that in your model, once you start skipping stuff, you're in trouble.

Yeah. You can't take any part out of here. The whole thing will crumble.

So you speak a lot about timing, and it has me curious about your approach to creating something that's relevant to the time, but that can also last, and that can also work to push culture, push the current movement.

Timing is important because you just want. The deadlines are important, you know, because you want to put a little bit of pressure. You don't want to have no pressure on a creative because then you'll never come out with an album. You'll never come out with a project. You'll never do the gallery show. You'll keep putting it off. So having a deadline is nice because it gives you. You need a little bit of that frantic energy to kind of close it, you know, I think it's called Parkinson's Law, and it's the Amount of time you have to complete a set task is the amount of time it'll take to complete the task. Hence why if you have two weeks to finish a project at school and you're going to cram the night before because it's due tomorrow, it's the same thing with a creative process. You know, if you know you have to put it out this date, you got that pressure. So it's like, sometimes it's good to have. But remember, as a creative, it's not like school, it's a self imposed pressure. So you have to give yourself your own deadline and stick yourself to it, you know? So I think deadlines work for a reason. You know, deadlines work in all aspects of life. And if you take deadlines out of creativity, you just get lofty dreams and you never get results.

But also, in terms of the sound, I don't think it's wise to go completely against the grain of what's relevant at the time. So how far is too far in terms of moving to what could enter your next sound?

Did you all hear the question? So it was like, how do you know how to not go too far ahead of what the current sound is, right? Like to push the edges of it without, like, going so far to the bleeding edge that you fall off? Is that kind of.

It depends on the goal, you know, it depends. Like, you know, I always have this talk in the studio about there are legends and there are originals, and most of the time they're not the same person. And a lot of times to be an original, you have to sacrifice commercial success. There's a lot of people, like, I. How I use the example of, like, Kanye's a all time legend, but I think future generations are gonna have to really study Kid Cudi. But Kid Cudi now is a little bigger than he was when he first came out because of his influence. Cause he's more of an original, you know, even though he's not as big as Kanye, who's a legend. But I don't think Kanye is the actual, like, I think Pharrell's, like more of an original. You know, he makes an original sound, he makes an original thing, his original thinking. So the answer to your question is really about your goal and where you want to end up in life and what you're happy with. Some artists are very happy with just say, you know what? I did an uncompromising body of work, and if they didn't get it right now I get it. And my happiness is that I completed the idea that I know I could accomplish, and that's cool, you know what I mean? And like, you'll inspire Digitality versus commercial. Like, what part of the spectrum do you want to be in or how hard do you want to work and what your goals are? There's no right answer. It's just where you want to end up. It's that fast and furious. Roma space.

Thanks.

So on Monday in our class with Ed Catmull, he explained that Pixar has a two to one rule where to stay creative. They introduce two new creative films for every one sequel they do to a financially successful one.

I was curious, since you're at a.

Point now where it may be easier to work with with artists that you've worked with in the past who have been creatively or financially successful, how do.

You think about taking risk on newer.

Artists without a proven track record? I decided my space. I decided I'm not all the way Roma, you know what I mean? I'm maybe like one step here. I like having commercial success that also is really kind of big and cool, you know what I mean? I like going in here and music playing out of cars. People hit me up for concert tickets. Like, I like being relevant, but I also don't want to work like on a Taylor Swift album, you know what I mean? Cause it's like I just wouldn't do anything. For me, Even if sells 10 million records, it's just like, it's not the space I want to be in. I don't want to be a part of it. It's not. The commercial success doesn't mean anything to me. So for you, it's like figure out where you want to be and kind of stay there, you know what I'm saying? Like, Pixar is kind of close to here, you know? Cause even the movies that are not like super, like, critical are still pretty dope, you know what I mean? They never really end up over here at all. They're kind of like in this range right here. So just kind of figure out your sweet spot, what you're excited for. Like, I really want to. I look at people like no ID or Rick Rubin. I like that space that they're in, you know, I want to be able to put out projects that people really love or change their life or is really inspirational. So for me, I have to work on projects for longer periods of time, you know, like have off years. Like, I might not put out a project this year. That's gonna be huge, you know, and I have to be cool with that. You know what I mean? Cause I know, like, next year or the year after, I'm gonna put out something that's gonna be amazing, you know? So it's gotta just be. The hard part is being comfortable during the dead time and locking into your idea when everything is going on around you. So if you work on one project for two and a half years, three years, it's kind of scary because all these other things are going on. You're still locked in this one concept. What if my concept's getting old? What if it's getting stale? What if the concept doesn't really work by the time it comes out? Are people really going to get it? And I'm not really getting the feedback from what I'm working on. That's like the hardest place to be. And knowing that you could absolutely fail. And that's where the faith comes in, you know?

So we're about to. So, Sam, I think you should wrap it up.

Great.

P.S. she's been raised her hand the whole time. We have one question here, one more.

And I do have a last question. So we'll do these two, and then that'll be it.

All right.

Nice shirt, by the way.

Thank you.

I al.

I found this shirt, and I was like, dang, I really need this shirt. But. So I was thinking a lot about how Starbucks Blonde hasn't have feelings and how people, especially artists, have a lot of feelings. And I want to know just, like, what kind of emotional fortitude does an artist need to build up either that in themselves or their teams, to be able to face all aspects of social media being very fast and responsive, and cancel culture being something that people fear a lot? And another question is, how do female artists deal with that when maybe they have less space to have a voice in the first place? And if they do, I mean, this is in context of maybe the prerequisite for female artists to make it, being that they have to be quite hypersexualized in order to be successful? How do. How does. These are all very broad thoughts, but I just want to hear what you want to say.

I think, for the first part is I think a lot of the great people kind of put blinders on during that third and fourth quarter of their project. It's probably not. At some point, you need inspiration. And the number one thing that taps inspiration, gives inspiration, also takes away is your phone, because you're like, oh, I'm really researching all these great things, like, oh, look, it's a cat. Like, you know what I mean? It's Too, you know, it's a whole. We're in the center of a place where people are spending billions of dollars every year to distract you and it gets your attention. So I think the best way to do it is like when you're really locked into those third and fourth quarters, you have to just kind of like sacrifice and cut away distractions. Like give yourself maybe like almost like a 30 minutes a day on your phone, only check it for a certain amount of times, like you really got it. Your phone is your number one enemy because most of the distractions come from there. That's it. Because everything is tailor made to get towards you. So I think just after the project comes out, there's no hiding. It's coming right at you. But just right that third or fourth quarter, just try to let it all go. As far as about different women and how they're hypersexualized in the industry, I think one person I've seen kind of taking back the narrative is Billie Eilish. I think she's been doing an amazing job, you know, doing her own thing, you know, controlling her narrative, not being over sexualized, you know, the counterpoint to that, well, what if I don't want to have to wear all my big clothes to do it? You know what I mean? It's like I get both sides. So I think the answer is more like inclusion, you know, I think it needs to be more women led teams, especially in the creative sphere, especially in music. You know, in the last year, year or so I've been really diving down and work with different female artists and different voices. I signed two artists recently that I'm really proud of. One, her name is Jayla Darden, she's from Detroit and she like a singer, a songwriter, a producer, an engineer. She literally does everything herself in a room by herself and the music comes out absolutely phenomenal. She mixes the music herself and I think that's an important story to tell. Another one is another singer from Britain. Her name is Amalou. I think she's incredible too. She produces her music. She's very hands on with all her branding. And I think in music, in film especially, music and film especially, there's kind of like this thing that I don't like, where women always have to be presented. You know, it's like in presenting so and so and they come on the stage and they start dancing. We're like. Men can be looked at more like as like creative geniuses or whatever. And I don't think that's fair. And I think that's because a of lot, a lot of people who are in power are kind of like tone deaf to what's going on. Until you start having more women in these positions to make changes in the boardroom and the people who are really cutting the checks, then it's really going to happen. I think it's happening all across the world in different areas. I think it's happening slower in music though. And if there's somebody in firsthand seeing it, I can tell you that's the reason why. Because some of the ideas that you're going to get in a room full of men for presenting a woman is just not going to be great, you know, until there's more inclusion, it's more diversity, especially in the higher levels. That's when things are really going to change.

So I want to wrap it up with one last question which is really about the future. So my work here is about bringing design and creative confidence to the K12 education space. My colleagues Laura and Louis are here, my friend and brother Al and my brothers Tony from High School for Recording Arts and Isaac, who co formed this whole concept of hip hop genius with me, which was all about bringing a hip hop creativity to education. And I know you went to an alternative creative type of school and that had some influence on how you move in the world and how you've developed all this. And I would just love to hear your thoughts about how we could apply all of these principles that are up on the screen and the way that you've approached your work in these creative realms of music and photography to education. What do you think the schools need to look like that are going to make sure that all young people have the opportunity to have the kind of creative confidence that you've been cultivating with the artists that you work with and in yourself.

I think going to an alternative high school I went to. Is that still a thing or is it only charter schools now?

Yeah, we have alternative, alternative schools.

Going to alternative school. I went to alternative high school in Brooklyn and it was kind of like, have you ever seen the movie Precious? Anybody? It's kind of like the classes they were in where they're like 10, 12 people and they were just like, if you graduated, success. But then a good thing about my school was like sponsored by Goldman Sachs. So I got a lot of cool internships. Like I worked at Fox News Channel, I worked at Goldman Sachs, I worked at my local park. So it gave me a lot of opportunities that probably wouldn't exist. Gotten maybe at a normal high school with the level of focus and it kind of showed. But at the time, though, like, I didn't know, like, most of these roles that we talked about today existed, you know, in the design school. You see all these type of roles and all these type of things that are going on here. But, like, I did a talk maybe about three weeks ago at Centennial High School in Compton, you know, and they don't have any of the green that they have here and the funding and everything. And, you know, when I say stuff like creative director, A and R, art director, all these things, there's not even a blip of a possibility that these roles even exist. So I think just creating awareness from really, like, really 8 to 12 that all these different options are available, like, you know, that would have helped me a lot. Everything that I do now I didn't know was an option. When I graduated from high school, I didn't know A and R was an option. I didn't know the creative director was the option. I didn't know any of this stuff were options. You know, I would just feel like if I just even had this as a role. And that's why I really want to teach a lot of this stuff in school. Because if I just knew, like, this creative process was an option, I think that. I think I like the way my life went out now, but I think that it would have changed a lot. I would have been a lot further, a lot faster. Because if I don't have, like, the financial capability to go to, like, a big Ivy League school, even go to my local school, at least I have the ability to be creative. And I just really want to show, you know, I think my time on Earth is going to be successful if I could just show people, especially people who look like me, that this is an option. And that's my overall goal, my biggest goal.