Guilty Before Proven Innocent: Rap Lyrics on Trial

And we're back with another episode of the FIM Show with Ty and Yo. That's my man Ty, I'm Yo, and this is the FIM Show. And it's your first time viewing us, just want you to know FIM is about wellness. Right? Some might say this is going to be an ignorant conversation about what wellness— I think it's going to be very intellectual. I think it's going to be very nourishing. I think it's going to be very enriching. But if it happens to be a little ignorant, that's your warning right there. That's how we kind of get down on the FYM Show. Uh, Ty, you was just in New Orleans recently, right, for, uh, for a panel that you did? How was that?

It was smooth. It was smooth. You know, we talked about we talked about Black artists, specifically rappers, being almost targeted. Well, not almost. The data says that they're targeted when it comes to using their rap lyrics to find them guilty or to build a case against them in court. And the conversation was about when does rap stop being an admission of guilt and just be art. So it was a healthy conversation about that, you know, talking about the comparisons of rappers and country music and, you know, actors. How rap is almost like so real that everything a rapper says they've done or somebody around them have done, um, versus a country singer can sing the same exact lyrics in a country song, but it won't come off as a Mention of guilt. So that was what the panel was about. And yeah, it was smooth.

Absolutely. Now, I saw you a few minutes before the panel and we started a conversation about the film industry and just like how long it takes to get projects off the ground. And right, you know, trying to do it the right way, you're trying to do it through SAG and have all the proper things in order to make a film and not just think about the profits of the film, but thinking about it being done properly, right? Um, I also been looking at film budgets. Film budgets tend to be somewhere between a couple hundred thousand dollars to multi-million dollars, right? I, I feel like that's so different than album budgets for music artists, right? Possibly, right? Possibly, right? I feel like if you make a rap album— I think the first Wu-Tang album Enter the Wu-Tang was made for $30,000. That's how much the value on that album when they went back and checked how much they spent. 30K, right? Huge album, classic album, changed everybody's lives for $30,000. I think that's very hard to do with the film, right? Change an actor's life, change a director's life, a screenwriter's life, but a $30K budget, very rare. But there's a very popular movie right now, Obsessed. Which was made for $750K, right, which feels like relatively small budget. And currently it's been reported to have grossed $403 million. Yeah, when you hear those numbers, how does that make you feel as someone that's very interested in the film and has been doing a lot of deep research on it?

Um, historical, right? It's what you aspire to achieve as an independent filmmaker, right? There's only been 4 films that have made over $100 million that had a budget less than $1 million. So Obsessed is one of them, um, uh, Blair Witch Project, which they shot for $10,000, Paranormal Activity, and then the first Mad Max.

The first Mad Max was for under— that's crazy.

That was though. That's 4. It's only been 4 films that have been able to achieve that level of success for under a million dollars.

So 3 of the 4 are horror films. Yep, in the horror genre, right? And then Mad Max is more of an action flick. And horror is a huge moneymaker. Yeah, people love to be scared for whatever reason. Not my favorite genre, But historically, people have been attracted to what scares them. Um, but again, when you see those type of numbers, why is it so historical? Why did— why does it so hard to kind of keep film budgets low cost?

I think that because you have to think about all of the elements of it. It's the same reason why touring for a music artist costs so much, right? You have to think about the people, the staging, the, the, um, accidents that can happen, the insurances. You got to pay for talent, you gotta pay for permits, you gotta pay for location. It just piles up.

And the more—

like, think about it from a touring— the more cities you do, the more it costs to do the tour, right? In the movie, the more locations you do, the more it costs to do the movie. Now you add the talent on top of it. Now the talent cost for how many days you booked the talent. Now, if you got to book multiple talents, right? So the film industry is costly because of how many people have to come together to like put this magic on the screen, right? And you know, it's going to be like that for the, for the near future. Technology is helping reduce those films because even with Obsessed, like, for $750,000, I haven't seen the full movie, but just the trailer that I've seen, the clips that I've seen, it felt like they used really great technology to shoot better, to edit better, you know. And, and technology is cheaper now than it was 10 years ago, even 3 years ago, you know, to kind of like— yeah, the best quality cameras are better. Those are the things, you know.

And they kept it so only maybe 4 locations, which is very few. Yes, yes, very few, uh, scenes outside of the core 4. And then I think all the actors are pretty new faces, so they don't really have like a celebrity big-time actor or actress that will cost upward of a million dollars. For the movie. So these things will keep your cost low if you can get young talent that isn't super famous, if you can keep your locations to a minimum, right? And if you can do a lot of stuff in-house— the director wrote their screenplay, directed, and he edited the film.

There you go right there. That's 3 jobs, you know what I'm saying?

3 jobs that you don't gotta outsource to anyone else. I think helps keep all those, you know, those numbers low.

They had experienced producers too, though. They had experienced producers that probably was able to call in favors to get the right people in to help the film have the highest, the highest level of, of, um, you know, quality on screen.

Yeah, absolutely. And exposure. Like, I, I remember before I even watched the movie, I had saw so much about it. A lot of just great marketing was kind of put toward this movie. Um, I want to ask you, Ty, how— if you were in this director's shoes, right, and if you just made a film for $750K, you just score really big, $400 million, how do you think about your next couple projects? Do you think, I need to keep everything lean, or do you feel like, now that I got a little bit— I got my foot in the door, I got some attention, let's go big, let's go crazy?

Um, first thing I would do is I would go back And I would try to increase the budget probably by about $250,000. Then I would try to go make a million-dollar film, and I would try to write it to be a million dollars, same crew that I worked with on the last film. Then once I get that film done and we're able to kind of put together something else, then I would go and I would go make a $100 or $1.5 million film. You know, I would hire the same budget of people, I would hire the same crew of people to kind of build it out. And then, um, after the success of the third film, whatever that success looked like, yeah, maybe on the fourth film with the right talent attached, I would probably go and try to do a $10 or $15 million film. But I would, I would try to create a real, a realistic scale for myself and not let the home run cloud my judgment on how realistic that is to try to do it again and not overwhelm myself too fast. I would definitely lock in a long-term deal off all the success, but I would take the Blumhouse approach. Be like, a million-dollar film, $1.5 million, and I would write the scripts designed to be cost efficient. And I would try to give more new people opportunities. I would keep working with the same lead actor, lead actress, and supporting actors around it. And I would try to make really, really good use of my long-term deal. So if somebody want to give me $30 million to do one film, I'd be like, yo, I'm gonna do 7 or 8 films with that $30 million. That way, the people that I work with from the beginning If, if they do a great job, I just want to give them 10— I want to give them 7 new jobs.

So it's keeping everything lean still. Yeah, keeping expectations realistic. Because let's say you do a $1.7 million film and it only gross $500,000. It's a loss, but it ain't a crazy loss. If you do a $30 million film and then you only make $500K, they're gonna say you're done, you know.

So for me, I, I just believe in slow scale. I've always believed in that because I believe you just have— you give yourself more legroom to have, um, success. And you scale it out time over time, you get sharper, you get sharper. Let the stories come to you. You know, now you know what you're looking for. You can go out in the world and you can acquire projects that, that can fit within the budget that you're trying to make. And, um, and I think that's where the, that's where the market is going anyway. I just think that studios will feel a lot more comfortable with me if I just say, yo, give me $30 million. I'm gonna deliver you, you know, 15 projects. You know, I'm gonna deliver you 15 projects, and once I deliver you these 15 projects, we can do an evaluation of what these projects brought in, and then we can see what my next deal gonna be. My next deal might be $50 million or $60 million, then I deliver you 30 projects, you know. Um, but I would literally try to scale and use the, the absolutely unicorn type success to lock in a long-term deal. That I can, that I can literally lock in my next 15 projects.

Now, 15 projects, are you thinking ideally that's a project a year, or would you want to even try to like double that and have 2 projects a year?

Um, it just depends on the creative, you know. If I got 5 creatives ready and done, then I probably try to shoot twice, him, to me, twice a year. Try to probably shoot like April and in July or like February and June or something like that. But I try to shoot 2 films and, um, and build them out like that. That's what I would do. Okay, okay.

I mean, it doesn't have to take forever to make a film, right? From the casting, from the crew, to the location scouting, all that can be done in a couple of months. Some films have taken notoriously long times to get made. And I just, from what I've studied, it's more difficult the more the movie starts to cost. Even if you're a famous name, even if you're a big-time actor, the longer a film takes, the higher the ceiling is that's going to be harder to get over. Um, so it's like, as long as you can kind of keep it lean, and it doesn't have to be fast, but you got to be considerate of your time. You got to be considered your time. Um, I mean, for you, Ty, when we did the first Culture Playbook, we talked about like the $30K year, right? Like if an artist is able to build a budget for themselves that they can live off $30K for a year and then kind of use that to invest in their business and to have their business grow. If you were doing the same type of budgeting in 2026, for creative people, would you still say $30K is a good wage to live off of for a year, or has 2026 changed your opinion on what is possible to live off of?

I think, I think the city that you live in is going to be important. Um, I think at the age that you are, if you're between 18 $25,000, you might have to have a roommate depending on the city that you live in, if you don't have a kid or if you don't have a girl, anything of that nature. But I think it's still realistic. Um, think about like this: $75,000 puts you in the 25th percentile for a household, so half of that is $37,500. So 37.5 probably puts you at the 50% mark, that you're making 50% more than your everyday person. So I think if you get a roommate, a dependable roommate— let's say if there's two people making $60,000, $30,000 each, and you both go in on an apartment, um, you know, you might not be able to live in LA proper. You might have to live in the outskirts. You know, you might not be able to live in, you know, Philadelphia proper. You might have to live in the outskirts. Same thing with living in, you know, uh, Atlanta. You might gotta live on the outskirts, or, you know, Tampa, you might have to live on the outskirts. I think that at the end of the day, the way that the world of breaking as a talent, I think it's all is going to be based upon how can you balance out your private expenses that deals with your day-to-day lifestyle, your personal living, right? Because if me and you are 22 years old and we are, you know, aspiring filmmakers, right? And yeah, we decide that, you know, we're gonna go live in Tampa, right? And, and because we live in Tampa because Tampa has like this new unique seen a filmmaking that's like up and coming and we've learned about it. So we wanted to be close, we wanted to imprint ourselves in it. And we go and we say, yo, we're going to put our money together. We both got a regular job or we're in school and we got our financial aid or whatever the case might be. And we're able to put together, you know, a film because we got all of the equipment for whatever the reasons are, we were able to rent it. And we can do that film for, you know, $75 grand. You know that I don't have to be in Hollywood to do a film. I don't have to be in LA to do a film. Once I do the film, I can go and, you know, shop it to the film festivals. I can try to just go direct to the consumer and run ads to get people to be aware about my project, things of that nature. But overall, I'm just gonna figure out how to build my life around that $30,000. And pursue my dream. So yeah, I do think it's still realistic. There's a certain level of nuances that you got to think about, but overall I think that is a very realistic thing. You just have to be, uh, disciplined, obedience with what you spend, how you spend, why you spend.

Very true. And I guess I think about that is when you don't have— but you have enough budget, it can be considered cool. But when you have a lot, that money come in, how do you stay on that budget though? Like, now you don't need a roommate, now you don't need to live on the outskirts, but it is still a great way of thinking about like, okay, your movie did well, that filming that you shot for $75K, it made $2.5, maybe you made $3, and maybe you got some offers from studios on the table. You get a good deal for yourself, but it's not a lot of money, right? Like, it might be— let's say you make— let's say you get 2 Ms, right? Should you still be on the $30,000?

I don't think you have to manage your overhead until you feel like you are out of the coal mine, you know what I'm saying? Okay, not the gold mine. Coal mine, right? When you see it, talk to me, of people to work in the coal mine, how hazardous it is. It's black, they full with all these different, these chemicals that comes from working in all type of environments. It's unsafe. So like, you have to think about, how do I continue to budget even with success? Because success doesn't mean go and blow the budget. You know what I'm saying? Success doesn't mean go get the new car. Success just means that you have unlocked another layer of opportunity in your career for your walk of life. And you have to unlock about 10 of those doors to kind of really be, you know, away from that one foot in, one foot out.

Lifestyle.

I still operate like I'm one foot in, one foot out. Like, like, I have to think about my overhead, man. Like, I'm not, I'm not a musician, right? I'm not. I don't have, uh, 10 million people following me across all my social medias, and any day I wake up, I can just go and throw up some shows and sell some tickets or go put out an album. I gotta be very mindful about the money I spend, the people I'm in business with, because I'm one foot in, one foot out, man. It's gonna take— it's gonna take a bad year, you know, and bad mistakes, you know. That's why I stopped gambling, I stopped going to strip clubs, I stopped doing all that stuff, man. I started focusing on the Lord. That's the only way I'm gonna not stay— I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna stay out of the coal mine is just being locked in with God, man, because you have to know that it's ebbs and flows when it comes to success, when it comes to opportunities and money, man. So for me, I'm always, until further notice, try to be mindful of my overhead personally.

Nah, I feel you. I like, I like the coal mine. I like that image. Especially when I remember that the learning about the Gold Rush in school, how everybody was running to LA looking for gold, right? I always thought that was such a like visceral image in my mind because people believed it was there, but it wasn't there for everybody. But niggas was digging for it, you know what I'm saying? Um, that's how I look at the art sometimes. Like you see a rapper get a really big deal, now we all got microphones. Same thing with podcasts. Same thing with filmmaking. It's like once you see someone do it and strike gold, it's like they seem like a unicorn, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And not just that I could do it too, but I could do it big, you know what I'm saying? I'm not thinking about making a decent living, I'm thinking about living a wealthy life, you know? I see a Jay-Z, I'm thinking about billions. See a Cardi B, I'm thinking about hundreds of millions. I think I see a Ryan Coogler, I'm thinking about hundreds of millions. But man, so many people think about hundreds of millions and make hundreds, right?

Make thousands. That's why you should just think about making hundreds.

Make your first couple hundreds, make your first couple thousand.

You know, if you, if you, if you do a project and after you pay everybody, you profit $150,000 every time you do a project, that's it. That's a good, that's a good turnover. You know, that's a good turnover, man. If you can do $300 a year, you know.

I mean, I hear you. Like, our first film, our first feature documentary was $100K, but it costs completely, right? So part of our tour that we did, we did a 5-city tour, uh, 5 different, uh, theaters. We had post-interviews after the screenings. And we let people know that we were taking, um, you can like give to the film, right? We had a link, we had set something up, and you know, that was— that helped out a lot, right? Having people be able to donate into the movie and kind of help the funding of the film. And doing it on the back end instead of like, let's get the money first and then shoot the film. It was like, we already made the film, this is how you can help and support the funding, right? I think we— I think we broke even about sometime last year. Sometime last year we, we got out the red and entered the black, but it felt like a long journey trying to get to $100K. Like, that was the thing that I remember. I was like, dang, the first night we didn't make $100K, the second night we didn't make $100K, the third night we— you know what I'm saying? 2, 3 weeks later, we still having to post this link letting people know, hey, if you like this documentary, you can give and fund, you know, help us fund the rest of this film. So that's another way, you know, you can always crowdfund. But I always felt like crowdfunding— I want to be able to make the thing first and then ask the crowd to support it versus try to create, create the funding for the film, say, hey, if you'll pay us, we'll make this thing. I feel like there's so, so much changes in the midst of making something. Yeah, when it's done, I know what I spent on it. You know, that's how I feel about crowdfunding. Do you have an opinion on crowdfunding?

I think crowdfunding is a very unique and beneficial situation, um, and it might just be something that, you know, you have to really drop your ego, you have to drop, you know, your pride, you know, drop your chain, you have to really put your project first. And, you know, you are, you are, you are politicking. Right? You are, you know, going through those different elements of that level of thought process. So you have to go and you have to think about it. And when you're doing that, you have to almost be like, yo, man, if y'all down with me, I'm putting it together. I'm doing all these different things. And if you really believe in it, like, this is the trailer. And this is how we're going to reward you and you're going to make X amount of dollars off of this and try to find something that you feel like people are going to relate to, that people are going to buy into. But I think white people do it better than us as Black people because I think we, at times, we're too cool for school and, you know, we are too proud to beg, you know what I'm saying? And I'm trying to get out of being proud. You know, if it's something that, that the Lord put on my spirit that I think that we, we should be doing, if I can get supporters to buy in on it. And I do agree with you that I think it's easier to go into the conversation like, I already have $200,000, we already started filming, we just are raising money for marketing, right? Yes, yes. That's a fair, uh, strategy as well, you know.

It feels a little less shameful to me. I agree with you, Ty. It's a hard thing to go out and be like, help me, please help me, you know what I'm saying?

Please let me make my movie. I know it's, you know what I'm saying, kids starving in Africa, you know, all throughout the West Coast. But if you can just help me with my movie—

I know gas $7. Is, you know what I'm saying? And it's like, I understand what people be going through, so it's so hard for me to be like, hey, pick me first, or pick me second, or pick me third. Where I always felt like once you've been entertained by the thing we've made and you've been moved by it, you can move your hand to your pocket and pull out whatever you feel inclined to give. But when it's not real, you know what I'm saying, it's not tangible yet, I, I, I'm not really a crowdfundee. I don't really give money to niggas with invisible ideas.

I don't.

It's not something I'm proud of, but I don't.

So I'm not a crowdfundee, a funder, you know what I'm saying?

But you got a product, you already got the thing, you tell me it's $10, oh, okay. If I could take it home with me, I could put it on my computer, I can watch it and be like, dang, I spent a good $10, or I'd be upset I spent $10. At least it's real. Before it's real, I'm a hard one to convince if it's not real, you know what I'm saying?

So the film that I, the film that I share with you, um, I can't wait. Yeah, I'm gonna raise, I'm gonna raise funds for it, but I'm like, money up to be able to shoot, but I'm gonna raise funds for it. I'm gonna go crowdfund and, and see what I get from it. I think it's a story that people will be interested in wanting to hear more of.

Now hold on, did you, did you decide that before this conversation?

Yeah, that was my, that was my initial strategy when I started writing it.

But why?

Because I think it's so relevant and I think it's so known that people believe in it already. So it's not like I'm trying to sell them something that they don't It's like, oh, I would love to see that. I've never even thought about it like that. I don't have that for any of the other projects that I'm, that I'm building, but for this one specifically, I have a crowdfunding strategy.

I'm not mad at that because even when you told it to me, I was kind of moved in the same way. I'm saving the script for my flight home, so I'm gonna read it when I head back to Atlanta. But it's interesting, I'm not gonna spoil Ty's story, But you know how current day they say that having IP helps, right? Like if you got an IP, something that's already well known. Ty got some real old IP for this film. There's some old— oh, it's old. He went back in the day and grabbed this thing. So he kind of right though. People gonna know what it is. It's like he's not gonna have to explain something that's new to people, but he does have a new spin on something that I've never heard people's perspective on it in that way. So immediately I was intrigued by it. And I, I didn't know you thought about crowdfunding though. We didn't have that conversation.

Yeah, yeah, because I saw— because with crowdfunding, I can put up— let's say if I'm gonna put up like $750,000 of my own money, you know, and I'm trying to raise $3 million, right? And the $3 million really is to probably put another $25,000, $250,000, $300,000 into the film, but the rest of it is just marketing, straight up and down marketing. I'm going super hard with digital. Yeah, I'm going to go to the different pitching and stuff like that, but I'm going to go super hard with digital ads and campaigns and billboards and theater releases with this one.

Super hard. I got, I got one more point before I let you go. Back in the day, I did not understand when they say our artists put up their own money for projects. It never made no sense to me, right? They were like, all right, this was the budget, but then I had to spend the extra $300K out of my own pocket. Ty, your experience, is that pretty common for artists to say, I'll go in my own pocket for this?

If artists got the money, they'll do it. The reason why it's not as common, because artists be broke. But like, true artists, bro, they don't— they want to get their art done. They will spend— they will spend that money and go live in their car. Yeah, true artists. We're not talking about these ex-drug dealers turned artists that's really hustlers. We're talking about artists that's like Bro will go broke trying to get this art out. It's not as common because they ain't got that much— it ain't common for them to have money, because if they had money, they wouldn't need people like me around trying to help them find money.

You real? That's real, that's real. But I do appreciate the sentiment that, like, if you feel like you're a true artist, you might have to risk sleeping in your car for an idea. Because it's hard to make things, it's hard to have the money for things, and when you get that payback, it's sweet, but it might take a minute. So, you know, the risk you decide to take, um, you know what I'm saying? So the risk you decide to take is very important. Also, your budgeting is very important. Sometimes I think when I grew up, artists like, they didn't care about their budgets. It just felt like money wasn't real to them at all. It's just like, I care about my art. Man, you look at people's history, you get into the history of art, but if you ain't budgeting, you ain't got— you ain't gonna have no canvas, you ain't gonna have no paint, you know what I'm saying? Like, you gotta, you gotta figure that shit out. But, um, that was another episode of FIM Show. That's Ty, I'm Yo. Yeah, leave us a comment, tell us how you feel about the convo, tell us how you feel about crowdfunding and how you feel about the way you raise money to make your art. If you are an artist and you raise money to make your art, tell us how you go about it, and we will see y'all next time.

Peace.