In this FYM episode, host Yo (Speaker A) and music manager Worldwide Ty discuss the structure and evolution of their "Culture Playbook" series, outlining four chronological volumes that map Ty’s growth from a young manager (2015‑2017) to a scaling entrepreneur (2018‑2020) and beyond. They dive deep into the oral history of the Grammy‑nominated single "Crew" (GoldLink, Shy Glizzy, Brent Faiyaz), recounting how Ty first discovered Brent via Forte’s SoundCloud followers, the lengthy pursuit of GoldLink, and the serendipitous Australian trip that cemented the collaboration. The conversation moves to Brent’s 2018‑2020 tour logistics, the role of industry buzz versus fan‑driven momentum, and how early playlist placement on Spotify pre‑TikTok differed from today’s discovery landscape. Ty emphasizes three enduring pathways for emerging artists: strategic collaborations, TikTok virality, and sync placements, offering practical advice on leveraging teams and data. The episode closes with promotional details for the upcoming Culture Playbook Volume 2 (pre‑order now, release March 24) and FYM Season 4 launch on March 11, urging listeners to subscribe and share.
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And we're back with another episode of FYM with Ty and Yo. That's my man Ty. Yo, if y'all don't know by now, FYM is a series about wellness. We talk about business, we talk about entrepreneurship, we talk about music, but at the root of it, FYM is to help you get to this fuck you money, okay? And you know how we get to this fuck you money, Ty? By sharing information. And what way do we share information, Ty? Tell the people, how do yo and Ty come together to share information?
Through books.
Through books, you know what I'm saying?
Literature, ladies and gentlemen.
You don't need a charger, you can just take it with you. And, you know, me and Ty got together, we did the first volume of The Culture Playbook, which is about, you know, Ty's journey into not just the music business but into being an entrepreneur and the lessons he's learned from, you know, uh, Ty, you kind of run it from— yeah, explain to people how you kind of decided the timeline of The Culture Playbook and how each volume is a specific time period in your life?
Um, I think it's because when I'm thinking about the volumes, it's really the gears that was changing, right? So Volume 1, feel like you was in one particular volume— I mean, gear in that business and in that career that you're building. Because it was multiple careers being built. It was my career as a young manager, but then Brent's career as an artist. And then Volume 2, it's like, it's like these gears shifted. That wasn't, you know, a cultural thing anymore. It became more of a commerce thing. And so first volume was about like, I'm not doing this, I'm not gonna get cheated out of my, my, my, my business, I'm I'm gonna be curious, I'm gonna makeshift these different things, I'm gonna talk about discipline, I'm gonna talk about comparisons. But all of that, it was like speculatory to a certain degree. Volume 2, money started happening, you know what I'm saying? To be able to like justify and move certain things, like bigger features started happening. So your business starts to scale. So that's kind of like how I've been gauging these volumes. So every volume, there's a, a growth that happens from the business perspective.
Now tell people, volume 1 is what year?
Volume 1 is basically 2026— I mean, 2016 up to the end of 2017. Really like late 2015 up to the end of 2017 going into 2018.
And Volume 2 starts where?
Volume 2 starts early 2018 all the way up until when COVID hits, 2020, which is 20— February, or really March 2020, right? Change of the century.
Change of Extinction, you're right. And that's volume 3, um, will take you from COVID into a little bit further. And volume 4 concludes this year. Is this the ending year? You don't know? It's a secret, it's a surprise. That's amazing.
Years to get to volume 2.
So yeah, we supposed to have a book first season. But you know, like the artists that sometimes get behind on their album release dates, they got a little pushback, you know what I'm saying? Gotta get back in the lab, gotta cut some new records. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we live some life. But I, I'm excited to get Volume 2 to people and then also follow that up with Volume 3 in a lot closer of a timeline. Um, but Ty, I wanted to make a point about Volume 2 which we start a little differently than Volume 1. Discipline is always the first chapter of your business, but we felt it was important to give people some background on a very special record called Crew. Crew is a record that is GoldLink, Shy Glizzy, and Britt Faiyaz. Now, I want to try to give his version of the oral history of Crew because Crew became a Grammy-nominated single And the book kind of starts off Grammy night before Brent's tour. So I thought it was important for us to know how Crew got made. So Ty, you know, without giving it all away, give me a little insight on where you were at the time that you and Brent got together and you started to kind of envision working with someone like GoldLink.
Uh, it was interesting because Uh, I've never told this part of this story before. Before working with Brent, I was working with this artist named Forte Bowie. So me and my man Freeze was managing Forte. Freeze was actually a fan of Gold Link, and this had to be 2011, 2012. And Gold Link had came to A3C, and so Freeze had connected with the manager and was like, yo, um, man, I'm really digging what you're doing, boom boom boom, and I got this artist I'm working with. So showed Gold Link some of Forte music. Gold Link was like, yo, I'm rocking with this, like, let's see if we can do something. And I'm paraphrasing because Freeze was giving me this dialogue. So what ended up happening was Forte wanted to charge GoldLink for the feature, and he was like, what? I'm not trying to pay for no feature. And then after that, GoldLink started to ascend, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. And so from that experience, I— that's how I learned about GoldLink. So I knew about GoldLink before I even met Brent.
Wow.
So now fast forward, I got— I don't— found Britt online, right, through Forte. The way I found Britt, because as a manager coming up, I didn't have a lot of relationships and contacts, so what I would do is I would go through my clients' followers on Twitter and SoundCloud and just see if it's a journalist that I could identify. So I was going through Forte's SoundCloud and I saw a name that stood out to me. It was like Brent Faiyaz, and I was like, that's interesting. So I clicked on it, then I listened to the music. I'm like, yo, this is hard. So that's how I even found Brent, through—
that's interesting—
going through Forte's, you know, followers, right? Boom. Fast forward, now I'm working with— now I'm working with Brent, but I haven't done paperwork with Brent, right? I am hunting down Gold Link because at this point he's getting hotter, and both of them was from the DMV area. I'm like, yo, we gotta work with Gold Link. So I'm hunting him down, I'm chasing Henny. I even presented Henny a partnership to work with me and, and Brent. Right? And 3 different people that I presented this partnership basically was just like either said no or they literally just didn't respond to me, right? I chased Henny for about all of 2014, like the back half of 2014, all of 2015, to try to get Brent and Gold Link in the same room. So when Henny was responding to me, Gold Link was moving, he was traveling internationally doing shows, so we never could get in the same room. The catalyst for us actually being able to get in the same room, two things happened. First, when we signed with Post on the publishing side, Brent— Gold Link was signed to Post as well. And then us working with, um, I, I knew Tunji. I knew Tunji, and I can't remember— oh, I met Tunji long time ago, which is another story. But I met Tunji, and me and Tunji had already been in connection. And when Tunji signed Goldie to RCA, I was like, bet, like, I can use, you know, Tunji. So what ends up happening, Brent signs to Pulse. Goldinger signed the Pulse, but he signed the RCA, and Tungis is A&R over there who signed him. And then that's when they was able to get in the room. So literally, I chased— I chased him for a year and a half to get them in the room. And then they got in the room. Then even when they got in the room, the song was supposed to come out that summer, but whatever happened, Henny was like, yo, I'm just trying to hurry the record out. So I was like, man, I'm gonna make it so easy on the paperwork side to get this record out because I want the record label to be pushing it. And so it did come out that summer. And if anybody really remember, Gold Link put out a single first off his album with Jasmine Sullivan, Meditation. That was the first single off the album. And then like, I don't know what happened, like, uh, maybe like a week later, two weeks later, Crew came out, and then who came out? All of them records came out like late November, and then Crew came out early, like mid-December. In December, yeah. Using— because they were like, I just put this single out, which is late November, early December, and then I just followed right back up with Crew. Um, and I don't remember why the label did it, but when they did it, it started moving.. And then 2 weeks later, we're all in Australia together just hanging out. Not even me and Brent wasn't doing no shows because nobody knew who Brent was from that perspective, and the song had just came out. We just so happened to be going to Australia on some random— I was going to meet my aunt for the first time, and I asked Brent, yo, you want to come? Because I had been traveling by myself for so long working at Delta. He was like Yeah, I'm trying to come. So we end up in— we end up in Sydney, Australia at a nightclub where, where, uh, Denzel Curry was performing. And me, Henny, Karl Cherry, Brent, Gold Link, um, um Kaz, Mark, and then Dizzee R. Curry. All of us was there. We got a photo floating around Instagram somewhere.
I need to— I need to see that.
Yeah, right. I'll find a photo and share it with you. But the truth of the matter is it was just random that Karl Cherry was there. This first time I met Karl Cherry, I knew of him, but that's first time we met. But he was in town for some Chance the Rapper stuff. Goldie was in town because he had a festival. Dizzee R. Curry was in town because he was actually working. Me and Brent was the only stragglers that was there with no work, right? And so we spent time in Sydney and we spent time in Melbourne. And so that was basically the first month that Crew came out.
I got two questions. Did you know Crew was going to be what it was, what it ended up being? Like, when you heard the record, did you believe like, dang, this is going to be life-changing?
No, I didn't know what it was gonna be. I just knew I wanted to make sure they would put some money behind something that had Brim on it. That's what I did though. I'm like, hey man, we ain't got the money, we don't want to sign to y'all, but man, give them a feature, something so they can put some market behind it and we can benefit from it too, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. I didn't know that it was going to be— I think that record is like 14, 15 times platinum at this, at this point today, which is— yeah, yeah, it's like December would be the 10-year anniversary of Gold. You gotta realize this, September will be the 10-year anniversary for AM Paradox. October is be the 10-year anniversary for Too Fast. And through, uh, December anniversary for Crew.
Jesus, does it feel like it's been that long?
Nah, man, it really don't. I was just texting Brent about this, about AM Paradox, and I was like, yo, make sure you tell your team, like Hey, this is something we should kind of like put some energy around since I got it out now. And now it's a 10-year anniversary, you know what I'm saying, of like— that was a project that like kind of started his career, you know what I'm saying? Really all of our careers that was working around it, you know what I mean?
And it's so good. It's like a really good project in terms of just like introducing a new voice and a new songwriting. I remember just hearing it and kind of being surprised, like, who is this kid? Right. And, um, you, you have a really interesting story about what happened in Sydney because you end up losing Brent, right? Because he didn't have a phone. Yeah, contact you with.
So, so for the, for the record, if anybody is feeling any type of way about bro not responding to your phone calls and not calling you, he's been terrible with phones since. So he had this Simply Mobile plan that don't work out of the country, right? Not simply mobile, probably. I think, I think T-Mobile bought them. But so when we went out of the country, he didn't have no service, right? If he didn't have Wi-Fi, he wasn't able to talk to nobody. So we get to Sydney, mind you, flew over standby buddy pass. That's how we still flew over. So we get to Sydney, we kicking in Sydney, hang out with Golden. Boom, boom. Like, yo, we're gonna go to Melbourne. Because I had a homie, um, named Jade that stayed in Melbourne. I said, yo, we're gonna go to Melbourne. Then we got connected with these promoters. So we go over, we get ready. I end up flying standby, and something happened where I get bumped off of the flight. And Brent, actually, I had bought him an actual flight, but I got bumped off of the flight because I was flying standby. So he ends up getting to Melbourne first, but he didn't have no phone. Right? So I'm just like, I don't even know how to get in contact with this nigga, man. So I get there like an hour late, an hour later, and he's like, yo, these chicks picked me up, we gonna meet, I'll meet you at the Airbnb. Because we're staying in the Airbnb. And I was like, what, bruh? I get to the Airbnb or the hotel, I can't remember which one it was first, and like this little red convertible pulls up with like him, 2, 3 girls, right? And they're like fans that knew about him already because he had music out, but he wasn't like big. So I'm like, bro, what is going on? What? Like, and so I'm like, they're like, you're gonna go here. I'm like, oh my God, I have to go with him. If I lose this boy, his mama gonna kill me. So I get in the— I get in the back seat in this little red like convertible. He's in the middle, no seat belt, and this girl is flying like a bat out of the bottomless pit, you hear me? Like flying. I'm in the back like, oh my God, I got my seat belt on. I'm not trying to die in Malibu. This is not cool. And mind you, these weren't even white women. These is like Black women. They're like— it was like either, um, Ethiopian or they was like African, but they like— they wasn't— they It wasn't white women. Like, like, Australia got a lot of white.
Yes.
And so, but yeah, that's the story about how I lost him. But end up, I don't know how to this day how he got in contact with random fans that, that picked him up. I think he was talking to him through Instagram, uh, while we was over there. Then when he got to the airport, had some Wi-Fi, I got to get to them DMs to get, to get, to get some, uh, some transportation, you know what I mean?
Transportation, right, right. I mean, I just like that story because you guys at this point did not know what the record was going to be, but you already have fans that are like down to pick you up from the airport and drive you around. Like, it's almost like you, you kind of saw that there was something about to happen.
Yeah, like the thing about— see, me, I love developing things. If you know me long enough, like, I just like development. And when it's in the form of developing an artist, I always encourage artists to like go to another country, like look at what you are doing, look at your data. We didn't really look at data, we just literally went to Australia on some like— but we had like buddy pass. That buddy pass I got for Brent cost $99. We flew first class from LA to Sydney, Australia. These are like $15,000 tickets apiece. We didn't think first class, watching movies, like, like literally. So we didn't really look at data like, oh, we're gonna go there and boom boom boom. But today with artists, when I'm thinking about this development, I'm like, yo, you've been putting out music, let's look at where your fans are at and plan a vacation there. Plan somewhere where you can go kick it, maybe you might do some work, then post on your social that, hey, I'm in such and such, like, tap in to see But fans, because me, I'm a firm believer, if it's safe, like Sydney, Australia is safe. Yeah, right. So if me, you go to Sydney and somebody like, yo, Maverick, the playbook, like, I'm trying to go do lunch, I'm gonna go do lunch with him, right? Right, right. Same thing with artists. Artists should go do that. If you go to another country and it's a safe country, I ain't talking about Kingston, Jamaica, you know what I'm saying? I'm talking about places like Switzerland, you You know what I'm saying? Or like, you know, Australia. Like, you can just articulate— this sounds safe. This sounds safe. Iceland, Greenland— these sound like safe places, right? Singapore. See, S stands for safe. Singapore. You know, you go to these places as an artist, male or female, and then you tap in to see what fans you might have there. And then you go hang out, you go to the studio with them. Who's in Australia, man? Who's in the studio? We went up to the studio where Goldie was working at, and that's the first time that I've seen like the impact of Brent's music, because a woman that was in there, she just started crying. She was playing all these new records and she just started crying. It was like, this is kind of crazy. But bro, when I tell you, we had a ball in Australia. We stayed in like 3 different Airbnbs. We stayed in a hostel on the beach. In, in, uh, I think in Sydney. Yeah, in Sydney on the beach, uh, one of the popular like beaches there where they got all the sharks and stuff.
But that was safe.
Yeah, but all of these different things, and what I have seen to be true over the last past 12 years is that if you're an artist in the US and you can identify that you got fans in other places and you can go there and start interacting with those fans Every single one of those individuals have started to kind of get traction because I don't know if it's something mentally, it makes it realer for them.
Yeah, yeah.
They go out of the country, they're like, wait a minute, how do you even know about my music, bro? And it, and it gives a certain type of charge and, and it, it unites you in a certain way.
That's real. I think, I think music sometimes as an artist you can be seen as real localized. Yeah, like the more local you appear, the less it seems like you have potential to be bigger. But if someone knows you from another country, it's like, yo, you already a big deal. Like, you know what I'm saying? It's, it's the reach that feels big. Yeah, so that's why I think you guys being in Sydney and already seeing fans, like, it kind of foreshadows that there's an attraction there to people. And, you know, it's like you saw it firsthand. I also remember you telling me that that was the first time Brent and Goldie kind of got to hang out and how that allowed them to kind of build a chemistry by the time it's time to shoot the music video. Yeah, that was—
yep, yep.
It's just crazy how your random trip ended up being beneficial on a lot of different levels.
But we didn't plan— we didn't know that none of them was going to be out there. I literally was going out there to meet my aunt that I never met before.
Oh my God, was that a nice— like, did you have a nice time being there?
It was, it was, it was dope. It was interesting. So because we landed on Christmas there, and so we went straight back to their house and like went and ate, went and ate dinner, like Christmas dinner, just kick it, you know. That was cool, you know what I'm saying? It was like one of those things where it was a pit stop. It justified going over there because like, okay, got one person I know. Then from there we just freestyling, and then Um, I got connected by this one woman named Blue. Paperboy Fabe connected with this woman named Blue, who she lived there, so she was showing us around, um, different places and stuff like that. So it was just a really great overall experience, you know, first time being in Australia for sure.
Super fire. Uh, I want to add that Crew gets nominated for a Grammy.
Yep.
How'd you find that out?
Um, I'm pretty sure somebody text me or text Brent or something like that. I, I ain't really see it online like that after the fact.
Now, at that point, were you already routing the tour for Brent?
Yeah, we had, we had just started on riding the tour, and, um, we routed the tour to start in Chicago I think that's just was the availability of everything. But then the, the, um, Grammys being in New York that year, it just, it ended up just working out.
Well, I don't want to give it all away, but that's a, you know, a portion of how the playbook starts. You learn about the, the making of Crew. You learn about how, you know, Grammy night is going to lead into Brent starting his tour. And then, you know, the lessons Ty learned as a manager preparing for, you know, y'all end up doing how many days dates on that tour, man?
First leg of the tour, we did, uh, like 21. And we did 4 dates in Europe. We did London, Paris— now we did 2 London dates, Paris, and Berlin. And then we took a slight break, then we came back doing like July, August, and we did, um, like 15 more dates in like the C markets. So like San Antonio, you know, Charlotte, like, like smaller, small, smaller venues with smaller markets.
I guess at the time Brent only had, I guess, you know, Cruze out, but he didn't have like a really big album or anything out. So what made you guys decide to tour?
Um, well, I take that back. When, when we had came out and started touring in 2018, Crew was already like hot on the radio doing all these different things. Sunder was hot. We had already went on a Sunder tour. We had did 11 dates as the band, and we was telling everybody no. We're telling everybody no. So we announced Brent's solo tour he had only been on the road with Thunder about 2 years. So, you know, we dropped A.M. Paradise September 20th, 2016, and then we end up going on the road January 2018, right? So that's 6— all of, you know, 4 months in 2016 all of 2017, whereas nothing was— music was coming out, you know, we dropped, uh, the debut album, Son to Son got dropped. So we had 2 Faz whole projects out, A.M. Paradox, the whole debut album, and Crew. And we had like 1 or 2 other features, like some DJ remixes and stuff like that. That all was out before we went on road in 2018.
That's a lot of— that's way more music than I had kind of remembered. But seeing it all together like that, the momentum is there for you guys to like have fans. I remember seeing the Sonder flyer for— I think you guys— I don't know if you had Atlanta date, right, for Sonder?
Yep, for the tour.
I think I saw it the day after the show and we're being just mad because I was just like, man, That EP was so good, and at the time I don't think people kind of recognized Brent as the lead singer versus this, just this band sings amazing. Um, and then to have Brent follow up with his solo material, I always thought that was really, really genius because it just felt like, man, this kid has all this music.
Yeah, and then the thing about that Atlanta show, the article you and I did happened after we got off the road with Thunder. Yep. But then that was another moment. Yeah, like from a viral perspective to learn. Yeah, especially from a— in time, inside of the music industry perspective. So any fans that was fans also became fans inside of the business that was coming. I mean, we had 100 people that work in the music business that came to shows, from editors to DJs to other A&Rs that was coming to the shows.
For sure. That was like, to me, how they talk about like the music business back in the day where you got like a young hot artist and everyone shows up to see this new act. It's like everyone has to be there. The journalist got to be there, the A&R has got to be there. And you know, I feel like— I don't know if we get that as often now with new acts because you can be viral on TikTok and not necessarily have like the team around you to facilitate that type of experience. So, you know, I remember that about Brent's rise, where it felt like there was a lot of attention in industry circles, but also like actual fans that didn't really care about working in the music business. They just like the music. So that's why I always felt like his trajectory was a little different than just someone that's just like hot in the industry but ain't got no outside fans. Or you got all these fans but no one knows you inside.
It's like that perfect Yeah, you know, you know, it definitely was, it definitely was a moment for sure. I think those moments can still happen. Like you said, you just gotta have the right team around you to know how to scale and to know how to like make those moments matter, you know, because it has to be somebody that's seeing around the corner to be like, yo, if we do this, it's gonna be way more impactful. If we wait, it's going to be way more impactful. If we look at it this way, it's going to be way more impactful. And I just think that, you know, it was easier for us to do that because, you know, the momentum was going, money was starting to be made, you know, and we was able to like really get out and get in front of the fans. And we just had a lot of the DSP support. This was early. This is when getting placed on New Music Friday was impactful. Yeah, yeah. Getting placed on playlists was impactful. That was before TikTok. Um, because TikTok really started to be impactful, uh, January 2016 with, uh, Panda. That you can call it. Yeah, and it started to transition. But before then, Spotify was a discovery tool. People discover music on Spotify through playlists. Today it's just purely marketing. People are not really discovering music on Spotify.
Man, I don't want to hold you too much longer, but I do want to ask you, where is— how is music being discovered today, and how should artists think about strategy with getting their music discovered?
Music is being discovered through TikTok. I think the last data we've seen, 87% of the Hot 100 was songs that went viral on TikTok first. Uh, music is being discovered through syncs, right? So, and then music is being discovered through collaboration, right? Obviously there's other ways that music is discovered, but it going viral on TikTok or being exposed through TikTok, it being synced on really great show, movie, commercial that, that does well, and then your collaboration with artists. Artists want to bring you on the road with them. If artists want to jump on your remix, your song, because they love it, that's another way for you to actually get discovered.
Fire. But do you say, if you're an emerging artist, what do you think is the most likely path for you to kind of get traction earlier? Should you be collaborating? Should you be pitching for sync? Like, where do you think, like, step one Collaborating.
Yeah, collaborating and using socials to try to, try to trigger something online. And then if you have a team that's savvy enough, start finding ways to pitch for sync. You know, there's other ways that people can discover your music, but those 3 ways I have seen that they have worked consistently for a decade plus. It doesn't matter what— it don't matter what format changes, it don't matter what— none of that, you know what I'm saying?
All right, well, I don't want to give away all the gems because we got a book to sell, but this is just a taste of what you can find in The Culture Playbook Volume 2. We got The Culture Playbook out right now, you know what I'm saying? So first volume, if you don't got it, but Volume 2 is— Ty, what's our release date? What day will you be able to— because you can do pre-orders now, but like our official book is out day is—
right, so we're going— you can pre-order it today. The drop is officially coming March 24th, we launching the first official episode for season 4 of F You Money on March 11th. So pre-orders out already. Now you can go to the website, you can go to the link, you can click under our link here on the, on the video for YouTube, and then we're gonna announce our— we're gonna launch the official, um, 11th, March 11th.
We might have a guest, we might not, who knows, you know what I'm saying? But tune in because we're gonna keep giving more game, we're gonna keep informing you guys on ways you can help improve your careers and your lives. And you know what I'm saying, tap in with the boys, man. Subscribe, like, share with somebody that need to know what we talking about, and we'll see you guys next time. FYI, peace.
