Welcome, dear listeners, to a riveting conversation with DJ Pain 1 Hold your breath as we journey through his transformation from an aspiring rapper to a multi-platinum record producer, as he recalls breaking into the music industry and the battles he had to fight to stay afloat. Be prepared to be amused and enlightened by his stories of collaborations with Ludacris, Rick Ross, G Herbo and the significant influence of Soulja Boy on the music business.
Ever wondered how fame can transform you into an Imposter? DJ pain 1 has experienced it first hand. He candidly discusses the struggle of dealing with the pressures of success and the uncomfortable feeling of people using him. He also emphasizes on the crucial role of relationships in the music industry. Hang on as our chat takes unexpected turns from him being an interviewee to an interviewer, sharing the invaluable lessons he learned through his journey.
We're bringing you a unique perspective on the role of the internet and authenticity in music business. Navigate through the digital age with us as we explore how artists can thrive. DJ Pain 1 shares his college experiences and how they prepared him for the challenges ahead. We're wrapping up the episode by redefining success and failure, debunking the myth that success is solely about financial gain. Brace yourself for an episode packed with valuable lessons and intriguing stories from DJ Pain 1 music journey.
Welcome, dear listeners, to a riveting conversation with DJ Pain 1 Hold your breath as we journey through his transformation from an aspiring rapper to a multi-platinum record producer, as he recalls breaking into the music industry and the battles he had to fight to stay afloat. Be prepared to be amused and enlightened by his stories of collaborations with Ludacris, Rick Ross, G Herbo and the significant influence of Soulja Boy on the music business.
Ever wondered how fame can transform you into an Imposter? DJ pain 1 has experienced it first hand. He candidly discusses the struggle of dealing with the pressures of success and the uncomfortable feeling of people using him. He also emphasizes on the crucial role of relationships in the music industry. Hang on as our chat takes unexpected turns from him being an interviewee to an interviewer, sharing the invaluable lessons he learned through his journey.
We're bringing you a unique perspective on the role of the internet and authenticity in music business. Navigate through the digital age with us as we explore how artists can thrive. DJ Pain 1 shares his college experiences and how they prepared him for the challenges ahead. We're wrapping up the episode by redefining success and failure, debunking the myth that success is solely about financial gain. Brace yourself for an episode packed with valuable lessons and intriguing stories from DJ Pain 1 music journey.
What's up everybody. This is your host D-Star here with.
Speaker 2:DJ Payne one.
Speaker 1:DJ Payne one platinum, multi platinum now Multi platinum how many platinum plots you got now?
Speaker 2:Just two, but you said that super, not that put me, that puts me into the, into the multi platinum.
Speaker 1:Right, but you said that to not. Shall I just to want more.
Speaker 2:I don't know what you want. It is very humble.
Speaker 1:He's very humble. Ok, so for the people that don't know, you kind of give us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:I'm a record producer, dj, also educator in the music business space other spaces as well but I've been doing this for a while, I probably say professionally, since 2008. That was, that was the breaking point for me. I was in school, I had three jobs at the time and then suddenly number one record kind of happened. But prior to that I had been making music for a good decade.
Speaker 1:So what you mean by making music? You mean by, like, making your own beats, making my own beats.
Speaker 2:I was wrapping a little bit at the beginning. Yeah, you know trying to learn how to engineer playing shows, DJing, all that.
Speaker 1:Right. So what? Which one did you fall in love with first?
Speaker 2:Probably probably rapping, I'm not going to lie, yeah.
Speaker 1:Still got bars no.
Speaker 2:That's why I stopped. You never did have bars? No, I don't think so. But yeah, you know like that necessitated having production, because it was. You know it was not going to say what year it was, but it was. I was in high school, middle school, going into high school, so it wasn't like it is now. We just go online and you got a million beats at your fingertips, so I had to figure out. You need to know somebody who made beats right, or you became that person, so I became that person.
Speaker 1:All right, we need beats. Somebody got to learn how to make beats, and you were the guy.
Speaker 2:I took that upon myself, and then I think that begets more learning, because a once you know how to make beats, well, now you got to figure out how to at least track Right, and you learn that. Ok, I may as well just try to learn how to mix.
Speaker 1:So the people that don't know what tracking is, break that down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, running the session as an engineer, but in the recording capacity, and then you move on to mixing. You know, making the recording sound good. And then well, hey, we got to put the music out, so now you have to learn the business to an extent distribution and Marketing, marketing and graphic design, because we're going to do those. And then you got to learn social media, because that was brand new. Yeah, it was new around that time. You know, that was, I remember, when it was revolutionary, the stuff Soulja Boy was doing right With MySpace.
Speaker 1:it was with MySpace whole game and I'm so shout out to Soulja Boy and Kazan and all those other file sharing services.
Speaker 2:He was kind of tricking people but because he was the first one to do it, it was the blueprint. It works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was the first one that actually made it work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so anytime there are all these memes or it's like Soulja Boy is the first rapper to do that, I'm like he kind of was yeah.
Speaker 1:And then he pulled up the files like oh this is. You know what I mean. This is irrespectable. I was the first one to have an iPhone. I was the first rapper to have an iPhone.
Speaker 2:And somehow, somehow things like that actually are accurate. I don't know how he does it, but yeah, he's a pretty interesting figure in the music business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's crazy because it seems like he's lying but he's not. Yeah, the truth.
Speaker 2:No, I never. You know. He has his moments where I have to shake my head. He's an influential figure. He influenced a lot. I mean bedroom recordings into viral hits.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I would argue that was one of the first viral hits.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And then after that.
Speaker 2:Now it's just the norm.
Speaker 1:You know there's not First ringtone hit. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, and that was revolutionary at the time. Ringtones were so novel. Now people don't even use them. But we go into the streaming area where a viral hit is just the norm. The norm, that's what you, that's, that's the minimum for success. You got to get the viral hit.
Speaker 1:So for the people that really just not familiar with your catalog, can you break down your catalog a little bit first?
Speaker 2:2008,. That was when I referred to as my break. That was a produced don't do it for Young GZ. And then from then on I just kind of had a cool run. We did another record, me and DJ Cass for GZ and USDA call CTE or nothing. Oh, I did Love this city for meat mill. Everything just kind of blends into some jumping all this is not in chronological order.
Speaker 2:Right, right, little bitty and Kevin Gates. We are strong. G Herbo, common Hunters. Most recently, the new platinum plaque is for the push ice, the album. But we did a gold single off the album, me Go Hayes and JD Fang. We did a record called switch it up, also featuring G Herbo. So a couple of records with him, let's not forget about I-20. Whole lot of, but that's like that's a friend you know. So we did a million together, lots of stuff with 20, oh, and then Ludacris, of course.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Ludacris and Rick Ross actually on a song called Money Off Ludiversel. The game featuring Jada Kiss Styles P AR-16, off of Jesus Pease, called Last Supper Race Rember. Grow it Up, mike Willemars.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of stuff it's a lot, I know, kind of trying to try to remember man.
Speaker 2:A public enemy. That was amazing. We worked on a oh my god. We worked on a Nas record, oh wow. Shout out to Static Select. Yeah, he brought us in Because we had been creating samples for him for a while. Me and my team, vintage Vandals, shout out to Dream Life. Who?
Speaker 1:we were talking about earlier, right.
Speaker 2:We, yeah, we got brought in and it was amazing because it was like all my friends, we had a memory from out here, stack, trace from out here, Dream Life.
Speaker 1:I like memory, yeah His work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's dope. And then Tina G, who's also from out here. She was singing. Gary Clark Jr was on the record. I think it was the first time Nas and Joey Badass were on the same record. So, I played some keys and some bass and stuff on it and it just became this epic project. And then we then Dream Life and I co-produced with Static Head High off of Joey Badass's last album.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a crazy catalog. So kind of tell us about the journey a little bit, Like did it kind of feel like it was overnight when you first got that first number one, or did it feel like it was a long time coming, or did it when it first hit there, was it like too fast or like how did you feel?
Speaker 2:All of the above? Oh, okay, I remember I was working one of my jobs. I worked on campus for a pre-college program because I studied to become a teacher. So I was working with kids and I'm sitting at my desk, my supervisors in the office with me, but we're the only two people there my manager at the time, Brendan, from Toronto. I get a call from a Canadian number and he's like you're on the GZ album and my brain just wasn't processing what he was saying because I'm like there's no way he said that right, Because I felt like at the time I had no business being on an album that big.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I mean I want like part of me. This is kind of the whole imposter syndrome thing with a lot of us artists, because we, on the one hand, we believe with all our hearts that this is what we were meant to do, but then, when it happens, we're like wait a minute, is this really, are we really deserving of this? So that I couldn't process what he was saying. I had to make. I made him repeat it like three times and then I walked out of the room. I was like say that one more time. And then I came back into the room and I told my supervisor, who was a musician, I was excited. He got kind of excited for me too.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that was the start and I remember I thought everything was going to change overnight. After that I'm like I got a number one record. This is amazing. I can walk into anywhere and I'm just you know, I'm the man, not even that just like opportunities are just going to come to me now. And realistically, that just wasn't how it was. I still had to seek out the opportunities. I had a great entry point, you know, so I could go to labels and be like I did this off the Gs. Okay, cool, yeah, here's my number. But it wasn't like I became the go to producer in the business. I still had to work a lot. I had a lot of room left to develop as a producer.
Speaker 1:So did the people stop asking you to do things for free, or? That has never stopped.
Speaker 2:No, someone has, as anytime I checked my phone, someone's asking me for something for free. So that's just how it is. It comes with the territory.
Speaker 1:How does that make you feel?
Speaker 2:I kind of ignore it. What bothers me is when I was having a tough week last week. Emotionally it wasn't a bad week, I'm not going to call it a bad week, it was a great week. Everything is great in my life. But sometimes, you know, you have these moments where, or these periods where you're reflecting on something and I don't know I was feeling particularly lonely or vulnerable or something that week.
Speaker 1:I was just getting all this as we all go through sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think we just try to hide it and that's another topic. But I remember someone reached out to like hey, I'm a big fan. Can you listen to my music, check out my beats and you know, get them places. I'm trying to go, I'm trying to get big placements.
Speaker 2:I'm just like you're just trying to use me. And I get this all the time and you know a lot of people are critical when I speak on this because they're like, I'd love to be in your position. It's like, yeah, you would and I I'm very grateful, but at the same time, I just want to make it clear that we're all human, um, and human beings don't like feeling like people are out to use them. So when someone reaches out and it's not about money or anything, it's like if I don't know you and you're framing your message to me as you wanting to extract some benefit from me, that feels terrible. It's like picture, you know, just like being used. You know like if you have a friend, that's like, oh, can you drive me somewhere? And finally you say, no, I can't drive you anywhere, oh, I'm not your friend anymore.
Speaker 1:You're like wow, you were using me the whole time.
Speaker 2:And this will be the first thing that people will say to me and to you. Know, anyone that they perceive as having some kind of influence in the business is like just talk to me like a human, just ask me how my day is. You know what I mean. Don't just be like, hey, what's up? Man, really respect you. Hey, can you do this, this, this, this, this for me? And you know, I pride myself on being non-reactive to that and just kind of trying to put it in perspective.
Speaker 2:But sometimes I'm just like, here we go, I've reached my limit, I feel sad about this and yeah. So I messaged him back and I was just like man, this is how it feels. I don't know why. I had that moment where I'm like let me just tell him exactly how I feel. And I was like, yeah, this feels, this feels bad Feels.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm getting a hundred messages like this every week. Someone's trying to get some benefit from me, someone that doesn't know me, someone that doesn't you know, like you don't even know my real name and I'm supposed to go out on a limb and get you all this stuff that I'm trying to get for myself and that if I were to get it for someone to be, for someone that I know has worked with me forever and you know we've been close and so on and so forth. He apologized, but I just don't think people understand that. I think people will look at an artist that are creative, that's in a potentially better position than them, and think, okay, let me go to them and get this benefit from them. But realistically that's not. I mean, you tell me with your journey, relationships matter.
Speaker 1:Here we go.
Speaker 2:You switch.
Speaker 1:You've, you've, you've done it. Okay, so Payne actually has a podcast too. So we were talking about this off camera, that sometimes in the course of doing an interview you switch from being interviewed to the interviewee, right, so it's like it's just a little inside joke. But I'm sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2:But correct me if I'm wrong. I mean for me any. Anytime I've developed a relationship that was of value. It's like it's a there's, there's some kind of I bring something to the table, you bring something to the table, we grow together from it. It's not just me saying, hey, give me this, give me this, give me this, give me this, give me this, give me this, and then I get it. I mean even I equate that I'm single, so I equate that to you know, like the dating process, my favorite subject relationships.
Speaker 2:Yeah let's go, let's just jump into that. So I can't just walk up to a woman and I'm like, hey, give me some sex Right now, don't work. And I'm not, let's not lie, men do that yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:And it's one. It's disrespectful to, it's ineffective, but that's. You know. In the music business, a lot of people are coming up to their peers. Even if I don't care if you're not, if you've never had a record out, if you put yourself in the music business, we're peers, right Like Drake is huge, but I'm his peer, we're, we're on the same platforms. You know, we're not at the same levels, but we're, we're part of the same ecosystem. So you'll come up to me or someone else that you perceive as being in a good position and say you know, it's the equivalent to give me some sex now because I want it. I'm not even going to pretend to want to get to know you. It's like give me what can you give me? Well, how can you benefit my career? It's like that's not no, hello, no, we don't have no introduction. I don't know if it's the internet that just kind of wrote it or our Social graces, but well, I'll share something with you.
Speaker 1:I knew exactly what you mean, because the internet right, when you have a social media presence, it makes people feel like they know you, mm-hmm. So my wife has a, has a snapchat and she posts snaps all the time and sometimes we know, you know we had a nice house, so we we throw parties and stuff like that and I'll meet some of her friends for the first time. Never met these purple people before in my life, never seen him before in my life. I'll come up to him like hey, how you doing, I'm demacia. And they'll be like, oh, I know you. And I have to remind like no, I've actually never met you. What's your name again, and then they'll. They'll be like, oh, I'm sorry, I just I just been watching you on snapchat for years now and I just I'm sorry. I felt like I know you already. So I, I know you get a lot of that, you know it gives you a false sense of intimacy.
Speaker 2:Exactly throws me when people DM me and they'll use my government name and I'm like, wait a minute, how did you look that up? Right? That's kind of weird. I don't, I don't mind it, it's just kind of I think. I think it's kind of cool that, like you can meet someone out and they know a lot about you, mm-hmm, and you know, and you've never met them before it's flattering.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree like oh man, you know, I met somebody on two days ago and we were at the play. We went to the American Players Theater.
Speaker 2:Oh, I would in them. Yeah, on the sticks.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, it's right, by the cave of the mountains.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, what spring green yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we were right there and I met this, this woman, for the first time and she was like, oh yeah, I'm such and such as roommate and you know, congratulations on the new baby. And I seen that you guys got married, you know, and I'm like, what's your name? Again it's like, oh yeah, you never met me, but you know I, you know I've been, why I'm up to date, I know what's going on. I was like, wow, you know what I mean. Like I put a lot on the internet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I guess everything I don't know. People think, because it goes both ways, like you're putting out positive things on the internet, a lot of people put out negative things on the internet and then I Don't. I don't want to, I don't want to give people this impression that you know there are gatekeepers out there, because it's not like people will throw that word around a lot. I mean there are gatekeepers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just saying, there are gatekeepers in the sense of like, if you're on the internet and you say something bad about somebody, you might think no one's watching, but years down the line you start looking around and like, wait a minute. I feel like maybe I should have gotten this opportunity, or why is this person not replying to me? It's because people talk, and that's not gay, kimmy. That's just people reacting to something that you did absolutely.
Speaker 2:So I think the in the internet also the negative side of the internet it. It gives us a false sense of anonymity and therefore we think there's no accountability for our actions in that space. And there are, you know, and yeah, there are consequences to that our audience.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of people that's incarcerated. For me incarcerated, we have a lot of creative people, you know. I guess the number one question is gonna always be how do I get on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what I? I have this conversation with a lot of people and I think the biggest thing is just where is your focus? Because I think what I've seen is that we're talking about, you know, music business, but really anything in life, specifically the music business, though people who are starting out are really focused on big, big targets that really aren't realistic not in the sense that I'm discouraged anybody, but they're just for what you're trying to do, that it's not the right place to invest your energy. So I'll give examples like a brand new artist, unsigned, just trying to get music out, a lot of them are focusing on radio play, and not local radio play, not like WRT. They want to get played on the top radio stations, the clear channels, and and radio is not for us. I mean commute. There's, like I brought up WRT, yeah, former relationship with them. That's for us. You know, form relationships with with Smaller stations. If you want to get into radio but the clear channels not playing your record, no matter how hard you try. So you may spend two years Trying to get to clear channel and in the meantime you didn't put any music out and you have no fans.
Speaker 2:The same way with you know a lot of people I talked to. They want to get signed. They want to impress people who work for labels. They want to Network with the you know they want to network vertical, vertically. They want to go up to you know A big a and r at a big label. It's like you're you're, you'll spend years of your life trying to impress those people. The thing is those people are looking at Numbers and for you, numbers equate to fans because the fans provide those numbers. The the shortest Distance between yourself and those numbers is you Directly to a fan slash consumer. It's not going to trying to reach radio and then hitting the numbers. It's not you trying to get to the label and then hitting the numbers, because that's working backwards.
Speaker 2:If you Authentically, if you make the music that's authentic to you, the content that's authentic to you, and you deliver it directly to fans, say you get. I break it down like this so you have a thousand fans. A lot of people would look at that as a failure. Right, you only got a thousand fans. You know Drake has a million fans. You have a thousand fans that are willing to spend $50 on you throughout the year. You're making $50,000. Now scale that up, provide more value, incentivize that they make them spend a hundred throughout the year. When you think about that, that's not very much. That's, you know, under ten dollars a month that they're spending on you. Now you make six figures off your music. That's crazy and it seems so Small in comparison to getting a major label deal now. If you're making six figures off your music now, you have options, because if you're happy doing that, you just continue to scale up.
Speaker 2:Now you got a budget you have a budget, you know, but you know also you're living a pretty good, comfortable life. Yeah, you're comfortable and you have you still have control over everything. You still ownership over everything and if you're making a thousand, you can double that.
Speaker 2:And Now they're gonna come to you exactly and you're gonna have leverage, whereas, say, you're the most talented person on the planet and the label does see that they don't, they then this is Unrealistic. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, it does. They want to work with you at point zero just because they see the potential in you as talent. Well, they can't justify giving you a million dollar advance. They might give you at $80,000 advance and then they're gonna try to invest in you, but realistically, labels don't do that much artist development these days. So it's kind of like you're just, you got your 80,000 and they're kind of expecting you to develop yourself. Maybe they put some resources behind you, but ultimately, you know, say, best-case scenario, you become a superstar, they made millions off of you and you just got 80,000 right. So Wouldn't you rather do that yourself and then say this deal isn't right I know my value and I have the numbers to prove it and negotiate from a position of leverage rather than someone who's just.
Speaker 2:You know, I get people DMing me all the time talking about please sign me, please, I'll do anything. It's like I don't even have a label. That's where the scammers come in. That's where those fake Atlantic records, a and our emails come in. Hey, congratulations, we love your music. Just send us $500 as a fee to cover a and R-ing and legal. Blah blah blah will draft a contract we want to sign you. People are paying that. There are a lot of people making Great livings off of scamming hard dream, because of the dream.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they praying off of people's dreams, hopes and dreams, and it's sick. It's sick, but the I want to provide a counter narrative to that, so that doesn't hate seeing it happen to people, but at the same time it's a hard pill to swallow that really you're alone out here. You got to build it from the ground up and To me it should be a feeling of power rather than, you know, a feeling of discouragement because it's like now you don't have to rely on anybody else, you're the one that does it all you know. But a lot of people like I need the right team, I need the right manager, I need the label, I need to deal any distance that you don't need that. I've seen it way too many times. The people that say I need this, this is this.
Speaker 2:They don't get it and Then they'd never move forward and the people who just say I'm just gonna go out and try it I they make more progress.
Speaker 1:Well, I had Godzilla here and I asked him the same question. One of the things he was saying is pretty much mirrored a lot of things that you were saying, but one thing that he added was do you do it every day? Do it every single day. Even the days that you don't wanna do it, you do it every day. That's where you start.
Speaker 1:Do it every day If you're in prison or you just came home, whatever. It's like a lot of people that's when they're in prison they doing it every single day. Then they get out, life happens and they don't do it every day, but they still want results of the people that do it every single day. So it's like just to add that. I thought. It's like I think that cause a lot of people ask me like hey, man, how did you get your podcast started? Man, how do you start a podcast? How did you build it up like that? And it's like I did it every day. I woke up and did it every single day, working on my craft, every single day. But I mean I already came from an audio background, but it's like I didn't interview and people is different. I mean it's still like, yeah, it's conversation, but there's a way to do it Leading the conversation and it's like subtle nuances about like actually conducting an interview. That's different from having a regular conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or writing a song Exactly. Well, let me, I'm gonna flip it again. Go ahead. So a lot of people because, yeah, you said something key, life happens Cause I'll say that I'll back up what Godzilla was saying 100% and I'll make statements. And you know, this is the internet generation. We have short form content. A lot of people need context or they want more information, which is why we have long form pieces of content, like a podcast, right? So if I say something and I understand why people get offended when I say this, but I'll say something, you know, like a general, blanket statement, and I say it to motivate people, not to discourage, but something like and I'm sure I've said this verbatim before but if you want music to pay you like a job, you have to work it like a job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I feel like that's just. I heard you saying it before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's. How is that false? You know it isn't, but I can. You know I often get people upset with me for saying that cause they're like well, life happens, which is what you said, and I think there's a way to marry the two. Obviously, life happens to everybody. You know, I've seen people overcome incredible obstacles because they were so focused on the music. So I want to ask you cause? A lot of people say well, I got a family, I got responsibilities, I got kids. How did you focus on the cause you like? What you have here doesn't happen overnight. You got to do that every day. So how did you make that?
Speaker 1:work. So what's crazy is when I, when I first went to college, before we even started one class, we had what's called orientation. So they set us down in this room and they played us this video and it was pretty cheesy but it was a lot of good information Like, hey, this is what you're going to experience. And one of the things they said is going to experience is life. They said, man, you know your dog's going to die, you know your girlfriend might break up with you, you know. And they had all of these different scenarios right, and they're like these things probably are going to happen in the course of you know the years it's going to take for you to get this degree, but you can't let that stop you.
Speaker 1:So me actually going to college and experiencing a lot of I mean, I had a kid when I was in college A lot of different things happen and I still you know 4.0, you know just like top of my class and everything. And so I felt like me overcoming that right there, like it just like trained me to like overcome you know whatever gets thrown at me, you know. So I would say education, you know college, that's what helped me. You know what I mean, that's what helped me, that's like groomed me to overcome whatever and stay focused on my goal.
Speaker 2:You know I would agree with that Cause. When I went straight from college to basically quitting all my jobs and just doing this full time and it was like I was already on a schedule with college. I was already on a schedule with the multiple jobs that I had. So I was used to work and then I was making music on the side and going on little, you know show runs and this and that.
Speaker 2:So it was just nonstop hustle, so it's like if you're used to hustling, just keep doing it, keep that same energy up and apply it to music. So yeah, that's how I feel about it. But yeah, you know, I have a lot of conversations with people that are like, well, I got a girl, I got a kid, I got a marriage. And I kind of look at it like cause I don't have those things, right, right, and I feel so they think it's easier for you because you don't have all of the extra responsibility.
Speaker 2:And I'll be totally honest, it probably is, it's certain. I mean, you know, we all go through what we go through.
Speaker 1:But you still got a mom, you still got a, you know what I mean. You still got family, you still got friends, you still got obligations outside of just taking care of yourself. But the other thing too.
Speaker 2:It was like, you know, you chose to get married, you chose to have kids. That's not a negative thing, you know what I mean. Like that's something to be proud of, right? So are you gonna make music because you want to be happier for yourself and your family, or are you gonna use your family as kind of the shield from criticism for you not pursuing what you claim you want to pursue? How bad do you want it, right? Yeah, you know, like this is a sexy career. It just is, and you can get swept up. But in all other careers I'll put it this way you don't buy a ticket to an NBA, but you don't buy a ticket to a Bucks game, right, and you're in the stands and in the third quarter you run out onto the court and expect the team to just embrace you and say, yeah, yeah, play with us. That's not how it works. You know they had to go through the college circuit, the high school, the college circuit, the draft, all that. And music is a similar way, except we don't really see those barriers.
Speaker 1:And we don't really, people don't really see the climb.
Speaker 2:They don't know.
Speaker 1:The back end, like all of the work that you had to do before you turned on a microphone or you flipped on a camera. They don't see all of that work, all of the sacrifices that you had to make. So it's like I guess my wife said you make it look so easy.
Speaker 2:No, but that's important, because another thing, too, is that we don't showcase or glamorize the middle class when it comes to music. I'm talking about people making a living. They're not obscenely wealthy but you will talk to people who will look you dead and I with a straight face and say, if you're not a millionaire, you failed. I'm like, wait a minute. So owning a house, having financial stability, well, doing what you love, that's a failure. Yeah, because you're not Drake. You're not Drake. I had someone say you're not Drake. Drake's a billionaire, you failed.
Speaker 1:I'm like, okay, I'm a happy failure Right.
Speaker 2:But that's what I'm talking about.