Some names, like Drake or Sarah Palin, show up everywhere because there’s a publicist making $20,000 a week to make phone calls, all day long. Some names show up everywhere because the artist behind the name is totally committed to their career. TAIS is a perfect specimen of the DIY CEO: running every aspect of his career and embracing every challenge that comes his way. I caught up with him while he was traveling to New York to sprint around the city for a week promoting his new single, Too Complex. He’s a highly energetic and focused dude with a lot to say…
I interview some busy motherfuckers but you...are...CRAZY busy. HOW do you keep track of all your projects and promotional work?
TAIS: Well, a lot of people don’t know this about me, but I have eight hands and two brains. I hide them when I’m in public, but when it is time to work, they all work together to try and take over the world. I know what your thinking, “What the hell?” I know, I know it’s not the answer you were looking for because most people would like to think I would say something like “I have great time management skills” or “I have a whiteboard that I keep ALL my projects on, and put due dates next to each item” (I do have both and stick to both vigorously), but it is really the fact that I have eight (sometimes more) hands. You see, I have my own two, and the other six or more come from Unseen Heroes. They help me handle a lot of the day to day stuff so I can keep focused on the bigger picture. It is a complete operation that blends what a lot of other artists can’t do: Mix the music with the business.
And I also take this as serious as anyone in any other profession does, so there is no time to rest. I live by two motto’s: 1) I can rest when I’m dead. 2) Live everyday like it is your last. I’m at that point in my career where I can no longer fail. And in “I can no longer fail” I don’t mean the cliché “I’m scared to fail, so I succeed” line. What I mean is that I am living my purpose, and in living my purpose, I live on purpose. So everyday I wake up, I look at my vision board (yes, I have a vision board) and I seize the day to the fullest extent.
How does your Vision Board system work?
TAIS: The vision board is something I picked up from mentors and actually a documentary called “The Secret” (I promise I was on to it before Oparah picked it up on her show). The vision board is based of the principal of Attraction or the Law of Attraction. In the simplest form, it is a map or goals you want to achieve in your life. Most people (hopefully), have some sort of goal or something they want to achieve in thier life. What the vision board allows you to do is actually “see” your goal or what you want to obtain. You collect pictures, descriptions, or what ever it is that reminds you of your goal, and you put it in a place that you always see it, so that everytime you do, you can see exactly what you want. For me, my vision board is life specific. All of the things that is on my board are things I want in my life overall. You can get specific to a certain area in life if you wanted to get that deep, but the overall idea is still the same: What you set your mind to is what you can achieve.
What are your biggest questions about the future of hip hop? What do you spend a lot of time wondering about?
TAIS: That’s an interesting question. I guess I don’t spend a lot of time wondering about much honestly. I just try and “DO” more than anything. I think that time spent wondering is idle time that can be used to get something done. I know it might sound boring of unimaginative, but in the time people spend wondering about things, is when I get the most done. LOL. As far as Hip Hop goes, I guess it is like Mos Def said on the opening track of “Black On Both Sides”. Hip Hop is going where the people take it because Hip Hop is US. So in the end, it is going where ever we as a people take it. As far as questioning the integrity, although it is hard at times, I try not to honestly. I might not personally agree with some of the things that are portrayed, but I try to think of things on a universal level. So with that thought, I think everything happens for a reason (even if sometimes I don’t understand). And when I center myself on that thought, I don’t get frustrated or agitated with the ways of things right now. I accept it and work in my area of effectiveness.
How do you track and evaluate your promo projects? What tools are you using to measure what’s a success and what’s a “learning experience”?
TAIS: Right now, I take a very direct approach to tracking and evaluating projects. I use google and gmail to track every time I am mentioned anywhere on the www. It is amazing the places that you find someone talking about your music, and they only way to figure it out is by keeping up to date with what is being said about you. Once I do that, I go into part two of the measurement: feedback from real people. I spend a lot of time texting or emailing people about the highs and lows of my music. I do my best to interact and connect with anyone and everyone who mentions me or something about my music. That way, I have a real response from the people that I want to reach most.
When someone tells me how a particular song I recorded touched them, I consider that a part of success. They other part of success comes from being happy with who I am and the music I put out. When I can sit back and listen to a song and know it is saying what I wanted without compromise, I rate that successful. As far as “Learning Experience”, one thing I’ve learned is over the years is to be humble and always be willing to show love to others. My purpose is deeper than music, so I NEVER want to be the guy who thinks his shit is the flyest or illest out. That route will get artist no where fast. I would rather speak to one person who is on the same page as me, then tell one million people I’m the hottest rapper out. With reaching real people, you are able to measure your success better because people respond to sincerity and choice better than they do promo from the ego. If you are measuring your projects amongst real people, they will be real with you.
How do things work with The Righteous Movement? As you all progress into professional careers, has your system changed?
TAIS: That is a good question. A lot has changed with Righteous Movement, but a lot has stayed the same. We started out as young cats making music collectively, turned into a group, and now it is back to the collective. It has always been a progression towards a better place in life, and I think that is something that we stay true to.
I always tell people we are like Hieroglyphics more than we are like a Tanya Morgan. We were all emcees in our own right before coming to the group, so it wasn’t like we started together and started rapping when we all met. I think it was tough at first because everyone gets comfortable in a group setting, and have big dreams of making it to the top or being successful. But when you lay it out on the table, “Success” is a relevant term that changes with the beholder. So, when you get to the bare bones of things, differences occur. And instead of doing what most groups do and break up, we rebuilt from the ground up and made it work even better than before. Now, we work together and push for everyone on in their solo projects, as well as the collective album. All in all, it covers more ground, and keeps the name more relevant and moving forward.
How did you connect with 6th Sense for your recent single “Too Complex”?
TAIS: One of my homeboys actually put me on to him. He had been talking about how dope this producer 6th Sense was, and that I would sound dope over one of his tracks. I decided to check it out, and he put me on to “It’s a 6th Sense Beat Yo”. I found a couple of gems on that project that really stuck with me. I haven’t even talked to him about the track personally. I just remember that he had a disclaimer at the beginning of of the project calling for emcees to do something fresh with it, and I thought that was dope.
I recorded to a couple of different songs he had on there (emcees - you need that in your life), but the “Too Complex” track just stuck out to me for some reason. I had just been told by someone that I need to rap on more hyphy or club type music, and that is the only way I would “Blow” (whatever that means). And at the same time I was talking to radio station DJs telling me my songs were dope, but they couldn’t play it on the air and had to play the club tracks they didn’t even respect. I guess at the end of the day, they have to report to someone that pays them right? But yeah, the “Too Complex” track just took me there. And I wanted it to be a very simply written track to provoke people would think, “What is so complex”? Because that is just the thing, it’s not “complex” at all. So hopefully, people will address the real reason the media is not balanced. I also wanted it to show that I don’t really care if they don’t, because I will still be me at the end of the day.
Do you think that promoting single tracks and keeping your name out on a steady basis is more valuable than putting in a year of behind-the-scenes work on a full-length album?
TAIS: Honestly, I do both at the same time because I think both are very valuable. I joke with people and say that I live in 2011 because that is how far out in advance I lay out projects. Literally, I have it all my projects mapped out, and I continue to add to it. The “TAIS” that people are seeing now, is only about 2% of my actual life at this moment. The “new” single to the masses, is the “old” single for me. I have already created it in my mind, then mapped it out on paper, then put it into action, packaged it, promoted it, and leaked it. And all that comes before the release date. So by the time the average person hears it, I’m already rapping up the next project. I think as an artist, you have to be able to live in the now and work on the future. With the internet and all the social media sites nowadays, one day can make a world of difference. The X and Y generations want things NOW. And once they have what they want, they want more. I think that is why record labels are in the process of failing at this point in time. They are running on the NOW time frame and trying to make the same money as they once were. It isn’t a steady climb anymore. You have to think outside the box, and figure out ways to satisfy the Instant Gratification Mentality. They pump a lot of money into these artist, and take a gamble because the artist can literally be hot one minute and a has-been the next minute. So in knowing who my market is and how they operate, I plan for both. That way, when I drop a single like “Too Complex”, I feed that NOW mentality at the same time as I’m planning for the future. Honestly, as of THIS moment, I am working on at least 6 other projects: Albums, Mixtapes, EPs, Collab Projects, Hosting Mixtapes, Features, Ect. With all that in the pot, I’m well into 2012.
Words of Advice for Young Future Mutants
What advice do you have for artists just getting started with networking, conferences and playing gigs in new cities?
TAIS: My advice would be to not listen to anything that I’m about to say after this sentence. Seriously though, I know it is copywritten, but it is simple as “Just Do It”.
1. Follow through on connections. If you get a business card or phone number, actually use it. You never know what can come of just sending an email or calling someone.
2. Rock each show like it is your last. You NEVER know who is watching, or who the people who are watching know. Some of my best opportunities came from shows that most would consider unimportant.
3. Connect with LIKEMINDED people (emphasis on likeminded). People like to think that connecting or collabing with anyone will get you there faster, but it doesn’t. I like to use the metaphor of fishing. People use all thier energy chasing the small fish, and fill up thier bag will the small fish. At the end of the day, when the big fish does come, thier bag is full or they don’t have enough energy to reel it in (think about it for a minute).
4. Get Up. Get Out. Get Something.
5. Think bigger than the glass box we call Hip Hop. I run TAIS like a small business. That means I read a lot of business, branding, and marketing books and apply them to Hip Hop.
6. Spend time listening instead of trying to get heard.
7. Seek first to give love, then to get it.
FLYER SCIENCE: Learn From TAIS
Source: TAIS music
One last point: check out the flyers that TAIS was running around NYC with. He’s co-promoting with a Sacramento-based online clothing retailer, United State. They’re tracking the results of the promo by giving people a promotional code. This is an all-around rock solid example of doing sponsorship right. It doesn’t have to look like a Pepsi ad, and you’re better off working with local business than national brands who view you as a replaceable component.
Other good examples to check out: Ro Spit and his Burn Rubber store in Detroit, and the recent moves Blue Scholars made: “signing” a record label, Duck Down Records, and entering into a brand partnership with a local coffee company, Caffe Vita.
If you have other recommendations, please drop ‘em and I’ll probably write a whole damn article about it.
5 responses to "TAIS: 8 Arms, 2 Brains and No Limits"
One Big Question
By Justin Boland on November 18, 2009
Hip Hop 2009, News
12 commentsThe most interesting question from the Audible Hype Survey was the simplest: Do you think you can make a living off music in 2009?. I’m going to pose it again here because I want to get the largest data set I can—we’re going for 4 figures this time. This is a question at the core of everything Audible Hype is about, and something that cuts across all genres.
The 33% Theory
Here’s how the results turned out last time:
I’m pretty fascinated by that ratio, so this is an experiment to see if it stays the same with a bigger data set. Thank you for your time and your answer.
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12 responses to "One Big Question"
Results of the Audible Hype Survey
By Justin Boland on November 17, 2009
News
Since Audible Hype had 333 RSS subscribers when I started the 2009 Survey, our benchmark was 33 responses, or a 10% rate. We got twice what we expected, so thank you for that. All praise due to Ganeshe. I promised I’d share the results, and this is that: for the curious and for the data nerds, let’s dig through the digits...for the casual reader, this is something you can skip.
Audible Hype Readers: 20% International
55% Vinyl Cult Members
It made me happy to see that so many of you have good taste. All music is better on vinyl. Nobody with real moral fiber would dispute this fact.
15% Never Ever Go to Hip Hop Shows
This was actually less grim than I expected. On the World Around survey we did, 33% chose the “Never Ever” option. Maybe I should be pushing more of my product on you guys...but honestly, if I start trying to sell you PDF files...or say that charging you for forum access is “VIP Membership,” please remind me that the real Justin Boland wants his soul back ASAP.
And in other news, SUPPORT LOCAL HIP HOP. If you live in the US, there is good stuff in your area. Timothy Leary’s advice to real emcees: Find the others.
8% Lifelong Slayer Fans
Seriously, I get a LOT of emails from metal heads who dig Audible Hype. That’s fucking awesome. Keep me posted. I actually really do appreciate detailed info about how your band’s career is going. Literally anyone who wants to send me data can feel free. I’ve already got 90% of the industry sending me spam and bullshit music, so you should, too: powerweirdo at gmail dot com
Workflow, Process, Marketing, Promotion
The big winners here: approximately what I was expecting. I’m glad most of my readers are on the same page. As I was remarking to [name drop] the other day, I might not have a very large audience, but I do have a very smart audience. I’m a “Quality Over Quantity” kind of mammal, myself. My readers are 100% awesome, but apparently, you’re also…
100% Greedy Bastards
Podcasts? Video? What in the fuck was I thinking when I gave you people those options?
Actually, I’ve been thinking about the podcast idea for awhile, and that will probably happen after I pick up a fancy, absurdly cheap new 1 TB hard drive. Video is something I have to learn for World Around anyways.
Dear Sweet Christ, though, those are time-intensive mediums for people who care about quality. I’ll let the rest of the amateurs in my niche peddle .mp3 recordings of skype calls. Audible Hype podcasts will be at least 8 hours of work, per slice. However, I do love you people, authentically and insanely, so expect everything you asked for in 2010.
All Human Problems Explained Definitively in One Image
So as it turns out...there really are only three kinds of people. I was skeptical, too, but this has gotta be the most interesting result of the survey, to me. I watched the results grow and it hovered around 33% each the whole time…
I was fascinated enough with this question to create a new form and gather more data. I want to see how that ratio scales up to a 4 digit data set.
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The Template: Diamond District Remix
By Justin Boland on November 16, 2009
Business, Promo, Workflow
8 commentsAfter writing The Template: Planning Your First Album, I’ve been re-thinking it ever since. I’d like to introduce you to Oddisee, the DMV renaissance man, who’s got a system that’s proven to work and gives us some real numbers to work with. Diamond District’s debut album, In the Ruff
, is more than just one of the best hip hop albums that’s come out this year. It’s also a perfect case study of how to make everything that’s “wrong” with the industry today work for you.
Oddisee, Preaching
“If you go about putting out hip hop the old way, you’re going to be destroyed by leaking and bootlegging. If you’re still subscribing to the formula of ’my albums done and I have to give it to press immediately 3 months before, and I have to promote a single on college radio and be underground, and do a tour 3 months before and 3 months after,’ you will be destroyed by downloading.”
Source: Crate Kings
If you dig Audible Hype you should definitely be checking Crate Kings—it’s the best source for news on hip hop production I’ve found. They’re also paying close attention to the business end, and it was this video that first made me realize how ambitious Oddisee was.
The Oddisee Template
“The most recent projects, they kinda came out right at the same time. Diamond District came out on April 14th, which was a group album, Mental Liberation is a compilation album that I produced, which came out May 5th, and then I dropped an EP called Odd Summer on May 29th.
Those three projects are kind of a new formula that I’m experimenting with, of putting out a limited version of those projects for free, gaining the numbers and the statistics from those, and then using those numbers to go to labels and get bigger deals once I re-vamp the record.
Same thing with Diamond District: it was 12 songs, edited, with slightly different cover art. So now that it came out, 12,000 downloads later, rave reviews, all of the legends I look up to bigging us up, tour offers, etcetera...I pitched that album for new distribution, and it’s coming out, again, as a physical version and on iTunes. It will have 14 songs, it will be un-edited, you’ll also be able to get the instrumentals free when you download it, it will be on vinyl...all different types of incentives to purchase something.
I believe in statistics, really. If I can get—by the time it comes out—20,000 people to download it...that means I can get, units sold, 5 to 8 thousand to buy it. Just based off sheer numbers. And that 5 to 8, translates to a “a living.”
The “new distribution” pitch found a home at Mello Music Group, which is run by Michael Tolle, someone I’d like to interview before 2010 rolls around: “We heard In The Ruff and thought ‘this is the best album of year.’ We had to document it in a physical, tangible way. MP3’s are cool, but in the end, we wanted to leave behind a cd, some vinyl – something audiophiles could hold in their hands.”
Mello Music Group pursued the same approach Oddisee does: testing the digital waters to gather data before the full release. They led off with two early iTunes single releases: I Mean Business on Sept. 15th and Who I Be on Oct. 6th. Both Tuesdays, in case you were wondering. Exactly two weeks later, they dropped the full LP on iTunes.
I have no idea how it’s selling. If you do, please drop a comment and let a mammal know.
Audible Treats: Digital PR Done Right
A good team matters, because DIY never really means Do It Yourself. One of the invisible hands involved with the success of In the Ruff is the “marketing and publicity firm” Audible Treats. They’ve got a wicked impressive track record going—Black Milk’s TRONIC, Finale’s Pipe Dream and a Promise, and Tanya Morgan’s Brooklynati. Dope projects that were everywhere and stayed in circulation for months at a time. There was a team behind that kind of consistency. The front end looks like this:
Check out how they set up their promotion page for Diamond District. Simple, clean, and it includes everything that a blogger or a journalist (or a potential corporate sponsor) could want. Maintaining links and material like this involves attention to detail, and Audible Treats is an operation worth studying.
Writing good Bio copy is not easy, but it’s necessary. Bad writing doesn’t have to happen to you. Check out Greg Rollet’s very useful and powerful exercise, Learn to Describe the Crap Out of Your Music. I’m not writing an advertisement for PR crews like Audible Treats, I’m recommending you spend some time taking notes on what they’re doing. And steal it ASAP. Apply it to your own operation.
Remember, though, one thing you can’t replicate, swipe or copy is a network. When you’ve got a product you really think is potential gold, it’s worth buying the attention of experienced and connected people.
The Vision Statement
“My long term goal is to become a consolidated version of Motown, to be honest. Now, Motown found artists, groomed them, cultivated them, recorded them, mixed and mastered them, and booked their tours. It was a label that did everything. And that what I want to do, but in a smaller version.”
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8 responses to "The Template: Diamond District Remix"
“Hip Hop is Dead” was a Marketing Campaign.
By Justin Boland on November 14, 2009
Business, Promo
7 comments“Is Hip Hop Dead?”
It’s 2009, and people are still repeating this question like idiot lemmings. Considering Nas dropped that album in 2006, I’d have to say this is the single greatest marketing campaign in hip hop history. Not only did it “go viral,” it’s still causing bar fights three years later. This article is a look behind the curtains at Def Jam, and into the marketing mastermind of Nasir Jones.
“Hip Hop is Dead”
47,900,000 google results for that phrase in 2009. For comparison, try searching for ”Hip Hop is alive.” As a conversation starter, this album title was hard to beat.
Opening week numbers were officially pegged at 355,880. You can see in the chart above that “Hip Hop is Dead” triggered a truly fucking huge discussion. For comparison, take a look at the results for American Gangster:
If you’re thinking “those two charts look pretty much the same” then you’re exactly the kind of reader I want to be talking to. You’re right, and that’s an important point.
See, the first take-away lesson here is that even a highly successful, well-financed promotion campaign is going to drop off hard after peaking. From Jay-Z to your next EP: all of them go down just like this. The Internets are a vast gaping maw with no mercy, and even less of an attention span.
This means it really matters how hard you hit it: how big your network is, how tight your planning is, how clear the message is. We’ve been talking about the importance of planning here already—check out The Template: Planning Your First Album if you haven’t read it yet, because this will give you a much more detailed picture of the thinking and preparation you’ll need to put behind a successful project.
Meanwhile, let’s keep digging deeper…
Meet Tracey Waples
Handy rule of thumb: if something worked incredibly well, there’s probably a woman behind it that you’ve never heard of. Sure, Jay-Z and Russell Simmons do the business porn pictorials and Forbes feature interviews, but most of the actual planning and work is done by women, such as the spooky talented Tracey Waples.
Pause for a moment to think about what a weird experience-building nightmare that job must have been...having a 40 stop, multi-million dollar arena tour melt down on the third night? That’s a LOT of awkward phone calls...if your idea of “paying dues” is harassing people with your demo at local hip hop shows, you’ve got some re-thinking to do tonight.
Hip Hop is Just Another Demographic
You might be wondering, Why don’t record labels do this all the time? Basically, for the same reason Bruce Lee doesn’t knock motherfuckers out with a spinning drop kick every time. He’s got a lot of moves that can crush a skull into dust, and he’s always looking for more. For the sake of comparison, let’s look at another big triumph on Tracey’s resume, Jay-Z’s album American Gangster.
The album was actually inspired by a mixtape that got a huge popular response online...and wisely, Def Jam ran with that and milked it. Everything about the promotion was artistically tied to the movie, even the distribution plan. Jay-Z refused to let American Gangster be sold on iTunes, saying “as movies are not sold scene by scene, this collection will not be sold as individual singles.” (Yes, that does translate to “I’m just reminding you all how big my dick is.")
President Carter even did an appearance on the Charlie Rose Show to talk about the album. You probably have no idea how weird that was, but I’d recommend watching it to find out. I’m mentioning all these details because they’re all important. Just getting Jay-Z onto “big time” media outlets is beside the point—Tracey Waples made sure even the media appearances reflected the project, as well as Jay-Z’s larger brand image, which is built around the expression of power. Rappers almost never do Charlie Rose—world leaders do, though.
The results were solid: with a fast turnaround, Roc-A-Fella (I mean, Def Jam (I mean, Universal Music Group)) moved over 425,000 units the first week. If you’re asking yourself: “How come nobody is posting up debut numbers like this in 2009?” I’ve already written about that twice: The Big Picture is the business version, The Year of the Glut is darker but more honest, too. And bear in mind, Jay posted up even better numbers in 2009 with 476,000 for the opening week of Blueprint 3.
Marketing Lessons from “Hip Hop is Dead”
1. IT’S BIGGER THAN... Are you a rapper who just released an album? Nobody fucking cares. There has to be a bigger story, a larger issue, something different, something new. The guiding rule for this is…
2. Don’t make journalists think. When it was time to review this CD, everyone knew exactly what to discuss. The question and the controversy behind this album was the story, overshadowing the album itself. How can you repeat this?
3. Make Opinions Easy and Necessary. This is abbreviated and hidden in plain sight as “Divide and Conquer”—one of those sayings everyone repeats but nobody thinks about. When you start the conversation with a polarizing statement, that’s something audiences feel compelled to respond to. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but I am saying you can use it in your own marketing. Think about the runaway success story of Soulja Boy, someone everyone has to talk about...especially if they hate him.
...AND FOR THE RECORD
So...what about the original question, right? “Is Hip Hop dead?” This is actually not a philosophical, open-ended question. Nor is it a matter of opinion. It’s a stupid question with a simple answer, and that answer is NO.
There is no acceptable excuse for claiming that hip hop is dead in 2009. If you’re unaware of the hundreds of dope artists making innovative and awesome music right now, that’s a personal problem, not a valid opinion. You are an objectively inferior human being and should probably talk way less often than you currently do.
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7 responses to "“Hip Hop is Dead” was a Marketing Campaign."
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