Latest / Clone Wars: The Spinoff / Knowledge of Self and the Business of Ownership

Transcript

Knowledge of Self and the Business of Ownership · Clone Wars: The Spinoff

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Clone Wars: The Spinoff, I'm DJ Universe, and we in here with the
• 0:04
  whole League today.
• 0:05
  Calvin Blingwell in the building.
• 0:07
  Legacy never sleeps, let's get it.
• 0:09
  Dangerous Zygos, C.E.O.
• 0:11
  of Currency Development himself.
• 0:12
  Numbers don't lie, and today they got a lot to say.
• 0:15
  And the newest voice in the fourth chair, Greedy Boi.
• 0:18
  I promise I'm gone eat it all, I'm a hungry MF, y'all already know.
• 0:22
  Before we get into today's topic, let's run the numbers section.
• 0:26
  Sony Music Publishing locked in a deal worth somewhere between three and a half and
• 0:31
  four billion dollars for a catalog of over forty five thousand songs,
• 0:35
  and that catalog's hip hop roots run deep, going all the way back to RZA's full
• 0:40
  catalog getting swept up a few years back.
• 0:43
  Four billion dollars for paper.
• 0:45
  Not masters, not merch, just the publishing and the writer's share sitting on top of
• 0:49
  songs.
• 0:50
  That's the number everybody in this room needs to sit with for a second.
• 0:53
  And that's exactly why I keep telling young artists, the song don't stop making
• 0:58
  money when the song stops charting.
• 1:00
  Somebody is collecting on that catalog for the next hundred years.
• 1:04
  The question is whether it's you, your kids, or a fund with a spreadsheet.
• 1:10
  See that's wild to me because when you independent and you selling merch out the
• 1:14
  trunk after a show, you thinking about tonight's bread, not no catalog forty years
• 1:19
  from now.
• 1:20
  Right, and that gap right there, between tonight's bread and forty years from now,
• 1:24
  that's exactly what we getting into today.
• 1:26
  So today we ain't just talking contracts, we going back to the root of it.
• 1:30
  Knowledge of self.
• 1:32
  That language comes straight out of the Five Percent Nation,
• 1:36
  the Nation of Gods and Earths, that grew up in Harlem in the sixties and shaped so
• 1:41
  much of how hip hop even talks.
• 1:43
  Supreme Mathematics is their system, the numbers one through nine and zero,
• 1:48
  each one carrying a meaning, and it's been in our music since day one,
• 1:52
  from Rakim to Wu-Tang to half the slang we still use without even thinking about
• 1:57
  where it came from.
• 1:59
  And I'm glad you brought the history correct, because a lot of cats throw the phrase
• 2:03
  around without knowing what it's rooted in.
• 2:06
  Knowledge of self ain't a vibe, it's a discipline.
• 2:09
  It means before you sign anything, before you spend anything,
• 2:13
  you know who you are, what you built, and what it's worth.
• 2:17
  From a sound and branding seat, knowledge of self is literally your identity.
• 2:23
  If you don't know who you are as an artist, the culture will hand you an identity,
• 2:27
  and it usually comes with somebody else's fingerprints on the publishing.
• 2:31
  Let's break the first three principles down plain, because they map straight onto
• 2:35
  the business.
• 2:36
  Knowledge is number one, that's the fact, that's your numbers,
• 2:39
  your streaming statements, your splits sheet, what your contract actually says
• 2:44
  versus what you think it says.
• 2:46
  Man I used to sign whatever they put in front of me just to get the show booked.
• 2:50
  That's zero knowledge, that's just hunger driving the whole bus.
• 2:54
  Exactly, and that's why wisdom is number two.
• 2:56
  Wisdom is knowledge applied.
• 2:58
  You don't just know your merch margin, you use it, you negotiate the venue cut
• 3:03
  before you load in, you register your songs with a P R O before the record even
• 3:07
  drops.
• 3:08
  And understanding, that third one, that's watching the outcome and adjusting.
• 3:13
  You put the knowledge and the wisdom to work, then you look at what came back,
• 3:17
  and you correct course.
• 3:18
  That's a full cycle, not a slogan on a t shirt.
• 3:21
  That's culture too though, that's the fourth principle, and that's where I live.
• 3:26
  Culture is what you build once you got knowledge, wisdom, and understanding working
• 3:31
  together, it's the sound, the visuals, the brand that people recognize as
• 3:37
  unmistakably you.
• 3:38
  So it's basically, know yourself, use what you know, check the results,
• 3:43
  then build something that's undeniably yours.
• 3:46
  That's just good business with better language.
• 3:48
  That's the whole point.
• 3:50
  Hip hop philosophy and financial literacy ain't two different lanes,
• 3:54
  they the same lane.
• 3:55
  Knowledge of self is a wealth strategy, it just came from the block before it ever
• 4:01
  showed up in a finance textbook.
• 4:03
  Alright, talk to me practical though.
• 4:05
  I'm on tour, I got a merch table, I got a booking agent texting me at two in the
• 4:10
  morning.
• 4:11
  What does knowledge of self look like when the tour bus is basically your office?
• 4:16
  It looks like this.
• 4:17
  Every dollar that touches your hand on that tour gets a job before you spend it.
• 4:21
  Percentage to taxes, percentage to reinvestment in the show,
• 4:25
  percentage that goes straight into something that pays you back,
• 4:28
  a publishing catalog, a small index fund, real estate down the line.
• 4:32
  You are building the generational piece in real time, not after you blow up.
• 4:36
  And brand wise, that's when you protect your name and your sound like property,
• 4:41
  because it is property.
• 4:43
  Trademark your name, register your masters and your publishing correctly,
• 4:47
  keep your metadata clean so every stream actually finds its way back to you.
• 4:52
  Discipline is the whole game long term.
• 4:55
  I've watched artists get one big check and disappear because they never had the
• 4:59
  knowledge of self to know that one check ain't the finish line,
• 5:03
  it's a checkpoint.
• 5:04
  The ones with longevity are the ones who treated a good year like it had to fund the
• 5:08
  next five.
• 5:09
  That's the mindset shift right there.
• 5:12
  I'm not just an artist grinding a merch table, I'm running a small business,
• 5:16
  and every one of these principles, knowledge, wisdom, understanding,
• 5:20
  culture, that's just good operating procedure with roots that go back before the
• 5:25
  industry ever tried to package it and sell it back to us.
• 5:28
  And that's the move for everybody listening.
• 5:30
  Pull your last three statements, whatever they are, streaming,
• 5:32
  merch, booking, and actually read them this week.
• 5:35
  That's knowledge of self, step one, today, not someday.
• 5:38
  That's a wrap for this one.
• 5:39
  Big shout to the whole League, Calvin Blingwell, Dangerous Zygos,
• 5:43
  Greedy Boi, and everybody riding with Clone Wars.
• 5:46
  Go get your knowledge of self together and we'll catch you next time.
• 5:49
  Legacy over hype, ownership over clout.
• 5:51
  And stay hungry while you do it.