Latest / The Scene Projects / Dr. Glenn Toby on Music, Advocacy, and Empowering Communities
Transcript
- 0:02Today, we're joined by doctor Glenn Toby, entrepreneur, philanthropist, wealth adviser,
- 0:07and music industry veteran.
- 0:09From his early days in hip hop to guiding athletes and leaders on financial literacy,
- 0:13Glenn's journey is all about impact and empowerment.
- 0:16Let's dive into the conversation.
- 0:23This program is part of the Scene Projects Projects podcast network.
- 0:28Scene Project features interviews with independent musicians, comedians, and artists
- 0:33from across the Midwest.
- 0:36Become part of our community and support local art wherever you are.
- 0:49Well, welcome in to another exciting episode of the scene.
- 0:52I'm your host, Bubba Starts, and with me today is doctor Glenn Toby.
- 0:55Doctor, welcome to the show.
- 0:57Glad to be here, Bubba.
- 1:00A lot of lot of plaques on the wall, a lot of big things in your past, and a lot of cool
- 1:05stuff that you're doing, right now in the present.
- 1:08So, before we kinda get into all the stuff that you're up to now, give us a a brief history of,
- 1:15you know, where you came from and a and a few of the accolades that you've achieved, and then
- 1:20we'll get into all the fun stuff that you're doing these days.
- 1:23Love to do it.
- 1:24Brooklyn born, queen sworn, experienced youth homelessness when I was really young from,
- 1:30like, eight to the seventh grade.
- 1:32From there, moved to Queens, and I you know, Hollis Queens Village, we're the home of Run
- 1:39DMC, you know, Oh Cool J and Russell Simmons.
- 1:42And before those records came out, I was one of the first rappers, mister Sweetie g.
- 1:48I have an EP out now called At The Place To Be, which is many years later.
- 1:53And, actually, my first one of my first records was At the place to be, so I made the EP the
- 1:57same thing.
- 1:58Did some videos on that to just redo it again, and I had the honor of being put in the hip hop
- 2:05hall of fame.
- 2:07Initially, before the first records came out in hip hop, the big ones, I was torn just before
- 2:11Run DMC and LL Cool J made records.
- 2:14And I would go to all five boroughs and battle with other emcees and crews.
- 2:20That's anybody from Dougie Fresh to Bizmarcki, Grandmaster Flash, Curtis Blow.
- 2:25And then during the emergence of hip hop as it became commercialized and the record company
- 2:31started signing and I left and went into business.
- 2:33From there, I had the honor of managing our our Cool J with Brian Latour and Charles Fisher.
- 2:38I did that for four years.
- 2:39That was during the period of the development of the show in the house.
- 2:45And, of course, obviously, the FUBU deal and much more discovered positive k, which was a
- 2:54joy, and I produced his first record and managed him.
- 2:57I discovered David Banner, the rapper that you may know, the rapper actor.
- 3:01Worked with Saigon, managed him.
- 3:04Went on to produce hit records in house music.
- 3:07I was one of the first pioneers in New York City garage, house music sound as a producer
- 3:12and artist with a group called Cultural Vibe and New Civilization.
- 3:16And during the music period at the height of that, I met a gentleman by the name of Alonzo
- 3:22Shavers and got into the sports business.
- 3:24We did over $300,000,000 in contract business in our career.
- 3:28Sold that company now with a new company, which is Rakim Vic, Brady Jackson, and Jay Gordon,
- 3:38and it's called the Winner's Circle.
- 3:39We're doing NIL, and we're also doing sports negotiation and management as a whole.
- 3:44So here we are.
- 3:46Life lived in the zone, in the heart of hip hop, and for a a young kid that experienced
- 3:53that homelessness and, you know, New York City in the I'm assuming in the, you know, seventies
- 3:59and eighties, not a great place.
- 4:01Right?
- 4:01This is before it really got cleaned up.
- 4:03Some some rough times, man.
- 4:05So I really my heart goes out to that young man.
- 4:09Not an easy situation to grow up in.
- 4:12You know, I experienced a little bit of homelessness in my life as well.
- 4:16I was a lot older than that.
- 4:17You know, I was in my teen years, but, I I understand that.
- 4:22And I wasn't on the streets in New York City.
- 4:24Right?
- 4:24I was in the the Midwest where there was always, you know, a a warm inviting person that
- 4:30would that would reach out to that.
- 4:32I I'm sure that it wasn't always the case for you.
- 4:35So thank you for sharing that with us.
- 4:37I'm sure that informed a lot of who you became, as an older gentleman and as you were, you
- 4:43know, meeting some of these other young men and trying to guide them.
- 4:46And I know that currently that means a whole lot to you as well.
- 4:50It does.
- 4:51It doesn't you know, the work you know, Bobby, you're right.
- 4:54We have a foundation called the BookBank Foundation.
- 4:56It's been around for thirty years.
- 4:58We serve the lost, the lonely, and the forgotten.
- 5:02These aren't handouts.
- 5:03These are hand ups.
- 5:05So we have a program called Groceries to Grow, we have been helping in people with sustainable
- 5:12food.
- 5:12Right?
- 5:12There's a food desert.
- 5:13Sometimes people can't budget right.
- 5:15Giving them the modalities and strategies to be able to live a better life.
- 5:20Diet, how to plan and program mealing, and how to make the dollar budget, you know, when
- 5:25you're going out to shop.
- 5:27We have something called shelter from the streets, which we'll be doing this year in
- 5:30December.
- 5:30We go around to all five boroughs.
- 5:32We go to homeless shelters and organizations that provide much needed goods.
- 5:36We have a flight school, the aviation camp, which we do every summer with doctor I mean,
- 5:40with captain John Addison, who's airplane pilot, and so many other programs.
- 5:44So it's thirty years of talking to the lost, the lonely, the forgotten, and we believe that
- 5:50ignorance and a lack of education and a lack of critical thinking is the first step into
- 5:56incarceration, mental illness, drug abuse, and economic disparity.
- 6:00The only way to fix it is to fix it.
- 6:04Yes, sir.
- 6:05And as someone who was incarcerated for two years of my life, you know, selling pot and
- 6:11just making really bad choices, I understand that, and I was very fortunate.
- 6:16We're actually a vote today in South Dakota about building a massive new prison,
- 6:22$650,000,000.
- 6:23It will be the biggest spending ever in South Dakota's history of public taxpayer funds.
- 6:30But there's so much about our current system that's broken because of the education factor,
- 6:36because there's zero rehabilitation done.
- 6:38It's adult day care, doctor.
- 6:39And I don't know if you've been into some of these facilities, but it's all pacification.
- 6:44And then you get three months before you hit the door, they're like, okay.
- 6:47Well, like, learn a little bit here, maybe learn a trade, and then and throw you out
- 6:51there.
- 6:51And and there's not enough helping people before they get to the point of incarceration
- 6:56and they are embedded into a lifestyle, it's very hard to pull them out of that lifestyle
- 7:02after they've been into it.
- 7:03And and there's so much more that can be done, and I hope that, through foundations like yours
- 7:09that, you know, these young men and and these young people everywhere.
- 7:13You know?
- 7:14Rural America, I think, is not much different in many ways from some of these inner city
- 7:19areas because of the lack of education, the lack of, you know, good jobs, and the lack of
- 7:25hope for a brighter future.
- 7:27And I think that's really where it all stems from.
- 7:30Yeah.
- 7:30I agree a 100%.
- 7:31I think if you look at the system, many children, you know, don't have a chance, don't
- 7:38have a choice.
- 7:38Like, we generally don't pick a lot of the choices they pick us.
- 7:43So these children are forced with an option.
- 7:45Do they stay hungry?
- 7:47Do they eat?
- 7:48Do they shoplift?
- 7:49They're competitive.
- 7:51Self esteem issues, confidence.
- 7:53Many of these things can't be built because in the home, it's it's so chaotic or there's such
- 7:58a a dire need that the parents aren't able to parent.
- 8:01They're just being loving mothers or fathers or one or the other.
- 8:05But I think when you have the entire village, I believe we don't we raise our children, but
- 8:12society and the community rises our children.
- 8:15Arise is the lift off from the best place that you get to start out.
- 8:19Some kids don't have a fair start.
- 8:21Some never have a chance.
- 8:22But through education, through the court systems, through laws, through communal
- 8:28exchange with fairness, equitable exchange, even with a prisoner that's inside a system.
- 8:33So this prisoner, if he's doing five years, we'll say, we'll cut it to two and a half, but
- 8:37this is a give and take.
- 8:38You can't have any violations, no contraband, no fighting, no drugs, listening, being on
- 8:45time, and then give the prisoners an opportunity to write out programs, scalable,
- 8:51measurable things that will give them attributable return of what they've done, an
- 8:57idea, concept.
- 8:58That same mind that's turns to the left that is strategic, it can go to the right.
- 9:02If they're really good in the dark, they can be just as good in in the light.
- 9:06And guess what?
- 9:06If it's a complete team, it's the reverse.
- 9:09It kind of reverses incarceration and creates an incineration for all the evil, the
- 9:15wickedness by giving people a chance, by having grace for them, and creating fail safe and
- 9:21default measures.
- 9:23Fail safe means this this person's isolated in a program specifically.
- 9:27So if they're working with sharp items in their tools and there's equipment and they you know,
- 9:32maybe they're in the room by themselves doing it.
- 9:33Right?
- 9:34They have to be psychologically qualified to know that they're not gonna hurt themselves
- 9:37with it.
- 9:37There's so much programming, and there's so many provisional concepts and thoughts and and
- 9:43ideology that can be put into these prisoners.
- 9:45They got a lot of time.
- 9:46When they're not working the four to eight hours, the other eight hours, they're either
- 9:50living in shame, pain, mental illness, discourse, or absolute adjunct evil and
- 9:57discourse.
- 9:57But imagine if we were constantly feeding them more than they can eat.
- 10:01There'd be an abundance of opportunity when they're ready to walk to it.
- 10:06Incredible stuff.
- 10:07I think a a lot of people could learn from from listening to you, and I hope a lot of people
- 10:12do.
- 10:13There's just so many people out there that don't understand it.
- 10:15They they don't understand, I I you know, am I proud of the choices that I made that landed me
- 10:23in the prison system?
- 10:24No.
- 10:24Of course not.
- 10:25But I'm very grateful that I had that experience because I can speak not just to
- 10:31these young men and women, you know, also, you know, an increasing female prison population as
- 10:38well.
- 10:39I can speak to them, but I can also speak for them and to expose people on the other side of
- 10:45that fence to what the plights actually are.
- 10:49Because if I didn't tell you, you would never have assumed that I was an incarcerated
- 10:54individual.
- 10:55Right?
- 10:55And I think that a lot of people look at me they don't look at me differently because of
- 11:01that.
- 11:01Right?
- 11:02But because you see the man that I am today.
- 11:05And it's it's important for me to share that part of my story where some people, think that
- 11:11I should never share that part.
- 11:12Oh, why would you tell people that?
- 11:13Because it's part of who I am.
- 11:15And it's not because it's something that, you know, necessarily that I'm proud of, but I want
- 11:19you to know the full story of the man that's standing in front of you.
- 11:22I want you to know my journey because that informs you of of what made me who I am.
- 11:28No doubt how the the bouts with homelessness in in your early life shaped you as well.
- 11:34So Absolutely.
- 11:36I love this job, doctor.
- 11:37I I I love having conversations with people from different walks of life.
- 11:42Be and without the Internet and with pod without podcasting, you and I may have never
- 11:47gotten the chance to to have these.
- 11:49And and for people that look like me or that look like you or have our similar experiences,
- 11:56they would never be able to see them.
- 11:57Maybe we're not all so different at all.
- 12:01Wow.
- 12:01I love it.
- 12:02I love it.
- 12:03You know, continuity is so important.
- 12:05Speaking of continuity, let's talk about before MIDI.
- 12:08Right?
- 12:09I wanna ask you a question.
- 12:10You remember we were doing analog many years ago.
- 12:13I got the joy of two inch tape and going to two track and edits with a with a razor blade.
- 12:19And I wasn't an editor, but it was such an amazing editing process.
- 12:23Then we went to ADATs and we went to complete digital.
- 12:27Do you remember the days of Performa?
- 12:28Do you remember the days of the pre digital?
- 12:30What are your thoughts on that?
- 12:31Digital versus analog.
- 12:32Do you miss it?
- 12:33Well and I came up, so I'm 39.
- 12:36So I'm I'm quite a bit, younger.
- 12:39I I came up as it was still you know, Pro Tools were obviously very big when I started kind of
- 12:45my recording career 02/2009.
- 12:48I was a campfire strummer.
- 12:49I learned how to play guitar so I can impress some girls at a party.
- 12:52Right?
- 12:53You know?
- 12:53My dad played and my uncle played, so a guitar was always around me.
- 12:58And when I got one put in my hands, you know, eighth grade, 13, 14 years old, I was already
- 13:03singing, and I was already writing about things that I felt.
- 13:07And, I found that songwriter's side, and I say that there's something so special about a the
- 13:12six strings of a guitar and the human voice and the human spirit.
- 13:16It's why rock and roll music became what it was for so long.
- 13:20And, now we're getting into the age of AI, and I feel like expression is expression.
- 13:26And if we have tools that people can learn how to get the things that are in their heads, and
- 13:31that's all we're trying to do, is to get the sounds out of our out of our brains and into
- 13:37the world somehow, some way.
- 13:39I'm completely in support of that.
- 13:41And especially in the commercial side of music today, nobody's making any money.
- 13:45So what is it?
- 13:46What does it matter?
- 13:47Right?
- 13:48Wow.
- 13:48Yeah.
- 13:49Yeah.
- 13:49I mean, hundreds of millions of streams can bring no more than $1,500 in some instances.
- 13:58It's insane.
- 13:59Hundreds of millions of streams.
- 14:02And every month, I mean, it's about 200 to 300,000 uploads in just one or two platforms
- 14:10alone.
- 14:11So this is new music every day from an eight year old kid to a 15 year old kid to someone
- 14:15that's doing it as a hobby.
- 14:16So yeah.
- 14:17I mean, live performance has gotta really make the difference now too.
- 14:21I mean, there's so much electronic music.
- 14:23They're gonna be probably streaming at some point or doing some some kind of three d
- 14:26rendering.
- 14:27So it's important that musicians continue their craft, and we have venues to come out and
- 14:32perform so we can resonate soul to soul with the audience.
- 14:35And that's so much of what we do.
- 14:36In the Midwest, we're very blessed that venues still pay quite a bit.
- 14:41Like, when I go out and perform with my band, and I'm honestly I'm nobody.
- 14:44Even in South Dakota, I'm very far down the list, but we make anywhere from a thousand to
- 14:50$1,500 to come out and perform, which in a major market well, the upper echelon of people
- 14:56are not getting that kind of a guarantee to perform.
- 14:59So very fortunate in where we live in the Midwest that we have so many venues that
- 15:05support that.
- 15:06Obviously, a lot of it is in the rock or country world
- 15:10Yeah.
- 15:10That we're seeing though you know, those kind of guarantees.
- 15:13But I I'm working tirelessly to continue to bring, you know, young people.
- 15:18Obviously, they wanna listen to higher energy music.
- 15:22Right?
- 15:22Whether it's pop or or it's hip hop or it's, you know, r and b, whatever that is, and trying
- 15:27to expose, that kind of music to other music lovers.
- 15:31I I feel like if you're performing with all of your heart that it's going to resonate with
- 15:37people regardless of the genre.
- 15:40Yeah.
- 15:40I agree.
- 15:41It's there's so many new systems.
- 15:45They're coming up with these.
- 15:46I know Timberland more recently is has a full artist that he's creating as somebody that had
- 15:52a bidding war on an AI artist.
- 15:55I mean, this is just taking renderings or samples of other people's music using a
- 15:59quantitative analysis to be able to break it down so it becomes the origin of the maker.
- 16:04I mean, what comes in is what comes out.
- 16:06I don't feel great about it, but I do acknowledge it.
- 16:08But as a competitive person and as a true artist, a creative, I guess I'd just carry my
- 16:14spiritual tools with the spirit of songwriting into that box and see what that does bring.
- 16:19So I might be fooling around with it one day.
- 16:22Right.
- 16:22And and I have friends that have no, musical talent with an instrument or with producing,
- 16:29but they write lyrics.
- 16:31And they have these things in their head, and they've learned they've learned the art of
- 16:35talking to the AI because it's not easy.
- 16:37It's not like you just plug in, make this song, and it spits out a perfect version.
- 16:41It takes adapting to the technology.
- 16:44It takes refinement along these things and to see how they were able to express themselves
- 16:50and just to see that joy that they had.
- 16:52It was the same joy that I had when I wrote a song.
- 16:55Right?
- 16:55And that's why as an artist who's not making any money in the business anyway that I'm like,
- 17:00I think that's so great.
- 17:02Now if if I had some skin in the game, and and I know Spotify just went through a massive
- 17:07change in their terms of service, and, it's the reason why I I kinda motivated to pull some of
- 17:13my stuff off of there, especially my podcast, because we put out so much content in here.
- 17:18And it would be very easy for them to just run that through and be like, well, we're just
- 17:22gonna create a new character that's like Bubba starts and and to run with that besides the
- 17:27terms that are pretty much you're signing a record deal without even knowing you're signing
- 17:31a record deal just for the opportunity to have yourself on the platform.
- 17:35I've been doing a lot to just try and educate people to, like, you don't have to believe me.
- 17:40Just go read your terms and educate yourself on on what you're actually signing when you do
- 17:45these things.
- 17:46Because if you're going to work so hard to finally make it and then have this company come
- 17:52back and go, cool.
- 17:52Well, we're gonna take 75% of that.
- 17:55Here you go.
- 17:57I just don't think that it's right.
- 17:59Yeah.
- 17:59I mean and it's systematic.
- 18:01I mean, they go in and they make side deals or we they push the creatives of the artist to the
- 18:08copyright owner to the side.
- 18:11I mean, then they come back and say, this is what the standard is.
- 18:13It's gonna have to change.
- 18:15If not, I think there's gonna have to be a revolution in music.
- 18:19It's gonna be live musicians or people are gonna go outside of the systems and create
- 18:23their own direct consumer or some kind of pathway.
- 18:28I think that's gonna come too.
- 18:29Well and we've been seeing that for a long time.
- 18:32I I I follow the creative juice podcast, indipreneur, you know, Rick Barker, which is
- 18:38Taylor Swift's former manager, and that's someone I got introduced in 2018 when I got out
- 18:42of prison.
- 18:43And I just started consuming their content and listening to them, and it was all of that.
- 18:47Direct to fan.
- 18:48Like, look.
- 18:48You don't have to have a million streams to do very well for yourself.
- 18:52And in my area, like I said, very fortunate to get great guarantees for performance fees, but
- 18:58there's other ways to get your music out there and to do that.
- 19:02You just have to educate yourself, in that field, and it's it's a lot of work.
- 19:08Right?
- 19:08It's a lot more work.
- 19:10But the days of, you know and I'm sure that you I mean, you experienced this.
- 19:15You experienced young men and artists that were able to sign deals that got massive, you know,
- 19:20advances, which they had to pay back through record sales and things.
- 19:23Right?
- 19:24I mean, you've been in this business a long time.
- 19:25I don't have to tell you, but for our young listeners, those days of signing a record deal
- 19:30with massive advances, those are long gone.
- 19:32If you're not coming to the table with a million followers already and massive streaming
- 19:37numbers, record labels aren't interested to you.
- 19:39And honestly, you don't want that deal anyway.
- 19:44Yeah.
- 19:44It's a bad bank deal.
- 19:45And then you gotta think, As the administrator, they may be doing a mathematic.
- 19:50Their mathematics may not meet your metrics like what you deserve and what you need to
- 19:55have.
- 19:55Self publishing's good.
- 19:57Hold on to all your rights.
- 19:59And there's so many nontraditional ways to advance your music career.
- 20:03You can DM other artists.
- 20:04You can offer people your beat packs, make sure they're covered and protected.
- 20:08And if you have several different songs, instead of copywriting each individual song,
- 20:13you can do it as one body of work.
- 20:15You can do 10 songs.
- 20:17You can make it an l EP, or you can I'm sorry.
- 20:19You can make it a LP.
- 20:21You can do it in sixes, fives, and fours, make them an EP, and then manage those the way you
- 20:26want to.
- 20:26It's important that you have an administrative system to measure the copyrights to make sure
- 20:30that everything's covered, all your registrations are in place, and, that's your
- 20:36first right.
- 20:36So you don't want it to be your last.
- 20:39Now is this something that you have a company that's kind of working on these with artists
- 20:43themselves, or or is that you know, I you just have your hands in so many things, I have to
- 20:49imagine.
- 20:49Yeah.
- 20:49So, go ahead and tell us some more if you have some, you know, your your own you know, not
- 20:55just the wisdom, which I appreciate you sharing for free, but where people can find out more
- 20:59about you and what you do for artists.
- 21:01And, just go ahead and share whatever plugs you need to, doctor.
- 21:05Love to.
- 21:06So all things Glenn Toby, g l e n n t o b y, That's on Instagram.
- 21:14That's Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok.
- 21:18DM me.
- 21:19If I can't help you, I'll guide you.
- 21:21I'm willing to share some jewels.
- 21:23We have access to some amazing independent ownership opportunities, will give you the
- 21:27ability to stream public relations, press releases, promotions, blogs, the whole gamut.
- 21:34You can get involved with it a la carte and manage it.
- 21:38Additionally, I always welcome giving free information from my past experiences.
- 21:42I have a TED talk out, a TEDx, and it's about healing, and it talks a little about a mini
- 21:49mini story on my life.
- 21:51And you can go to my website for that, which is doctor d r, Glenn, g l e n n, two n's, t o b y
- 21:58dot com.
- 21:59And mistersweetieg.com, mrsweetyg, is my music site.
- 22:08So, you know, if you're a friend of Bubba, you're a friend of mine.
- 22:10This is where it is.
- 22:11Any information I can share and do get a chance on Saturdays every single night, 8PM eastern
- 22:17time, 07:00 central time, 5PM pacific time.
- 22:20I'm on the global dance party on Freshest FM, streaming and playing some of the best dance, r
- 22:25and b, soul, hip hop, rock, anything you can name.
- 22:29Remixes that are in the format of dance and high energy and good good information I try to
- 22:34share with our listeners.
- 22:36It's a global station and it's a global dance party.
- 22:38Come join us Saturday.
- 22:40That sounds like a great time.
- 22:42Well, doctor, thank you so much for sharing some of your story and some of your wisdom with
- 22:46us here on the show.
- 22:47Thank you for being part of the scene.
- 22:50Thank you, for having me, Bubba.
- 22:52Great show.
- 22:52Heard a lot about you guys, so I took the time.
- 22:54So let's talk, You know, it's an open exchange.
- 22:58One thing about this podcast, many of us come through the door.
- 23:01This is an open community that I think continues.
- 23:03Lot to talk about.