September 7, 2023 • 50 mins
In 1996, Adrian Moeller and Patrick Elasik published the first issue of Mass Appeal Magazine.
In the nearly three decades that followed, Mass Appeal would grow from an underground graffiti zine into a culture-defining multi-faceted entertainment brand with a hand in everything from digital content, to music distribution, to full-length documentaries and much, much more.
However, the rise of Mass Appeal has been anything but straightforward. From barely legal circulation schemes and bankruptcy to a shocking death in the family, the brand has endured extraordinary challenges and still, through it all, risen like a Phoenix. On this week's episode of All Angles, we talk to co-founder Adrian Moeller, Creative Director Sacha Jenkins, as well as current CEO Peter Bittenbender and rap legend / partner Nas, to hear the tale of two Mass Appeals, and understand how a brand can rise, fall, and rise again, thanks to an ensemble cast of elite like-minded culture creators
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
We were almost out of business, literally, like we had
no way to pay the printer back. I don't think
we had any employees, a couple of interns, but like
that was it. We weren't going to make another issue.
We couldn't.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Welcome to Idea Generations All Angles, a podcast about culture's
most influential brands and the teams that built them. If
you're an entrepreneur, creative, or anyone interested in harnessing the
power of collaboration, join me Noah Callahan Bever each week
as we dissect the most dynamic companies in culture, because
(00:42):
the only way to truly understand success is to look
at it from all angles. Idea Generations All Angles is
a Will Packer Media podcast. In nineteen ninety six, Adrian
Mohler and Patrick Alassek published the first issue of mass
(01:05):
Appeal magazine. In the nearly three decades that followed, mass
Appeal would grow from an underground graffiti zine into a
culture defining, multifaceted entertainment brand with a hand in everything
from digital content to music distribution, to full length documentaries
and much much more. However, the rise of Massapel has
(01:29):
been anything but straightforward. From barely legal circulation schemes, at
bankruptcy to a shocking death in the family, The brand
has endured extraordinary challenges and still through it all risen
like a phoenix. On this week's episode of All Angles,
we talked to co founder Adrian Mohler, former creative director
(01:50):
Sasha Jenkins, as well as current CEO Peter Bittenbender and
rap legend slash partner Nas to hear the tale of
two mass appeals and understand how a brand can rise, fall,
and rise again thanks to an ensemble cast of elite,
like minded culture creators. But before any of that happened,
decades before Massapeel would release a string of smash Nas
(02:12):
albums or produce an epic four part Wu Tang documentary,
there were just two teenagers running around the streets of Washington,
d C. With dreams of getting in touch with their
graffiti idols.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I was living in McLean, Virginia, which is a suburb
of DC.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
This is Adrian Moehler, co founder of Mass Appeal magazine.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I had a crew of my dare like friends, and
all we cared about in life was graffiti, riding on walls,
riding on freight trains, and during high school, you know,
we would sneak out at night go paint in the city.
We were like a crew of like, I don't know
seven of us, and I think five of us started
doing graffiti at the same time we sucked. We'd paint
(02:54):
like underneath overpasses in the suburbs, and back then, you know,
obviously there was no Internet, so we would like subway
art or any kind of book or magazine we could
get her hands on, and kind of quickly realized that
we didn't have a lot of talent in the traditional sense,
but we loved excitement and loved doing daredevil shit, so
(03:14):
like bombing aspect of graffiti really appealed to us, being
willing to be uncomfortable, risking getting in trouble and just
getting up as much as possible.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Pat and Adrian were in love with graffiti and the
outlawed lifestyle that came with it, but they knew that
where their talent might be limiting, their passion had no bounds,
and they wanted to participate in the culture. So they
decided to document it in a magazine, a magazine that
they would call mass appeal.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
At that point, we had already been doing graffiti for
a while by the time I graduated, I had moved
to New York to go to Pratt. We talked about
a little bit like oh yea, we should do magazine,
but you know, it was just drum talk, like nothing
ever came of it. And somehow Pat was just like yo,
I yea like five grand from my grandparents. I don't
know where you got it, but and he found like
a printer that like it was in DC. You know,
(04:07):
I think he said they printed like National Geographic, which
in hindsight I really doubt. I used the photo labbit Pratt.
They had a scanner. I would design like half the
magazine and photoshop. He did a couple of pages and
I still have the floppy disc that says mass Appeal
on it, and then I would mail him that disc.
I honestly didn't think anything would ever come of it,
but then he actually got this thing printed. That's how
(04:29):
mass Appeal one was born. We had a bunch of
copies and we would just go to stores and put
them on consignment and get them out there. And in hindsight,
I mean, the magazine looked terrible, but it just proved
us that these like kind of nineteen year old like
fuck up kids could make something just by having like
a magazine. We were able to get like a couple
(04:50):
of sponsors for the next one, a couple of graffiti
stores that took it, and like people were mailing us
shit like that was incredible. I mean we did not
put a lot of these out. Most of them probably
are still in this ba you know what I mean,
the other's mom's basement. But somehow it would get passed around
to different graph writers and we would just get these
envelopes with pictures in them, and we were like, wow,
this is actually like reaching people.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Despite its limited print run, somehow Mass Appeal got around
and overnight the guys started receiving inbound submissions from graph
writers looking to be featured in the mag With very
little strategy but a lot of authenticity, Mass Appeal had
found an audience.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
It was awesome in hindsight, I think it made us
feel important. Rob from Alife said it really eloquently, you know.
Mass Appeal like at the beginning was kind of like
a blog or social media before there was that for
that culture. There were a couple other graphmags out there,
but there wasn't a ton of ways to like communicate
with everyone. People really treasured those magazines. Code from the
(05:55):
Bronx mailed us like some really nice pictures, and we
always were like, how did these magazines get all these pictures?
We just figured because you know, graft guys are so
like secretive, nobody would like ostentatiously just mail a bunch
of pictures. But they did, and we got cool shit,
you know, and we were just like, dude, like we
should do this again. Pat moved to New York fairly quickly.
(06:16):
He was my roommate in New York. I had this
like rent controlled four bedroom apartment at two thirty four
Saint James's Place, which Biggie Small was like two thirty
two or something. It was like right next door. It
was this huge apartment, and I had a couple of roommates.
I think my rand was six hundred bucks for the
whole thing, so I literally like lived there for free.
(06:37):
We had a little office, you know. For the two
years or something, we worked out of there.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
As Pat and Adrian worked to keep massive Field's business growing,
each fell into natural roles that suited them best.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
I could still picture Patt just chain smoking cigarettes in
this little office. It was like boiler room I mean
probably probably make five hundre phone calls today, Like he
didn't give a shit. He was relentless as good as
the sales stuff. But I was good at making like
decks and sponsorship ideas and whatnot. That was always really
good at talking to people and good at sales. And
you know, his dad was always in sales and taught
(07:12):
him a lot, always gave us great advice, and so
that was just a natural thing for him to do.
I had gone to art school for photography, so I
love the whole creative aspect of it. The printing thing
was kind of just a by product of that, because
you know, I was good at doing like the pre
press stuff and some of the graphic design, and I
just enjoyed it too. And a big thing that I like, too,
(07:34):
was just kind of collaborating with creative people, like in hindsight,
like that was my favorite part of the magazine, just
working closely with some really awesome, sometimes really wacky, but
just highly creative designers, photographers, whatever, and just making cool shit.
The first five issues were just really like hand to mouth,
(07:55):
Like Tower Records would take a bunch of magazines and
they would pay us like half the money for them
almost like upfront, and like that check would bankroll us
get like maybe ten thousand dollars in advertising, not a lot,
but we don't really have any overhead, you know. We
were like poor kids.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
As Pad and Adrian continued to drop issues, their process
evolved and they found ways to become more efficient, and
with the help of Pat's mom's credit card and the
generous return policy at best Buy, mass Appeal was able
to level up.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
We really lucked into the timing of that right because
desktop publishing became like possible. That was kind of that whole,
like Quark Express Photoshop probably one point zero, I don't remember,
but we would say, Pats mom's credit card, go to
like comp Usa or best Buy, buy all the shit
we needed, use it for a week, and then return
it all. And then at the same time, the roots
were kind of spreading a little bit.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
As mass Appeal started to make a name for itself
within graffiti culture, Adrian and Pat looked to differentiate the
book within the graph scene landscape, so they avoided featuring
overly wrought legal walls and made mass apeels beat high
wire bombing.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
We were like, we're going to put more bombing into
it and writers that took bigger risks. We tried not
to put a ton of legal walls in the magazine
and the people that we interviewed. We wanted someone that
was either just put it all on the line every night,
or someone that overcame a lot of obstacles and made
a successful career out of it, someone like Todd James,
(09:24):
you know, that had like an incredible amount of talent
but then transcended that into a successful career outside of it,
but without like turning his back on it. I don't
know if we really wrote that down or anything, but
in hindsight, that's kind of what we tried to do.
I pretty quickly realized, like this is only going to
go so far. No, like this was fun. I had
to get a job. I was working for Martha Stewart
(09:46):
Magazine for a while and using her color printer after
hours to print like thousands of media kids. I mean
they had this like printer like the size of a
small room, and you know, I got caught at the
and quit, but but literally print like thousands of these things.
It kind of worked. But then like we were almost
out of business, literally, like we had no way to
pay the printer back. I don't think we had any employees,
(10:08):
a couple of interns, but like that was it. You know,
we weren't going to make another issue. We couldn't.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Internally, the future of Mass Appeal may have been in jeopardy. However,
in the streets the magazine was gaining heat, and they
organically caught the attention of another pioneering publisher in their space.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
I did a graffiti zine when I was a kid,
and they weren't many zines at the time, and maybe
two or three in the entire world.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
This is Sasha Jenkins, who, among other things, is an
acclaimed documentary filmmaker, author, and co founder of the legendary
culture publication Ego Trip.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
So Mass Appeal was a zine that I kept up with,
and I noticed an evolution. They started to have interviews
with rappers and great photography, and you know, I bought it.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I was a fan. Sasha kept a close eye on
the landscape because in nineteen ninety as a teenager in
a story queens, he self published a graffiti scene called
Graphic Scenes and Explicit Language. Then a couple of years later,
in nineteen ninety two, he had a neighborhood friend Hajji
Akabadi would co found the first hip hop newspaper, beat Down.
Sasha's first projects covered what was then a novel mix
(11:16):
of interests from rap music to skateboarding to graffiti. His
passion for those cultures and independent publishing foreshadow division that
he would bring to mass appeal.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Beatdown was a hip hop newspaper. I started with a
childhood friend and Queens who was like an aspiring producer
who had worked in Marley Marl and had done things
in the music industry. And I had my relationships with
artists and photographers, and we came together and did a
hip hop newspaper called Beatdown in nineteen ninety two. Was
printed at a place right across the street from Queensbridge
Housing projects where they printed newspapers, and it cost us
about six hundred and fifty dollars for the first issue.
(11:49):
I was there for about a year. We got Tommy
Boyd to buy the back cover, which paid for everything
for at least a year. Beatdown had done a party
with KRS one and we were giving out newspapers and
I gave it to a gentleman named Elliott Wilson. I said,
I know you from high school, and then Hodgi went
up to him and said, I know you from college.
So we both kind of randomly knew him, not directly
(12:11):
but seen him around. So he called our voicemail and
said he wanted to be down with us, and Elliott
Wilson got down with beat Down. Eventually, me and Hodgy
had a falling out where we didn't agree on what
the direction of the magazine.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Eventually, Sasha would part ways with Hodji and lead beat Down. However,
music editor Elliott Wilson would come with him too, and
after a short hiatus, the two would secure seed money
from Star Wars producer Henry Chalfont and list beat Down
critic Jeffrey chairman Mao and co create a new Brandon magazine,
Ego Trip.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Sometime later in ninety four, myself and Elliott started Ego
Trip Magazine. Ego Trip Magazine was a free magazine in
New York. It wasn't all hip hop. It was skateboarding,
it was graffiti. It was all of my interests sort
of crystallized in a magazine. Elliott loved hip hop, but
he was open to the idea of doing something a
(13:07):
little different, and my argument was what purpose are we
serving creating another hip hop magazine? What advertisers it's gonna
want to fuck with us, right, Why don't we offer
something that's more expansive that can get more advertisers. Maybe
we'll get a skate brand, maybe we'll get a clothing brand. Right,
So that's how I was thinking at the time. So
at first it was myself, Elliott Wilson, and Jeff Chairman Mao,
(13:29):
who was affiliated with a place I was interning at
called Third World Newsreel. There was a magazine called Rap
Pages out of California and they had a section called
Underground Zine. So the Gabe Alvarez, who was the editor there,
reached out to us and said, hey, we want to
interview you guys about your zine. We think it's really cool.
So he gave interviews us and then we fly to
(13:51):
California to do a Cypersil cover story. We meet Gabe
in person, we hit it off. We say to Gabe,
why don't you move to New York and work on
this ego trip thing. He decides to move to New
York and he moves to my mother's house in the
story of Queen's Because we didn't have that much money,
but my mom was like, I'll put your boy up. Eventually,
Gabe convinced or encouraged Brent Rollins, who was the art
(14:14):
director at rad Page's, to come to New York, which
he does. And then once Brent came on board, I
mean he's, you know, obviously a fabulous artist, super talented guy.
How brands come together is obviously the talent and the
vision that everyone has, but it's also magic. It's also
like you can't explain, you know. I look at Ego Trippez,
(14:35):
a band that I was in, and we put out
some great records and they stand a test of time
and we move on.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Ego Trip did indeed put out some classics, and I
know because I was fortunate enough to be part of it.
As a young intern. I looked up to Sasha and
I was eventually able to work with him at Well,
we'll get into that later. Meanwhile, at Mass Appeal, things
were still looking pretty bleak for Patent Adrian. The guys
were down to their last dollar and it looked like
they had published their last issue, but with a lucky
(15:11):
bounce and a little help from their NYC Graffiti network
of writers like Saysan Ewok. Things would change overnight.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Mountain dew called us and we're like, we need breakdancers
to make a video commercial. Do you guys do that?
And we'll like, yeah, of course we have breakdancers. Of
course we didn't know any breakdancers. But it turned out
that ewalkdrew out of breakdance and Pat somehow got Saysa's
studio keys and we like filmed this commercial with them
(15:42):
there and I think they paid us like twenty thousand
dollars for it. At that time, like we were billionaires,
Like that was like more money than we had ever seen,
and we were just like yes and able to do
another issue.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Having gotten a taste of blue chip advertiser money, Pat
and Adrian had an appetite for more, but they felt
that the magazines rough around the edge of aesthetic was gating,
so they reached out to a Life, the independent New
York culture brand to help Who's eponymous streetwear line and
Rivington club sneaker boutique defined downtown cool.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
There was other magazines coming out and they had better
ads than we did, nicer paper, all this stuff, and
we're like, man, we want to step it up, but like,
how do we do that and then you had a
place like a life that opened up. And meeting those
guys is when Massive fel really changed for the better
because my vision was an experience was just really limited.
I knew I liked better stuff, but I didn't know
how to do it that original A Life crew they
(16:37):
were like a generation older than me. They'd had like
real jobs in publishing, could like really make shit happen.
So many people I felt were just like full of
shit and didn't have like the life experience to back
it up, and those guys did, especially Rob. They were
able to take like the Iraq crew and a lot
of those early photographers and mix that up and put
(16:58):
some dope content together. Making those guys do the creative
directors of Mass Appeal at the time was awesome.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
With a Life in the mixed creatively, Mass Appeal became
a more sophisticated product, both for consumers and advertisers alike.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
As soon as we made a few bucks, we got
an office, and then a Life helped make the magazine
cool to bigger advertisers, and once we stopped work with
them at that point, we kind of had to figure
it out. Been around in photo shoots and creative directors
and all this stuff to figure out how to hire
our own and we kind of had the recipe down
and then we're like, okay, you know, we could do
this six times a year. It became a little easier.
(17:36):
At the time, there were probably like one hundred, you know,
advertisers like the Stucy and the Vans that supported things
like mass Appeal. I mean that's just so important, you know,
because without those companies, I think it couldn't have happened.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Support from other independent brands was instrumental in keeping the
lights on it Mass Appeal, but they would need to
start landing corporate advertisers if they really wanted to grow.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
We started kind of upselling it to the Cools and
the Scions and the Fords, and we started getting like
real advertisers. I remember when we did like a million
dollars in revenue for the year, and I was just.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Like, dude, I'm a millionaire, like you know, And yeah,
obviously there was nothing left of that million dollars, probably
less than that after paying everybody, but that just felt
really really good, Like I felt like we made it
on average, probably did like one hundred thousand dollars in
ads per issue.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
We always just plow it right back in because there's
always something that needed to get you know, we needed
a phone system, we needed a graphic designer or whatever.
You know, there's always a list of shit that needed
to get bought. You know that that never ended.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
As the overhead grew, the team found creative ways to
increase their ad revenue. Going out of business was not
an option. So without any other recourse, and in order
to stay cash flow positive, Pat and Adrian were forced
to make some ethically questionable moves.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
We had all these people that needed to get paid,
and the only way we could bring in more money
was by just saying that we printed more copies than
we did. So we did a thousand copies, and then
two and then five, and then we'd go after these
like real advertisers and they're like, we don't advertise with
anybody that prints less than fifty thousand copies. So well,
(19:20):
we do fifty thousand, and then of course we're like,
well wait a minute, if they'll pay eight thousand dollars
for that, they'll pay sixteen thousand if we say we
do one hundred and twenty five thousands. And then it
just kept going up. And up and up, and it
just became more and more unbelievable. The printer was cool
as shit. You would give me like fake receipts if
somebody asked for it. Forget just how many were printed,
(19:42):
Like we couldn't even distribute that many, you know, so
like Tower would keep taking you know, I don't know
what they took, fucking five thousand copies and send us
the half of them back like a year later. And
then at that point we did have real distribution. But
you know, MASSI Appeal is never like a newstand magazine
like it would be on some newstands and you know,
Barnes and Old what was cool, Like we couldn't afford
like the front window placement, and even we could have
(20:04):
like what about it, you know, like it's like a
very niche thing. I mean, that was definitely like a
house of cards waiting to fall down, just because it
had to keep going up because we had no other
way to increase the revenue or we would have just gone.
Our business.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
Money was always very tight.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
We used to have this peel box we would always check,
and I swear to that it was never any fucking
money in it. We'd wait in line for twenty minutes
at the post office and be like, sure, you don't.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
Have any mail for us, and maybe a check fell off.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Could you check again? And it was very stressful to
make payroll and just have the cash fload. Even though
we were doing good, the cash will never kept up
with anything. So, you know, growing just meant that next
month we have any less of the cash that we
needed to run the business. So whenever we had an
opportunity to kind of hustle or away into a little
(20:57):
bit more money.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
We would take everything from just.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Blatantly lying about how many copies we printed with the circulation,
to like Scion would send us these mailers and I
think at that point, I don't know how many hundreds
of thousands of magazines we said we were printing.
Speaker 5 (21:11):
They would mail just like, you know, all the inserts
to the printer, and the printer's like, what do you
want me to do with all these things? Weally just recyclele.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
And so at the time, the cigarette companies were still advertising,
but at the same time they had to give all
this money to anti smoking causes, and a big one
of those was the Truth. So the Truth and the
Truth dot Com was funded by tobacco companies to stop
kids from smoking.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
If the Truth knew.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
We had cigarette ads, they would never have anything to
do with us again. And at the same time, if
the cigarette companies knew that we had Truth ads, they
would want nothing to do with us because it's like,
even though they're funding them, it's kind of their arch enemy.
So if we took money from the Truth, there's no
way that we have money from sigare and helping.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
But you know, they both were like, we half down
to the back cover or we're not doing it. So
we printed half the magazines with one back.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Cover and the other half with the other back cover,
and then just prayed that they wouldn't see it.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
And uh, I think the statue limitations was over. We
got away with it.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Mats Bill was getting big, maybe not Rolling Stone or
XXL big, but the book was fat with ads and
its audience was growing. However, growth necessitates change, and Adriane
was struggling with alienating the core graffiti guys that he
had started this whole thing for in the first place.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I was kind of torn between two worlds because like
all my graffiti friends would be like, dude, you guys
sold out. It's a fucking clothing catalog and I hated
hearing that. But then at the same time, like I knew,
like to grow we had to put product reviews in
there and shit like that. We were also like, like,
we're not in a bubble either, so we're seeing, you know,
if there's advice and a fader and what else was that?
(23:03):
Like flaunt We knew we kind of had to have
our own niche, but not get like too crazy into
anything else. I feel like we're good at like finding
great people and then giving the trust and the autonomy
to do.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It, and just then quite unexpectedly, one of those great
people would actually find them.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
So one day I just called them. I got their
voicemail back when people had like answering machines, and I said, Yo,
I'm a huge fan of your magazine. I think it's beautiful,
It's come a long way, keep doing it.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
I wasn't expecting anything.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Sasha's call would not only inspire Paton Adrian to keep
pressing forward, but it would also give them a game
changing idea.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
They called me up and said, we know who you are,
and like, you know, why don't you get down with us?
And I was like, you guys can't afford me, man,
And it's cool. Just keep doing what you're doing. It's
all good, man, keep going, And so they kept going.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
I knew that we did not have good writing in
the magazine. He was a good writer, and it seemed
like he got it them up.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
One day they hit me up again and they said, yo,
we want you on board. And I was like, all right, well,
let me think about it.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
We met up like just you know, here's the key, Yasha,
you drive that part of the magazine and nine time.
I mean, I didn't really even know the guy. I
knew of him, and you know, Madam wants or something,
but he's just one of those people that is intelligence
and kindness. If you just tell like, this is someone
I want to be associated with, here's somebody I want
to work with.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
I thought about it. I said, well, I think you
need someone who is you know, I wasn't that old,
but I was older at that time, and I wasn't
fully plugged into everything that was going on. My interests
were a little bit more diverse. I said, here's what
I'm gonna do. I'm gonna make myself the editorial director.
And as a young man, who I think would be
great for the job as editor in chief. And his
name is Noah Callahan Bever.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
All Right, So, as I intimated earlier, I your trusted narrator,
actually worked at Mass Appeal for about two years as
it's editor in chief, and for several years after that,
I moonlighted as editorial director while I was catching exit
Vibe and later Complex. As I mentioned, I knew Sasha
because I had been his seventeen year old intern at
Ego Trip and he'd helped me secure my first paid
(25:08):
job as a fact checker at Vibe back in nineteen
ninety seven. So when he reached out during the summer
of two thousand and two and asked me to come
on to run the day to day of the editorial
operation at Mass Appeal, it was an absolute no brainer. Sure,
they were only offering me a cool sixteen thousand dollars
a year salary without benefits and essentially no editorial budget,
but I was all the way in. Sasha was my
(25:30):
mentor and the opportunity to work with him was everything.
And beyond that, I was so enamored of the camaraderie
I had witnessed within the Ego Trip family that I
couldn't wait to emulate it and build my own team.
Of course, given the total lack of resources besides the
awesome art team of photo editor Angela Boatwright and designer
Sally Thurr, that meant assembling an all star squad of
(25:51):
unpaid interns. Honestly, in retrospect, the talent that we brought
together was phenomenal. Acclaimed YA novelist Mary H. K Choy,
genius CC Brendan Frederick, longtime Complex editorial leaders Jack Erwin
and Justin Monroe, Wu Tang, doc producer Kerry Graber, Hoonigan
co founder Brian Scotto, and Billboard's deputy editorial director Damian Scott,
(26:13):
amongst so many others.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
What I saw in mass Appeal was what I was
aspiring to do with Ego trip.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
It's Spike messengers and guys who sell weed and like graffiti,
hip hop, clothing, all these things that are like commonplace
now put together at a time before the Internet was
really rocking. That was how I lived. That's how I
saw the world. I didn't just love hip hop, I
love punk, I loved skate, I loved all this shit
that now, if you're a kid of color, in New York,
(26:43):
it's not weird to be into it. So I was like,
this is cool to be a part of this. How
can I help shape it?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
It worked out. He ran with it, he got the
writing better, improved it. Every collaborator like made it that
much better. And then you know, once we had like
the contributors, you know, the Rocky Owls and all that stuff,
and the Estevons and like that's that was when it
was like tight.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yep. We reimagined the magazine, keeping its downtown New York
City perspective, but with an eye for broader culture and
a particular interest in emergent hip hop. And we tried
to make it funny without being cynical or ironic, and
we brought in a host of columnists, from Ricky and
Estevan to House of Pain's Danny Boy to Ari the
Rugged Man. Prophetically, our first cover would pair Nas with
(27:26):
his estranged mentor large professor, and then we had stuff
like fifty cents guide to Guns and Bad Brains, bassist
Darryl Jennifer's ruminations on navigating golf courses as a black
punk rock icon. Oh yeah, and we also had one
of the first feature stories written on Kanye West, the
story and photoshoot of which was featured in his Genius
documentary on Netflix. It was an insane, stressful and chaotic time,
(27:49):
but honestly speaking, at least for myself, it was some
of the best days of my life.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Things were just just just rocking, and we would get
ads for the first time. We really had like budgets
to do stuff, and we can pay photographers a little bit.
Speaker 5 (28:06):
We could have read better equipment.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
We always put everything right back into the magazine, but
we were able to really elevate it from just like a.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
Magazine that had pictures.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Of graffiti in it to something that's really spoke to
the culture of the time. In two thousand and four,
we started being ready to branch into other things. We're
already starting to get a little bored just doing the
same thing every day for eight years. At this point,
our friend Paul paints these giant advertising murals in la
(28:40):
and we're going to be out there for an ASR
trade shows. Let's go see if something like that could
work in New York. Using like the mass appeal connect,
Paul learned how to paint these giant walls.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
For a company called Artifacts that was like one of
the only.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Companies that still painted these big mural advertising walls. We
had this skill that was kind of like a direct
next step from from graffiti, but really had nothing to
do with graffiti other than that it was painted on
a wall. But the graffiti writers and us could recognize
that it's kind of the same thing. We just knew
that if you hit a good spot like comedy, people
(29:16):
would see it, and obviously advertising is the same thing.
So we're standing at Paul's house in La getting drunk
one night and we're like, dude, you should come to
New York and paint one of these and I bet
we could sell it to the advertisers of Mass Appeal.
And he wasn't you know, that crazy about it at
the beginning, but we kind of convinced him and he
(29:37):
let us borrow one of his photo albums. He had
these graffiti photo albums of you know, like four x
six prints of all the work that he painted for artifacts.
So we took it back, scand the whole thing and
just put a colossal logo on it and pretended like
it was all of art work and started sending it
out to all the magazine advertisers. It was really tough
(30:00):
going at first. Those big vinyl banners were really big
and nobody was painting things anymore. But Rockstar Video Games
kind of saw the light and they were like, Yo,
this is really cool. Could you guys do a test one?
And we just want to make sure that you guys,
can I actually paint something like this. They didn't believe
that that was our work. And the thing, Paul flew
down painted this one all by himself and they loved it.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
And then we must have done like thirty of them in.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Every borough of New York, all just you know, illegal style,
just going to the like a building arms, giving a cat.
He would paint your wall, didn't know anything about permitting
or any of that stuff, and mostly got away with it.
Speaker 5 (30:42):
The New York Times caught windows. It did a really cool.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Article on us, and you know, the floodgates just opened
in a way that it never did with Maxacre.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
With Colossals out of home marketing angle, Adrian, pat and
Paul had tapped into a new, deeper well and we're
ready to run the table.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Within six months, We're like, holy shit, this is the future.
There's something new and cool and just this energy here.
There were so many magazines out at the time. There
were not any other colossals on artifacts. They only cainted
for like the big entrenched companies like the Lamars and
the Clear Channels, they didn't have any of their own walls.
(31:29):
So we knew from the graffiti side of things that
the locations are what's important from the very beginning, where
like we have to get our own walled, and we
were able to get a few.
Speaker 5 (31:39):
Of them, sell them, and it just it just took off.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Things are going really well doing it for about eight months,
and then you know, all hanging out on Paul's birthday
one night, and then the next morning.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
I get the worst call of my life.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Being a graph writer well familiar with the tunnels, Pat
knew his way around the subway. On his way home
from Paul's birthday, late at night, Pat found himself on
the wrong side of the station, headed to Queen's rather
than Brooklyn, So he decided to jump down off the
platform and crossed the tracks to the proper side. Tragically,
(32:27):
Pat missed a step, slipped and touched the deadly third rail.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
You just don't expect that to happen, you know, I
had just never had my life turned upside down literally
from like one hour to the next, like everything was different.
I had to go to the morgue and that was
that was fucking horrible, you know. And they didn't show
me his body. They showed me a polaride of his body. Remember,
(33:00):
I broke down crying. Like the next like three weeks
or just like a blur, you know, uh, just dealing
with Dad, you know, going to his girlfriends and then
the funeral. I must have been uh, he was like
twenty five.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
I didn't know how to deal.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
On top of dealing with the passing of his best friend,
Adrian also had to deal with running their shared business
and what was once a fun, creative outlet was now
a daily reminder of Pat's death.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Once I was back in the office, having to be
there with the business, like having to take over like
his stuff and call advertisers, and I was like it
just felt like so real to try to like sell
an ad And then people would ask me, well, where's Pat,
And I'd be like, he's dead, and and you know
they didn't say it, but like, how are you calling
me for an ad? And I didn't want to be
(33:53):
calling him for an ad? But like like I had to,
it was it was just so fucking uncomfortable and so shitty.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
In the years after losing Pat, Adrian also lost his
passion for mass appeal. With social media and blogs providing
new competition, not to mention a collapsing economy, the landscape
was changing and mass Appeal wasn't equipped to compete on
top of it. Colossal continued to scale organically, and eventually
Adrian could no longer justify splitting his time, so one
(34:22):
day he made the hard decision to shutter Mass Appeal.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
My heart was not in it as much anymore. And
then we had just started Colossal when Pat died. I mean,
it wasn't anything, you know, but we quickly kind of
saw that, like, hey, this has like better legs than
mass appeal does because blogs were coming in. Social media
was like all this stuff, like like it was very
clear that print was on the way out, and you know,
(34:57):
like there's no like riding this into the sunset, you
know what I mean, Like it's going to get ugly.
And by the time I shut it down, it was
time to do so. And you know, magazines were failing
left and right. It's tough because I was still you know,
somewhat young and inexperienced and only knew what I knew
(35:17):
from doing this one thing. You know, I didn't really
have like a big support network outside of it, or
my experience of that to lean on. You know, it's draining.
It's like being in like a you know, like a
bad relationship or something. It stops becoming fun to go
to work. And I waited too long to shut it
down too, just for my own pride. So advertisers were canceling,
(35:39):
distribution was going down. We didn't have money to print
even like the like bullshit number of copies that we
actually did print, you know, so that got less, you know,
expenses kept going up. Like it's obviously it's clear to
everybody that they're on a sinking ship. I'm proud of
how how we handled that because you know, we told everybody,
we're like, yo, let's put one more really off some
(36:00):
issue out managed to so much ads for it, and
we were able to pay everybody, you know, like I
don't think there's I mean maybe one or two people didn't,
but he don't pay the printer. And like most like
when companies like shut down, there's a lot of piss
off people in the wake, and we didn't do that.
You know, we we didn't plan it got like super
long term, but we were like, you know, let's let's
let's finish this one up and make it make it special.
(36:22):
So we did that, and then uh obviously told everybody.
I feel like Colossal kind of absorbed the remaining mass
Appeal staff.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Adrian focused on Colossal, Sasha pursued documentary filmmaking, and the
descendants of my administration eventually all dispersed, and the mass
Appeals we knew it was no more. Sasha, now a
free agent, partnered with a production company called Roadside and
began to cut his teeth in documentary filmmaking. However, after
a few years, he got the hunger for more and
(36:59):
contemplated his next chapter.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
I got to a point with Roadside where I was
becoming antsy, and that usually comes every ten years. I
want to try to do something else. So there's a
guy named Philip Leed's former graffiti artist, hardcore dude, hip
hop guy. He approached me. He was like, we should
start a creative agency or something. Let's figure something out,
and I'm like, I'm open to that. It's like, you
should meet my friend Peter, He's got a company called DCON.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
The Peter in question was Peter Bittenbender, the proprietor of
the agency and record label DCON, a hip hop obsessed
creative entrepreneur who in the decade previous had grown DCON
from a decad a dream into a thriving operation. Peter
had actually started his career going in a completely different direction.
Speaker 6 (37:42):
I went to school for restaurant hotel management, trained chef,
had zero intent of ever entering the entertainment industry. My
last year of NYU, I made a film that was
called One Big Trip that ended up becoming quite successful.
It was a DVD on one side and a CD
on the other, and we got music from like Hieroglyphics,
it was Direct Classic five, it was Dilated Peoples, etc.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
And before we know.
Speaker 6 (38:03):
It, like this thing became the sort of like cultural
touch point with this doc and this soundtrack. But before
we put it out, I had to come up with
a name for a company. And my business partner at
the time, Jason Goldwatch, who directed that film, he was like,
let's call a deconstruction company. But people just kept referring
to us as DCON basically for about ten years Decon
operated working with artists, whether it was Farrell or Kanye
(38:25):
or Ludacris, doing two things, either helping artists produce content
or helping them put out their music. At some point,
brand started to take notice of what we were doing
and they're like, oh, if you're making content for this artist,
we want to do stuff similar to that, so let's
hire you. So like the Microsoft's of the world and
the video game company started hiring us.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Besides the advertising work, Decon would more its branding culture,
releasing revered records by Alchemist, Rock Marciano and perhaps most significantly,
Jay electronicas Exhibit A and Exhibit C.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
So I mean, Peter, hey, man, you don't know who
I am. So I know you are. You know what
are you guys trying to do it? But we're trying
to start this agency. He's like, listen, man, I got
you by five years, Like, why don't you just join DCON.
You save you some time and some effort. We can
crush it if we get together. I was like, all right,
fuck it. I wound up coming to DCON, which at
the time was a record label and a creative agency,
(39:22):
and they had done a few videos and some commercials
and stuff, and we started to do stuff in TV.
You know, me and Peter started talking and he's like,
what's up with mass Appeal?
Speaker 2 (39:32):
After laying Dorman a few years, the mass Appeal name
had becomes something of legend. With Adrian's blessing, Peter and
Sasha decided to resurrect it.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Sasha just hit me up out of the blue and
was like, hey, uh, if I ever want to do
mass Appeal again, do I have your blessing? And I
was like, yeah, of course, man. You know, I think
I still have a couple of hard drive sitting around
or something. And then I guess he talked to Peter.
I thought nothing would ever come of it, and then
a couple of months later he's like, yo, I got
this thing going, and really.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Mass Appeal was up and running again, but with a
refreshed approach thanks to the help of Peter's agency experience.
The initial plan was to relaunch the magazine and website,
as well as to rebrand Decon's existing assets under the
Mass Appeal moniker.
Speaker 6 (40:14):
It was just an obvious thing, like let's change the
name overnight to mass Appeal because it's just such a
stronger consumer facing brand.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
But there was a final piece of the puzzle that
would take the reborn Mass Appeal to the next level. Nas,
a Grammy Award winning musician, entrepreneur and friend of Peter
and Sasha, who had actually appeared on our first cover,
caught wind to the brand's revival. At the invite of
the duo, the former Mass Appeal cover star decided to
(40:42):
get on board and help ID eight and create a
new and evolved vision for Mass Appeal.
Speaker 7 (40:48):
Peter anew from hanging out in New York. I always
liked them is where a chill dude, but had this
I or the tiger type of spirit to go get
it and do great things. And Sasha for years and
we grew up in the same area in Long Island City.
We come up in the same place. I knew where
their hearts wat when it came to the art form,
(41:09):
to what they felt about pop culture, what they felt
about people, what they felt about hip hop, and they're
my kind of guys to get into this with. I
think we have a synergy and people can check the
pedigree and see that we're concerned about what's really happening
in real time and what's pure and what's honest. And
(41:30):
people that moved the needle on things in major ways.
Speaker 6 (41:34):
NOAs that I had known each other for a few
years prior to relaunching Mass Appeal, and we've been talking
about stuff to do together when we ultimately partnered. The
reason it happened is Kasasha respected the work we've been
doing at Decon, and so did NAS because I'd done
a music video for him and I shot some other
content of a record label and we have relationships with
artists and we have NAS. But let's keep the core
of what mascacill stands for, which is storytelling, but let's
(41:56):
do it in the ways more traditional. So let's have
a magazine, let's have a website. For the first couple
of years we produced the magazine, I was so proud
of it, like as somebody who loves the graphic design
and loves like printed materials. We brought back the magazine
that didn't end up working out, which was a good
thing because that wasn't our path. At some point we realized,
like the brand is more of a storytelling vehicle. Let's
be less boxed in and how we tell those stories.
(42:18):
And that's when we started to pivot more into content.
Let's work with brands et cetera.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
As Massi Peple moved into longer form content, they secured
partnerships with CNN Films, TBS, Netflix, and Showtime to produce
documentary films and series. These included Fresh Dressed, a documentary
about hip hop fashion, Rapture, a multi part series that
profiled a swath of budding MC's, and an epic four
part docuseries about the rise of Wu Tang clan of
(42:47):
Mikes and men.
Speaker 6 (42:49):
Let's bring in some directors and some creatives that we
really like and let's become that engine. How are these
stories that led to us producing like Rapture, where we
developed a bunch of directors that we still work with
and you know it. Frush Dressed, which was his first documentary,
which took us to Sundance and kind of taught us,
I guess, sort of the ins and outs of the
content business. But this was his first time like directing
a project in us, like producing something of this scale.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
As the team's film division started to make some noise,
it enticed Nas to deepen his involvement and try his
creative hand in a new discipline, starting with Your Watching
Video Music Box, a doc celebrating Ralph McDaniel's pioneering rap
video show and then Supreme Team, which examined the infamous
Queen's drug empire. NAS rebranded himself not only is one
of the top five lyricists of all time, but now
(43:33):
as an acclaimed documentary filmmaker too.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
He was excited.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
He had ideas, he wanted to do it, He wanted
to be involved, He want to talk to Route and
so it just made sense. And same with Supreme Team.
Like he's referenced Supreme Team in his rhymes. He grew
up in Queens. He understands the weight of the story.
Speaker 7 (43:52):
From unsung heroes to the most popular cats out there.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
We're very interested in their stories.
Speaker 7 (43:59):
We're interested in and Ralph McDaniels because how important he
is to the culture. And he's the first person bringing
New York City the faces of the artist they loved.
The kids were not seeing these people until Ralph McDaniels
put them on Public Assets Channel. It just felt like
a match made in heaven. I was honored.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
You know, he's someone that those folks and I put
in quotes. Trust you know, you're not dealing with like
regular people on the street. You're dealing with serious heavyweights,
and I think that because Nas has referenced them with
a level of respect for distance. At the same time,
I think they appreciated his reporting. He's being a documentarian
(44:41):
in his rhymes, mentioning these folks talking about their legacies
and their dynasties. So that's another project that simply just
made sense that he was enthusiastic about. So I think
he himself is surprised, but he's surprised in a way
where he is really happy with this new direction that
he's been, you know, messing with.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
As mass Apeel looks to the future, they continue to
seek ways to expand their impact. Kicking off at the
end of twenty twenty two, Mass Appeal began a multi
year celebration of hip hop's fiftieth birthday under the title
hip Hop fifty, orchestrating a litany of content and irl
activations that have only just started to be revealed. So
hip Hop fifty is a.
Speaker 6 (45:27):
Global movement to celebrate the fiftieth aniversi of hip hop.
The goal is that this becomes that large scale global
celebration of hip hop culture that lasts for multiple years.
So we launched it last year and it's dozens of
different partnerships with different companies that have either historically been
deeply connected to hip hop or we see as a
great extension like Carnegie Hall, for example, isn't a brand
(45:48):
that's been connected to hip hop culture, you know, but
they're a place that hip hop should be celebrated.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Another brand extension the team is focused on moving forward
is broadening their global flop print. Mass Biel has begun
to look to open offices outside the US, with an
eye on Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, and India, with ambitions
of sourcing local musical talent.
Speaker 6 (46:11):
At some point, we realized we cannot truly be one
of the voices of hip hop if we're just thinking
about hip hop from a New York's sensibility. Had to
look at telling stories that were bigger than just in
our backyard. And when we started to talk about different
places we could park the mascil flag, one day, I
just suggested India because we got a script for this
movie called gully Boy, which is the story of this
(46:31):
artist Divine, who ended up being our first artist we
partnered with in India. But it's kind of like the
eight mile of India, Rags to Rich's Super aspirational story
of this artist, Divine, who came from the slums of India.
It came in because Nas was his favorite rapper, so
they wanted Nas to ep the film we partnered with.
Divine started partnering with other artists and India very quickly
and went from like where do we go?
Speaker 1 (46:51):
What are we doing? To like India.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Today, mass Peel drastically different from the downtown graffitisine it
started as, but even as the brand branches out into film, television,
and music, it's commitment to telling authentic stories rooted in
hip hop culture remains the same.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
We do film, we do TV, we do podcasts, we
do marketing, we do advertising, we do a bit of everything,
and it's become a brand that has real legacy.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
I think it's awesome. I'll be watching Netflix like one
in the morning and see a fucking massive heel logo
and the show that I had no idea what was
going to be there, and fucking puts a smile on
my face like a proud parent. I think it's awesome.
Speaker 3 (47:37):
For the longest time, we didn't have people who could
advocate for certain stories, and I feel great about what
we've been able to do. In terms of telling these
stories at a high level, real polished, real thought, real
art direction, real consideration, great archive bal like I think
we brought that to the game, and I don't know
(47:57):
who else is really doing what we're doing.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
For more than twenty five years and over its many iterations,
Massapeel is retained at potent through line a reverence for
documenting outsider culture and investing in the most dynamic creators
of tomorrow. From the days of celebrating their graffiti gods,
to birthing a definitive canon of documentary films, to developing
a roster of musical talent, to now spearheading the fiftieth
(48:25):
anniversary celebration of hip hop and taking the brand global,
Massafield remains dedicated to finding culture's most important, untold stories
and platforming them with care and consideration. When Adrian and
Pat titled the magazine way back in nineteen ninety five,
they did so with tongue in cheek, an ironic nod
to their fringe Passion project.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
But over the.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Years, from Sasha opening the editorial aperture to Peter and
NAS's work securing broadcast deals around the world and blasting
the content to every home. Together, the team has willed
mass appeal in all its authentic glory, from the tuose
recesses of downtown Cool to today earnestly living up to
its name. And so now not only is the money,
(49:07):
but also the fame and the respect growing like mass
appeal from Idea Generation. I'm Noah Callahan Bever and this
is the All Angles Podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode,
(49:28):
please don't hesitate to like comment DM or tell a
friend to tell a friend about Idea Generation and the
All Angles Podcast. We can't do any of this without
your help, and honestly, your support means everything. We do
this for you, and we can't do it without you.
This episode was brought to you by Will Packer. Executive
(49:48):
produced by John Valachick and Helena Ox. Original music by
Valentine Fritz, Edit and sound mixed by Nonsensible Production, and
hosted by me Idea Generation founder Noah Callahan Bever. Idea
Generation's All Angles is a Willpacker Media podcast
We were almost out of business, literally, like we had
no way to pay the printer back. I don't think
we had any employees, a couple of interns, but like
that was it. We weren't going to make another issue.
We couldn't.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Welcome to Idea Generations All Angles, a podcast about culture's
most influential brands and the teams that built them. If
you're an entrepreneur, creative, or anyone interested in harnessing the
power of collaboration, join me Noah Callahan Bever each week
as we dissect the most dynamic companies in culture, because
(00:42):
the only way to truly understand success is to look
at it from all angles. Idea Generations All Angles is
a Will Packer Media podcast. In nineteen ninety six, Adrian
Mohler and Patrick Alassek published the first issue of mass
(01:05):
Appeal magazine. In the nearly three decades that followed, mass
Appeal would grow from an underground graffiti zine into a
culture defining, multifaceted entertainment brand with a hand in everything
from digital content to music distribution, to full length documentaries
and much much more. However, the rise of Massapel has
(01:29):
been anything but straightforward. From barely legal circulation schemes, at
bankruptcy to a shocking death in the family, The brand
has endured extraordinary challenges and still through it all risen
like a phoenix. On this week's episode of All Angles,
we talked to co founder Adrian Mohler, former creative director
(01:50):
Sasha Jenkins, as well as current CEO Peter Bittenbender and
rap legend slash partner Nas to hear the tale of
two mass appeals and understand how a brand can rise, fall,
and rise again thanks to an ensemble cast of elite,
like minded culture creators. But before any of that happened,
decades before Massapeel would release a string of smash Nas
(02:12):
albums or produce an epic four part Wu Tang documentary,
there were just two teenagers running around the streets of Washington,
d C. With dreams of getting in touch with their
graffiti idols.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I was living in McLean, Virginia, which is a suburb
of DC.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
This is Adrian Moehler, co founder of Mass Appeal magazine.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I had a crew of my dare like friends, and
all we cared about in life was graffiti, riding on walls,
riding on freight trains, and during high school, you know,
we would sneak out at night go paint in the city.
We were like a crew of like, I don't know
seven of us, and I think five of us started
doing graffiti at the same time we sucked. We'd paint
(02:54):
like underneath overpasses in the suburbs, and back then, you know,
obviously there was no Internet, so we would like subway
art or any kind of book or magazine we could
get her hands on, and kind of quickly realized that
we didn't have a lot of talent in the traditional sense,
but we loved excitement and loved doing daredevil shit, so
(03:14):
like bombing aspect of graffiti really appealed to us, being
willing to be uncomfortable, risking getting in trouble and just
getting up as much as possible.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Pat and Adrian were in love with graffiti and the
outlawed lifestyle that came with it, but they knew that
where their talent might be limiting, their passion had no bounds,
and they wanted to participate in the culture. So they
decided to document it in a magazine, a magazine that
they would call mass appeal.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
At that point, we had already been doing graffiti for
a while by the time I graduated, I had moved
to New York to go to Pratt. We talked about
a little bit like oh yea, we should do magazine,
but you know, it was just drum talk, like nothing
ever came of it. And somehow Pat was just like yo,
I yea like five grand from my grandparents. I don't
know where you got it, but and he found like
a printer that like it was in DC. You know,
(04:07):
I think he said they printed like National Geographic, which
in hindsight I really doubt. I used the photo labbit Pratt.
They had a scanner. I would design like half the
magazine and photoshop. He did a couple of pages and
I still have the floppy disc that says mass Appeal
on it, and then I would mail him that disc.
I honestly didn't think anything would ever come of it,
but then he actually got this thing printed. That's how
(04:29):
mass Appeal one was born. We had a bunch of
copies and we would just go to stores and put
them on consignment and get them out there. And in hindsight,
I mean, the magazine looked terrible, but it just proved
us that these like kind of nineteen year old like
fuck up kids could make something just by having like
a magazine. We were able to get like a couple
(04:50):
of sponsors for the next one, a couple of graffiti
stores that took it, and like people were mailing us
shit like that was incredible. I mean we did not
put a lot of these out. Most of them probably
are still in this ba you know what I mean,
the other's mom's basement. But somehow it would get passed around
to different graph writers and we would just get these
envelopes with pictures in them, and we were like, wow,
this is actually like reaching people.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Despite its limited print run, somehow Mass Appeal got around
and overnight the guys started receiving inbound submissions from graph
writers looking to be featured in the mag With very
little strategy but a lot of authenticity, Mass Appeal had
found an audience.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
It was awesome in hindsight, I think it made us
feel important. Rob from Alife said it really eloquently, you know.
Mass Appeal like at the beginning was kind of like
a blog or social media before there was that for
that culture. There were a couple other graphmags out there,
but there wasn't a ton of ways to like communicate
with everyone. People really treasured those magazines. Code from the
(05:55):
Bronx mailed us like some really nice pictures, and we
always were like, how did these magazines get all these pictures?
We just figured because you know, graft guys are so
like secretive, nobody would like ostentatiously just mail a bunch
of pictures. But they did, and we got cool shit,
you know, and we were just like, dude, like we
should do this again. Pat moved to New York fairly quickly.
(06:16):
He was my roommate in New York. I had this
like rent controlled four bedroom apartment at two thirty four
Saint James's Place, which Biggie Small was like two thirty
two or something. It was like right next door. It
was this huge apartment, and I had a couple of roommates.
I think my rand was six hundred bucks for the
whole thing, so I literally like lived there for free.
(06:37):
We had a little office, you know. For the two
years or something, we worked out of there.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
As Pat and Adrian worked to keep massive Field's business growing,
each fell into natural roles that suited them best.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
I could still picture Patt just chain smoking cigarettes in
this little office. It was like boiler room I mean
probably probably make five hundre phone calls today, Like he
didn't give a shit. He was relentless as good as
the sales stuff. But I was good at making like
decks and sponsorship ideas and whatnot. That was always really
good at talking to people and good at sales. And
you know, his dad was always in sales and taught
(07:12):
him a lot, always gave us great advice, and so
that was just a natural thing for him to do.
I had gone to art school for photography, so I
love the whole creative aspect of it. The printing thing
was kind of just a by product of that, because
you know, I was good at doing like the pre
press stuff and some of the graphic design, and I
just enjoyed it too. And a big thing that I like, too,
(07:34):
was just kind of collaborating with creative people, like in hindsight,
like that was my favorite part of the magazine, just
working closely with some really awesome, sometimes really wacky, but
just highly creative designers, photographers, whatever, and just making cool shit.
The first five issues were just really like hand to mouth,
(07:55):
Like Tower Records would take a bunch of magazines and
they would pay us like half the money for them
almost like upfront, and like that check would bankroll us
get like maybe ten thousand dollars in advertising, not a lot,
but we don't really have any overhead, you know. We
were like poor kids.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
As Pad and Adrian continued to drop issues, their process
evolved and they found ways to become more efficient, and
with the help of Pat's mom's credit card and the
generous return policy at best Buy, mass Appeal was able
to level up.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
We really lucked into the timing of that right because
desktop publishing became like possible. That was kind of that whole,
like Quark Express Photoshop probably one point zero, I don't remember,
but we would say, Pats mom's credit card, go to
like comp Usa or best Buy, buy all the shit
we needed, use it for a week, and then return
it all. And then at the same time, the roots
were kind of spreading a little bit.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
As mass Appeal started to make a name for itself
within graffiti culture, Adrian and Pat looked to differentiate the
book within the graph scene landscape, so they avoided featuring
overly wrought legal walls and made mass apeels beat high
wire bombing.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
We were like, we're going to put more bombing into
it and writers that took bigger risks. We tried not
to put a ton of legal walls in the magazine
and the people that we interviewed. We wanted someone that
was either just put it all on the line every night,
or someone that overcame a lot of obstacles and made
a successful career out of it, someone like Todd James,
(09:24):
you know, that had like an incredible amount of talent
but then transcended that into a successful career outside of it,
but without like turning his back on it. I don't
know if we really wrote that down or anything, but
in hindsight, that's kind of what we tried to do.
I pretty quickly realized, like this is only going to
go so far. No, like this was fun. I had
to get a job. I was working for Martha Stewart
(09:46):
Magazine for a while and using her color printer after
hours to print like thousands of media kids. I mean
they had this like printer like the size of a
small room, and you know, I got caught at the
and quit, but but literally print like thousands of these things.
It kind of worked. But then like we were almost
out of business, literally, like we had no way to
pay the printer back. I don't think we had any employees,
(10:08):
a couple of interns, but like that was it. You know,
we weren't going to make another issue. We couldn't.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Internally, the future of Mass Appeal may have been in jeopardy. However,
in the streets the magazine was gaining heat, and they
organically caught the attention of another pioneering publisher in their space.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
I did a graffiti zine when I was a kid,
and they weren't many zines at the time, and maybe
two or three in the entire world.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
This is Sasha Jenkins, who, among other things, is an
acclaimed documentary filmmaker, author, and co founder of the legendary
culture publication Ego Trip.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
So Mass Appeal was a zine that I kept up with,
and I noticed an evolution. They started to have interviews
with rappers and great photography, and you know, I bought it.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I was a fan. Sasha kept a close eye on
the landscape because in nineteen ninety as a teenager in
a story queens, he self published a graffiti scene called
Graphic Scenes and Explicit Language. Then a couple of years later,
in nineteen ninety two, he had a neighborhood friend Hajji
Akabadi would co found the first hip hop newspaper, beat Down.
Sasha's first projects covered what was then a novel mix
(11:16):
of interests from rap music to skateboarding to graffiti. His
passion for those cultures and independent publishing foreshadow division that
he would bring to mass appeal.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Beatdown was a hip hop newspaper. I started with a
childhood friend and Queens who was like an aspiring producer
who had worked in Marley Marl and had done things
in the music industry. And I had my relationships with
artists and photographers, and we came together and did a
hip hop newspaper called Beatdown in nineteen ninety two. Was
printed at a place right across the street from Queensbridge
Housing projects where they printed newspapers, and it cost us
about six hundred and fifty dollars for the first issue.
(11:49):
I was there for about a year. We got Tommy
Boyd to buy the back cover, which paid for everything
for at least a year. Beatdown had done a party
with KRS one and we were giving out newspapers and
I gave it to a gentleman named Elliott Wilson. I said,
I know you from high school, and then Hodgi went
up to him and said, I know you from college.
So we both kind of randomly knew him, not directly
(12:11):
but seen him around. So he called our voicemail and
said he wanted to be down with us, and Elliott
Wilson got down with beat Down. Eventually, me and Hodgy
had a falling out where we didn't agree on what
the direction of the magazine.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Eventually, Sasha would part ways with Hodji and lead beat Down. However,
music editor Elliott Wilson would come with him too, and
after a short hiatus, the two would secure seed money
from Star Wars producer Henry Chalfont and list beat Down
critic Jeffrey chairman Mao and co create a new Brandon magazine,
Ego Trip.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Sometime later in ninety four, myself and Elliott started Ego
Trip Magazine. Ego Trip Magazine was a free magazine in
New York. It wasn't all hip hop. It was skateboarding,
it was graffiti. It was all of my interests sort
of crystallized in a magazine. Elliott loved hip hop, but
he was open to the idea of doing something a
(13:07):
little different, and my argument was what purpose are we
serving creating another hip hop magazine? What advertisers it's gonna
want to fuck with us, right, Why don't we offer
something that's more expansive that can get more advertisers. Maybe
we'll get a skate brand, maybe we'll get a clothing brand. Right,
So that's how I was thinking at the time. So
at first it was myself, Elliott Wilson, and Jeff Chairman Mao,
(13:29):
who was affiliated with a place I was interning at
called Third World Newsreel. There was a magazine called Rap
Pages out of California and they had a section called
Underground Zine. So the Gabe Alvarez, who was the editor there,
reached out to us and said, hey, we want to
interview you guys about your zine. We think it's really cool.
So he gave interviews us and then we fly to
(13:51):
California to do a Cypersil cover story. We meet Gabe
in person, we hit it off. We say to Gabe,
why don't you move to New York and work on
this ego trip thing. He decides to move to New
York and he moves to my mother's house in the
story of Queen's Because we didn't have that much money,
but my mom was like, I'll put your boy up. Eventually,
Gabe convinced or encouraged Brent Rollins, who was the art
(14:14):
director at rad Page's, to come to New York, which
he does. And then once Brent came on board, I
mean he's, you know, obviously a fabulous artist, super talented guy.
How brands come together is obviously the talent and the
vision that everyone has, but it's also magic. It's also
like you can't explain, you know. I look at Ego Trippez,
(14:35):
a band that I was in, and we put out
some great records and they stand a test of time
and we move on.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Ego Trip did indeed put out some classics, and I
know because I was fortunate enough to be part of it.
As a young intern. I looked up to Sasha and
I was eventually able to work with him at Well,
we'll get into that later. Meanwhile, at Mass Appeal, things
were still looking pretty bleak for Patent Adrian. The guys
were down to their last dollar and it looked like
they had published their last issue, but with a lucky
(15:11):
bounce and a little help from their NYC Graffiti network
of writers like Saysan Ewok. Things would change overnight.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Mountain dew called us and we're like, we need breakdancers
to make a video commercial. Do you guys do that?
And we'll like, yeah, of course we have breakdancers. Of
course we didn't know any breakdancers. But it turned out
that ewalkdrew out of breakdance and Pat somehow got Saysa's
studio keys and we like filmed this commercial with them
(15:42):
there and I think they paid us like twenty thousand
dollars for it. At that time, like we were billionaires,
Like that was like more money than we had ever seen,
and we were just like yes and able to do
another issue.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Having gotten a taste of blue chip advertiser money, Pat
and Adrian had an appetite for more, but they felt
that the magazines rough around the edge of aesthetic was gating,
so they reached out to a Life, the independent New
York culture brand to help Who's eponymous streetwear line and
Rivington club sneaker boutique defined downtown cool.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
There was other magazines coming out and they had better
ads than we did, nicer paper, all this stuff, and
we're like, man, we want to step it up, but like,
how do we do that and then you had a
place like a life that opened up. And meeting those
guys is when Massive fel really changed for the better
because my vision was an experience was just really limited.
I knew I liked better stuff, but I didn't know
how to do it that original A Life crew they
(16:37):
were like a generation older than me. They'd had like
real jobs in publishing, could like really make shit happen.
So many people I felt were just like full of
shit and didn't have like the life experience to back
it up, and those guys did, especially Rob. They were
able to take like the Iraq crew and a lot
of those early photographers and mix that up and put
(16:58):
some dope content together. Making those guys do the creative
directors of Mass Appeal at the time was awesome.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
With a Life in the mixed creatively, Mass Appeal became
a more sophisticated product, both for consumers and advertisers alike.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
As soon as we made a few bucks, we got
an office, and then a Life helped make the magazine
cool to bigger advertisers, and once we stopped work with
them at that point, we kind of had to figure
it out. Been around in photo shoots and creative directors
and all this stuff to figure out how to hire
our own and we kind of had the recipe down
and then we're like, okay, you know, we could do
this six times a year. It became a little easier.
(17:36):
At the time, there were probably like one hundred, you know,
advertisers like the Stucy and the Vans that supported things
like mass Appeal. I mean that's just so important, you know,
because without those companies, I think it couldn't have happened.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Support from other independent brands was instrumental in keeping the
lights on it Mass Appeal, but they would need to
start landing corporate advertisers if they really wanted to grow.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
We started kind of upselling it to the Cools and
the Scions and the Fords, and we started getting like
real advertisers. I remember when we did like a million
dollars in revenue for the year, and I was just.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Like, dude, I'm a millionaire, like you know, And yeah,
obviously there was nothing left of that million dollars, probably
less than that after paying everybody, but that just felt
really really good, Like I felt like we made it
on average, probably did like one hundred thousand dollars in
ads per issue.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
We always just plow it right back in because there's
always something that needed to get you know, we needed
a phone system, we needed a graphic designer or whatever.
You know, there's always a list of shit that needed
to get bought. You know that that never ended.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
As the overhead grew, the team found creative ways to
increase their ad revenue. Going out of business was not
an option. So without any other recourse, and in order
to stay cash flow positive, Pat and Adrian were forced
to make some ethically questionable moves.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
We had all these people that needed to get paid,
and the only way we could bring in more money
was by just saying that we printed more copies than
we did. So we did a thousand copies, and then
two and then five, and then we'd go after these
like real advertisers and they're like, we don't advertise with
anybody that prints less than fifty thousand copies. So well,
(19:20):
we do fifty thousand, and then of course we're like,
well wait a minute, if they'll pay eight thousand dollars
for that, they'll pay sixteen thousand if we say we
do one hundred and twenty five thousands. And then it
just kept going up. And up and up, and it
just became more and more unbelievable. The printer was cool
as shit. You would give me like fake receipts if
somebody asked for it. Forget just how many were printed,
(19:42):
Like we couldn't even distribute that many, you know, so
like Tower would keep taking you know, I don't know
what they took, fucking five thousand copies and send us
the half of them back like a year later. And
then at that point we did have real distribution. But
you know, MASSI Appeal is never like a newstand magazine
like it would be on some newstands and you know,
Barnes and Old what was cool, Like we couldn't afford
like the front window placement, and even we could have
(20:04):
like what about it, you know, like it's like a
very niche thing. I mean, that was definitely like a
house of cards waiting to fall down, just because it
had to keep going up because we had no other
way to increase the revenue or we would have just gone.
Our business.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
Money was always very tight.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
We used to have this peel box we would always check,
and I swear to that it was never any fucking
money in it. We'd wait in line for twenty minutes
at the post office and be like, sure, you don't.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
Have any mail for us, and maybe a check fell off.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Could you check again? And it was very stressful to
make payroll and just have the cash fload. Even though
we were doing good, the cash will never kept up
with anything. So, you know, growing just meant that next
month we have any less of the cash that we
needed to run the business. So whenever we had an
opportunity to kind of hustle or away into a little
(20:57):
bit more money.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
We would take everything from just.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Blatantly lying about how many copies we printed with the circulation,
to like Scion would send us these mailers and I
think at that point, I don't know how many hundreds
of thousands of magazines we said we were printing.
Speaker 5 (21:11):
They would mail just like, you know, all the inserts
to the printer, and the printer's like, what do you
want me to do with all these things? Weally just recyclele.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
And so at the time, the cigarette companies were still advertising,
but at the same time they had to give all
this money to anti smoking causes, and a big one
of those was the Truth. So the Truth and the
Truth dot Com was funded by tobacco companies to stop
kids from smoking.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
If the Truth knew.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
We had cigarette ads, they would never have anything to
do with us again. And at the same time, if
the cigarette companies knew that we had Truth ads, they
would want nothing to do with us because it's like,
even though they're funding them, it's kind of their arch enemy.
So if we took money from the Truth, there's no
way that we have money from sigare and helping.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
But you know, they both were like, we half down
to the back cover or we're not doing it. So
we printed half the magazines with one back.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Cover and the other half with the other back cover,
and then just prayed that they wouldn't see it.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
And uh, I think the statue limitations was over. We
got away with it.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Mats Bill was getting big, maybe not Rolling Stone or
XXL big, but the book was fat with ads and
its audience was growing. However, growth necessitates change, and Adriane
was struggling with alienating the core graffiti guys that he
had started this whole thing for in the first place.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I was kind of torn between two worlds because like
all my graffiti friends would be like, dude, you guys
sold out. It's a fucking clothing catalog and I hated
hearing that. But then at the same time, like I knew,
like to grow we had to put product reviews in
there and shit like that. We were also like, like,
we're not in a bubble either, so we're seeing, you know,
if there's advice and a fader and what else was that?
(23:03):
Like flaunt We knew we kind of had to have
our own niche, but not get like too crazy into
anything else. I feel like we're good at like finding
great people and then giving the trust and the autonomy
to do.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It, and just then quite unexpectedly, one of those great
people would actually find them.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
So one day I just called them. I got their
voicemail back when people had like answering machines, and I said, Yo,
I'm a huge fan of your magazine. I think it's beautiful,
It's come a long way, keep doing it.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
I wasn't expecting anything.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Sasha's call would not only inspire Paton Adrian to keep
pressing forward, but it would also give them a game
changing idea.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
They called me up and said, we know who you are,
and like, you know, why don't you get down with us?
And I was like, you guys can't afford me, man,
And it's cool. Just keep doing what you're doing. It's
all good, man, keep going, And so they kept going.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
I knew that we did not have good writing in
the magazine. He was a good writer, and it seemed
like he got it them up.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
One day they hit me up again and they said, yo,
we want you on board. And I was like, all right, well,
let me think about it.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
We met up like just you know, here's the key, Yasha,
you drive that part of the magazine and nine time.
I mean, I didn't really even know the guy. I
knew of him, and you know, Madam wants or something,
but he's just one of those people that is intelligence
and kindness. If you just tell like, this is someone
I want to be associated with, here's somebody I want
to work with.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
I thought about it. I said, well, I think you
need someone who is you know, I wasn't that old,
but I was older at that time, and I wasn't
fully plugged into everything that was going on. My interests
were a little bit more diverse. I said, here's what
I'm gonna do. I'm gonna make myself the editorial director.
And as a young man, who I think would be
great for the job as editor in chief. And his
name is Noah Callahan Bever.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
All Right, So, as I intimated earlier, I your trusted narrator,
actually worked at Mass Appeal for about two years as
it's editor in chief, and for several years after that,
I moonlighted as editorial director while I was catching exit
Vibe and later Complex. As I mentioned, I knew Sasha
because I had been his seventeen year old intern at
Ego Trip and he'd helped me secure my first paid
(25:08):
job as a fact checker at Vibe back in nineteen
ninety seven. So when he reached out during the summer
of two thousand and two and asked me to come
on to run the day to day of the editorial
operation at Mass Appeal, it was an absolute no brainer. Sure,
they were only offering me a cool sixteen thousand dollars
a year salary without benefits and essentially no editorial budget,
but I was all the way in. Sasha was my
(25:30):
mentor and the opportunity to work with him was everything.
And beyond that, I was so enamored of the camaraderie
I had witnessed within the Ego Trip family that I
couldn't wait to emulate it and build my own team.
Of course, given the total lack of resources besides the
awesome art team of photo editor Angela Boatwright and designer
Sally Thurr, that meant assembling an all star squad of
(25:51):
unpaid interns. Honestly, in retrospect, the talent that we brought
together was phenomenal. Acclaimed YA novelist Mary H. K Choy,
genius CC Brendan Frederick, longtime Complex editorial leaders Jack Erwin
and Justin Monroe, Wu Tang, doc producer Kerry Graber, Hoonigan
co founder Brian Scotto, and Billboard's deputy editorial director Damian Scott,
(26:13):
amongst so many others.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
What I saw in mass Appeal was what I was
aspiring to do with Ego trip.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
It's Spike messengers and guys who sell weed and like graffiti,
hip hop, clothing, all these things that are like commonplace
now put together at a time before the Internet was
really rocking. That was how I lived. That's how I
saw the world. I didn't just love hip hop, I
love punk, I loved skate, I loved all this shit
that now, if you're a kid of color, in New York,
(26:43):
it's not weird to be into it. So I was like,
this is cool to be a part of this. How
can I help shape it?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
It worked out. He ran with it, he got the
writing better, improved it. Every collaborator like made it that
much better. And then you know, once we had like
the contributors, you know, the Rocky Owls and all that stuff,
and the Estevons and like that's that was when it
was like tight.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yep. We reimagined the magazine, keeping its downtown New York
City perspective, but with an eye for broader culture and
a particular interest in emergent hip hop. And we tried
to make it funny without being cynical or ironic, and
we brought in a host of columnists, from Ricky and
Estevan to House of Pain's Danny Boy to Ari the
Rugged Man. Prophetically, our first cover would pair Nas with
(27:26):
his estranged mentor large professor, and then we had stuff
like fifty cents guide to Guns and Bad Brains, bassist
Darryl Jennifer's ruminations on navigating golf courses as a black
punk rock icon. Oh yeah, and we also had one
of the first feature stories written on Kanye West, the
story and photoshoot of which was featured in his Genius
documentary on Netflix. It was an insane, stressful and chaotic time,
(27:49):
but honestly speaking, at least for myself, it was some
of the best days of my life.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Things were just just just rocking, and we would get
ads for the first time. We really had like budgets
to do stuff, and we can pay photographers a little bit.
Speaker 5 (28:06):
We could have read better equipment.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
We always put everything right back into the magazine, but
we were able to really elevate it from just like a.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
Magazine that had pictures.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Of graffiti in it to something that's really spoke to
the culture of the time. In two thousand and four,
we started being ready to branch into other things. We're
already starting to get a little bored just doing the
same thing every day for eight years. At this point,
our friend Paul paints these giant advertising murals in la
(28:40):
and we're going to be out there for an ASR
trade shows. Let's go see if something like that could
work in New York. Using like the mass appeal connect,
Paul learned how to paint these giant walls.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
For a company called Artifacts that was like one of
the only.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Companies that still painted these big mural advertising walls. We
had this skill that was kind of like a direct
next step from from graffiti, but really had nothing to
do with graffiti other than that it was painted on
a wall. But the graffiti writers and us could recognize
that it's kind of the same thing. We just knew
that if you hit a good spot like comedy, people
(29:16):
would see it, and obviously advertising is the same thing.
So we're standing at Paul's house in La getting drunk
one night and we're like, dude, you should come to
New York and paint one of these and I bet
we could sell it to the advertisers of Mass Appeal.
And he wasn't you know, that crazy about it at
the beginning, but we kind of convinced him and he
(29:37):
let us borrow one of his photo albums. He had
these graffiti photo albums of you know, like four x
six prints of all the work that he painted for artifacts.
So we took it back, scand the whole thing and
just put a colossal logo on it and pretended like
it was all of art work and started sending it
out to all the magazine advertisers. It was really tough
(30:00):
going at first. Those big vinyl banners were really big
and nobody was painting things anymore. But Rockstar Video Games
kind of saw the light and they were like, Yo,
this is really cool. Could you guys do a test one?
And we just want to make sure that you guys,
can I actually paint something like this. They didn't believe
that that was our work. And the thing, Paul flew
down painted this one all by himself and they loved it.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
And then we must have done like thirty of them in.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Every borough of New York, all just you know, illegal style,
just going to the like a building arms, giving a cat.
He would paint your wall, didn't know anything about permitting
or any of that stuff, and mostly got away with it.
Speaker 5 (30:42):
The New York Times caught windows. It did a really cool.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Article on us, and you know, the floodgates just opened
in a way that it never did with Maxacre.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
With Colossals out of home marketing angle, Adrian, pat and
Paul had tapped into a new, deeper well and we're
ready to run the table.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Within six months, We're like, holy shit, this is the future.
There's something new and cool and just this energy here.
There were so many magazines out at the time. There
were not any other colossals on artifacts. They only cainted
for like the big entrenched companies like the Lamars and
the Clear Channels, they didn't have any of their own walls.
(31:29):
So we knew from the graffiti side of things that
the locations are what's important from the very beginning, where
like we have to get our own walled, and we
were able to get a few.
Speaker 5 (31:39):
Of them, sell them, and it just it just took off.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Things are going really well doing it for about eight months,
and then you know, all hanging out on Paul's birthday
one night, and then the next morning.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
I get the worst call of my life.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Being a graph writer well familiar with the tunnels, Pat
knew his way around the subway. On his way home
from Paul's birthday, late at night, Pat found himself on
the wrong side of the station, headed to Queen's rather
than Brooklyn, So he decided to jump down off the
platform and crossed the tracks to the proper side. Tragically,
(32:27):
Pat missed a step, slipped and touched the deadly third rail.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
You just don't expect that to happen, you know, I
had just never had my life turned upside down literally
from like one hour to the next, like everything was different.
I had to go to the morgue and that was
that was fucking horrible, you know. And they didn't show
me his body. They showed me a polaride of his body. Remember,
(33:00):
I broke down crying. Like the next like three weeks
or just like a blur, you know, uh, just dealing
with Dad, you know, going to his girlfriends and then
the funeral. I must have been uh, he was like
twenty five.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
I didn't know how to deal.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
On top of dealing with the passing of his best friend,
Adrian also had to deal with running their shared business
and what was once a fun, creative outlet was now
a daily reminder of Pat's death.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Once I was back in the office, having to be
there with the business, like having to take over like
his stuff and call advertisers, and I was like it
just felt like so real to try to like sell
an ad And then people would ask me, well, where's Pat,
And I'd be like, he's dead, and and you know
they didn't say it, but like, how are you calling
me for an ad? And I didn't want to be
(33:53):
calling him for an ad? But like like I had to,
it was it was just so fucking uncomfortable and so shitty.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
In the years after losing Pat, Adrian also lost his
passion for mass appeal. With social media and blogs providing
new competition, not to mention a collapsing economy, the landscape
was changing and mass Appeal wasn't equipped to compete on
top of it. Colossal continued to scale organically, and eventually
Adrian could no longer justify splitting his time, so one
(34:22):
day he made the hard decision to shutter Mass Appeal.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
My heart was not in it as much anymore. And
then we had just started Colossal when Pat died. I mean,
it wasn't anything, you know, but we quickly kind of
saw that, like, hey, this has like better legs than
mass appeal does because blogs were coming in. Social media
was like all this stuff, like like it was very
clear that print was on the way out, and you know,
(34:57):
like there's no like riding this into the sunset, you
know what I mean, Like it's going to get ugly.
And by the time I shut it down, it was
time to do so. And you know, magazines were failing
left and right. It's tough because I was still you know,
somewhat young and inexperienced and only knew what I knew
(35:17):
from doing this one thing. You know, I didn't really
have like a big support network outside of it, or
my experience of that to lean on. You know, it's draining.
It's like being in like a you know, like a
bad relationship or something. It stops becoming fun to go
to work. And I waited too long to shut it
down too, just for my own pride. So advertisers were canceling,
(35:39):
distribution was going down. We didn't have money to print
even like the like bullshit number of copies that we
actually did print, you know, so that got less, you know,
expenses kept going up. Like it's obviously it's clear to
everybody that they're on a sinking ship. I'm proud of
how how we handled that because you know, we told everybody,
we're like, yo, let's put one more really off some
(36:00):
issue out managed to so much ads for it, and
we were able to pay everybody, you know, like I
don't think there's I mean maybe one or two people didn't,
but he don't pay the printer. And like most like
when companies like shut down, there's a lot of piss
off people in the wake, and we didn't do that.
You know, we we didn't plan it got like super
long term, but we were like, you know, let's let's
let's finish this one up and make it make it special.
(36:22):
So we did that, and then uh obviously told everybody.
I feel like Colossal kind of absorbed the remaining mass
Appeal staff.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Adrian focused on Colossal, Sasha pursued documentary filmmaking, and the
descendants of my administration eventually all dispersed, and the mass
Appeals we knew it was no more. Sasha, now a
free agent, partnered with a production company called Roadside and
began to cut his teeth in documentary filmmaking. However, after
a few years, he got the hunger for more and
(36:59):
contemplated his next chapter.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
I got to a point with Roadside where I was
becoming antsy, and that usually comes every ten years. I
want to try to do something else. So there's a
guy named Philip Leed's former graffiti artist, hardcore dude, hip
hop guy. He approached me. He was like, we should
start a creative agency or something. Let's figure something out,
and I'm like, I'm open to that. It's like, you
should meet my friend Peter, He's got a company called DCON.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
The Peter in question was Peter Bittenbender, the proprietor of
the agency and record label DCON, a hip hop obsessed
creative entrepreneur who in the decade previous had grown DCON
from a decad a dream into a thriving operation. Peter
had actually started his career going in a completely different direction.
Speaker 6 (37:42):
I went to school for restaurant hotel management, trained chef,
had zero intent of ever entering the entertainment industry. My
last year of NYU, I made a film that was
called One Big Trip that ended up becoming quite successful.
It was a DVD on one side and a CD
on the other, and we got music from like Hieroglyphics,
it was Direct Classic five, it was Dilated Peoples, etc.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
And before we know.
Speaker 6 (38:03):
It, like this thing became the sort of like cultural
touch point with this doc and this soundtrack. But before
we put it out, I had to come up with
a name for a company. And my business partner at
the time, Jason Goldwatch, who directed that film, he was like,
let's call a deconstruction company. But people just kept referring
to us as DCON basically for about ten years Decon
operated working with artists, whether it was Farrell or Kanye
(38:25):
or Ludacris, doing two things, either helping artists produce content
or helping them put out their music. At some point,
brand started to take notice of what we were doing
and they're like, oh, if you're making content for this artist,
we want to do stuff similar to that, so let's
hire you. So like the Microsoft's of the world and
the video game company started hiring us.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Besides the advertising work, Decon would more its branding culture,
releasing revered records by Alchemist, Rock Marciano and perhaps most significantly,
Jay electronicas Exhibit A and Exhibit C.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
So I mean, Peter, hey, man, you don't know who
I am. So I know you are. You know what
are you guys trying to do it? But we're trying
to start this agency. He's like, listen, man, I got
you by five years, Like, why don't you just join DCON.
You save you some time and some effort. We can
crush it if we get together. I was like, all right,
fuck it. I wound up coming to DCON, which at
the time was a record label and a creative agency,
(39:22):
and they had done a few videos and some commercials
and stuff, and we started to do stuff in TV.
You know, me and Peter started talking and he's like,
what's up with mass Appeal?
Speaker 2 (39:32):
After laying Dorman a few years, the mass Appeal name
had becomes something of legend. With Adrian's blessing, Peter and
Sasha decided to resurrect it.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Sasha just hit me up out of the blue and
was like, hey, uh, if I ever want to do
mass Appeal again, do I have your blessing? And I
was like, yeah, of course, man. You know, I think
I still have a couple of hard drive sitting around
or something. And then I guess he talked to Peter.
I thought nothing would ever come of it, and then
a couple of months later he's like, yo, I got
this thing going, and really.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Mass Appeal was up and running again, but with a
refreshed approach thanks to the help of Peter's agency experience.
The initial plan was to relaunch the magazine and website,
as well as to rebrand Decon's existing assets under the
Mass Appeal moniker.
Speaker 6 (40:14):
It was just an obvious thing, like let's change the
name overnight to mass Appeal because it's just such a
stronger consumer facing brand.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
But there was a final piece of the puzzle that
would take the reborn Mass Appeal to the next level. Nas,
a Grammy Award winning musician, entrepreneur and friend of Peter
and Sasha, who had actually appeared on our first cover,
caught wind to the brand's revival. At the invite of
the duo, the former Mass Appeal cover star decided to
(40:42):
get on board and help ID eight and create a
new and evolved vision for Mass Appeal.
Speaker 7 (40:48):
Peter anew from hanging out in New York. I always
liked them is where a chill dude, but had this
I or the tiger type of spirit to go get
it and do great things. And Sasha for years and
we grew up in the same area in Long Island City.
We come up in the same place. I knew where
their hearts wat when it came to the art form,
(41:09):
to what they felt about pop culture, what they felt
about people, what they felt about hip hop, and they're
my kind of guys to get into this with. I
think we have a synergy and people can check the
pedigree and see that we're concerned about what's really happening
in real time and what's pure and what's honest. And
(41:30):
people that moved the needle on things in major ways.
Speaker 6 (41:34):
NOAs that I had known each other for a few
years prior to relaunching Mass Appeal, and we've been talking
about stuff to do together when we ultimately partnered. The
reason it happened is Kasasha respected the work we've been
doing at Decon, and so did NAS because I'd done
a music video for him and I shot some other
content of a record label and we have relationships with
artists and we have NAS. But let's keep the core
of what mascacill stands for, which is storytelling, but let's
(41:56):
do it in the ways more traditional. So let's have
a magazine, let's have a website. For the first couple
of years we produced the magazine, I was so proud
of it, like as somebody who loves the graphic design
and loves like printed materials. We brought back the magazine
that didn't end up working out, which was a good
thing because that wasn't our path. At some point we realized,
like the brand is more of a storytelling vehicle. Let's
be less boxed in and how we tell those stories.
(42:18):
And that's when we started to pivot more into content.
Let's work with brands et cetera.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
As Massi Peple moved into longer form content, they secured
partnerships with CNN Films, TBS, Netflix, and Showtime to produce
documentary films and series. These included Fresh Dressed, a documentary
about hip hop fashion, Rapture, a multi part series that
profiled a swath of budding MC's, and an epic four
part docuseries about the rise of Wu Tang clan of
(42:47):
Mikes and men.
Speaker 6 (42:49):
Let's bring in some directors and some creatives that we
really like and let's become that engine. How are these
stories that led to us producing like Rapture, where we
developed a bunch of directors that we still work with
and you know it. Frush Dressed, which was his first documentary,
which took us to Sundance and kind of taught us,
I guess, sort of the ins and outs of the
content business. But this was his first time like directing
a project in us, like producing something of this scale.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
As the team's film division started to make some noise,
it enticed Nas to deepen his involvement and try his
creative hand in a new discipline, starting with Your Watching
Video Music Box, a doc celebrating Ralph McDaniel's pioneering rap
video show and then Supreme Team, which examined the infamous
Queen's drug empire. NAS rebranded himself not only is one
of the top five lyricists of all time, but now
(43:33):
as an acclaimed documentary filmmaker too.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
He was excited.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
He had ideas, he wanted to do it, He wanted
to be involved, He want to talk to Route and
so it just made sense. And same with Supreme Team.
Like he's referenced Supreme Team in his rhymes. He grew
up in Queens. He understands the weight of the story.
Speaker 7 (43:52):
From unsung heroes to the most popular cats out there.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
We're very interested in their stories.
Speaker 7 (43:59):
We're interested in and Ralph McDaniels because how important he
is to the culture. And he's the first person bringing
New York City the faces of the artist they loved.
The kids were not seeing these people until Ralph McDaniels
put them on Public Assets Channel. It just felt like
a match made in heaven. I was honored.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
You know, he's someone that those folks and I put
in quotes. Trust you know, you're not dealing with like
regular people on the street. You're dealing with serious heavyweights,
and I think that because Nas has referenced them with
a level of respect for distance. At the same time,
I think they appreciated his reporting. He's being a documentarian
(44:41):
in his rhymes, mentioning these folks talking about their legacies
and their dynasties. So that's another project that simply just
made sense that he was enthusiastic about. So I think
he himself is surprised, but he's surprised in a way
where he is really happy with this new direction that
he's been, you know, messing with.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
As mass Apeel looks to the future, they continue to
seek ways to expand their impact. Kicking off at the
end of twenty twenty two, Mass Appeal began a multi
year celebration of hip hop's fiftieth birthday under the title
hip Hop fifty, orchestrating a litany of content and irl
activations that have only just started to be revealed. So
hip Hop fifty is a.
Speaker 6 (45:27):
Global movement to celebrate the fiftieth aniversi of hip hop.
The goal is that this becomes that large scale global
celebration of hip hop culture that lasts for multiple years.
So we launched it last year and it's dozens of
different partnerships with different companies that have either historically been
deeply connected to hip hop or we see as a
great extension like Carnegie Hall, for example, isn't a brand
(45:48):
that's been connected to hip hop culture, you know, but
they're a place that hip hop should be celebrated.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Another brand extension the team is focused on moving forward
is broadening their global flop print. Mass Biel has begun
to look to open offices outside the US, with an
eye on Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, and India, with ambitions
of sourcing local musical talent.
Speaker 6 (46:11):
At some point, we realized we cannot truly be one
of the voices of hip hop if we're just thinking
about hip hop from a New York's sensibility. Had to
look at telling stories that were bigger than just in
our backyard. And when we started to talk about different
places we could park the mascil flag, one day, I
just suggested India because we got a script for this
movie called gully Boy, which is the story of this
(46:31):
artist Divine, who ended up being our first artist we
partnered with in India. But it's kind of like the
eight mile of India, Rags to Rich's Super aspirational story
of this artist, Divine, who came from the slums of India.
It came in because Nas was his favorite rapper, so
they wanted Nas to ep the film we partnered with.
Divine started partnering with other artists and India very quickly
and went from like where do we go?
Speaker 1 (46:51):
What are we doing? To like India.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Today, mass Peel drastically different from the downtown graffitisine it
started as, but even as the brand branches out into film, television,
and music, it's commitment to telling authentic stories rooted in
hip hop culture remains the same.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
We do film, we do TV, we do podcasts, we
do marketing, we do advertising, we do a bit of everything,
and it's become a brand that has real legacy.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
I think it's awesome. I'll be watching Netflix like one
in the morning and see a fucking massive heel logo
and the show that I had no idea what was
going to be there, and fucking puts a smile on
my face like a proud parent. I think it's awesome.
Speaker 3 (47:37):
For the longest time, we didn't have people who could
advocate for certain stories, and I feel great about what
we've been able to do. In terms of telling these
stories at a high level, real polished, real thought, real
art direction, real consideration, great archive bal like I think
we brought that to the game, and I don't know
(47:57):
who else is really doing what we're doing.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
For more than twenty five years and over its many iterations,
Massapeel is retained at potent through line a reverence for
documenting outsider culture and investing in the most dynamic creators
of tomorrow. From the days of celebrating their graffiti gods,
to birthing a definitive canon of documentary films, to developing
a roster of musical talent, to now spearheading the fiftieth
(48:25):
anniversary celebration of hip hop and taking the brand global,
Massafield remains dedicated to finding culture's most important, untold stories
and platforming them with care and consideration. When Adrian and
Pat titled the magazine way back in nineteen ninety five,
they did so with tongue in cheek, an ironic nod
to their fringe Passion project.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
But over the.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Years, from Sasha opening the editorial aperture to Peter and
NAS's work securing broadcast deals around the world and blasting
the content to every home. Together, the team has willed
mass appeal in all its authentic glory, from the tuose
recesses of downtown Cool to today earnestly living up to
its name. And so now not only is the money,
(49:07):
but also the fame and the respect growing like mass
appeal from Idea Generation. I'm Noah Callahan Bever and this
is the All Angles Podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode,
(49:28):
please don't hesitate to like comment DM or tell a
friend to tell a friend about Idea Generation and the
All Angles Podcast. We can't do any of this without
your help, and honestly, your support means everything. We do
this for you, and we can't do it without you.
This episode was brought to you by Will Packer. Executive
(49:48):
produced by John Valachick and Helena Ox. Original music by
Valentine Fritz, Edit and sound mixed by Nonsensible Production, and
hosted by me Idea Generation founder Noah Callahan Bever. Idea
Generation's All Angles is a Willpacker Media podcast
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