Questlove Supreme: Shawn Gee

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Couest. Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
All Right, well, ladies and gentlemen, this is a special
episode of Court Love Supreme, as all episodes are special
episodes of course Love Supreme.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
No seriously, for a long time fans of the show.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Who already know like how nerdy and informative we are,
or at least that we strive to be at least
and putting you on game. This is probably why our
guest today is the perfect example and know how having
one foot being a well effective suit in the business

(00:44):
while equally having his other foot deeply rooted in creativity.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
It's really rare to.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Meet someone on the other side of the camera that's
as much of a creative as artists are, but still
in the mode of being a suit. He is the
president of Live Nation Urban and as a business manager
for the last twenty years, he's literally guided the careers
of a bajillion acts from Jill Scott, Scott.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Storch, Lil Wayne, j Colen, Nicki.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Minaj, even a certain unnamed presidential candidate Slash Nuisance, not
to mention Philadelphia's finest.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
The legendary Roots Crew.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
Hello.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Hello, but you know pretty much if you've been head
scratching for the last ten or fifteen years, wondering how
in the hell does Questo? How can Questo match a
triple platinum artist going buff for buck with only a
single going gold in silent?

Speaker 1 (01:57):
This man is really fully responsible.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Uh he can answer that question because lord knows, I've
been in the game since nineteen ninety two and there's
not many of us left here still swimming and thriving.
If you will, and we owe that to our guest.
I promised no inside baseball talk. This is supermanager, Sean guest, super.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Thank you, brother, thank you. I'm waiting for my supreme
y y you'll do that practice last night.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
We can do it on zoom.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
We can't do it on COVID nineteen.

Speaker 5 (02:41):
But if we had about it that name, I'm like,
we can get a feature.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Then, you know, break it down.

Speaker 4 (02:47):
His name was Sean G I think that's what it was.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
Was your.

Speaker 6 (02:51):
No, I don't know, you tell us please, lets you
can start there the story, all right?

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, No, Seawanz's rap name was MC two cool mellow
cool cool cool mellowy.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, Sean, Sean is really responsible. I guess you know.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
I mean, it's no secret.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Shawn and Tarika cousins.

Speaker 7 (03:19):
And I guess a lot of people don't know that.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Right, Okay, again, no inside baseball from question treating you
like a regular ask guest. Yeah, and so I guess
the legend is that the sibling rivalry nature of their
of their childhood. You know, Sean was like the star
of the family because he had a twelve inch single

(03:44):
that was popular Philly and you know that that really
lit a fire into Tarik, like you know, wait, do
they get a load to meat like that? That sort
of thing, and that's you know, so Sean is responsible
for really putting the fire under.

Speaker 5 (03:59):
Hold on, I see what's about to happen here, you
go ahead.

Speaker 7 (04:02):
Okay, IM about to say so.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
So Tarika and I our cousins. Black thought is my cousin.
We were sort of raised more like brothers because his
mother was my first cousin, so he was my second cousin,
but we were obviously around the same age range.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
And you know his mom, you know.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
He's always stayed at the crib like my mom was.
The was the aunt was the South Philly aunt who
moved to Mount Airy where all of the entire South
Philly family would come up and hang and drop their
kids off. And Riek was always at the crib, always
at the crib. And from the time we were four
or five six years old, we were super competitive in everything, right,

(04:47):
whether it was riding our bikes, whether it was drawing,
like Trek is a super dope visual artist. And you know,
I'm the older cousin. I'm two years older than them,
so I I especially in those at that time when
you were younger, two years is a big difference. So
I was able to muscle him. I was able to,
you know, verbally muscle him, physically muscle them like yo.

(05:08):
So you know, we would have drawing contests, you know
what I mean, and we judge each other's picture and
you know, his pictures looking super dope in minds, looking
like stick figures. But I'd like, I want, I want,
you know, So you know I used to always be
able to frustrate them and in different ways. And music
was another passion of us, like we you know, grew up.

(05:30):
You know, I got my first record that I bought
was you know, the Fat Boys but a stick them,
you know, from Sound of Market, you know, brought it
up to the cribe, was at the crib. You know,
we're playing a record. So you know, a lot of
the experiences that I had being the older cousin, I
would come back and and explain or talk to him

(05:50):
or about it, and he would sort of live vicariously
through me. And then, yeah, it got to a certain
point where you know, I started rapping and and I
started to get a rep in Philadelphia, and I used
to travel around the city and got a record deal
quote unquote and put out a single. And at the
same time, you know, REP was always an artist, you know,

(06:14):
whether it was a visual artist, whether it was a poet, writer,
a rapper, you know, a singer. He could do it all.
And I got to a point where, you know, I
also played basketball in high school and I was shooting guard.

(06:34):
I had a record out and I was on a
basketball team.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Played basketball then.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
No, no, not at all, not at all, not at all,
but but basketball basketball took me away from from hip hop,
like basketball took me away from because it was like
I started getting college scholarship offers and things like that.
So I stopped. You were that good, Yeah, I got
I got scholarship division too. I mean I wasn't. I
didn't know that you were in that Villanova you swhere,

(07:03):
But yeah, I got I got a college Scouts, I
got the ball, like yo, google me though, like.

Speaker 7 (07:07):
I got to be a mayor me Sean.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
Know that's I'll send you some clippings, like you know,
I don't know that life.

Speaker 5 (07:19):
So twelve grade year, I put numbers the way Sean,
you basket forward and can we take it back, like
take it back to like the kind of house that
you grew up in, like what your what your parents did, and.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Oh we can start there. We can start there. So
so my entire family on my mother's side, I was
really close, you know, to my mother, and father was
in my life, but my mother raised us.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
It was a household where you know, my father was
in and out. You know, he was in my life.
I'm not I'm not the one who's got it. He
was in my life, but my mother raised it. She
was She was the visionary, she was everything. And my
mother grew up in the projects in South phil projects.
I have three siblings thirteen, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years

(08:06):
older than me. So they're much older than me.

Speaker 4 (08:08):
Oh they were.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
They were born in the projects in South Philly. My mom, uh,
she dropped out of high school in tenth grade. She
was pregnant with my sister when she was in tenth grade,
so she dropped out of high school in tenth grade.
Her my dad got married. They had two more kids,
living in the projects. My entire mother's side of her
family is from South Philly, Fifth Street Projects of Seventh Street.

(08:31):
You know, South Philly is fifth Street of seventh Street,
and you know that was the sort of pre showing
existence was all South Philly. My mom was a hustler,
you know, she worked two three jobs. She saved up,
she bought real estate, and her dream was to get
her children out of South Philadelphia and she did that.
She bought a house in mount Airy and my closest

(08:54):
sibling was twelve years old, and they moved, and we moved.
They moved to mount Airy and I was born in
a mount Airy So I I was born on Sharpenext
Street in mount Airy with my entire family living in
South Philly for the first six years of my life
because my mom was working a couple of jobs, my
dad was working, you know, and my kid, my brother's

(09:16):
and sisters in school and we was ground and they
couldn't keep me. So my first six years of my life,
I lived in South Philly with Tarik's grandma, so until
I became until I was able to get become school age,
I stayed during the week in South Philly with Tarik's
Grandmam and my other aunt who lived like two doors
from each other, my Aunt Many and my Aunt Blanche,
until I turned six, when I was able to go

(09:38):
to school. That's when I moved to Mount Airy with
my mom and my family for the entire you know,
all week. So that was sort of my my early
existence was jumping between South Philly and Mount Airy during
the week and then you know, sort of staying with
my parents and my family on the weekend.

Speaker 7 (09:57):
Which at the time was like the first right was.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
The hood and the burbs. It was absolutely one thousand
percent this was this was mount Airy at the time
where there were white people there, you know what I mean,
it was, it was, it was predominant. It was predominantly
white when my mom moved there. I mean, now you
know that that doesn't exist, but that's that's the Mound
area that we moved to when it's predominantly white. But again,
my existence until I became six and went until I

(10:21):
became school age. Was still in South Philly because my
mom and dad didn't have you know, didn't have no
home health care, you know, kid money, money to.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Put me in some sort of some sort of you
know care. Wait, so I have a question that Trica
is going on record to tell the story. But were
you there in South Philly during the infamous fire episode?

Speaker 3 (10:47):
So the fire episode? All right, So I moved When
my mom moved from South Philly, she moved to a
house on Sharp Next Mount. That was the house she
saved up. You know, she saved two jobs. She bought
that house again. My mom was a hustler. Let me
tell you one more thing about my mom. My mom
was death So she lost her hearing at sixteen, so
she dropped out of high school at fifteen, lost her

(11:09):
hearing at sixteen, and had three kids by the age
of twenty. But she was a hustler and super smart
and understood how to make moves and under and had
a vision for her family. So she got us out
of South We moved to a house on Sharpnext Street.
We were there for about I think four or five years.

(11:30):
Then she saved up and bought another house on Hoarder Street,
which is the street around the corner, and kept the
sharp Next Street as a rental property. Right, so we
moved around the corner, kept the sharp Nextreet as a
rental property. One of the first tenants in that Sharp
Next Street property was Tarik and his mother. So the

(11:51):
infamous house burned down story was the house that my
mother owned. Oh and it was in Mount Airy, not
in South Philly. So the story is Tarik lived in
this house. Tarik and and and his mom and his
brother lived in this house. I was over there. I
was there. We were hanging, we were playing. We were
being cousins or whatever. And then I bounced and we

(12:12):
were playing. I don't know if y'all remember these little
green army men.

Speaker 4 (12:15):
Yeah, that was that was our thing.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
That was our thing.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
We used to set them up all around the crib
and you know what I mean. And again I'm the
older cousin. I'm like, wow, wow, wow, I killed you.
I killed you. You know what I want. But we
we we, you know, we got into the game and
I bounced and he continued playing, and you know, evidently
the story is he found a lighter and you know,
the army men were stuck in one particular position. You know,

(12:41):
that's the position you bought the man, whether they're on
their knees shooting or on the ground shooting. Te you know.
Being the intelligent kid that he was, he said, I
think I can if I burned this army man, I
can change his position, because it's going to be you know, yeah, exactly. So,
you know, he clicked the lighter, old school lighter, you

(13:02):
know what I mean, clicked the lighter was burning the
army man. Of course, the lighter got hot and he
flicked the lighter down, and before you know it, you
turned around and the curtains is on fire. And he
runs downstairs and tells his mom, and then the whole
upstairs is on fire, and then the house is so, yeah,
that's the that's the that's the that's the ultimate story.

(13:22):
But yeah, I mere the house that the house that
caught on fire was actually my mom's rental property. Oh okay,
how those ladies in that house?

Speaker 4 (13:31):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
He tells the story that he just ran downstairs like
like you smell something burning, not at all, that's when
it happens.

Speaker 8 (13:49):
So when you question, I had just about your mom
and she lost the hearing. Did you learn how to
sign to that?

Speaker 4 (13:56):
Like, how did y'all?

Speaker 3 (13:57):
That's the crazy shi? It is so here. So let's
you know, again unpacking a little bit. So my mom
lost her hair in at sixteen, her sister, Tariqu's grandma.
It was hard of hearing from the time I knew her.
I mean, she could hear when you like yell. Our aunt,
Dot was death. Dot had two kids that were both deaf,

(14:20):
and my middle brother was deaf. You know, So we
had all of that in the family. And I just
don't understand why I don't know silent you know why?
You know why because my mom didn't learn silanguage. My
mom read lips. Wow, I mean, my mom never learned
silentuge she and what I did. I was her communicator.

(14:42):
So my early business days was while she was doing
and building her real estate business. You know, I was
this eight year old on the phone translating with the
electric company or translating with the contractor. Like Mom, he said,
it's going to cost you know, six hundred dollars to
put this hot water heater in, and she'd be like, Sean,
get the fuck out of here. Time. It don't cost

(15:04):
me four hundred dollars and I'd be like, sir, and
she'd be like I heard her, but tell her we
could do four fifty. And I'm like, mom, he said
four fifty, She's like, no, four hundred, and that's it,
you know, okay for it. So I learned my first
sort of negotiating and and just handling business and understanding
the rhythm of those conversations because business right, yeah, over

(15:30):
my mom handling buying houses, buying property, negotiate with contractors.
I was the one doing it because she couldn't hear,
so she never really learned sign language, but she obviously
knew how to communicate. So I think because of that,
I never learned sol What was.

Speaker 5 (15:44):
The height of her number of properties at like.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
Her height, I think we had. I mean she used
to buy and sell, so it was never like a
buy and hold, like oh my mom had fifty properties
all over the city. It was it was a buy
and sell thing. But I mean I think she probably
you know, across my through my high school years, it's
probably like ten to fifteen you know, properties around the

(16:07):
city that she's either bought held, So whatever.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Are you still in that business or have you just
let them all go?

Speaker 3 (16:14):
No, I know I still have. I still I still
got some property. And so you know I'm still likes.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Great because that'll call your parents in case some shit
happened to me.

Speaker 4 (16:30):
Are your parents to they still alive?

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Shot?

Speaker 3 (16:33):
My mom passed away young. She was sixty four when
she passed. She passed away fifteen years ago. My father's man.

Speaker 4 (16:39):
Yes, okay, gotcha.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
So you also attended Millersville? Correct?

Speaker 3 (16:46):
Absolutely, all right at the university I got Are you
the one that introduced Malkan to read to each other?

Speaker 4 (16:53):
Or yes?

Speaker 3 (16:54):
It was so I did. You're asking this question. I'm sorry,
So it was me. It goes back to me and
Tarik being competitive, right, so like I was saying, basketball
took me away from him, Like you know, he wasn't
making no money back in the day.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, you know. I was doing.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
Shows at the Why out fifty second Street. You know,
that was my trap.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
That was the house of the Why Circuit.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
I did the Why on Christian down South Philly, Why
on fifty second Street.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (17:20):
I always wanted I always wanted to be jazz j
just see, like that was my goal in life.

Speaker 7 (17:24):
Right, what is that record deal with Sean?

Speaker 3 (17:26):
It was with a company called Payhill Records with the
label was The label was a joint venture between mc
breeze and balally B.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Again where is all right?

Speaker 2 (17:40):
So for those that don't know, like balawie B is
like mid hip hop period, like between eighty five to
about ninety one. Blii B was like a legendary Philadelphia
label CEO, Like what was I always heard his name?
But was he like our was artists.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
So it's funny because the label was you know, this
is his dude name was Jim Hill. He was like
your traditional you know, corporate guy, non musician, non you
know probably what what what y'all thought I was when
you first met me, you know what I mean, like
corporate shoe, no, no creativity. So it was his label.

(18:23):
He did a deal with mc breeze, who was an artist.
This combobulated later and and and you know all of that,
and Breese did a sub deal with balally B, who
also was an artist. So my label was run by.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Two artists and production deal exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
I'm like, where's my royalties?

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Dog?

Speaker 3 (18:44):
I'm about to about to hit you up for that,
but but yeah, so so so you know I had
that then I started playing ball. College, just start calling.
I'm thinking about life. I'm like, let me take this
college scholarship. You know, I stopped rapping and I start
playing ball, so I go up to military. But I'm
you know, you still rap. You're still freestyling, right, You're
still in the car. Bea come on, you still you

(19:04):
never stopped fucking rapping when you rap? And you know,
I come home Thanksgiving of my sophomore year, and you know,
reeks over the family. We have our Thanksgiving dinner. You know,
we're in the basement or whatever, and me and we
always battle. We always battle, always used to battle. And
when I was younger, you know what I mean, I

(19:25):
would kill him. I mean yeah, I wouldkill him. He
was younger. I would muscle him right, like, even when
I lost, I won. But he's just start getting fucking bad.
It was like right around the time he met you
and me were like, you just start getting better and
better and better. And when I came home from college,
we was in the basement and he was like, yo,
you want to battle. And I was like you go first,
and he was like all right, and whatever he said.

(19:48):
I was like, oh no, I don't rap no more.
That shits the sucker, you know what I mean. Like
I said, but listen, but I said, look, you might
be good, you might be better than me. But I'm
playing ball man. I said. There's this dude up Miller's
named Malik. Like, Yo, you can't fuck with Malik B.
You can't. He was like who. I was like, Yo,
he's from Philly, he from westsel Wayne. You cannot touch

(20:09):
Maliku B. And you know, that was it. That was it.
That was Thanksgiving dinner. I said that to him, and
that was it. Fast forward. He's a senior in high
school at this time. Fast forward, him and a couple
of his homies from high school ended up going to
Millersville and they ended up, you know, applying and getting
accepted to Millersville. They go into the summer program. You know,
I'm up there working in the summer. I want the

(20:31):
first weekend that they're up there, I go to the
you know, off campus party or whatever, and they're like, yo, yo,
I just met your cousin. Your cousin go here. I
don't know you had a cousin here. I just met
your cousin. I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's all good. He's like,
he's in the kitchen. I'm like, what are you doing?
He back there rapping and I'm like, all right, cool.
So I walk in the kitchen and it's Tariq and
Malik battle and Malick says to me, like, yo, your

(20:55):
cousin came in a party and asked who I was,
so Tarik in his mind, you know, from the time
when I said, yo, you this kid Malik and Millersville,
You're not better than him, it was like a missile.
He was like, let me find this kid mal like
Moseean's talking about. And from that they literally battled the
entire It was like a two and a half hour battle,
just back and forth. From that point they were bonded,

(21:17):
you know, from from a rap perspective, that was that's
when the you know, that st that portion of the
roots were formed in that kitchen that summer in Millsville University.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Wait, there's the question.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
You You'll be the perfect person to answer, because normally
our guests are New York UH based guests and they
always have a Latin Quarter experience. However, the Philly Latin
Quarter was a spot called after Minon and I never
had a guest on the show that could really explain

(21:53):
why the after midnight was so important? Even though I'm
of age, I was not allowed to the after midnight?

Speaker 1 (22:01):
What was? What was it like in there? Now?

Speaker 2 (22:04):
I know after Midnight's building as the Spaghetti Warehouse because
it shut down, But like, what was was the after
midnight the pinnacle or the top place where you could
see hip hop shows at that time? Was that our
house of blues? Was that our or was it the

(22:25):
fifty second Street?

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Why? Like, where was Philly besides block parties?

Speaker 2 (22:30):
Where was Philly in terms of seeing a show that
wasn't at the spectrum?

Speaker 3 (22:36):
Right? So there was sort of two levels to it.
You know, you had your sort of i'll call it
the local regional level, but for certain shows you still
had some national acts. But that local regional level, which
is mean which means you can on any given Thursday, Friday,
Saturday and Sunday you can go to a party. Right.

(22:57):
You had the YMCA's, you had the out in Winfield,
You had Circus City. You know, there was this circuit
of clubs that rock every week. But you got to
understand that Philly back then, the stars wasn't the rappers.
The stars were the DJs, you know what I mean?

(23:19):
So when you got the Flyers, you weren't going to
see you know, Prince Will Rock. That was Fresh Prince's
name before Fresh Prince Prince Will Rock. You know, you
were going to see DJ Jazzy Jeff, you were going
to see DJ cash Money, you were going to see
Lightning Rich, you were going to see DJ Spinbad. Like
those were the names on the flyers. And when at

(23:39):
all of these clubs, those are the people who sort
of made those rounds, and as young teenagers, we were like,
we gotta go see the DJ. It was almost like
a you know who cared who was actually rapping for them.
Like Jazz Jeff said earlier, I always wanted to be jazz.
Like Jazz Jeff is a god to me, Like it's
amazing that I can call him a friend. But because

(24:00):
when I was a kid, you know, I was like
following Jazzy Jeff, like you know what I mean, Like
he was an icon and during the time he had
Rock well he had I see, he had all these
random m seeds, but it really didn't matter. So you know,
you had your DJ circle in Philly around all of
these clubs that all of the DJ's were the stars.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
What's that well, Grand Master Vict Victor do play.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
Absolute you know, yea Master Vic and the super m seeds,
you know what I mean, Like he was he was
a he was a star, you know. And Vic actually
went to my high school. So I would go see
him at parties on Saturday, him and and his two mcs,
and I come back and he'd be walking through the
halls in high school and I'm like, oh, shoot, that's
Master Vick, you know. But yeah, So it was just

(24:51):
sort of energy in Philly around the DJs. And this
was and that was the club circuit, but after Midnight
brought was this sort of national u look from a
national recording artist perspective. All of the New York people
came down to play after midnight. You know, you gotta
figure even on the club DJ circuit, it was still neighborhoody.

(25:11):
Right when you went to the fifty second Street, why,
ninety percent of the people was from West Philly, you
know what I mean. When you went to you know
what I meant, the Christian Street wid ninety percent of
the people in South Philly. When you went to the
after Midnight, it was people from all over the city,
and you had performers from that you were listening to
on Ladyb's Hip Hop Show and Memi's Hip Hop Show

(25:31):
and DAS. So it was like that was like our
house of blues. That was where the national acts would
come and play and you would see all of the
people in the audience from all over the city at
one place where we would all congregate.

Speaker 7 (25:46):
Would your life be in danger?

Speaker 5 (25:48):
Likely?

Speaker 7 (25:48):
Latin Quarter?

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Yeah, your life in danger at all of these places.
You know, that's just part of that's part of the culture.
You know what I mean, girls, girls would get there
snatch and you know, guys will get there. You know,
the six's jackets taken and you know what I mean,
their name belts and all that ship. But yeah, I
mean that's you know, that's that's that's that goes along
with with the culture. You don't want if you don't

(26:11):
if you don't want to experience that, stay home. Okay,
I did anyway?

Speaker 4 (26:19):
Wait what weren't you allowed to go?

Speaker 1 (26:20):
I don't understand that. Yeah, come on, I.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Did it the first route show of Princess Lounge.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
I wore burking Stocks. Now you got anyway?

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah, So okay, Now how you entered my life was
you you started my first ever bank account, Like, at
what point are you realizing that that basketball might not
be your future? And when does finance enter? And when

(27:02):
you were entering finance, were you thinking of entertainment finance
or were you just thinking like, I'll be a professional
and you know, make low six figures a year, get
a BMW, nice job and you know, wife or two
kids in mount airy life, Like, where was this paradigm
shift in your life where it's like, Okay, money might
be in my future.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Well, what you doing?

Speaker 5 (27:27):
I was I was looking and laughing in my mind.
Sean was just about to say, Darren, but I'm gonna
exactly what I'm going to say.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
That basketball stopped becoming important my freshman year when my
girlfriend at the time and at Millersville told me she
was pregnant. And at that point I had to grow
the fuck up. So it was yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I had November of my sophomore year, my oldest

(27:54):
son was born. I was nineteen years old, a father.
I was a quote unquote statistic, a teen age father
who wasn't supposed to make it. And you know, you're
supposed to drop out of school, and you know, all
of your dreams are over and just support your kid.
But again back to my mom and actually her mother,

(28:15):
her mother and father. They both looked at both of
us and said, all right, cool, you know y'all got this,
but we're gonna take care of this for the next
couple of years. We're gonna take care of this kid
for the next couple of years. Y'all both gonna graduate,
and that's one thing that's not gonna happen. Y'all not
gonna drop out of school. So that support a lot.
But but also my mom said, but you're gonna get

(28:35):
you know, I was always a worker anyway, but you
know you're gonna take care of them too, Like this
isn't all on us, So you make sure you get
your answer job or two if you need it. You know,
you know you got you gotta take care of it.
So at that point I stopped playing ball. Stop playing ball.
I literally worked two jobs for my sophomore year to
to my senior year. One one was at a bank

(28:57):
in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. One was at Kellogg's facility up there.
On the weekends, I would they would shut down the
the cereal uh whatever that is not treadmill, what do
they call the assembly assembly shut down the Cereal assembly line,
you know, on the weekends, and they bring people in

(29:19):
and all we do is clean. We cleaned from ten
at night to ten in the morning, twelve hours, two
days a weekend and get paid doing it. So I
had two jobs up at school and graduated in four years.
I was an accounting major, so you know, I didn't
know what the funk I wanted to do. Like, it
wasn't like I was like, I want to do finance.

Speaker 7 (29:39):
You know.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
I was an accounting major, so I you know, it
was like, all right, you know, let me, I guess
numbers are are where I'm where I need to be.
I started working for the phone company. It was Bell
Atlantic at the time, but it's it's Verison now, uh.
And you know, it just was like going through life
not knowing where I wanted to It was eliminating things

(30:02):
that I didn't want to do, if that makes sense.
So worked in the finance department with the phone company.
I was like, oh, this is where I'm supposed to be.
Once I got in there, I was like, oh, no,
this shit ain't for me, you know what I mean.
After the finance department of the phone company was like, oh,
people are going to get their NBA, Like, you know,
there's a I can get another degree and that's going

(30:23):
to help me make more money. Let me go get
my MBA, you know. So I went to move to Washington,
d C. I went to George Washington University full time.

Speaker 5 (30:33):
While wait wait wait wait wait wait, so you'll parents
are still like, okay, so you want to get your NBA.

Speaker 7 (30:38):
Sorry, Sean, go ahead and move to d C.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
I moved to d C, but by that time I
had graduated college. She had graduated college. Darren was living
with her and her parents, but he was with me
every weekend. Wow, So I was traveling to get them
even when I lived in DC. You know what I mean.
I would drive up to Blancaster, pick them up, bring
them the DC. He'd be with me on the weekends,
I take him back drive back to d C. So

(31:04):
he was with me pretty much every if not every
other weekend. But yeah, she was living with her She
was living with her parents at the time. So you know,
went got my degree, MBA and finance and investments. You know, Okay,
what are you supposed to do with that? You either
go consulting or you go Wall Street all right, let
me try this Wall Street thing, you know, went up, started,

(31:25):
got a job at City Bank, moved to New York.
I was a private banker at City Bank, you know,
working with high networth individuals. I had an office in
New York. I had an office in Zurich, Switzerland. I
was spending probably two weeks out of every month in Europe,
two weeks out of every month in New York living
the dream, right, I didn't know, but I quickly realized

(31:47):
I wasn't living my dream, you know again, eliminating shit
that I didn't want to do. That's that was my
that point in my life. That was four or five years.
It was less about finding my direction. It was more
about eliminiting things that I didn't want to do. Again.
I was spending two weeks in Europe, and I had
a son in Philadelphia. Like, I'm like, yo, I'm trying
to be with my kid, Like, this ain't the life

(32:07):
that I want to be, that I want to have.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
What year was this?

Speaker 3 (32:11):
This was ninety seven into ninety eight, So you were.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
In Europe from the time when we were grinding.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
I was in Zurich. Yes, I was in Switzerland.

Speaker 4 (32:21):
Damn.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
Okay, I was in Switzerland. I mean, did you see it?
We were there two weeks out of two weeks out
of every month. No, we never it never it never,
you know, so that we never connected.

Speaker 7 (32:31):
Are you are at this time?

Speaker 5 (32:32):
Are you talking to to y'all, like talking about your lives?

Speaker 3 (32:34):
And then yeah, I mean I mean an American attest
to this, like during this point in the Roots career,
Like I was the cousin that would come around and
hang in the dressing room and drink up they liquor
and eat their food and hang.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
But then I was mail D call the original mail
D coll.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
But I would bounce because I had to work in
the morning, you know what I mean, or I had
school in the morning. But you know, yeah, I was
definitely you know, still communicating and and and you know,
I always say I was because of that, because of
me and Tarik, because of the Tarik Malak introduction, you
know what I mean, all of that I was. I was.
I'm a root, you know what I mean, I was
a root at that point. I just was a root
in grad school and the root in Wall Street.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Well, I think we we met.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
I think the first oh distortion, I forgot you're the
eye in distortion and static.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
Yes are you not?

Speaker 4 (33:26):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (33:27):
I am. I was the star. I was the star
of the first two routes.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
Yeah, you know, I forgot about distortion.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
I know you were in proceed, but I forgot that's
eye is the eye.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
That if you just.

Speaker 4 (33:46):
Right.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
I totally forgot that joint. So okay. So at the
time when.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
Me and Tarique are sort of elevating this thing past
just being a high school rap group and name only
and trying to get joints at the gallery, yeah, making
like the early organic shit?

Speaker 1 (34:09):
Are you taking at seriously?

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Like when Tarik's playing you like past the popcorn and
like early organics things. Is is there anything sparking in
your head, like all right, he's doing something or did
you just think like, uh they corny? Nah?

Speaker 3 (34:23):
Absolutely taking it seriously, you know, absolutely taking it seriously.
When Tarn told me he was gonna drop out of
school and and come back to Philly with you and
concentrate on this group and he's taken malk I was like, yo,
go you.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
Know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (34:36):
Because again, for me, a part of me wanted to
be that like you know what I mean, Like you
remember in high school I was rapid, but it was
at a time where nobody wasn't making money and it
wasn't no traveling. It was just like, you know, a
professional hobby for lack of a better term. So for
me to see y'all at that point, you know, focus

(34:58):
and commit and elevating, you know what I mean. I
was the one on the phone fucking calling Kobe at
powernighty now like why don't you play the roots? Why
don't you play the roots? Why you know I work
with y'all, you know what I mean? So it was
I was I was absolutely taking it seriously and I
was absolutely sort of believing in you know, the future,

(35:20):
the vision, you know what I mean of what y'all
were forming at that time. Okay, so what did you
have to do?

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Because I'm trying to get into how you got into
the profession that you are right now?

Speaker 1 (35:32):
So I know that my correct. Are we your first client?

Speaker 3 (35:35):
Yeah? I mean I can tell you.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
I'll give you two mess worry at the time when
you came.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
Afore words words as to how I got into this business,
the words are Richard Nichols.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
So while I'm being the cousin that's smoking up, y'all,
weed and drinking y'all liquor, you know what I mean,
Me and me and Rich on the side, and a
relationship because I'm also the cousin that's in grad school,
and you know, I mean handling his business, you know
what I mean. So Rich as all of you who

(36:08):
know Rich as a you know, he was a visionary
and he could see things before you could see him.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Right.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
So I think during those times where I'm building, I'm
just in the back and we're just talking and arguing
about shit, and he's schooling me about life and you
know why, you know, nbas don't mean shit in the
real world, and you know all of Rich's philosophies. You know,
he's really he's really testing me, you know what I mean,
He's really testing me. And I remember it was nineteen

(36:38):
ninety eight. I was at the bank and he called
me and he was like, Yo, where are you at?
And I was like, I'm at the band, I'm at
my job. He was like, YO, come by the studio
after he was at some MEMBERSNY Studios is on fifty
fourth Street. My bank was on fifty third and Alex
So I walked up there, walked in the studio with him,
and I think it might have been like Axe or

(37:00):
somebody back in, one of the engineers.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Actually, and he had, you know, two bottles of red wine,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
We sat there, drank a little bit, smoked a little bit,
and nobody else was in there. I think he was.
He was He was mixing like a jazzy fa nasty
song or something like that, and uh, he was like, yo,
I hate this ship. And I was like, okay, what
you what do you what do you hate? And he
was like it is fucking managing this ship, like I
hate it. And I'm looking at him, like what is

(37:31):
he talking about? And he was like, you know, just
dealing with the agents, dealing with these dudes in their money,
you know, dealing with the record label and budgets and
and all of that ship. He was like, I fucking
hate it, Like that's the part of my job that
I hate. And anyone in those rich you know was
He's the ultimate visionary, the ultimate creative, you know, the
fifth beetle to you know, to to to to the

(37:53):
really the you know, the third and fourth beatle to
Tarik's first and second from a creative perspective and a
visionary respective and what he was saying to me was
this part of my job is weighing me down. So
I just was like, how can I help you know
what I mean? He's like, all right, that's what we're
gonna do. You know, he gave me Carol Lewis's number.
I remember he gave me Caro Lewis's number. He gave

(38:14):
me somebody's number at the label, and and and and
he gave me Miyoshi's number, and and he was like, YO,
call these three. I'm gonna tell him you calling them,
and then you can take this shit over. And I
was like, but Rich, I don't I got a dog.
I got a job, Like I got a real fucking
job down the street, you know what I mean. He
was like, don't worry about you gonna figure it out.
You're gonna figure it out. I literally left the studio,

(38:37):
as you know, Rich's partner that night. And you know,
I didn't know shit about the music business. But you know,
I knew finance, right, and I knew business, and I
knew the rhythm of back to my Mom right. I
knew the rhythm of a negotiation and the rhythm of
a conversation. And I work at the bank, and I

(38:58):
know how to deal with these white folks, you know
what I mean. So there's no different than you know,
someone I'm dealing with the bank and someone I'm dealing
with the label. So I sort of fell back on
the experience that I had my entire life, and Rich
gave me the opportunity to figure it out. And it
was months of me figuring it out right. And you know,

(39:18):
at a certain point it went from me doing two
hours of root work and ten hours of bank work,
and then at a certain point, I you know, be
in my office to ten at night and realized, like,
you know, I haven't done shit for my bank, Like
I just wanted the phone negotiating tour deals and figuring
out you know, mileage from from London to you know whatever,
you know, what's the mileage and what's the gas called.

(39:39):
You know, I've been doing that. So I got to
a point where I was like, yo, I again going
back to my earlier point. I found what I'm supposed to.
I've eliminated all of these things that I wasn't I
wasn't interested in, and I finally found my passion, or
I should say my passion found me. And I had
to make a decision. You know, I was making six

(39:59):
figures at the bath. I was twenty this is ninety seven.
I was twenty five years old, twenty sixty, twenty five
years old, making six figures at the bank.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
You know.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
And but I went talked to my mom again, you know,
my my rock, and I said, Mom, I'm I'm gonna
work with I'm gonna work for Tariq and his group,
you know what I mean. My mom was like, oh really,
and she's like, it's a yeah. He's like, what you
gonna do? I said, I don't know, Like you know,
I'm gonna be richest partner and we're gonna figure this out.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
And you know, my mom, being.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
An entrepreneur that she is, she was like, look, as
long as you can take care of that boy talking
about Darren, as long as you can take care that boy,
you can pay your rent, go ahead, do you you know?
So I said a prayer and jumped out on face.
And I remember my first year I was making six
figures with in the bank, and my first year with
the Roots, I made twenty seven thousand dollars and uh,

(40:49):
you know, took a huge break, but I always appop
last day that I worked the last day that I
worked in my life. The last time I worked the
job was that last day at the bank. You know
what I mean, Like, that's the last job I've ever had.
The last day I woke up and said I have
to go to work was that day in April of

(41:11):
nineteen ninety eight when I left the bank.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
The thing is, is that, all right? Can you explain
to our listeners what does it entail?

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Now?

Speaker 2 (41:25):
I'll give the pre story at least with us, the
way that we were living very hand to mouth. You
would do a show nine times out of ten. You know,
we get paid in cash, even though our system was
a little bit different. It was more of a socialist system,
like you get to repeat, you get to repay, you
get to you know that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
And had like a little talance.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
But you know, the first time I got my advance,
you know, you would have killed me, Like I spent
that shit in three weeks my van. Do you get
what you get about? Let's see seven thousand dollars worth
of records. Yeah, a bunch of pumas.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
You know. I was, I was Billy Jean, I was I.

Speaker 8 (42:14):
Was about say when I sorry, you say he was
giving booms money.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
It was like a hundred bucks trying to watch it
joynts like glow in the Dark, Like I was just
you know, Sean hates this story, but that.

Speaker 4 (42:28):
Look he's pissed. He's already.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Man, Man, it's the truth.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
Like thirty years later, thirty years.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
Later, right, you just you don't think about like I
wasn't thinking about like am I Like back in nineteen
ninety three, Like nineteen ninety nine seemed like the future.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Like oh we won't be here that.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
That's thet I think, you know, even coming back from
the proceed video, my dad was still like you got
to get a real job. Like I didn't see this
as a sustainable future.

Speaker 7 (43:01):
So curious how he tuned it up. Yes, can you.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
Explain how an organization with at least thirteen people because
we rolled like you know, there's a band, there's you know,
staff and all those things. Can you just basically because
a lot of people do want to know how the
Roote's been able to be a thing, drive and be
a thing when on paper we technically should.

Speaker 7 (43:27):
Now yeah, like what was those first changes that you made? Sean?

Speaker 5 (43:30):
Like you came in he was like, oh no, we
gotta do this, we gotta I.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
Mean well, also would threaten to fire me if I
ever fucked up. I don't know if we'll go into
his clients that have no if you I mean shor
want to ask me shell shock, Like if I spend
anything over like my nineteen ninety nine budget, I'm still

(43:54):
like can I buy this bicycle? Or you know, I'm It's.

Speaker 3 (44:04):
Because again, coming into this business, I didn't I didn't
grow up in this business, so I didn't know the
norms and the roles and the titles and the things, right.
So when I started working with rich you know, I
remember we had a conversation. We were in the studio
one day and I asked him, I said, you know,

(44:26):
what's my title? And he was like, I don't know.
You know, He's like, what's my title?

Speaker 1 (44:30):

Speaker 3 (44:31):
And I was like true, I was like facts, And
we sort of settled on these titles of creative manager
and business manager, right, but it extend My role extended
beyond what a traditional business manager did. Like a business
manager in the business is pretty much your accountant, you know,

(44:55):
or your financial advisor. That person builds your financial team.
It's the hub of your financial team. So that person
is the one who interacts with your tax account and
interacts with your investment team, and interacts with your insurance
team and your bank and you know, all of the
financial activity around your business. He's your CFO. For me,

(45:16):
that was an easy sort of title because that is
the that is similar to the role that I played
at the bank as a private banker. That's what I
was doing behind network individuals. I was the hub of
all of their financial activity and using specialists in the
bank and bringing them in. So I was like cool,
But my role with the roots or was more. You know,

(45:37):
I was also the person that was responsible for touring,
you know, tour strategy, toard budgets, toar execution, you know,
every aspect of a tour.

Speaker 5 (45:48):
You know.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
Rich sort of handed that to me. And again that
that's not your traditional business manager, you know what I mean,
it's sort of part of the management job. So where
me and Rich sort of had our delineation was all
of the business aspects of management, dealing with the label,
Like most business managers don't deal with the label, but
I was dealing with manager recording, budgets and and and

(46:09):
that type of thing. While Rich was dealing with making
the records.

Speaker 4 (46:13):
He was in the studio, you know.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
So so those first couple of years was a period
of adjustment for both of us because I came in
on my flat shoe, ignorant to the business shit. And
Rich although he was the you know, upon first sight
or if you get in an argument with him, you
know what I mean, you think he's the roughest, toughest,

(46:35):
you know dude in the room, Rich was a softy
like Rich was like doctor, yes, Like anybody can get
anything out of Rich, you know what I mean. So
for me it was like I was like, Doug, why
do we have all of these people around? Like He's like, oh,
because we're developing this and this and that and this
and that. We literally argue back and forth about the

(46:57):
usefulness of individual or why are we paying this out
of the roots tour money? Like why is this person
getting their rent paid out of the roots tour money?
Like are they not self sufficient? Like is this? Do
we have a deal with these people? So I came
in and sort of instituted traditional business structure in a

(47:18):
non traditional business, or at least tried to institute traditional
business structure and a non traditional business. And it was
the yin and yang of Rich's creative vision as well
as socialist mentality mixed with my or capitalist mentality and

(47:39):
hardcore vision that sort of formed this nice sort of
pocket that we ended up in. Right, We ended up
with the Roots Crew, but I also made sure that
the roots were cool, you know what I mean. If
we just would have went with the Roots Crew, the
Roots probably wouldn't be here by now. So I made sure, like, yes,
we got the Root Crew, you know what I mean,

(48:02):
which is, you know, planting seeds for a lot of
other people. But I'm gonna make sure that the roots
are cool as well, because that is the bus that
we're all riding. And it was that sort of that
back and forth up front, which was a lot of
back and forth, that allowed us to build the foundation
I'd say, by like two thousand and two, two thousand

(48:23):
and three, when we start sort of rolling post post
things fall apart, post Grammy, that sort of allowed us
to take this, you know, this, this beautiful journey that
we've been on for the last couple of decades.

Speaker 5 (48:35):
Did you know you'd be the bad cop to Riches
good cop. I'm sorry, I'm here.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
I mean at times I was most of the times
I was the more. I was the financial bad cop
to Riches good cop, but I also was the creative
and business good cop sometimes to Rich's bad cop. Like
we played ying and yang really well, especially with you know,
the the label side or promoters or you know, creates,

(49:00):
you know what I mean. We played we played our
good cop backcop really well. But definitely because of my background.
You know, I played the financial bad cop and and
and Rich played the good cop just because he was doctor.
Yes a lot of times. But but we we we
we balanced each other well. And I think you know,
at the end, we at the end, we you know,
we were both managers, you know what I mean. Like

(49:21):
I I just said business manager without knowing that business
manager was actually a role in the music business. I
just like, Okay, I have the business handle of the creator,
so I ran with that. But I think that that
that's the reason why we were able to lay the
foundation for the roots and and and and I said
this before another in the in other interviews. You know,
we were we were also realistic, yea, Like at the

(49:42):
end of the day, our goal was can these guys
make enough money so that they don't have to go
get a day job, you know, and and and make
money and live off of their art, you know what
I mean. That was our goal. It wasn't like let's
let's let's make sure that a mirror can drop around
in the maybox and Tarik can have twenty five cribs
around the country. It was like, Yo, can they pay

(50:02):
their rent? Can they give their mom some money when
she needed for a light build? Can they take a
lady out on a date, you know what I mean?
And and then can we go and do it all again?
So it was like having realistic goals, understanding the what
a blue collar musician is I mean, because again rich
come from Rich came from that jazz world where it

(50:24):
was you know, blue collar musicians, you know what I mean.
So understanding that, you know, a blue collar musician is,
you know, living off of his or her art and
they're enjoying that versus going and having a substitute teach
and you know, playing the jazz clubs at night when they.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
Can you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
So it was that that sort of mentality that we
always had, and obviously those goals increased over the as
we got more successful, you know, those But we've always
even to this day, you know, I'm you know, it's funny,
I'll be in these rooms and I love the roots.
I really do love the roots. And I'm like, name
fucking three root songs. You love the concept of.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
The reats, you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (51:06):
Three root songs? You know what I mean. But again,
for us, that's always been our goal was, how can
we take these virtuoso you know, performers, you know, Tarek
and a mirror, how can we make sure that you know,
they can they can create a living off of their
talent because they're super fucking talented and there's nobody out
there better than them. They may never create a hit

(51:27):
record ever in life, but that shouldn't define, you know,
their future and their ability to earn a living off
of the.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
Absolutely so you mentioned the socialist system versus the capitalist system,
of which you know, I think people think I'm super
exaggerating when I said, like we we really didn't start
as far as me and Tarik like really put ourselves
on payroll until like later later or later in life,

(51:57):
whereas absolutely before were it was very socialist, like okay, again,
your RNK gets paid and your car bill gets paid
and that's how and you kind of came in and
cleaned up shop, like, okay, well why are we So
do you, in hindsight do you feel as though that
I think the socialist position sort of kept us pure.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
But did you agree with it? Because the thing is that.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
I agree with aspects of it, you know what I mean?
I agree with aspects of it, but I think I
think the way that things were set up, people were
taking advantage of it, and people were taking advantage of
Rich and I think he and I think he realized
that too. I think that's why I got that call
that night from the bank. But I agree with aspects

(52:49):
of it. I agreed with the sort of creative community
that was being built. And for any community, the one
thing that in any creative community, any you know, sort
of a musical movement, you know, whatever you want to
call it, you know, the one thing that's needed in
order to breathe life into it is infrastructure. Otherwise it's

(53:10):
just some one off musicians and artists, fucking you.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
Know, creative.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
Yeah, he's just doing it right. It's not a community
or a movement without any infrastructure. And what Rich had
was the vision to say Okay, we're going to provide
that infrastructure, right, and without that creative infrastructure, Without that infrastructure,
the community slash movement, slash everything that was happening that

(53:35):
beautiful times that we all had from you know, ninety
seven to two thousand and four where all of this
ship you know, really sort of took off. It wouldn't
have it wouldn't have existed without Richard Richard Nichols pre
you know, creating that infrastructure. However, the problem when you
have you know, infrastructure without structure is that infrastructure would

(53:57):
have would have eaten itself alive because there would have
been too many people eating at that same apple, you
know what I mean. At some point you got to
be like, I'm cutting this apple in half, Tarekan the mirror.
This is your half, everybody else, this is y'all hair.
If y'all can't survive off of this, oh so be it,
you know what I mean. So that's where, you know,
the the balance of being rich at least in that

(54:17):
time was was that I provided the structure for the infrastructure.
But if if it were just my way, it probably
wouldn't have survived either because I was too hardcore. You
know this is about Tarekan the Mirror, and I think
that that without the commun I think y'all thrived off
of the community as well.

Speaker 5 (54:36):
Think about that, there would have been no Black Lily,
And think about all the people that.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Black Lily know, even the you know, the whole you
know tele comment like all of all of that, Not
that they were core, but they were part of the
the orbit that that everybody sort of you know, revolved around.
So I think, you know, to your point of me,
I think this. I agreed with a portion of you know,

(55:03):
the socialists you know ideas, and I think they they
were part of the reason why we've been able to survive.
But you know, if we just would have stuck with that,
I don't think we'd be where we are to that.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Okay, can you talk about the growing I guess the
first two ventures that we really put our eggs into
those baskets was okay, Player and Black Lily.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
Now remember the beginning.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
I think I had to really sell you and Rich
that this was going to be the future. I don't
think Rich really saw, you know, what the hell me
and Answer was doing, you know, in the bedroom.

Speaker 5 (55:46):
Trying was the easier sell Emir, which was the easier sell.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
Where because you know, I I was done before it
was Black Lily was the Jam Sessions, and so you know,
the second third week, you know what I'm saying, Like, really,
I'm not exaggerating, like Beanie Seagulls putting out blunt ashes
on the floor like everyone in the room is a

(56:12):
bona fide celebrity.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
You know what I'm saying. Music really was the pizza guy,
you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
But just at the time, they are regular people using
my living room.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
As their hub.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
And I got to live on the block of neighbors
looking at me like I'm crazy, Like why y'all jam
until two in the morning, that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
So I you know, I went along with the.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
Jam checked out. He checked out of the Jam Sessions.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Yeah, I call the police on us.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
So my heart was with Okay Player simply because like
I just envisioned a future where there was a virtual
playground that I could contact.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
And so, but it was a hard sell for Rich
and Sean.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
And there have been many times where like they were
just like dog, let's just go, like let it die.
And so at what point did you get that this
might be something futuristic?

Speaker 3 (57:13):
So we're talking. Okay, player, we're talking Black Lily. Which
want you to talk first?

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Either or because I feel like that's so.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
Yeah, so for let's talk Black Lily first.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Black Lily.

Speaker 3 (57:23):
Amir told the story one thousand percent correct. Like Black
Lily started off as the Jam, the Roots Jam Session.
The Roots Jam sessions are epic, you know, have been
done for years, you know, in various places. Started in
the Mirror's living room and you know sort of grew
from there when the Roots Jam Session started happening in clubs.

(57:46):
I forget the club that Malik Gioba used to have
in New York. Remember we did that club the second
forty second Street. You know, we went from there then
we went down to to the Wetlands and but the
problem was it it became all fucking male rappers, you
know what I mean. It was like a line at
the side of the stage of you know, dudes trying

(58:09):
to get.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
Up and spit.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
And you know, in the community that that that the
Roots had formed, you know, there were female artists, most
notably the Jazzy Fantasties, and they would either never get
an opportunity to get on stage, or they'll get on
and you know sing you know, four bars of a
hook while some random rappers you knows, or they'd get

(58:36):
on at the end of the night after four hours
of energy gone and people were leaving, right, So Rich
and Mercedes and Tracy, you know, came up with the
idea of doing their own jam session. And you know
Black Lily. I remember it was you know, sort of
a play on Lilla Fair because Little Fair was that

(58:58):
thing back then. It was sort of on Lilla Fair
that they came up with the name and the Jadge
and Fantasy was also signed to the Rooch label Mode
of Records and rather than you know, and it wasn't
a huge like marketing budget that that that they were
given at that time, so you know, they came up
with the idea of saying, you know, rather than randomly
spend our money on you know, radio promotion, which who

(59:19):
knows what that actually gets you, especially when you're an
emerging artist, how about we pull this money and again
back to the C word, create this community. You know,
let's build this this this brand, let's build this event.
This weekly event that started off in New York, this
weekly event, so you know, called Black Lily, which builds

(59:42):
from the energy and style and and and and aura
of the root Jam sessions. Right, so Black Lily was
built off of that. It was, you know, here is
the next iteration of the root Jam session. And it
was funded by initially by the Jazzy Fat Nasty's marketing budget.

(01:00:03):
And I remember that first that first event we had
was at the Wetlands and it was probably like fifteen
people there, you know what I mean. But it was dope.
It was dope, you know, and we just continued on
the weekly basis and the crowd started coming and people
heard about it was free. That was that was the
other part of it. Early on, it was free, you
know what I mean. We just had the martest pre
social media. It's like market you know, to get people there.

(01:00:25):
But it was free. And that free event just started
started growing and then it, you know, eventually moved from
New York to Philly to the five spot, et cetera,
et cetera, and you know, it grew to become you know,
what people know is Black.

Speaker 7 (01:00:37):
Lily, but never more than ten dollars.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
It still never was more than ten dollars, and it
became and it became you know, at a certain point,
so post Jazzy Fat Nasty's budget funding it. You know,
Richard Nichols commissions were funding it. Because again you got
to realize this is the post, this is post Shawn
g coming into the fold, right, So it wasn't like

(01:01:00):
when we ain't using this Roots money to fund this
Black Lively thing, you know what I mean. You know,
we got enough, We got enough things that the Roots
money is funding over here. So you know, rich you know,
mainly rich quite honestly was using the commissions that he
was making off of the Roots to fund that five
spot version of the Black Lily. And to your point,
like we would you know, we charged at the door

(01:01:22):
ten dollars, but that was barely you know, covering back line,
you know what I mean. So it was a we
lost a lot of money, but you know a lot
of a lot of big musical movements if you look
at him in history, you know, they didn't make money,
you know what I mean. They created, they created culture,
but it wasn't it wasn't a profit center.

Speaker 7 (01:01:40):
It's like we got Jazmine Sullivan.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
Yeah yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely so, so that that's the
history of sort of black Absolutely, they held us down,
like yah is the family soul. We went on the
Okay Point, so Black Lively was poppular. Then we built
an Okay Player too, and we took all of the
Black Lily artists on the Okay Player tour. So then

(01:02:05):
what happens to Black Lily when they're all out on
the road for two three months kindred the family soul
between in Asia and their band, which you know, at
the time, again they ain't had no money at the time,
so they just picked musicians that were passionate about the
you know what I mean. And at the beginning, you know,

(01:02:25):
I remember me and rich will look at him like
they sloppy as ship, like not for teen and Angel,
but their band, it was just sloppiness. But after four
or five, six, seven, ten weeks, you know what I mean,
everybody comes back off the road. They owned Black Lily.
They defined Black Roots would come and perform at Black Lily,

(01:02:48):
and people would be like, oh, that's cool, that's cool.
Where it's where's Frendrick? You know what I mean? And
they still I mean again, shout out to both of
them because they still one of my fas groups, like
I love I love them. But yeah, so that's that,
that's the Black Lily story. I mean, Okay Player, you're
right you when you and an Chad division. I stepped

(01:03:10):
in early on because I just wanted to make sure
there was some business structure there. Again, I didn't want
this to be Okay a mere starting this business in
his bedroom, and you know, he's going to eat into
our roots profits and we won't be able to pay
for our tour bus on the next tour because you know,
he's buying everybody computers, you know what I mean. But

(01:03:31):
what y'all built was immediately special. Again, the community that
that that that that that formed around Okay Players absolutely absolutely,
and and the relationships and the music and the artists

(01:03:52):
and you know, I think Will I Am was like, yo, y'all,
would y'all were the first Facebook?

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
Like he said something like that, y'all were the first Facebook.
It was it was all about the community. It was
less about you know, artists websites like That's how we
went into it, right, it was like, let's build this website,
let's build that website. But yeah, you know you and
you and Ange your participation in Angie's you know sort
of vision and and craziness, you know what I mean?

(01:04:19):
Were able to were able to attract this sort of
community that that that you know has has continued to
grow and build.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
So how did what were the first steps into you
really building coming outside of just keeping us, you know,
keeping the lights on for us and then you And
there's two there's two phases. Yeah, your your empire at

(01:04:49):
least as far as tour managing other artists, like what
was your first rate and tour managing artists that weren't
roots bas so so.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
A business man, I don't again, I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
And this this is and this is a study in
my life. Like the title, you know, my title, I
don't know what it is. Like I call myself a manager,
you know, that's what I say, a manager because people
kind of understand that, but I do more. You know,
it's it's not your traditional man. Anyhow. My second client
was a young lady out of Philadelphia that I've known
since high school by the name of Jill Scott. Jill

(01:05:29):
and I went to brother sister high schools. I went
to Central, she went to Girls High. I knew her
in high school. We uh, we went on a we
went on a we even going a prom together.

Speaker 5 (01:05:41):
But yeah, okay, because she's already told this story so
that we needed to sound the same.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
Y'all went to She went on a prom with a guy.
I went on a prom with.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
A young lady.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
After the you know how after the prom you go
to Great Adventures, right, So we were all at the
prom together. Then the next day it was like four
couples that were supposed to go to Great Adventure together.
It was the three couples in me. My date didn't
go with me, so it was, you know, I was
the third wheel or whatever you want to call it.
So you know, we hung out then, and you know,

(01:06:15):
I sort of lost touch with Jill after high school,
like you know what I mean. She was the girl's
high jone.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
And I remember.

Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
Having a cassette to giving me a cassette with the
original You Got Me beat and hook, and on the
cassette was written the Jill song. I don't remember this
on here. We used to be called the jail so
the Jil song R it was, And you know I
just ignored. I was like, oh, the Jill song, Yo,
that Jill song, banging like yo, that Jill song. You
gotta do that Jill song. Anyhow, at a certain point

(01:06:45):
we were on tour and we were at whatever that
venue that is across the street from Fenway Park in Boston.
You know that little club Fante that's right across the
street from Fenway Park.

Speaker 4 (01:06:58):
But it's not that it's not the Middle East.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
It might have been a Middle I don't know what.
It's right across a Frienway Park, but I remember we were, Yeah,
we were in bound Chack and I heard this voice
from the stage and it was Jill singing you do
you got me hooked? And I walked out and I'm
looking at her and she's looking at me, and I'm like,
Jill Scott, like you are the Jill song and she

(01:07:23):
was like showing you know what I mean. And that
was like the first time we connected was at soundcheck
when she came out, you know, doing some doing some
shows with the Roots. And you know, her husband or
ex husband now was managing her at the time, and
she had her and her lawyer had to negotiate with
me the deal terms to get on that tour. And

(01:07:46):
you know, I think she had, you know, a lawyer
that was like, you know, she was a lawyer, but
she wasn't an entertainment lawyer. It might have been her
girlfriend or something, you know what I mean, that happened
to be a lawyer, and she was asking for all
kinds of shit Like I was like, yo, sweetheart, like
do you understand what this is? Like I'm gonna give
you this amount of money and this is how we try,
like you know what I mean. She's like, well, she
needs to fly between each other. And I'm like, yeah,

(01:08:08):
we're playing House of Blues, Like what are you talking about?
But because Jill was my friend, because she was my
friend or you know, I had an own her, I
called her and Lizell and said, Yo, I'm just gonna
give you a piece of advice. Like this lawyer she
has no idea what she's talking about, and she may
ruin relationships. Like if it wasn't me, if it wasn't me,

(01:08:31):
I would be like, fuck this girl. Let's just you know,
we'll figure out how we do this. This girl is crazy, right,
So I think her and Lizel appreciated that, and you know,
a few months, you know, then you know, Jill became
you know, she started putting her record together and Touch
of Jazz and you know, all of that, and her
record came out July of two thousand and July two

(01:08:51):
thousand and I think later in the fall, like she
would you know everything, she was grinding or whatever, and
they called me and was like, Yo, can you come
be a part of our team? And I was like,
what do you want me to do?

Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
Again?

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
It's almost like a Richard Nichols call. I was like,
what do you what do you what do you want
me to do? And they were like, you know, I don't,
we don't know, we don't know what we're doing. You
know you work with the roots. You know you know
what you're doing, and we trust you. That was basic,
the basic premise of our relationship. Needed the call and
the start of our relationship. So again I came in
leveraging what I knew finance, so you know, I stepped

(01:09:29):
in and looked at the money and tried to make
sure everything was structured right business wise. I came in
and immediately took over all the touring because I was
the roots guy. We were doing two hundred shows a year,
like this is how you organize your touring, et cetera,
et cetera. And I just came in playing my roles again.
I never had a title with Jill. We always called
ourselves business partners because you know, she went through a

(01:09:50):
couple managers and then she's like, this managership ain't working
for me. You know, me and Sean we just rock together.
We're business partners. But people call me a business manager early,
people to this day called call me her manager. But
we're just business partners. We just we just build right,
we build together. So Jill was my second client, and
you know, thankfully, both the Roots and my first two
clients I always say will be my last two clients,

(01:10:11):
you know what I mean, We've been together, you know,
multiple decades. My third client, though, is the one who
sort of set my trajectory to where you know, the
next phase of my business was. And that was you know,
me getting a call from Don de West in two
thousand and four when Kanye had college dropout and wanted

(01:10:36):
to do a tour. You know, he wanted to do
a tour. He wanted to do a college tour, and
nobody on his team had ever worked with a tour
touring artist. You know, his managers at the time, Gee Roberson,
Who's hip hop, ol Branch hip Hop, they all at
that point, they all they managed was producers. They had
just Blaze. They had Yay. You know, remember Yeay was

(01:10:58):
a superstar producer before he became an artist, so they
were like the managers of all the superstar producers, so
they ain't no shit about touring. The business manager that
he had, Kellogg and Amberson, I believe, was the company
in LA. They were filming TV. You know, they didn't
have any music folks, so they didn't know much about touring.
And his agent was a lady named Karen Lewis, and
Kar told them you need to talk to this guy,

(01:11:20):
Sean G. Because he can organize, strategize, he'll have your ship, right,
So they flew me out to LA interviewed like three people,
and they hired me on the spot.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
Can ask but be cause you mentioned that we did
two hundred shows a year, where was that common knowledge?
Like was that common knowledge in the business of like
how the roots keep like able to you know, is
that normal for a music act to do that many shows?
Like what does a normal act do in terms of

(01:11:54):
like what is it what does a gang start doing
that time period?

Speaker 3 (01:11:57):
So so you got to think about the time period
that we're in and the time period that we're in
touring wasn't sexy, you know what I mean. Touring wasn't
a thing, especially in black culture. You know, in the
in the alt rock world, which is you know, alt
rock slash jam bard world, which you know, a mirors
was our model. That's the model that me and you

(01:12:18):
rich In Tarik sort of built around. Was like, you know,
the alt rock or jam band model, and fifty doing
one hundred and fifty two hundred shows a year was
normal with that world because number one, these bands grew
up as fans of bands, you know what I mean,
So it was part of their culture, their favorite bands

(01:12:40):
when they were growing up and playing that guitar in
their garage or wherever the fuck they learned their music,
their favorite bands they experienced live, so it was live
was part of their culture, our culture, you know, as
as consumers of black music, you know, especially hip hop.
Live wasn't a thing. So we were a huge anomaly

(01:13:02):
within hip hop by doing all those shows. You know,
hip hop tour was you know, uh uh bad boy
versus you know what I mean, whatever, You know what
I mean, it was if you're not in the big
arena with with with Pyro and all of that, you're
not really touring. You know what I mean. You're going
after fresh Yeah, you're going after your big publishing checks.
Are you going after your Adidas deal? Are you going

(01:13:24):
to get another advance from a label? That's how you
made your money, Like you weren't making money on the road.
Who did that? So for us, we were an anomaly
in hip hop. We were anomaly in black music by
doing all of that. So from a from an overall
artist perspective and fan perspective, they probably didn't recognize it,
but the business people in the music industry recognized it.

(01:13:47):
The label heads, the label execs, the agents, you know
what I mean, they all realized, like, oh ship the roots,
you know what I mean, they're doing their thing and
they're a live bang like you know. So that's how
I was recognized through Karen Lewis to be recommended to
Kanye because of the business that we built by doing

(01:14:08):
two hundred shows a year and making sure it's organized,
making sure we're you know again, simple shit, we're on time,
you know what I mean. We perform, you know, we
collect our money, we pay our bills, and we wake
up and do it another day, you know what I mean.
That's sort of back to the blue collar, that blue
collar musician, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
I asked one more question inside of this question.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
Yeah, again, like if you look at marketplaces and maybe
this is more of an agent question.

Speaker 3 (01:14:36):
Maybe this is the Caroll Lewis episode. I don't know, but.

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
If, as far as I know, there's really around the world,
who would you say that there's maybe at the most
twenty three markets.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
For us for the for the roots use us as.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
An example, like how many marketers are there?

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
And people to the past, like is it normal for
an artist, because that's the thing I want to convey
to people.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
Is it normal for an artist to play New York.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
City seven times a year and still sell out?

Speaker 3 (01:15:13):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
How are you?

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
I just had this conversation with I had this conversation
with an agent because again, you got to think about
the time frame that we were in versus the time
frame now like right now, it you know a lot
of and because you know, I'm sure we'll get to
the live nation side of my life. But because I'm
working with artists from a different perspective, you know, it
is short term gratification. It is Yo, I played the

(01:15:37):
House of Blues last tour. Why aren't I playing you know,
Hammerstein Ballroom this tour, and I want to be in
Madison Square Garden by my next album, you know what
I mean. And I'm like, yo, y'all tripping like happening. Yeah,
you we from a roots perspective. We played the House
of Blues for fifteen years and we're happy about it.

(01:16:03):
In Halloween World, yeah, we increased all the financial was
instead of trying to reach too far on venue size,
we would just increase the ticket price, every ticket paying back,
you know what I mean. So that's how we went
from ten thousand dollars a show to twelve five.

Speaker 7 (01:16:20):
Better save it at New Year's Even show.

Speaker 3 (01:16:23):
So so that so that part of it, I mean,
you know, we don't you know we there are there
are probably you know, a good thirty to thirty five
cities if you're a popular hip hop artist in the
US that you can play. If you're if you're if
you're Drake, you know, you can go into going to

(01:16:44):
Des Moines, Iowa, and Eugene, Oregon, and you know what
I mean, Tallahassee, Florida, and you know you can you
can hit those forty and fifty you know, tertiary or
whatever is beyond tertiary markets but for most successful artists,
you're between twenty five and thirty markets in the US.
In Europe, you know, you have multiple markets in the UK,

(01:17:06):
you know, depending on again how big you are, from
a from a from a pop culture perspective, from a
pop culture perspective, depending how big you are, you have
multiple markets in the UK. And then you have a
handful in continental Europe, you know, in the continent. Like
it's not like you're going too deep. You know, you're
basically one city per country, you know what I mean.
You're doing Amsterdam, you're doing.

Speaker 4 (01:17:31):
You might hit like Helsinki, like you might see you know.

Speaker 5 (01:17:35):
What I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:17:36):
Germany you can hit two or three cities, you know
what I mean, And you.

Speaker 8 (01:17:39):
Got motherfucking uh like maybe kind of went up last
time I went, but like you got that Berlin can
go Berlin.

Speaker 4 (01:17:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
Yeah. So so you know it's there's there isn't a ton. Now,
what's what's open the market? It's festivals, because you have
festivals in these secondary cities in Europe now where you
can go to Leon or whatever and they or you
can go to to Portugal, you know, where you can't
go do a hard ticket date there. You can go,

(01:18:08):
So that's opened up. The amount of markets is the
sort of festival economy over the last decade. But you know,
there is a limited amount of markets. And for us,
what we did is we continue to just go back
and play markets because you build that audience one show,
one fan at a time, you know what I mean,
and when it's time to grow, You'll know when it's
time to grow.

Speaker 7 (01:18:26):
And it should be noted by this time.

Speaker 5 (01:18:27):
By the time you get to Kanye, you're not a
one man band, right Like, there's like the office.

Speaker 7 (01:18:32):
Maybe you've got some help, but are you.

Speaker 3 (01:18:33):
Still yeah yeah, yeah yeah, right around Jill, Right around Jill.
When I picked up Jill, I started, you know, I
hired two people, you know what I mean. I was like, okay,
now I got Now I got a company. You know,
when it was the roots, it was just me. I
was just trying to figure out what the hell I
was doing. When I got jail, I was like, oh,
I got a business. I got two clients. You know.
By the time I got to Kanye, you know, I
never I never really stacked up to you know, a

(01:18:55):
thousand people in sixteen offices. There's always been a pretty small,
pretty small operation. But but but yeah, yeah, so by
the time I got to Kanye, you know, I had,
I had, I had some folks to it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
Okay, so in building your clientele, which you know Drake
is well, I mean more than that, I who name
all your clients because I know Latifa And again I
know you don't have a title, but as far as
I know, if money is coming down the pike to you,
you are in some You're under that management Unbroke.

Speaker 3 (01:19:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. It was. So that's why
I say so with Kanye, I had this weird role
of I wasn't as manager. I wasn't as business manager.
I wasn't his agent, I wasn't as all of that.
I was just a consultant in touring. So I you know,
I worked with him. We we we worked on that
very first college tour, which was the School Spirit Tour

(01:19:50):
from college dropout. And you know, and when I say worked,
I mean I felt it was more tour strategy. Like
I hired the tour man, I hired the production manager,
I hired the whole team, and I worked with the
agent and worked with ya on the overall strategy. And
you know, I started with him on colleges. And I

(01:20:11):
think the last tour I did with him was Watched
the Throne, you know, with with with with him and Jay,
and you know, I sort of took that trajectory went
from with him. I went from clubs to theaters to
amphitheaters to arenas, the stadiums, you know. And I learned
the big business of touring through my experience with Kanye West.
As I started building that reputation other and building my relationships,

(01:20:35):
other artists started coming to me for that work. So
Ge Roberson, his next client after Kanye in two thousand
and seven was Lil Wayne. And again this is two
thousand and seven, two thousand and eight. Lil Wayne. You know,
he releases Carter three, the biggest record in the first world,
a million of first week. So he's no longer some

(01:20:57):
some hood as hip hop artists. He's a driving culture.
But his touring was on some hood shit, like he
was still getting brown paper bags from the ship clubs,
you know what I mean. So G was like, Yo,
my guy just did the glow and a Dark tour
with Kanye. We need to bring him over here. So
G and Cortes hired me. Again, I wasn't Wayne's business manager.

(01:21:18):
I wasn't Wayne's manager. I was just this guy who
came in and built his touring business and we went
from you know, strip clubs and brown paper bags to
you know, I AM Music Tour, which was the first
tour and we did I Am Still Music Tour after
he got out of jail, and we've done America's Most
Wanted and you know, built that up on that first
tour with Wayne. You know, he had a bunch of

(01:21:39):
artists that he was developing on this random tour bus.
And on that bus was Drake, a young young gentleman
by the name of Drake, a young lady by the
name of Nicki Minaj, amongst others. So, you know, I
started working with g and Cortes and I started working
with Drake early on and built the sort of infrastructure
for him and for me. My role was touring, you

(01:22:00):
know what I mean, And I helped, you know, build
with his agent, Rob Gibs, helped build his early touring career.
I think the last tour I did with Drake was
Club Paradise when I had you know, just just how
the puzzle works. On the first European tour that I
did with Drake. Drake chose an opener by the name
of J Cole. You know J Cole and his management team.

(01:22:22):
I had knewest management team. They knew my wife through
the business and you know, on that Europe tour we
built and they called me in in in London, they
called me in there in their dressing room. Was like, Sean,
I need you to help us. You know what you're
doing with Drake, what you did with Wayne. I need
you to help us. So I worked with Cole from
the Friday Night Lights period on up through his first
arena tour. I mean a lot of the roles that

(01:22:43):
I played with artists because I'm building their touring, I'm
also educating their team. So I sort of worked myself
out of a job at certain points and times, you
know what I mean. You know, when when Drake's contract
was up with with with Cortez and Gina Man's company,
you know what I mean. And his management team who
came on is as bright eyed, you know, you know,

(01:23:07):
sort of naive Toronto kids, but super smart, you know
what I mean. They come ask me questions. They see
how the ship run like it's it's not rocket science.
It's like if you're smart in your attention, you pay
attention to detail. You can do this right. So at
a certain point they're like, all right, cool, Sean, I'm good,
you know what I mean. J Cole, same same thing.
J Cole's crew. I love them, you know what I mean?
I love them because they were super smart. They thought

(01:23:29):
out of the box. They were always individuals, never really
followed a pattern. Eve and Adam we would always talk
about touring Envision and Rob Gibbs again their agent, and
you know, at a certain point they were like, oh,
you know, your resources are my resources now right. I
know I know a rigor what a riggor does, and
I know I can call the rigger, you know, who
hung my light's last tour, So I don't need you know,

(01:23:52):
But I don't mind that because I think that's part
of you know, i'll use the L word, but it's
part of sort of my legacy in the business. Is
I am joy, Yeah, I am. I am teaching these young,
you know, super smart future executives the touring game. So
I went from Cole to Nicki, Wayne Cole, Nicki Drake,

(01:24:13):
you know, and a few others.

Speaker 8 (01:24:15):
But that was sort of and also I think that
you're is you teaching them how to do it for themselves,
not by themselves, but you know, teaching them like, yo,
you can do this for yourself.

Speaker 4 (01:24:25):
You know what I'm saying, with the resources that are available.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
To you, absolutely now without it being all got you
journalism disc.

Speaker 1 (01:24:36):
No no, no, no, no no this.

Speaker 2 (01:24:38):
What can you talk about managing expectations? You can actually
use me as an example. I mean, I would like
to think that you know, you've only had maybe two
or three of those.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
Four m a mirrorphone calls of what the fuck? All right?

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):
One time I misread a price on a ay on
a particular or on a simple item a mattress and
a mattress, Well, I okay, I graduated from the W mattress.

Speaker 3 (01:25:11):
Oh ship no rich put me.

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
On to Hastens on a Hastens mattresses and they're extremely pricey.
The thing was, they saw me walking in the door.
They must have thought it was a football player played
with the.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
Giants or whatever. I don't know. And you know I
came in like I will be the first to.

Speaker 5 (01:25:35):
Tell you shut up, sorry you got a king, because
I'm just looking at a queen and I'm like.

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
Got that right? So they take what kind of kind
of when you go into Hastins, they.

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
They they they you're supposed to They're supposed to you
try one bed, and I still feel like they lied.

Speaker 1 (01:25:57):
I feel like they lie.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
To you and make that initial cheap bed so uber comfortable.

Speaker 1 (01:26:03):
Then your mind's like, hey, let me try that one
over there. What's that over there?

Speaker 2 (01:26:08):
And you're like, oh, this is sud you know, maybe
two hundred more and you're give that one, and then
they got you.

Speaker 1 (01:26:13):
Then they're like, all right, let's go to the next one.
Let's go to the next one.

Speaker 2 (01:26:17):
These motherfuckers actually just brought me to the top of
the line. Joined I didn't look at the price because
again Rich is like, yo, I think, I think you'll
you know, you have better circulation for your legs and
d D d D if you get this Haystens bed.
So I got in the bed, fella stick like you
lay down for ten minutes and then I say, yeah,

(01:26:37):
I fell asleep. Okay, great, I'll take it, and here's
my office number, and I'm thanks. And I never looked
at the price because you know, at that time, getting
a W Hotel bed was a big deal because W
Hotel beds were like seventeen hundred bucks again, which was

(01:26:57):
expensive for w Hotel bed. I didn't realize that I
just purchased a six figure bed.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
I got a hundred thousand dollars. I didn't look at
the price.

Speaker 4 (01:27:10):
This is the whole night. This is bed, like the frame,
everything has over the egg. That's all you.

Speaker 5 (01:27:23):
Get.

Speaker 2 (01:27:23):
Visit Monday right again, Babe Bill said that Hastings has
two dots over.

Speaker 3 (01:27:31):
Two dots.

Speaker 1 (01:27:33):
J Z like j.

Speaker 4 (01:27:36):
That's all you need to know.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
You're gonna get charges out. It's like a white person dots.

Speaker 4 (01:27:44):
There's like ship like whoa.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
Anyway, So cut to.

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):
Eight o'clock in the morning the next day, yeo, you
would have thought I ran everybody's mom over with the
car the like really, it's come to this now, like
we we give you an inch and this is what
it is, Like did.

Speaker 7 (01:28:05):
You get to what the buck calling me?

Speaker 1 (01:28:06):
And like come on, no, they were it was he.

Speaker 2 (01:28:09):
The thing was is that Seawan's had some other clients
that he's not naming right now that have done that
shit like you get your check and you want to ball.

Speaker 1 (01:28:19):
The fuck out.

Speaker 2 (01:28:20):
And fifteen minutes into this curse out, I realized that
oh shit, I just brought a one hundred thousand dollars bed,
my bad and of course I got the price I
can afford, or that they told me where my budget was.

Speaker 1 (01:28:37):
But the whole point was how do you manage expectations?

Speaker 2 (01:28:42):
Because you are managing acts and dealing with their money
post two thousand, you know, it's way it's way past
that baller stage. How are you Are you having conversations
with them at the top of your business relationship? Will
you tell them like if you color within these lines

(01:29:04):
and live you know, da da da da da or
you or is it just like you just get the
Evans money from you know, Cincinnati, Ohio, and that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:13):
I'll see you later, Like how do you manage?

Speaker 3 (01:29:16):
Managing expectations is one of the key things to being
a manager, a successful manager in music. I'm sure it's
in film and TV or or in any sort of
creative genre, right, you know, because when you're dealing with
creatives and but and again, I didn't come in knowing

(01:29:36):
this shit, like I've just learned it, you know, on
the backs of my clients, like dealing with you and
dealing with Tariq and dealing with Jill. You know, just
understanding the motivational aspects, the aspirational aspects that each of
you have, What inspires you, what motivates you, what buttons

(01:29:59):
can be he pushed. It's psychology, right, It's all psychology.
That's that's the most important part of being a manager.
That's the most important part of being in any relationship, right,
is understanding the give and take of psychology. So that's
whether we're talking about a mattress or you know, we're
talking about you know, damn I wish emir ended the

(01:30:19):
show with this song versus that song, Like how can
I have this conversation with him knowing that this is
his world and his baby, but I know I'm in
the crowd and you know what I mean. So it's psychology.
It's understanding the give and take. It's compromised. Like one
lesson that I learned and Kanye taught me, and I've
taken this throughout my career. So again, this is you know,

(01:30:42):
two thousand and six, I think seven whenever that year
whenever we started to Glow in the Dark tour, and
again I'm four years in with Kanye at this point,
we've done three or four tours together.

Speaker 1 (01:30:52):
You know, what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:30:53):
We have a level of trust. He knows me, you know,
meaning how I think. So we're going on this this
big tour, biggest service career, biggest tour of my career,
you know what I mean. And I go out and
specifically go and hire the sort of logistics team. I
put an all star team together of people. He had

(01:31:16):
all his creator I ain't touched none of his creator shit.
But he allowed me, as did Wayne and others, to like,
all right, give me the team that's going to properly
execute this. So I go out. I hire Curtis Battles,
who number one is black and number two is what's
Eminem's tour manager. And at that time two thousand and six,

(01:31:36):
two thousand and seven, Eminem's on fire, He's on stadiums
and shit. So I'm like, I got the top black
tour production manager. I bring in the tour manager. I
bring in all of the tech teams. I'm hiring all
of the logistics. He's dealing with the creator. At a
certain point, I start calling people. I'm putting it together,
my budgets, going back and forth with the agent, you know,

(01:31:58):
doing venue deals, calling the venues, arguing with him over
you know, our point, and everybody went dark on me,
like literally nobody would return my call. Curtis didn't return
my call, Yay didn't return my call. Like nobody fucking
return my call. And I'm like, what is going on?
And it was like a two week period. I'm in
the middle of planning. I can't get any information. I'm calling,

(01:32:19):
you know, Miss West.

Speaker 1 (01:32:20):
His mom.

Speaker 3 (01:32:20):
She's like, hey, Sewan, now I don't know. Everything seemed
cool to me. You want me to ask around. I'm like, no,
I'm not gonna get you into it. Let me figure
it out. After a two week period, Kanye calls me.
He's like, Yo, can you come to La tomorrow. I'm like, yeah,
you know, I fly to La, go to his crib,
sit in the living room. He's on his computer and
he turns the computer around and I'm like what's this
And he's like the tour, this is the creative what

(01:32:43):
do you think? And he walks me through it and
I'm like, Yo, this shit is crazy and I'm like, yo,
but what the fuck? Like how much is this cast?
Like I haven't talked to nobody like and he was like, yo,
I called everybody and said if you talked to Shawan
g you're fired, and I was I was like why.
I was like, why'd you do that? And he said,

(01:33:03):
because I know. If I wasn't able to get my
full creative vision, I would have talked to you along
the way. You know, I would have made a left
turn and I would not have been able to get
my full creative vision out because you would have been,
you know, asking me how much things cost and how
are we gonna move this? And I got my full

(01:33:23):
creative vision out. Now, now tell me what you think
about it unless And it taught me like that was
a really deep lesson on how to work and deal
with creatives, because at the end of the day, y'all
are the motherfucker you know, a mere fonte to reak.
You know, whoever it is, y'all are the ones that's

(01:33:45):
driving this car, you know what I mean. I just
gotta yeah, yeah, exactly. I just got to make sure
that it got gas in it, it got oil in it,
and it's gonna get to where it needs to get
to and it ain't gonna break down. And when you
get there, you got some money in your pocket.

Speaker 4 (01:34:00):
Right, So, because the show is they're not gonna holler Shanji.

Speaker 3 (01:34:05):
Exactly. Or even if the show is good and you
weren't able to do what you wanted to do creatively,
you're gonna be unfulfilled. And who you're gonna blame for that?
For being unfulfilled, You're gonna blame Sean g You know
what I mean, you didn't let it out. So that
lesson that I did with Kanye, that lesson that Kanye
taught me I've taken throughout my career and working with creatives.
It is managing expectations, but it's also a balance in

(01:34:28):
making sure that look, I mean that not that matchless.
But we could tell other stories here where you know,
there have been things that you needed or you wanted,
and you know, we talked about it, and I'm like,
you know what, this is what this motherfucker work is
ass off for. This is why he's up twenty three
hours a day to be able to do what I
think is dumb shit, but it's aspirational shit for you.

(01:34:51):
So I can't I can't give you know, I can't
overlay my thoughts on you know, your creative vision and
what I just to put the barriers up, both creatively,
business wise, money, whatever it is I got to put
the barriers up so you don't fall off the highway,
you know what I mean. But you're driving the car,
you know what I mean?

Speaker 5 (01:35:10):
Hey, Sean, can you tell us the time, like when
it comes to the roots in jail, what was the
deal that you've made that really made you take a
step back and like past yourself on the shoulder or
really go fuck yes, Like I'm finally doing what I
feel like is fulfilling them, and like we we've done
this ship. Nobody else has done this ship. Like this
is fucking phenomenal.

Speaker 3 (01:35:30):
I don't think there's you know, I don't. I don't
think there's one deal, you know what I mean? Like,
I don't think there's there's not like one big branding
deal or one even the Tonight Show deal. Like I
don't think there's one. What I get it? What I
you smile? I thought? I mean even the whose picnic?

(01:35:52):
We're not there. Like the thing about the Roots is
the thing that keeps us going is we never fucking arrived,
Like you know what I mean, Right, We've never like
arrived to whatever that mythical place is that you think
you need to get to. We're we're always motivated to
either do more or diversified, you know when I.

Speaker 5 (01:36:15):
Say right, But they still had to be a moment
where you went they didn't think we could do this,
and we did that ship.

Speaker 3 (01:36:21):
Oh okay, okay, gotcha for the Roots. It was the
Roots pet in New York. Okay, it was when we
did when we did, when we did Bryant Park. I
I I literally stood at the back of the park
we were on with Wu Tang and you know, I
looked up in the sky and I shot the rich
and I was like, yeah, look, look what the fuck

(01:36:43):
we did? You know?

Speaker 8 (01:36:44):
Because again I remember that night. Man, we talked that night.
Uh you know, we I think I don't think w
was on, but it was. Somebody was on. But we
was talking and you was kind of giving me time.
You was like, yeah, man, like this ship was work,
like he was on, like you was. You was giving
up like that.

Speaker 4 (01:37:00):
So I remember that being a big moment for y'all.

Speaker 3 (01:37:02):
Yeah, Ruth Picnic New York was probably that moment.

Speaker 1 (01:37:05):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:37:05):
Again, it wasn't a deal, but it was that moment
where it was like all right, you know what I mean, like, okay,
you know we're there. But again, I think. You know, overall,
it's the constant it's the constant growth, like the it's
the what's the tortoise versus the hair mentality that we
have that I'm happy when I'm happy when Alicia keyes

(01:37:28):
twenty years into her career makes a fucking song called
Jill Scott, you know what I mean. Like that makes
me happy because that shows all of the work that
Jill put in and I was able to assist. You know,
it's being recognized. I'm happy when you know Questlove is
DJing the jay Z and Beyonce Oscar party and killing it,

(01:37:52):
you know what I mean. And everybody there is like,
oh my god, I'm twenty five, thirty years in Like
it's just a constant ascension of people that you know,
over the years, everybody always turned it. You know, who
are these guys? What's up with her? The girl from Philly?
You know, but you know they at the end of
the day, as long as we constantly ascend creatively, as

(01:38:13):
long as we diversified business wise, and we can make
sure that we follow our own dreams and every time
we achieve a goal, reset and go for more goals,
you know it's gonna work out.

Speaker 2 (01:38:28):
All right, So I guess for you and me personally,
you know, twenty fourteen was definitely a turning point once
Richard died of of chemia, yep. And you know I
definitely was going out my mind during that time period,

(01:38:52):
and you know, I realized that it was just it
was going to be a shift for all of us.

Speaker 3 (01:38:56):
You know, I was like, well, damn right now.

Speaker 2 (01:39:00):
You know, any creative musical creator, like usually I always
have Rich to bounce off of, and there's always that
eight am phone call that you have with Rich which
is weird because Rich had am phone calls with everyone.

Speaker 3 (01:39:13):
So I'm trying to have am phone call every day
were Rich. I don't know how he did this.

Speaker 2 (01:39:17):
Right exactly, Like in my mind, it's like Rich wakes
you up at like eight seventeen and then you're off
at eleven.

Speaker 3 (01:39:23):
But everyone has and so what in.

Speaker 2 (01:39:28):
My mind, I was just like, well, shit, like Sean's
the suit to Rich's creative. Now Sewan's going to have
to be a creative and I'm going to have to
do things that I hate doing, like vocal takes and
like sitting there patiently, like putting stuff together. So talk

(01:39:53):
about the shift that because I guess that's the period
in which you made the decision to I mean, at
that point, you would you were you were developing sports
Entertainment or s C s CFTE. Yeah, you had you know,
basketball players, yet you were managing business, managing all these people.

(01:40:15):
Can you talk about the transition from sort of amalgamating
your your company into Maverick, which then goes into Live Nation,
like how does it?

Speaker 4 (01:40:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:40:28):
Yeah, yeah, yep. But before doing that, I want to
talk about twenty fourteen because you're right, you know, at
that moment when we all realized that Rich was was
was on his way out. The first thing is Rich
being rich, you know he was he was prepping me
for it. You know, Rich was prepping me for for

(01:40:50):
years just you know, thinking back on it, just the
conversations we were having and and you know, ship that
we were talking about, and responsibility that were normally his,
and the creative side that he would be like asking
my opinion, and I'm like, you really want you want
my opinion?

Speaker 4 (01:41:06):

Speaker 3 (01:41:07):
You know he would always say I was wrong with that.
I gave my opinion, but he was just asking my
opinion and things that you know what which photo looked good.
I'm like, you want my opinion on that, you know,
but he was prepping me for twenty fourteen. And I
don't know if you remember, I had a conversation with
you and Tarik. You know, I said, look, I'm going

(01:41:29):
to step up and do a lot of shit, you
know what I mean. But I am not going to
step into the shoes of Richard Nichols. You know, from
a creative perspective, I can do a lot. Then I
can build this and you know, tours and festivals and
ideas and hire people to come build your dreams. But
I can't. I can't make reference. I can't do vocal takes.

(01:41:49):
I can't. That's just not who I am, you know
what I mean. And you guys are going to have
to step up as well. It's not just me stepping up,
So you're going to have to step up because this
is a big ass void that we both got film
and I think it is it is that sort of
combination of my growth in the two of you individually growing.

(01:42:10):
That is the reason why you know, six seven, eight,
hopefully ten, fifteen, twenty years after rich you know, we're
still sort of building, growing and driving. But as far
as you know where I was business wise. I mean,
it's funny because twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen was the year
that I sold my a portion of my quote unquote

(01:42:31):
management business into Live Nation, into Maverick, you know, and
Live Nation was building this mega management company called Maverick
and Guile Siri was the head of the Guile Siria
the manager of You two and Madonna. He brought in
Clarence Faulding, who was the manager of Jason Alden and
Rascal Flats and Shanaia Twain. They brought in Adam and

(01:42:54):
Larry Rudolph, who managed at the time Miley Cyrus and Britney.
So you had black folks, yeah and and yeah. So
at a certain point, at a certain point, these were
all the deals that were done. And I guess someone
within Live Nation said, you got a whole bunch of
white men. You know what I mean, I got white Yeah.

(01:43:15):
So they went after my partner, Gie Roberson, Remember Gie
Roberson from Kanye I walked in, I met him with Kanye.
They went after him and said, okay, you managed Kanye West,
and you managed you manage uh Lil Wayne, like, you know,
let's do a deal a little bit of a sidebar

(01:43:37):
all of these tour deals that I was doing, you know,
Kanye Wayne dre Nikki. I was on the other side
of the table from a company called Live Nation, So
I was doing these deals from with Live Nation, so
they knew me as the manager, the black dude that
did all of the big black tours. The guy who
I was negotiating with on the other side was a

(01:43:58):
gentleman by the name of now Hayman and the most
successful black concert promoter in the history of the game
bar none, and he sins right now. Managers Floyd Mayweather,
and he's the most successful boxing promoter in the history
of the game, bigger than Don King and Bob Aaron

(01:44:20):
and all of them right now.

Speaker 4 (01:44:21):
To this Haman was he the one? Was he the
one behind the.

Speaker 3 (01:44:26):
Superfess Rick James Michael Jackson like.

Speaker 1 (01:44:31):
Mary J.

Speaker 3 (01:44:32):
Blige, I mean, he's he's he's the guy.

Speaker 7 (01:44:35):
So let's get him on the show.

Speaker 3 (01:44:37):
Se so so, so I'm negotiating these big deals with
al Owl's on the other side of the table, Like, Okay,
this little motherfucker knows what he's talking about, you know
what I mean, because you know he's like I never
dealt with a young black man who knows touring like
you do. So back to the Maverick thing. When Live
Nation Slash Maverick goes and tries to buy gro Risin's company,

(01:45:01):
Al Hayman tells Live Nation, Well, Gee Robson is great,
but this guy showing g over here, he's the operator, you.

Speaker 1 (01:45:11):
Know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:45:12):
So if you're going to because at this time, me
G and Cortes had similar clients, but we had three
different companies. She had Hip Hop's in nineteen seventy eight,
I had SEFG. Cortes had Bryant Management. So you know,
in order to sort of complete that purchase, they said, Okay,
we're going to buy Gee Roberson's company. We're going to
buy Cortez Bryant, We're gonna buy Sean G because that

(01:45:34):
is the machine that makes all of this work, and
we're going to merge them together and then put them
under Maverick. So that was that deal in twenty fifteen
where I brought they brought into my car, sold half
of my company to Live Nation.

Speaker 7 (01:45:51):
Are you interested in bedfellow Sean, I'm sorry, I was
just thinking.

Speaker 5 (01:45:54):
I was like, so you got management mixed in with
live shows and production, just production.

Speaker 7 (01:46:00):
I'm just thinking like Live Nation again.

Speaker 3 (01:46:04):
You mean from a Live Nation perspective, I mean said
Michael Rapino is one of the smartest executives in the business,
you know what I mean. For him, he calls it
a flywheel, and for him it is. You know, when
he started, when he took over Live Nation, Live Nation
was a bunch of individual regional promoters, you know what
I mean. You had your guy in New York, you

(01:46:25):
know what I mean, and he had his company. You
had Electric Factory concerts in Philly, you had cellar door concerts,
and these were just the independent individual companies. What Repino
was able to do was merge all of these business
It was. It was actually Clear Channel prior to Repino.
But you know what came out of the Clear Channel

(01:46:46):
Divester was this merged entity of all of these individual
regional promoters that created this one mega promoter business. But
what a lot of people don't understand on the promoter
side from the live show you you don't make no money,
you know what I mean. From a margin perspective, the
artist makes all the money, right, you know what I mean.

(01:47:06):
If I have Fonte come in performing, you know what
I mean, and I do a deal with him. Ultimately
in success, he's gonna walk out with eighty five ninety
percent of the money, you know what I mean. The
promoter margins are five to ten percent. So what what
Rapino did, which was intelligent, super super genius, was he said, Okay,

(01:47:27):
I'm gonna build a flywheel around the shows. I'm gonna
have shows which are the volume business, low margin but volume,
thousands upon thousands of shows. But I'm gonna have venues
and when you pay for parking and peanuts and popcorn,
you know, at the shows, you know, I'm gonna make
money off that. I'm gonna have media and sponsorship that

(01:47:50):
sells sponsorship at the venues. I mean. So he's built
a flywheel of business.

Speaker 8 (01:47:56):
It's that almost like McDonald's, like you know with famous
McDonald's quote, he's like, I'm not in the hamburger business.

Speaker 4 (01:48:01):
I'm in the real estate business business, you know what
I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:48:04):
But the Hamburgers is would bring you in, right, the
shows bring you in. Yeah. So so so to your point,
like you know, it's your hand is in different areas,
but it's all sort of a flywheel that works together
and you know that. But again I came in under
the austices of ge Roberson's partner, and that was that

(01:48:25):
was Maverick management. It's funny because you know, I can't
guy about this, but you know, when I came in
with the Roots and Jill Scott, we were like the
folks that didn't belong, you know what I mean. Every
artist was an arena artist. Every single artist in Maverick
was an arena artist, except the Roots in Jill Scott.
But over time, you know, they start just like you know,

(01:48:48):
just like I said earlier, like over time, you know,
the managers started to respect you know, oh ship the Roots, Yeah,
oh ship Jill Scott, and you know they start calling like, hey,
can I can cuss a lot coming help produce this
or you know when I think the key that that
the pinnacle of that sort of disrespect at the beginning
but ultimately led to respect, was when you two called

(01:49:12):
an ascid the Roots can open for them, or no,
if the Roots can guess on their set at Madison
Square Garden and you know they came out right in
the middle of Madison Square Garden of course. So uh
but yeah, so I mean that was that's how I
got into a lot of nation. It was through you know,
y'all need some black managers. And these are the three

(01:49:33):
that you got to buy out. Though Jill.

Speaker 2 (01:49:37):
Uh sells out Madison Square Garden, does she not? I
mean that's one of the like we have.

Speaker 3 (01:49:44):
We have sold out Madison Square Garden.

Speaker 2 (01:49:47):
Yes, but you know what I'm saying from that, Neil
sold class of two thousand.

Speaker 3 (01:49:55):
Jill, Erica and Maxwell and Mary are probably the three
and and and believe it or not, you know, Kim
are probably the four miles.

Speaker 1 (01:50:12):
You know they're strong.

Speaker 2 (01:50:15):
But even man, you know, if tickets are going on
cell not for look, Erica is you know, I've been
down from day one. But Erica isn't going to sell
out Manson Square Garden by herself.

Speaker 3 (01:50:28):
Or maybe we've never sold out by ourself. It's all
about strategic packaging. We sold it out with Maxwell, you
know what I mean, Jill and Maxwell. We did two
Knights of Madison Square Garden together, all right. Maxwell and
Mary sold out Madison Square. So it's about you know,
part of part of the touring is strategic packaging. Yeah,
we sold out Amphitheaters with Sugar Water with Jail, Erica

(01:50:50):
and and and Latifa. You know, Erica sold out Barclays
last year was Erica, Anthony Hamilton and I forget who
else it was. You know, again, strategic The the beauty
about that that world is you can strategically package and
one plus one can equal three or four, and that's
where you get to fifteen, sixteen, seventeen thousand. On their own,
they're all probably like five six thousand, but when you

(01:51:13):
put them together, it becomes an event.

Speaker 5 (01:51:15):
Didn't that line of thought kind of lead to why
there needs to be a Live Nation Urban?

Speaker 4 (01:51:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:51:21):
Absolutely. I mean, you know, once I was in Live
Nation officially, you know, with the venture on management, I
just I just air beat them.

Speaker 1 (01:51:29):

Speaker 3 (01:51:30):
I was like, yo, you know, y'all not really fucking
with Black culture. You know, like at the end of
the day, Live Nation at that point did big really well,
meaning you know, Drake blows up, he goes to arenas.
No one does big better than Live Nation. You know,
jay Z, Beyonce doing stadiums, they do big very well.
But incubating culture, building partnerships, building festivals that are curated

(01:51:55):
for specific audience, i e. Black audience, they didn't do
that at all. So after about a year meet Air Beaten,
you know, the CEO and the chief strategy officer at
the time. They, you know, gave me an opportunity and said, okay, cool,
you want to do this. You know you think there's
an opportunity. You're an entrepreneur. We respect you. We already

(01:52:15):
have a deal with you. Go build it.

Speaker 2 (01:52:17):
And besides the roots picnic, what did you build?

Speaker 3 (01:52:23):
The first three deals that I did. The first deal
was I flew to Dallas. I sat with a gentleman
by the name of Kurt Franklin, and I said, Kurt,
you are the jay z of gospel music. Why don't
you have your own event? Why don't you have your
own festival? Why don't you have your own series? He said,
because no one's ever asked me. So we that year

(01:52:47):
launched the Kurk Franklin Exodus Music and Arts Festival, which
is the biggest, most successful gospel music festival in the country.
And I and I say gospel because I mean Bishop
Jakes has you know, the essence of gospel. But it's
bigger than music, you know what I mean, It's it's everything.

(01:53:07):
So his is much bigger. But you know, we've had
every you know, we've had you know, all of the
who's who of gospel has performed on it. And next year.
This year we were supposed to but next year we're
going to expand it to It's in Dallas now, but
we're going to expand it to multiple markets. So that
was deal number one. Deal number two is I called

(01:53:28):
a fellow Philadelphian by the name of Troy Carter, who
was running Spotify at the time. Spotify had this playlist
called Rap Caviar, which was driving you know, I mean
at that point, rap Caviard was what Mike Show DJs
were to us back in the day, where it's like,
this is how rap artists get broke. You know, you
got to get on the Rap Caviar list they had.
Troy was running the company and Tumabasa, good friend of

(01:53:51):
mine was was he was Rap Caviar, he was the curator.
So I went to them and said, you know, you
are the new radio and really the only self sustaining
profitable model in the radio space is radio shows, you
know what I mean, the summer jams and the powerhouses.
So let's build the live iteration of your playlist called
Rap Caviar Live. So we built that fifty fifty venture

(01:54:13):
between Melivenish Urban and Rap Cavit and in Spotify, and
we took and built that music series. And the third
deal that I did is I identified these two young
brothers in DC that you know, had their finger on
the pulse of culture. Had like this many sort of
smallish festival that they did, did like seven eight thousand people,

(01:54:33):
and it was called Broccoli City Fest Broccoli City. And
you know, I came on my radar because as I was,
as I booked the Roots Picnic every year, of course
I'm on my own shit. I'm like, I'm the best curator,
you know what I mean in this in the space,
you know what I mean. And agents and artists started saying, well,
I play the Roots Picnic as long as I could
play Brocoli City. So I went on a mission, like

(01:54:54):
what the hell is Brockley City? And I went and
met with the two brothers Marcus and Brandon too, really
smart young brothers and from North Carolina. I'm both from
from Yes, that's the homie.

Speaker 1 (01:55:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:55:07):
And I invested in them, you know what I mean.
I didn't try to take over. I didn't try to
make it Nation Urban Festival. I said, look, you guys
got a vision, you got a finger on the pustal culture.
You know your audience. What I want to do is build, put,
get invest, and build the infrastructure for you so that
you can grow and scale. And we went from seven
eight thousand people to thirty five thousand people. I moved

(01:55:30):
into RFK Stadium and built.

Speaker 1 (01:55:32):
And grew and this year we didn't go down.

Speaker 3 (01:55:34):
We probably would have had fifty thousand. It's the largest
gathering Black millennials in the world because I'm the oldest
person there by far. It's it's eighteen to thirty, eighteen
to thirty, you know what I mean, period. And so
that was the third That was the third thing. I mean.
Since then, I've partnered with her Gabby, with the artist her.

(01:55:54):
We built a festival called lights On Festival in the
Bay Area. You know, We've I've taken a start producing
the Miami Jazz and the Gardens Festival, and.

Speaker 4 (01:56:04):
In d C.

Speaker 3 (01:56:06):
I've do some you know, smaller emerging artists platforms you
know Audio, Mac and others. But those are the first,
Those are the first three deals that I did. Was
were those three?

Speaker 2 (01:56:18):
Can you explain how you build a festival from the
ground up like one of the one of the times
where I dread the most as a Philadelphian, it's usually
around March because that's when everyone starts hitting.

Speaker 1 (01:56:34):
Me up, like yo, can I get them with Roots Picnic?

Speaker 2 (01:56:37):
Can get And I'm like the oh, we start building
the picnic two months after the Roots Picnic like August.
So can you just explain what goes into building a festival,
like the calls you have to make, the like this
is done ahead of time?

Speaker 1 (01:56:57):
Is it?

Speaker 3 (01:56:57):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:56:58):
How do you how hands on is it for you?

Speaker 3 (01:57:02):
I mean it never stops. It's twelve months a year,
you know what I mean. You know, if you talk
about the Roots Picnic, if you talk about Brocoli City,
if you talk about some of the some of the
events that we have that that that I have, it
it there. There's a there's a process to it where
it goes from like you said, ideation. You know, let's
say a festival starts in the fall. I mean I

(01:57:23):
mean festival plays in the summer usually you know, late summer,
is you know ideation sometimes actually ideation takes two or
three years, you know what I mean? Like for the
Roots Picnic, most headliners we've talked about two years prior,
Like we talked about Pharrell two years prior, and it

(01:57:44):
took us two years to lock in the deal, you
know what I mean. Same thing with Usher, you know
what I mean, we talked about So so you know,
that ideation process never stops, but you know, it starts
soon as the previous year ends. Then you go into
the booking process because as the festival economy and market
has gotten bigger, there's more competition in the space. When

(01:58:06):
we first started Picnic, we were we were the only
ones that were looking for sort of alternative urban black
R and B hip hop like nobody else, no other options,
So we can you know, call and be like, what's
up you want to play it? But now you know,
between the sort of regular mega all things to all
people festivals like the Bonus and the that yeah that

(01:58:28):
are that are now being tinted black, between those and
then the other you know, sort of culture facing festivals.
Now it's a lot of competition. So you start that
booking process, you know, nine ten, eleven months in advance,
and you need to have you know, I got a
I got a team of young people that have their
finger on a postal culture as you know, a mire,

(01:58:50):
I send out a group text to our entire team.
Who y'all listening to? Who y'all want to? Tell me?
Who you want? A mir Tell me who you want?
You know, Dawn, you know anyone that's like, you know
out there, like talk to me, send me main, send
me videos, send me clips. Because you almost have to
be a predictor of what's going to be hot at

(01:59:11):
two periods, A when your tickets go on sale and
B when you play, and those.

Speaker 4 (01:59:15):
Are two different periods.

Speaker 2 (01:59:17):
Probably your two story was napping U I'm gonna things.

Speaker 1 (01:59:24):
What's his name?

Speaker 3 (01:59:26):
Nack Lamore?

Speaker 1 (01:59:26):
Yeah, we got back Lamore right in the nicked time
of Like I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:59:31):
Yeah, there's a lot of stories like we got kid Cuddy,
like you know what I mean, super early weekend, you
know the weekend. Yeah, I mean, but again, that's a
team that's a team based effort. It's not just Sean
g or Meir Thompson sitting in our rooms, you know,
saying this is hot. It's a team based effort, both
official people. But then also you know, the last three years,

(01:59:53):
my son has booked four or five of these acts.
You know, my fifteen year old I'm like Sean who
popping like, oh, you gotta get young boy. You got
to get this person. You got to get that person,
you know what I mean, Because it's a balance.

Speaker 5 (02:00:03):
So being a sons, can you just a quick callback
because we talked about your first son, but can you
just tell people what your your first son is doing now?

Speaker 3 (02:00:11):
Darren Darren's a sports agent and c.

Speaker 7 (02:00:14):
There you go living your dreams.

Speaker 3 (02:00:17):
Just moved to l a wow.

Speaker 7 (02:00:20):
From a baby having babies.

Speaker 3 (02:00:23):
But yeah, it's it's a never it's a NonStop processing there.
It's just you know, it never stopped because once you book,
then there's the marketing, you know what I mean. And
you got to put the marketing plan together. You got
to understand what the marketplace is saying. You gotta understand
how you hit your audience. You got to understand how
to break through the clutter. You gotta understand when other
festivals are announcing. And then you know, once you get
out of the marketing phase, hopefully you sell tickets quickly.

(02:00:46):
And then is execution. You know what I mean. You're
you're you're you're transforming empty fields into concert venues, into experiences.
So it's more than just the stage it's the creative
concept that goes along with how do you want these
people to interact with all aspects of your site? Like
it's not just who you put on stage, it's who

(02:01:07):
are your vendors, where are you going to place your vendors,
what are your prices? Who are your marketing partner, your
brand partners? What are your activations?

Speaker 5 (02:01:14):
So Sean, doesn't all that go out the window now
because uh, for twenty twenty.

Speaker 3 (02:01:18):
I mean, hell, yare for twenty twenty, but no, twenty
twenty one, we'll be back yep.

Speaker 2 (02:01:22):
Okay, well all right, so it's April, Nah, it's May.
It's May of twenty twenty. Like how much gray hair
are you getting.

Speaker 1 (02:01:37):
During this people?

Speaker 5 (02:01:40):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (02:01:41):
I mean? And you know, with the Roots picnic, how
much work we put into that second day like we
had the first day, which we booked the shit out
of Because part of the strategy for us and The
Mirror has been driving this for years, is how do
we get the Roots out of the headlining slot because
if we ever want this to be Lallapalooza, we need

(02:02:04):
the Roots to ultimately play the role of James addiction.
You know, Perry Felt, you know what I mean, like,
how do we get the roots out of it? So
we finally figured a way to get the roots out
of the headlining slot while still keeping them in the festival.
We were selling tickets like hotcakes on our one day festival,
and we Tarique Emir myself. We spent six months negotiating

(02:02:28):
with Missus Michelle Obama to come and headline our day two.
We were about to shock the world with that. So
we finally had it deal done, putting together the creative
and COVID hits, you know what I mean. And so
it wasn't just the roots picnic. I had Broncoli City

(02:02:48):
Festival sold out. It was sold out two months in advance.
I had Miami Jazzmine Gardens that weekend in March when
everything shut down, headlined by Mary J. Blige, Jill Scott,
Anthony Hamilton, Charlie Wilson.

Speaker 1 (02:03:03):
It was live Crew, y know.

Speaker 3 (02:03:06):
We were we were we were better than essence. We
were better than essence that you know. But again we
had to stop. So I had a ton of festivals
that got shut down, and you know, ship, I was depressed,
dog like, I was fucked up, you know what I mean,
Because I spent I spent the first four to six
weeks of COVID undoing my last ten months of work.

(02:03:29):
It's like building a house and you get to the
front door. All you got to do is put the
front door in and then the bulldozer comes and knock
knock it down. Was like fuck, you know, I just
eight ten months building and ship. So it was it
was super super you know, sort of depressing. You know,
I was. I was depressed. I was upset, you know
what I mean. I was, I was hurt, you know

(02:03:50):
what I mean. It was all types of emotions.

Speaker 7 (02:03:52):
When did it change? When did that change?

Speaker 1 (02:03:53):
When spirit?

Speaker 3 (02:03:56):
I'll be real when we don't in with the route
we dove in on our on our YouTube page, you know,
we sort of we sort of rolled up our sleeves
and and and got creative and started coming out Quest
Love Supreme Live, Quest Loves DJ, you know everything that
you know Tariq's you know, the Thought Interview, you know,

(02:04:19):
our our emerging artist platform, like like we got the
creativity is the thing that that sort of was like,
oh shit, Okay, this isn't the time to be depressed.
This is the time to roll up our sleeves and
we become entrepreneurs again. Like I I talked to Tariq
a Mere Jill More during that period because you got

(02:04:42):
to realize, like it was like a well we machine.
With my management client, it was like, Okay, we got
tonight's show. I'm going to stay six months ahead of
the guys, you know what I mean. I got an
execution team keeping feene Teina Faris Monir, I got a
team that handles the day to day. My job is
to stay six months ahead so that when we get there,
it's something there. So it was sort of like a

(02:05:03):
well oiled machine. What this did for us was it
forced us to become entrepreneurial and creative again. And this
shit's been fun as a motherfucker. I'll be real with you,
all right, So what does that future look like now?
And I know people talk about, man when we get
back to normal, but it's like, okay.

Speaker 1 (02:05:22):
So when so all right?

Speaker 2 (02:05:24):
So when when when the the line finally gets flattened
in the United States and there's we're COVID free?

Speaker 1 (02:05:35):
Am I still.

Speaker 2 (02:05:39):
Going to blah blah blah club to DJ YadA YadA YadA.

Speaker 1 (02:05:45):
You know, what do I do with the thirty thousand?
You know?

Speaker 2 (02:05:51):
Audience members that I've gotten on these six platforms, virtual
DJing yep, Like is that a monetary future?

Speaker 1 (02:05:58):
Like?

Speaker 3 (02:05:59):
How absolutely?

Speaker 1 (02:06:00):
I think you go back? Or do you stay the course?

Speaker 3 (02:06:06):
We will never in the live music space, in the
live entertainment space, we will never return to February of
twenty twenty. Okay, that won't happen. That won't ever happen again.

Speaker 1 (02:06:18):
What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (02:06:19):
What that means is like the way that the Roots
Picnic look when we last did it for the Things
for All part twentieth, what would be different? I mean,
I think Live Picnic twenty twenty two, Lite will return
and Live will return at scale.

Speaker 3 (02:06:34):
I think that part of it is going to be
driven by science and governments, you know, mainly science meaning
you know, whether it's testing vaccine, whatever that ends up being.
You know, you can't replicate the emotional connection of being
in an audience and watching your favorite artists. And I
think that will return. But I think the difference is,

(02:06:56):
you know, COVID was the symptom, but what the live
music industry is actually going through, It's not COVID. It's
a technological disruption we're going through. This is the first
true disruption of technology for live music recorded music went
through it from LimeWire to Napster to that ended up,

(02:07:18):
you know, that sort of six to eight year process
of disruption ended up with Spotify, Apple Music title where
we are now, right And if you guys remember that
was a really fucking uncomfortable time when Napster was in
and live people were like, the industry's gone. Record labels
are never going to happen again. Why are we doing this?

(02:07:38):
These consumers will never buy anything because they can trade
files for free, all of that. But what ended up
happening was the industry embraced technology at the end of it,
and the business is bigger than ever right now. And
that's the same thing that's going to happen live. What
we're seeing with these live streaming platforms. We're seeing with

(02:08:01):
the consumer engagement. If you think about the level of
digital engagement from music consumers when Fante, if I told
you you were going to be sitting on your fucking
couch for two hours watching Patti LaBelle and Gladys Knight
play music and enjoy it, if I would have told
you that in February, you'd have been like, what.

Speaker 8 (02:08:21):
Nigga, my my moment for that was versus was the
primo and uh, and.

Speaker 4 (02:08:29):
That was the moment where I was like, yo, the
world has changed.

Speaker 8 (02:08:32):
Forever like these but that engage my house watching two
dudes play record and that's the most important in the
world right.

Speaker 3 (02:08:41):
Now, and enjoying it and looking forward to it. So
that level of consumer engagement, which probably would have taken
a decade for us to get there, happened in six months.
That's going to transition out of COVID, and you're going
to see cottage industries that become major, cottage companies that
become major companies that are building companies around that digital

(02:09:02):
distribution and digital engagement. That's not going to take live away.
It's going to add on to the live economy and
you're going to now see a bigger industry. The pie
is going to get bigger because now you have brick
and mortar lies, remember Blockbuster and h and I mean,
what's the what's tower record? You'll have You'll still have

(02:09:25):
brick and mortar line. Now you want to have virtual
line and together you're going to twenty twenty five, the
live music industry is going to be two three times
the size that it is now. Just like recorded music
is bigger than it was, you know during the during
the Limewires. It's what Eric, It's going to be a
point it's going to be a point of uncomfortable. It's

(02:09:46):
about to say that two or three years where you're
going to see big major players like Tower. You're going
to see big major players that were the ship in
twenty nineteen and twenty in early twenty twenty in the
live music industry. If they don't adapt, they're gonna be gone.

Speaker 5 (02:10:02):
So Sean, is what Erica did recently during the COVID
is that the future the whole subscription live show thing.

Speaker 3 (02:10:08):
You think the beauty about it is. I don't know
the future. I say it's fun ship. That's the fun part.
The fun part is we are in the Wow wild
West with Ship. Erica came out and said, well, all
of y'all platforms, I'm gonna build my own platform. Is
that is that going to be? Is Erica gonna end

(02:10:30):
up being Spotify? Or is she gonna end up being LimeWire?
You know, I mean, I don't know, you know what
I mean? Like like Twitch, Twitch is you know, it's
a huge gaming platform now has a music strategy. Are
they gonna end up being Spotify orre they gonna end
up being Napster. I don't know. But that's the great part.
And again depending on how I came up, and this
I always and you know what I mean. I'm not

(02:10:52):
just saying this because you're on the phone. I say
it in meetings with CEOs and presidents. I'm a root,
you know what I mean. I came in this game
of route and we figured out how to make this
ship work. We figured out how to make a twenty
plus year, thirty plus year career off of one and
a half hit songs. When when it's time, when it's
time commercial right there, you know, when it's time to

(02:11:16):
roll in the sleeves and figure some shit out. In
a period of time where it's discord and everybody's confused,
you know, some people are gonna fall off the wayside.
I'm having fun. I'm coming up with ideas, creativity. Let's
figure this ship a Mirland. Why don't you dj? And
you know from your barn in New York, you know
to why don't it? It's this is the part here

(02:11:36):
that it's fun because I don't you don't know what
the future is, but you do know, it's not going
to be where we were on February twenty twenty.

Speaker 8 (02:11:45):
And you get to create it. We're essentially absolutely absolutely
and the.

Speaker 3 (02:11:49):
Winner might be some kid that's sitting in you know,
his bedrooms homeschooling right now, Like he might be the
next Steve Jobs of the next you know what I mean.
And it ain't gonna be somebody that's the CEO or
somebody that's the president right now. There's gonna be some
kid that's sitting there doing virtual school right now, and
that's going to come up.

Speaker 4 (02:12:07):
With the answer.

Speaker 1 (02:12:09):
All right, man, did I just hope?

Speaker 3 (02:12:10):
I just hope your Roots fan, whoever he is the Roots?

Speaker 1 (02:12:16):
So did I?

Speaker 3 (02:12:17):
Well?

Speaker 2 (02:12:18):
Wait, I forgot there's one thing that we forgot to
mention you also going to a foray of developing with
two one five Entertainment.

Speaker 1 (02:12:31):
You know, actually, like what what is I find myself.

Speaker 2 (02:12:36):
Trying to step away from platforms and get less and
less jobs. But now that I'm listening to this story,
you're actually quest low like just between lot Nation two
one five Entertainment us developing these these movies, these plays,

(02:12:57):
these television shows. I mean, at what point are you
going to Chef Gordon the thing and just be like
all right, Alice Cooper, let's just right off into the sunset.
And you know, do you have do you have a
master plan written out in which you just like all right,
I'm cool, or you let your.

Speaker 1 (02:13:15):
Son take over? Or for me, is he is he
on that level yet where it's like.

Speaker 3 (02:13:21):
Which which on the music side? You know, yeah, like
it's my it's shown, it's my fifteen year old. Like
he's he's he's built for this and he's he's telling yes,
he's telling me about you know, this person doing his
bundle and you know how it's super creating because everybody's
bundling with their T shirts, but he bundled with this
and that, and you know, we look at the numbers,

(02:13:43):
look at the streams. He's he's not not not a
proactive thing for me teaching him. He's just I see it.
I smell it like Darren. I smell sports Like Darren
wasn't into music and this my business. He took what
he learned from me, what he saw. He's took my
hustle and my grind and applied it to his passion.

Speaker 4 (02:14:05):

Speaker 3 (02:14:06):
Sean is absolutely built for this music game. Like that's
that's you know, I see it. I'm like, all right, dude,
I'm gonna be working for you, so you know what
I mean. But yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't.
I don't have a I don't you know, I don't
have an exit plan meaning exit plan from a you know,
I'm gonna go get my house in Hawaii. Like for me,

(02:14:27):
it's about passion, Like if you all the things I'm
involved in is because I'm passionate about it. Like their
clients that have fired me, you know, like I said earlier,
because I sort of worked myself out of a job,
their clients that I fired. Like if I don't fucking
wake up and inspired by you or you know, every
day isn't gonna be inspiration. Some days I wake up
and be like, man, what the fuck I'm here? Come

(02:14:48):
on dog?

Speaker 1 (02:14:49):
All right?

Speaker 2 (02:14:49):
So when's the first phone call start? Like, when's the
first like when does your phone start ringing? Obviously you
have a rule in the house that no more phone
calls after black blah black out, because I could be
imprisoned somewhere and I know you ain't gonna pick up
the phone.

Speaker 3 (02:15:06):
But that's part of that's part of hiring a team
like you call near, he gonna pick it up. But
years but fifteen years ago, I was that dude that
picked up their phone, you know what. You know, I
was the one riding up when somebody got locked up.
But now that's part of growth. It's like, all right,
y'all do that. But it's funny my phone calls, you know,

(02:15:26):
now that I live in La I usually start my
phone calls around seven. But when I'm being creative and
my team, you know, always jokes to me. Sometimes that
last email comes from me at three or four in
the morning. Like my mind. As I've grown in this business,
my mind has started to work more like an artist,
unless like a suit Like I know, y'all always used

(02:15:46):
to say, like, you know, creativity don't start until after midnight,
and I'd be like what y'all talk about? Like you
got to sleep. But as I've gotten older, that's when
my creative ideas come because during the day, you know,
I'm doing phone calls and zooms and shit like that,
so I'm able to.

Speaker 8 (02:16:00):
You gotta wait to everybody else's asleep so you can
really exact exactly.

Speaker 3 (02:16:04):
But yeah, my day usually starts at seven. You know,
seven seven thirty with calls, and you know, especially during COVID,
I'm able to work from home, so I you know,
between calls and my kids, you know, the balance is good.

Speaker 1 (02:16:16):
I see.

Speaker 2 (02:16:17):
All right, Well, I'll be hitting you about adding more
acres to my property and.

Speaker 7 (02:16:24):
Oh shit, and you gotta battle Jeff more acres, more acres.

Speaker 2 (02:16:31):
Oh no, I'm about to sun Jeff in the second.
And anyway, no, I think you know, I had to
learn some shit. And you know we've been.

Speaker 1 (02:16:43):
We've been business partners for what twenty plus years already.

Speaker 5 (02:16:48):
Ye, we can definitely name this episode the lesson like
there's there's some lessons in him.

Speaker 1 (02:16:54):
Absolutely. Yeah, all right, well you know, Sean G. Thank you.
I'll be bugging you later tonight.

Speaker 3 (02:17:00):
Oh good, Well, make sure y'all send me that edit
because you know I ain't signed that so I can
should tell y'all any time.

Speaker 9 (02:17:07):
Than let us never about the career of Davy l Yes,
so fine, anyway, all right, and I just say, and
I'm so.

Speaker 8 (02:17:19):
I told you this before, I told both you and
me this, but it really is inspirational to just to
watch and see what y'all brothers are built over these
decades man, and you know, and I just think you
for the opportunity, you know, for bringing me into this
and uh, you know, you hit me. And it was
just like, hey man, the mirror is doing this thing
you on in And I was like, all right, I mean,
you know what the ship was gonna be. But but

(02:17:42):
you know, I just I just you know, ad my
work ethic in the hustle, and you know, for I
know how hard it is to build something on your own.
So I was gonna just you know, salute you man,
and just give your flowers and just say yeah, Sean.

Speaker 3 (02:17:55):
Definitely appreciate it.

Speaker 7 (02:17:56):
We all have our own Shan stories.

Speaker 5 (02:17:57):
I wouldn't have got my own radio show back in
Philly fifteen years ago if Kobe Cole would asked.

Speaker 7 (02:18:01):
Sean ge who he was the host for this show?

Speaker 1 (02:18:04):
Wait what?

Speaker 5 (02:18:05):
Yes, That's how I got Sunday Morning Soul because Kobe
was on the call with Sean and he was like,
I want to do this specialty show about soul, and
Sean he was like, who'll be a good hell Sprach.

Speaker 7 (02:18:14):
And how yeah, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (02:18:19):
I thought.

Speaker 7 (02:18:19):
You know, me and Sean had many a morning conversations
on the way to work and stuff like that, like
it was a bill.

Speaker 5 (02:18:26):
Yes, And he finally told me when I was able
to have my allowance to buy my weed, which was
also very exciting. I remember the day when he said, like,
you can now put some money aside weekly for weed thinking.

Speaker 1 (02:18:38):
And I regret telling the story because now you that
was great.

Speaker 3 (02:18:44):
That great.

Speaker 4 (02:18:45):
I'm gonna stop talking about you.

Speaker 7 (02:18:47):
I would have love for you to say I took
it back, but that's.

Speaker 1 (02:18:49):
Fine, dots, No, I did take it back.

Speaker 7 (02:18:53):
Okay, okay, good, all right, dude.

Speaker 1 (02:18:56):
Sure this has been the more more informative that so.

Speaker 2 (02:19:00):
I already learned from Alan Weeds that managers aren't going
to do the tail all ship on the so you know,
I feel that this show is effective enough without talking
about you know, artist fuckery that is going down.

Speaker 1 (02:19:18):
It wouldn't serve the episode a great way to build.
I never say this enough you.

Speaker 2 (02:19:23):
You definitely take on the gray hair that I successfully
avoided right now, and I have.

Speaker 4 (02:19:31):
A lot of it.

Speaker 1 (02:19:33):
Anytime I see my my my barometer for how.

Speaker 2 (02:19:37):
My life is going is based on how much gray hairs.
Right absolutely, I'm like, all right, all right, it's a
good month. I'm amazing all right, well on behalf of
the team, Sugar Steve. We still FLI Chustine right now, Yes, yes,
I see you, I see you. Pay bill and take

(02:19:59):
a little and all right, yeah, thank you showing ge
uh this appreciate and signing and off we will see
you next week when the next Joe around request Love Supreme.

Speaker 4 (02:20:07):
Thank you, yo, what's up? It's a sponte.

Speaker 8 (02:20:12):
Make sure you keep up with us on Instagram at
QLs and let us know what you think and who
should be next to sit down with us.

Speaker 4 (02:20:18):
Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast, all right peace?

Speaker 1 (02:20:22):
How Much Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (02:20:28):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Laiya St. Clair

Questlove

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