Today on The Breakfast Club, Richelieu Dennis Talks 31st ESSENCE Festival of Culture, Teyana Taylor & The Aunties, Black Owned Brands,Caroline Wanga. Listen For More!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Every day I wake click, yours up the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
You know I'm finished for y'all.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
Done morning.
Speaker 4 (00:09):
Everybody's DJ, Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne, Na gud We are
the Breakfast Club. Law Lao's here as well. So it's
Mimi And we got a special guest in the building.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
We have the brother Rich Dennis.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Welcome back, Thank you, Thank you guys. Rich. I'm getting
used to this man.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Before we start out, I just want to say one
one thing about Essence, because of course Essence Fest was
a couple of weeks ago. Two weeks ago, I would
say I've never been to Essence. I've always been as
a talent, right and being as a talent, I'm only
usually there very short periods of time. I go in there,
DJ or speak on the panel, get in and out.
This was the first time that I was there from Thursday,
(00:45):
Wednesday to Sunday, right from nine am to five pm.
And it's a different experience, and I have a different experience,
and I have a different conversation I want to have
with people.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I have never been to a place.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Where it's over one hundred thousand people that look like me,
that care and love on each other. And I know
a lot of times when things don't go right, people
are quick to kick on people or tear things down.
But I really enjoyed it. And I don't think people
really understand what essence festival is because I didn't understand
what it was between and we'll just talking about the
(01:19):
free things right in the convention center. Between the free
gives away giveaways a beauty con they were so much stuff.
They were people walking around with big boxes and tampons.
There were people walking around with big things of vasiline,
with makeup, with bounty rolls.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
With Coca Cola products. People were leaving with luggages of
free ish.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
But now not only that, you got so many artists,
so many panels given informative information.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
You have Gospel Sundays.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Which it was just a huge vibe and it was dancing,
there was music, there was kids, and it's something that's needed.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
I think people understand what festival no, not the way that,
But I think the reason they attack it is because
they have such it's beloved.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
But I heard Plies say the same thing, because Plaie
said the exact same thing, because I don't think he
experienced it. But when you experience when you go, when
you experience it is a different experience, and you talk
about it differently because I don't think we have anything
ever like that with that when I.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Think was so beloved, that's why it gets the back
last year guy.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
But I think I think it's a couple of things.
So what you said, I've heard that three or four
different times now since this weekend, right. And the person
who brought it to me first with that was was
was d Nice. Right. So Dee was saying every time
he comes to Essence, he's got ten gigs. He's playing here,
he's playing there. He's never had an opportunity to really
(02:36):
move around as a person as opposed to talent, right.
And I don't think he's going to come back as
a talent again. I think he's gone back every year
as a person, right, because he he one one of
them is exactly what you experienced. One of the things
the experiences he's like, I've never been in a place
(02:56):
where there's so much love, right, And I tell you
one of the ways that that love God express was
you know, they had a fire down on Bourbon Street
and knocked out some of the power for a few hours, right,
and people's hotels. There were complete strangers finding hotel rooms
and giving up rooms to other people who had been displaced. Now,
(03:19):
it was for a short period of time when the
city handled it beautifully. But the point is is that
there is that kind of love there where everybody's looking
out for each other, everybody, everybody's just loving on each
other for three four days. And to your point, Charlemagne,
what people remember from nineteen ninety five, and it's not
(03:41):
that right, And I think it's I think it's high
time that we all realize that the country is in
nineteen ninety five anymore, right, The people aren't nineteen ninety
five anymore. So it's very difficult to say, hey, we
are going to serve black women by only giving them
what they had in nineteen ninety five. In nineteen ninety five,
we didn't have podcasts. Right in nineteen ninety five, we
(04:04):
didn't have people attacking DEI, we didn't have people attacking
our communities as blatantly as that's happening right now. Right,
so people are coming in with a lot heavier loads
right from their daily lives. That place is a place
where you come there and you can leave everything behind
(04:24):
and everybody is there just to love on each other.
I say this all the time. You know, if Wakanda
were a real place, it would be Essence Festival, right,
because it is nothing but love. It is nothing but excellence,
but progression but joy, right, And you feel it from
the moment you get on the plane, even when you
(04:46):
get on the plane going it's it's like, oh, I'm
with my people, even before you land, right, and when
you land like, oh, I'm with my people. When you
go in that convention center, you're seeing between forty and
fifty thousand people that are there for the same reason.
So you know it's it's it's really a magical, magical place.
And that's why I work so hard and my team
works so hard to preserve it and to and to
(05:08):
elevate it so it's not what it was in nineteen
ninety five. It's actually elevated. But it has all of
if you're looking for nineteen ninety five, everything you had
in nineteen ninety five is there. I don't think it's
a festival anymore. I think it's an institution. I would
agree with that. I mean, when you when you.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
When you can, when it's big enough to be a
backdrop for a movie. Yeah, that made over one hundred
million dollars. That's when you know you got anstitution. So
how do you protect an institution from becoming a tradition
that people attend, you know, out of habit instead of
necessity because you wanted to feel like I gotta be there.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah, yeah, And I think look, I think you saw
a lot of Hey, if I had listened to the internet,
I would have I would have never come right, And
I tell people that the internet is not a real place. Nope, right,
like you when you get there, you see what it is. Now.
Do we make mistakes one lots of them. Yes we do.
(06:02):
Do we correct absolutely, and I think we correct better
than anybody else that team. You've got over one hundred
black women that are putting on this festival, right, and
then you've got probably another six seven hundred that are
contractors working the festival, all black women. Like all your experiences,
there are black women. I'm not I shouldn't say all
(06:22):
black women, vast majority ninety eight percent of black women. Right.
There's a few men doing different things like you did
this year. But what you got to realize is that
it's also a training ground for those people that own
production companies, for those people that are that are that
are in the entertainment space, that are getting an opportunity
(06:44):
on the super louned stage or in the other place.
So it's more than what they What people see is
all of the entertainment aspects, all of the all of
the value that we create, all of the free products,
all of the right. What they don't see is that
we look at it. And I've said this here before,
we are building the infrastructure for which culture can monetize. Right.
(07:07):
So we launched the podcast Festival. What we talked about, right,
we had four studios up there, we filmed over we
I think it did over fifty podcasts in two days. Right,
those podcasts is not walk now walk away? All of
them combined about five million dollars of inventory that they
(07:27):
can now go sell. There's nowhere else you can go
do that, right, and it costs them nothing to do it. Right.
We put it, We put it all on right. If
you look at what we did with the car show,
I can't wait for us to talk about the car
show because I think that was probably the biggest mistake
we make next to the lines, was it was too small. Yeah,
it was too small.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
But I also feel like sometimes you have to see
it to believe it. Like you know, even with you know,
dealing with your team, they do everything by the book.
I'm the type of person to be like nah be
and I will say it, but I asked for you know,
I asked for forgiveness and just keep it moving. But
you know, it's it's it's one of those things where
it's like people just wanted an outlet to see something different.
(08:08):
And the car she did amazingly. Yes, we needed more space,
there was so many people there. But brother, I don't
think you sat down for three days.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
No, took the Twitter.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Everybody, everybody, thousands of thousands of people, everybody.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Right and that. But that's that's that's what it's about,
the same thing. You know, Tianna Taylor walked that festival
floor two three times.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I actually was so surprised.
Speaker 6 (08:32):
Not I know, Tianna Taylor get busy with like anything
she does, She's gonna take her time with it. But
because she's Tiana Taylor and it's so many people, I
thought she was gonna have a hard time navigating it.
But the men and I walked into conventions and not
only did you see her? You saw all of the
Auntie's production stats in their gears, so you felt her presence.
I was like, oh, she like they're here, Like this
(08:52):
is like then I watched the panel she did and
she her and uh Daniel Daniel could yes, and her
best friend Coco, and they like took their time with the.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Audience and this is like you saw me, right, you
see that, you know what you do?
Speaker 1 (09:07):
They were taking questions. I raised my hand to ask questions.
They just glazed over me, like.
Speaker 6 (09:15):
They moved the couch just closer to the to the
end of the stage. But they wanted to like really
like connect with the people. But I was just surprised
how well she navigated being, you know, a curator or
producer of the festival, but also still like being having
a presence there too and just like being good with
the people.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Look, I think I think that that what what Charlemagne
said is it's it's it's an institution and at the
core of it, it's home. So she felt comfortable enough
to not just come to the convention center, but to
go through the crowd, right, and the crowd not just
(09:53):
embraced her and loved on her, but they gave her
space to move around. Right now, I'm not saying you
didn't have to get people hey, right, but and the
other thing I noticed was she took a picture was
just about every kid that came up to her.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Right, you don't even know this part?
Speaker 4 (10:06):
How about this when you were when she was doing
that thing, there was I guess it was a VIP
place where people can sit. There was two young girls
sitting in that place, and they asked the two young
girls to leave, and the young girls will crying because
they want it to be Tiana. Nobody knew the mom
hit me on just hit me on DM and it
was like, hey, this is what happened to my daughters.
I sent it to Tiana, and Tiana actually called the
(10:27):
young girls, sent her a package of stuff and said,
you know, made sure that she was cool because it
was the girl's birthday. But that's the feeling that I
got out of essence. So sometimes when I hear these things,
I'm like, that's not.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
What I've seen.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Its like I felt, I felt.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
The love like no other, and I thought that was
an amazing thing.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
And the Aunties enhanced the overall experience. Oh, I thought
it was I thought it was a tremendous enhancement. I think,
I think the but I wanted, I want to be clear,
that was a very very tight collaboration with the Essence
team and the other and the other curators as well,
(11:03):
like like Nina and and uh Mara and Nicole right
like and Sanid like. They they really came together around hey,
how do we make this the best experience for everybody?
And they did a fantastic job. And our team, you know,
kudos kudos to our team because it's also a lot
(11:26):
to navigate, and we added in a whole nother level
of navigation, right, which is which is the curators right
and too, and to say hey, here's what we do now,
y'all come take it and do it. And we're in
a support role. It takes a real mature organization and
really talented people to have the confidence to be able
to to be able to let that happen. And what
(11:47):
I tell the team all the time is you can
do anything you want in this world as long as
you don't care who gets the credit, right, right, And
that's the way that we that's the way that we
take it right. And then but the learnings, man, the
learnings this year with just it was just like we
learned last year. But there's probably more to learn from
success than there is to learn from failure, right, because
(12:08):
now how do you repeat the things that are successful,
and how do you now go focus on the things
that you fail that to make sure that they better.
I think we nailed that part of it from last year.
The big thing that I think we got to focus
on this year and what we're already working on and
planning is those lines, right, because I think it was twofold.
I think one is this is the largest festival we've
(12:30):
ever had, Right, There's more people there than you than
you can imagine, and it was hundreds and hundreds of
thousands of people.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I kept hearing that on the ground, So that was true.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, no, yeah, no, it was. It was one. There's
no two ways about it. But part of that is
then the infrastructure has to scale to accommodate those people, right,
And so and as we grow, we've got to be
well ahead of what the infrastructure needs to be and
look like so that that number of people can get
(13:01):
hands so the lines, we won't have a line problem
next year. Right, We're get we're expecting we'll have even
more people next year. But while it was going on
and people saw during the days, we made adjustments. We
got we know how to handle that now, right, and
so so we're we're we're we're working even you know,
it's not even five days later, we're redoing how the
(13:22):
lines work. I think that was that was the biggest thing.
And I tell you the thing that I was the
most proud of. We had a lot of sponsors pull out, right,
we still put on the best festival I think we've
put on right, certainly Top three.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Was a d was a dead The reason for the sponsors,
I think I think d I was a lot of it.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
The backlash was probably the biggest part of it, because
brands don't want to be associated with that. So kudos
to our partners like Target, big, big kudos to to
Coca Cola, Target Disney, Like these are the people that
came back, and like you used to have McDonald's and Delta,
and none of those people came back, right, But who
(14:02):
came back was Target, Disney, I'm going to Amazon. So
they came back, and we need those people to be
able to put on that experience. But what we also
need is when I talk about building infrastructure and building
up businesses. We also need our own businesses that can
afford to be there, right, that can afford to pay
for the space, and that can put on the experience.
(14:24):
So if you went to Beauty con right, most of
those sponsors that were there in years past either pulled
out or scaled down bigly. Right, you know who stepped up,
the black owned brands, the black owned businesses was ninety
percent of the revenue that came in to put on
Beauty con So stop and think about But those are
(14:46):
businesses that we've been nurturing and developing in our community
and our fund in our not for profit over the
past ten years or so. Many of them we had
nothing to do with their development. But because of what
they've seen us do, the ways that you know, the
ways we've navigated the marketplace and the doors that we've opened,
they've been able to come in and do that. So
(15:06):
now you've got brands like Canvas, Beauty Black Girl, Vitamin Brown,
Sugar Babe like they're now anchoring. They're now anchoring Beauty
Con right at festival. By the way, get your tickets
to Beauty Con La September. I think it's September nineteenth.
Already all the early bird has sold out. Everything is
(15:28):
sold out there. It's just the GA tickets in some experience.
But the point is that we now have in the
beauty community enough businesses that can support this type of infrastructure.
If I had listened to the naysayers two years ago
or even last year, that wouldn't have been the case.
(15:49):
Or if this backlash had happened three years ago, we
wouldn't have had businesses that were ready to step in,
to step in and fill in the gap. Now, those
companies that have pulled out, they're going to lose market shared,
lose market share over and over again because now that
these now that the black owned businesses an't in the space,
(16:09):
they're curating that thing on a whole nother level. Like
the energy is crazy.
Speaker 6 (16:13):
So what did that teach you, like as a person
that's in the program in space of essence about or
not teach you, but like what what what's your plan
moving forward next year about focusing just on those black
owned brands and not always leaning toward like the big
corporate sponsors, Like what we see more of that?
Speaker 1 (16:26):
So we've never done that, right, So that's that's perception. Right,
What we've done is said, Okay, we're going to use
our resources to develop and platform black owned businesses. Gotcha,
that's what we do. Right. We also understand that we
need those corporate dollars in order to make the investments right.
They don't just happen, right, So we've focused, we've we've
(16:50):
we've been able to focus on both, right, and we're
going to continue to focus on both because the other,
the other side of this coin is that those companies
we need, need those companies to pay attention to our
communities because they have the resources to drive scale, to
drive access, to drive structural development and improvement, to provide
(17:13):
shelf space, to provide We can't survive without those things
until we build our own. Our job is to bring
the two together, leverage the dollars in the resources to
provide that growth and development for everybody. Right. So it's
not that we lean in one or the other. What
I'm trying to articulate is that we're now in a place,
(17:33):
and that is where we need to get our entire
community in a place where we can stand on our
own two feet. And now people come in. They don't
come in because they feel they're doing us a favor.
They come in because they now have to compete against us,
as opposed to us not having the resources to compete
and they not having the need feeling the need to
make the investment.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
We reach back out to those businesses like a McDonald's,
like a absolutely At and T, like a Delta that
that said no, we don't want to be part of it.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Do you reach back and say, hey, yeah, We'll be
in continuous engagement with them. This is Look, I don't
take this stuff personally, right, And I say to you
guys all time, I don't have the luxury of being angry, right,
I don't have the luxury of being disappointed. The only
luxury that I have is the love and care that
(18:23):
I have to give to my community and bringing the
resources and my best thinking to it. Not always going
to be the right way, but it's always going to
come from that place. So we're going to continue to
reach out with them. We're going to continue to provide
them opportunity. We're going to continue to show them the data,
the opportunity to scale because they need our community to grow, right,
they need our community to grow. There's a whole host
(18:44):
of reasons why people pull out they didn't support that
doesn't matter to me, right. What matters to me is
that we're able to do what we're doing, We're able
to deliver the product that we're able to deliver, and
that we have the resources to scale it, right, Because
that's the other thing. I don't know of another place
on this planet that you can go engage with those
three four hundred thousand people that are there for those
(19:07):
three four days, right and get the type of safety
and protection. And that's the other thing is like what
I saw a ton of this year, even more than ever.
And I'm sure you guys are there SR too. The
multi generational game is crazy.
Speaker 7 (19:23):
Absolutely, And when you talk about that in the concerts,
right because there was like someone for each generation, Patti LaBelle,
Cardi B.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
You know, every generation had someone that they wanted to see.
That's I felt the second.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah, yeah, well if you felt that the second night.
The first night, you had everybody from Michelle Obama to Lotto.
Speaker 6 (19:41):
See, I didn't get Kalani Cardi B. We was just outside.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
That Friday night.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
That's all I need. You took me outside. What about though,
because I know Cardi B. She did a live afterward.
Speaker 6 (19:57):
It was just talking about her performance, and she was saying,
and she felt like the crowd coudn't hear, so she
was screaming, where do our sound is?
Speaker 1 (20:02):
She was happening, No, so part of it is and
if you listen to what So, I'm not saying that
there weren't sound issues, because over when you do a
stadium of that size, right that the one thing we
learned from last year is that you are going to
have sound issues, especially as people bring in different tech
packages to do their shows. Right. But what we did
(20:24):
this year was we had people, multiple people there correcting
quickly if something was going off course. So something was
going on, of course they were correcting quickly. And in
a stadium of that size, it's very different than arena.
What she was saying was she hadn't done a venue
of that size.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah, I remember she said that, right, Yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
If any artist that you talk to will tell you
that when you do a venue of that size and
a stadium where it's it's closing, you get all the
echo on it, there's always an adjustment that they have
to make. So what she was saying, well, she's not
afraid of it anymore.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
She says she wants to come back, want to come back.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah, we're excited CARDI come back.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
And she did that. That was another thing to a
lot of the artists who had like performances.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
They were also like in golf in like the community
that I saw her then she had grow good. She
was over there and she spoke on the.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Stage beauty come Yeah.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
Like so the artist Kaylani was outside at Treehouse after
she performed, and she talked about it on the stage
like there was a connection to the outside of the
community as it always is. With that being said, I
know that your contracts up in September, right, is it
going to stay in New Orleans?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Is that? Is it a possibility?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Where we look, New Orleans is a special city. It
is the birthplace of the Essence Festival. Right, We've got
a lot of work to do with the city and
with the state, and we're going to do that work.
The idea is, let's do the work. Let's like it
is so special there, right, let's do Let's do the work.
So we're going to do the work. We're not afraid
of the work. Yeah, I read that.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
Y'all are trying to negotiate a new long term deal
with the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah right, yeah, yeah, No, I mean the for us
because of what it is again, it's we're never gonna
be able to compete against a live nation. That's not
what we're here for. Right, We're never our Age or
any of those guys. But what we are going to
do is to create the best product for black people
(22:18):
on the planet, right, And that's and that's and that's
where we're focused. So we're going to focus on partnerships
that enable that. Right. New Orleans is one of those
places that enables that. And we're where we're we're we're fully,
fully focused on making sure that we can get a
long term agreement because it takes us. We don't we
can't plan this thing. Again, it's not it's not like
(22:39):
it's a concert and you get five people together and
you take them on tour, right, or it's a tour
that right, it's not that. It is a deep rooted
sense of community that we need to create and that
takes long term planning. We need to right now be
planning out twenty twenty eight, twenty twenty nine, so we
don't have the problems that we had in twenty twenty five. Right,
(23:01):
So for us, it is important that we have a
long term relationship with a city. We've already had that
long term relationship with New Orleans, and we're hoping to
continue that and we're going to do the work to
continue that.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
How does it feel too? I don't want I guess
bounce back would be the word. Like, after all the
back last year, we see it from tween twenty five,
but to see people say, no, it was a big
improvement for twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
I was reading actual reviews.
Speaker 5 (23:25):
On nola dot com and they were saying, how like
it was much better than last year?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
How did that feel to you? Look, I'm I'm extremely
grateful for my team, right, the team that put and
the next time we do this, I want to bring
them all. I want to bring them all along. Right.
What we've had to do over the past year year
and a half is to make sure that people had
the space and the head space to focus on delivering
(23:52):
the product. And I think they did an extraordinary job
with that. Right, this idea or this notion of of
bounce back or not, In my mind, it's you know,
as ll CUJ says, don't call it a comeback, right.
(24:13):
What we did was we listened to the areas that
made us better, and we took that feedback right, and
we executed it like hell right. And that's what we
do is we execute right. We took that feedback and
we executed it. We also had a lot of feedback
that was non constructive, right, so we had to we
(24:36):
had to filter that out the execution. So the strategy
wasn't any different this year versus last year. What was
different is the execution, right, and so we're going to
continue to continue to lean into that. But it feels
I feel great for my team, right. I feel great
for my team. My team, they have an extraordinary amount
(24:57):
to be proud of, right, and I am extreme proud
of them. For me personally, it feels good to be
able to say to my team, y'all did this right,
because they actually they did it. And the other thing
that they should be extremely proud of is nobody else
on the planet can do this right. So it's not
(25:17):
like we haven't had people try to emulate or copy
what we do. It's not that it's that nobody has
been able to do it, and they do it, and
they do it year in and year out, and a
lot of times it's a thankless role that they play, right,
It's like they do all of that to get cust
out right, and then and then it's like, but now
the love comes in, and I say, I was sharing
(25:39):
this with somebody else earlier, and the week is you know,
black people can hate hard, but they love even harder, right,
and you got to love them more than they hate themselves.
Sometimes you do, right, And so that that's what it is.
But we feel Look, we're excited about twenty twenty seven.
Planning is is in motion and all of these things
(26:02):
that all of these strategic things that we've been doing
are not starting to come to life. You know, I
brought for you guys. I don't know if you saw
this around festival, but this is the reimagined Essence book right,
took us five years to get here, Double side, double
issue Katanji Brown Jackson, who's carrying us on her back
(26:24):
right now, and then all our curators Wow, oh dope,
right right, I'll go to how good is that? And
the idea? Yeah? Yeah, no, we went hard, dude, we
went hard. She did she did film FIRS.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
There you go, now, she did good. She did the
film festival and the film thing about her.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
They did a pitch fest where somebody got to pitch
a movie and they picked I guess five people how
they pick it, and they said, we'll pick one person
out the audience, and the one person out the audience
is the person that actually.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Got the deal.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
So it was it was pretty dope.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I thought.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
I thought that was dope.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So and something for everybody. Film festivals, you know, books, books.
Speaker 7 (27:08):
Authors, you know, concerts, there's something for literally everyone.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Everybody and for every age group, right. And and that's
been part of the challenge that we've been we've been
up against is there are many people who wanted to
remain right for our generation or the generation before us,
And the reality of it is, we can't think that
(27:33):
way right, because where do like I look at and like,
then where would my kids go right? And if my
kids don't get to experience this right, or or or
somebody else's grandkids don't get to experience this, they never
get to get that feeling of scaled black love right
and scale black unity right, and they don't get to
(27:54):
learn how to behave right. So that's the other thing
so that I don't know if you guys saw the
dug the double dutch you want to go to so
like you know, you're you're a kid in from you know,
pick a city, Chicago, and you come with your mom
and your grandmother and this is what your mom and
grandmother grew up doing. And now you get to double
(28:16):
dutch in front of thirty thousand people and get to like,
what kind of confidence booster is that? What kind of
passing down tradition is that? Like? Where where else are
you gonna? Where else are you going to get that?
Speaker 4 (28:27):
So the woman is actually she was pregnant. She she
used to come to She used to teach the kids
in my car show. That's that's my first metage. We
would hire her to come today, but I don't think
about it. Even if you don't know how to do
it double dutch, they teach you right then.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
And that learned. I learned how to double dutch at
my car show. They teach men.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
If the kids older, you should have Laura and Geena views.
I'm serious, like they too, right.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
You don't know why did you dated? So the first day.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
She's just too busy managing the stage.
Speaker 6 (28:53):
I tell you that crushed on that stage a real job,
a real job, and.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
It's a lot of pressure.
Speaker 6 (28:59):
It's a lot of physical like because you're physically there
then you're interacting with people or whatever. That first day
I was like, I'm gonna make it over there, but
by the end of the day my feet was hurting
too bad.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (29:07):
Second day, I was supposed to just go enjoy the festival,
but I ended up being on the HBCU pan because
they needed me to jump in and then by the
time we finished that everything was packed up.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I didn't get the double dutch. I was really trying.
Speaker 6 (29:18):
Wow, Like people was coming over to me, like do
you see the double dutch? Because every time I'm somewhere
and I can double Dutch, we try to do it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
So so two things. One is make sure you schedule
yourself next year for double dutching. And two all the
comments are saying we need.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
You there every year, so thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
You know what, you're a hater. I looked up. You
know what, if you don't got nothing nice to say,
don't say it.
Speaker 6 (29:46):
Then you're gonna say don't nobody be talking about how
you can't pronounce some essays.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
But you know what I mean, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah, it was it was, it was. I mean, it's
it's what it's supposed to be for us. And then
as you look at that magazine, you see the difference. Right,
So we're we're we're we're transitioning from a your typical
magazine on the newsstand to long form content, right that
you'll only find in the magazine. So we're not putting
(30:14):
this online, right, it's it's it's and we're going hard
into serving our subscribers, right, because that's the other place
I think that we've we sort of dropped the ball
over the past few years is not being not deeply
serving our subscribers. So in this, in this you know, bigger,
bigger book, better paper thanks to our partnership with Piece Bureau,
(30:37):
incredible like like just gorgeous photography, right, like original photography,
and that the team just did an extraordinary job of
of reimagining this book. So go ahead and subscribe to
essence you get You're getting something that's even more unique
than you ever had before. This is now something that
you can put back on your coffee table with pride,
(30:58):
you can put on your addresser with pride, you can share,
you can gift with pride, right, and so that's that's
that's where this is all headed. And we're going to
do the same thing. Continue to do the same thing.
That's it on the lawn and then we'll pass it
down here so you can see you can see quality
and uh in journalism. Come back now.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
I hate to put any type of damper on this
because what you did was great for Esthen's Festival the Ship.
But there was a little controversy right before the festival
because the former CEO, Caroline Wango farre a defamation lawsuit
against Sundance Sundown Media and Technology Group in Essence Leadership,
a legging that y'all use her escapegoat following the holly
controversial two thousands, twenty five Essence Festival of Culture.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah, what do you say to that? Well, look, we
we've responded, and as you guys know, when you're dealing
with something legal, there's limited things that you can say, right,
So so we responded, right. We believe that we've done
everything we could to protect Caroline. We were very clear
very early. In fact, I came on here after the
(31:59):
after the festival last year and said that she had
nothing to do with I remember it. So we've been
we've been very very clear on that, and we'll we'll
go through the process, but we've been very clear. We
from the morning after I did an interview, I said
it was the morning after, two mornings after, and made
it clear that she had nothing to do with it,
and and did the same when I came here maybe
(32:23):
the following week, So we were very public about it.
We were grateful to Caroline for the work that she
did while she was while she was with us, and
we wish her all the best, but we definitely did
not do anything to jeopardize her in any way. And
that's just not how we function, right. So if anybody,
(32:43):
I come and I take the heat, right, So that's that,
that's the answer to that, and I think that'll that'll
clear itself.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Up absolutely all right, Well, we appreciate you for joining us,
and I also want to say I'm surprised that he's
outside like he's doing so much when he at festival.
Rich Rich is out there moving stuff around, shaking and
moving out that which is would surprisingly see you out
there doing.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
This, Yeah, and a good fabric should be having on.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
That was that was probably pretty surprising, y'all, just very
hands on with it, which I think you have to
be for it to be as successful as it's been.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
But congratulations, no.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Thank you, thank you. But as that, as I keep saying,
is like that for us is training ground, right, So
those almost you know, however many you know, close to
a thousand people that are working the festival. That's for
them training all those people. You see, they have production companies,
they have talent agencies they have, right, and that's that's
training ground. And so my job is, you know, my
(33:35):
title is the head intern. My job is to go
around and make sure everybody has what they need. And
then I wouldn't know what the issues are if I
didn't if I didn't do that, right. And so we've
got it. We're building that culture into the organization. Is
these people are coming here, they're expecting something from us.
We have to deliver it. And part of delivering it
is being is being present. Right. So so yeah, so
(33:57):
we have it. We're gonna keep doing it.
Speaker 5 (33:58):
And I think the multi generational thing is great idea
because you got to continue to introduce Essence Festival to
a new generation. When Cardi B says I want to
come back, yeah that matters to her generation.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Yeah, it really really matters. But the multi generational thing,
and I get the clashing right. So when you go
there and you experience what you just experienced, it's like, oh,
this is for me, right, And then you come back
and then there's like, oh, but there's all these other
people here. Our children need to see how we behave
(34:37):
right in the environments when we're together, and we need
to teach them how to behave right. We need to
listen to their music and other to understand the things
that our children aren't able to say to our parents.
They're being said in that music, right, So you can't
just shut it off and run the things that they're emulating.
They're emulating those things because they're seeing it and they're
(35:00):
learning from it. If we're not engaged with it, we
can't provide them the support, right, And they're definitely not
getting that support when they go out into the world. Right.
So that's what Essence Festival is about. It's like, come in,
all generations, from all walks of life. We are going
to support you here. You're going to see how to
behave You're going to learn how to engage with each other.
(35:20):
You're going to feel the love. And when you go
back home when things are dire, right, you will know
that there are people that love you out in this world, right,
and they will know that there are people out there
who are going to seek you, who are going to
seek your best interest, and that you don't have to
go find solace in other communities. Your own community is
good enough for you. But if you're not seeing that,
(35:41):
and if that's not being reinforced, then you're not going
to understand it when you see it out in the world,
and you're not going to be able to go find it.
And I think that, more than anything else, diminishes us
as a community. I believe firmly, and I can't say
that there's any scientific fact to this, but I believe
that we are a communal people, right. We do better
(36:03):
when we are in community. I don't believe that we're individualistic.
We live in a society that does everything to individualize us, right.
And I don't mean that you're not an individual as
a human being. I mean as a group of people.
I think our strength comes from community. Our strength always
has from community. How did our ancestors survive in this
country through slavery? It was by them bonding together, right,
(36:26):
It was by them having faith in each other and
taking on the pain each other's pains and taking on
each other's victories. If we now think that we're post
that and we're living in a world where I don't
need you or you don't need me, or they've lied
to us because guess what, they live in community too, right,
and they building community. We were the ones that we
(36:49):
were being told that we shouldn't partner with each other.
You can't do business with your family, you can't do
business with black people, You can't do this, you can't
do this, you can't do that. When you go to Essence,
you realize that you can right over a thousand people
working to serve each other on an everyday basis, right, Like,
where do you see that? Right? Working together? Companies that
(37:12):
compete against each other all year come the Essence to
work together to put on this, to put on this show.
Where else are you going to see that? Right? So
it's not just what you experience as a guest, it's
also the infrastructure that we're building in the people that
we're training up so that they can do that as well.
So I thank you, guys, and thank you to my
team you guys.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
Real quick, One last thing that I wanted to compliment
y'all on the media room that y'all had when I
went over there. I love the fact that all the
media outlets were outlets I had never heard of before.
They were new, they were young, a lot of them
were independent, and they're trying to figure it out, and
that y'all gave them the opportunity because I remember when
I used to just be doing things on YouTube and
social media. I would get denied for festivals because I
wasn't a part of a platform, and y'all had them
(37:53):
all set up. Y'all were helped, y'all had handlers for
them bringing talent over. I thought that was so dope
that y'all were supporting them in that way.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah. Yeah, well again, so thank you for noticing that
those are the things that people don't see, right, And
those are the things that people don't don't fully appreciate.
Because you, as a media personality, or you as a
person that's started trying to start a media company, where
do you go get your big story, where do you
go get your big interview? You don't, right, nobody gives
(38:22):
you that opportunity. So if we don't have a place
where you can get that opportunity, then how are you
going to develop? Who's gonna who's going to see your talent? Right,
That's why we don't we look at it. We're a platform.
We're platforming everybody, right, come here, you get on it.
And we did the same thing with with with podcasts.
I don't know if you any didn't even go up there.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Next year, I'm going to actually take the second day
and like a lot of.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Stuff, not the people already spoke, you worked there, everything.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
I do. I want to see it. Like it was
so much that I was.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Like, Dad, should have your podcast out there the ladies.
Speaker 6 (38:59):
That's actually how we started this conversation. So next year
we'll make sure that happens.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
You should have you had. You know, Daniel Brooks did her,
I think she launched her, launched Our Live did her,
Michelle Obama and then you know the other one hundred
and fifty or so podcasters that that did it. Right.
It was it's like there was like four studios set
up just like this, right, and you go in and
(39:24):
you create your content, and you take your content and
you go home and you go you go do it.
And then what we will do is we will use
our infrastructure to say, here's all the inventory that came
out of it. Let's go talk to our partners to
see about who wants to advertise here. Because that's the
other thing is, you guys, the individual podcasters don't have
the infrastructure to go do that, and they may not
be big enough to get on another system, right, but
(39:48):
on our system, anybody can get on, right. And then
and then we developed them, so it was it's it's
what we're trying to do. Thank you for noticing it.
And that that same thing was the same thing at
the at the book at the book Festival, young writers,
giving them opportunities, giving them getting them book deals right,
same thing at the Film Festival with the micro drama
competition as well as the film competition. Is now you
(40:11):
got another five or six people that are actually going
to get movies out next year that would have never
had an opportunity to do that. And you know, in
our partnership with Heartbeat. So my point is this is
the place where everything you see in front of you
is supported by something underneath you that's driving black economics, right,
(40:31):
and that's that's the whole focus of it. So you know,
but I want to assure people the lines will be
fixed next year. If the lines aren't fixed next year,
y'all can come for me right with. The lines will
be fixed. Rich.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
We appreciate you for joining us. Rich Dennis. It's the
Breakfast Club. Good morning.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Appreciate you guys man. Thank you. Every day clicks up
the Breakfast Club. You don't finish the y'all done it.
Every day I wake click, yours up the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
You know I'm finished for y'all.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
Done morning.
Speaker 4 (00:09):
Everybody's DJ, Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne, Na gud We are
the Breakfast Club. Law Lao's here as well. So it's
Mimi And we got a special guest in the building.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
We have the brother Rich Dennis.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Welcome back, Thank you, Thank you guys. Rich. I'm getting
used to this man.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Before we start out, I just want to say one
one thing about Essence, because of course Essence Fest was
a couple of weeks ago. Two weeks ago, I would
say I've never been to Essence. I've always been as
a talent, right and being as a talent, I'm only
usually there very short periods of time. I go in there,
DJ or speak on the panel, get in and out.
This was the first time that I was there from Thursday,
(00:45):
Wednesday to Sunday, right from nine am to five pm.
And it's a different experience, and I have a different experience,
and I have a different conversation I want to have
with people.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I have never been to a place.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Where it's over one hundred thousand people that look like me,
that care and love on each other. And I know
a lot of times when things don't go right, people
are quick to kick on people or tear things down.
But I really enjoyed it. And I don't think people
really understand what essence festival is because I didn't understand
what it was between and we'll just talking about the
(01:19):
free things right in the convention center. Between the free
gives away giveaways a beauty con they were so much stuff.
They were people walking around with big boxes and tampons.
There were people walking around with big things of vasiline,
with makeup, with bounty rolls.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
With Coca Cola products. People were leaving with luggages of
free ish.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
But now not only that, you got so many artists,
so many panels given informative information.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
You have Gospel Sundays.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Which it was just a huge vibe and it was dancing,
there was music, there was kids, and it's something that's needed.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
I think people understand what festival no, not the way that,
But I think the reason they attack it is because
they have such it's beloved.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
But I heard Plies say the same thing, because Plaie
said the exact same thing, because I don't think he
experienced it. But when you experience when you go, when
you experience it is a different experience, and you talk
about it differently because I don't think we have anything
ever like that with that when I.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Think was so beloved, that's why it gets the back
last year guy.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
But I think I think it's a couple of things.
So what you said, I've heard that three or four
different times now since this weekend, right. And the person
who brought it to me first with that was was
was d Nice. Right. So Dee was saying every time
he comes to Essence, he's got ten gigs. He's playing here,
he's playing there. He's never had an opportunity to really
(02:36):
move around as a person as opposed to talent, right.
And I don't think he's going to come back as
a talent again. I think he's gone back every year
as a person, right, because he he one one of
them is exactly what you experienced. One of the things
the experiences he's like, I've never been in a place
(02:56):
where there's so much love, right, And I tell you
one of the ways that that love God express was
you know, they had a fire down on Bourbon Street
and knocked out some of the power for a few hours, right,
and people's hotels. There were complete strangers finding hotel rooms
and giving up rooms to other people who had been displaced. Now,
(03:19):
it was for a short period of time when the
city handled it beautifully. But the point is is that
there is that kind of love there where everybody's looking
out for each other, everybody, everybody's just loving on each
other for three four days. And to your point, Charlemagne,
what people remember from nineteen ninety five, and it's not
(03:41):
that right, And I think it's I think it's high
time that we all realize that the country is in
nineteen ninety five anymore, right, The people aren't nineteen ninety
five anymore. So it's very difficult to say, hey, we
are going to serve black women by only giving them
what they had in nineteen ninety five. In nineteen ninety five,
we didn't have podcasts. Right in nineteen ninety five, we
(04:04):
didn't have people attacking DEI, we didn't have people attacking
our communities as blatantly as that's happening right now. Right,
so people are coming in with a lot heavier loads
right from their daily lives. That place is a place
where you come there and you can leave everything behind
(04:24):
and everybody is there just to love on each other.
I say this all the time. You know, if Wakanda
were a real place, it would be Essence Festival, right,
because it is nothing but love. It is nothing but excellence,
but progression but joy, right, And you feel it from
the moment you get on the plane, even when you
(04:46):
get on the plane going it's it's like, oh, I'm
with my people, even before you land, right, and when
you land like, oh, I'm with my people. When you
go in that convention center, you're seeing between forty and
fifty thousand people that are there for the same reason.
So you know it's it's it's really a magical, magical place.
And that's why I work so hard and my team
works so hard to preserve it and to and to
(05:08):
elevate it so it's not what it was in nineteen
ninety five. It's actually elevated. But it has all of
if you're looking for nineteen ninety five, everything you had
in nineteen ninety five is there. I don't think it's
a festival anymore. I think it's an institution. I would
agree with that. I mean, when you when you.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
When you can, when it's big enough to be a
backdrop for a movie. Yeah, that made over one hundred
million dollars. That's when you know you got anstitution. So
how do you protect an institution from becoming a tradition
that people attend, you know, out of habit instead of
necessity because you wanted to feel like I gotta be there.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah, yeah, And I think look, I think you saw
a lot of Hey, if I had listened to the internet,
I would have I would have never come right, And
I tell people that the internet is not a real place. Nope, right,
like you when you get there, you see what it is. Now.
Do we make mistakes one lots of them. Yes we do.
(06:02):
Do we correct absolutely, and I think we correct better
than anybody else that team. You've got over one hundred
black women that are putting on this festival, right, and
then you've got probably another six seven hundred that are
contractors working the festival, all black women. Like all your experiences,
there are black women. I'm not I shouldn't say all
(06:22):
black women, vast majority ninety eight percent of black women. Right.
There's a few men doing different things like you did
this year. But what you got to realize is that
it's also a training ground for those people that own
production companies, for those people that are that are that
are in the entertainment space, that are getting an opportunity
(06:44):
on the super louned stage or in the other place.
So it's more than what they What people see is
all of the entertainment aspects, all of the all of
the value that we create, all of the free products,
all of the right. What they don't see is that
we look at it. And I've said this here before,
we are building the infrastructure for which culture can monetize. Right.
(07:07):
So we launched the podcast Festival. What we talked about, right,
we had four studios up there, we filmed over we
I think it did over fifty podcasts in two days. Right,
those podcasts is not walk now walk away? All of
them combined about five million dollars of inventory that they
(07:27):
can now go sell. There's nowhere else you can go
do that, right, and it costs them nothing to do it. Right.
We put it, We put it all on right. If
you look at what we did with the car show,
I can't wait for us to talk about the car
show because I think that was probably the biggest mistake
we make next to the lines, was it was too small. Yeah,
it was too small.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
But I also feel like sometimes you have to see
it to believe it. Like you know, even with you know,
dealing with your team, they do everything by the book.
I'm the type of person to be like nah be
and I will say it, but I asked for you know,
I asked for forgiveness and just keep it moving. But
you know, it's it's it's one of those things where
it's like people just wanted an outlet to see something different.
(08:08):
And the car she did amazingly. Yes, we needed more space,
there was so many people there. But brother, I don't
think you sat down for three days.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
No, took the Twitter.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Everybody, everybody, thousands of thousands of people, everybody.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Right and that. But that's that's that's what it's about,
the same thing. You know, Tianna Taylor walked that festival
floor two three times.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I actually was so surprised.
Speaker 6 (08:32):
Not I know, Tianna Taylor get busy with like anything
she does, She's gonna take her time with it. But
because she's Tiana Taylor and it's so many people, I
thought she was gonna have a hard time navigating it.
But the men and I walked into conventions and not
only did you see her? You saw all of the
Auntie's production stats in their gears, so you felt her presence.
I was like, oh, she like they're here, Like this
(08:52):
is like then I watched the panel she did and
she her and uh Daniel Daniel could yes, and her
best friend Coco, and they like took their time with the.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Audience and this is like you saw me, right, you
see that, you know what you do?
Speaker 1 (09:07):
They were taking questions. I raised my hand to ask questions.
They just glazed over me, like.
Speaker 6 (09:15):
They moved the couch just closer to the to the
end of the stage. But they wanted to like really
like connect with the people. But I was just surprised
how well she navigated being, you know, a curator or
producer of the festival, but also still like being having
a presence there too and just like being good with
the people.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Look, I think I think that that what what Charlemagne
said is it's it's it's an institution and at the
core of it, it's home. So she felt comfortable enough
to not just come to the convention center, but to
go through the crowd, right, and the crowd not just
(09:53):
embraced her and loved on her, but they gave her
space to move around. Right now, I'm not saying you
didn't have to get people hey, right, but and the
other thing I noticed was she took a picture was
just about every kid that came up to her.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Right, you don't even know this part?
Speaker 4 (10:06):
How about this when you were when she was doing
that thing, there was I guess it was a VIP
place where people can sit. There was two young girls
sitting in that place, and they asked the two young
girls to leave, and the young girls will crying because
they want it to be Tiana. Nobody knew the mom
hit me on just hit me on DM and it
was like, hey, this is what happened to my daughters.
I sent it to Tiana, and Tiana actually called the
(10:27):
young girls, sent her a package of stuff and said,
you know, made sure that she was cool because it
was the girl's birthday. But that's the feeling that I
got out of essence. So sometimes when I hear these things,
I'm like, that's not.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
What I've seen.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Its like I felt, I felt.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
The love like no other, and I thought that was
an amazing thing.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
And the Aunties enhanced the overall experience. Oh, I thought
it was I thought it was a tremendous enhancement. I think,
I think the but I wanted, I want to be clear,
that was a very very tight collaboration with the Essence
team and the other and the other curators as well,
(11:03):
like like Nina and and uh Mara and Nicole right
like and Sanid like. They they really came together around hey,
how do we make this the best experience for everybody?
And they did a fantastic job. And our team, you know,
kudos kudos to our team because it's also a lot
(11:26):
to navigate, and we added in a whole nother level
of navigation, right, which is which is the curators right
and too, and to say hey, here's what we do now,
y'all come take it and do it. And we're in
a support role. It takes a real mature organization and
really talented people to have the confidence to be able
to to be able to let that happen. And what
(11:47):
I tell the team all the time is you can
do anything you want in this world as long as
you don't care who gets the credit, right, right, And
that's the way that we that's the way that we
take it right. And then but the learnings, man, the
learnings this year with just it was just like we
learned last year. But there's probably more to learn from
success than there is to learn from failure, right, because
(12:08):
now how do you repeat the things that are successful,
and how do you now go focus on the things
that you fail that to make sure that they better.
I think we nailed that part of it from last year.
The big thing that I think we got to focus
on this year and what we're already working on and
planning is those lines, right, because I think it was twofold.
I think one is this is the largest festival we've
(12:30):
ever had, Right, There's more people there than you than
you can imagine, and it was hundreds and hundreds of
thousands of people.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I kept hearing that on the ground, So that was true.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, no, yeah, no, it was. It was one. There's
no two ways about it. But part of that is
then the infrastructure has to scale to accommodate those people, right,
And so and as we grow, we've got to be
well ahead of what the infrastructure needs to be and
look like so that that number of people can get
(13:01):
hands so the lines, we won't have a line problem
next year. Right, We're get we're expecting we'll have even
more people next year. But while it was going on
and people saw during the days, we made adjustments. We
got we know how to handle that now, right, and
so so we're we're we're we're working even you know,
it's not even five days later, we're redoing how the
(13:22):
lines work. I think that was that was the biggest thing.
And I tell you the thing that I was the
most proud of. We had a lot of sponsors pull out, right,
we still put on the best festival I think we've
put on right, certainly Top three.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Was a d was a dead The reason for the sponsors,
I think I think d I was a lot of it.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
The backlash was probably the biggest part of it, because
brands don't want to be associated with that. So kudos
to our partners like Target, big, big kudos to to
Coca Cola, Target Disney, Like these are the people that
came back, and like you used to have McDonald's and Delta,
and none of those people came back, right, But who
(14:02):
came back was Target, Disney, I'm going to Amazon. So
they came back, and we need those people to be
able to put on that experience. But what we also
need is when I talk about building infrastructure and building
up businesses. We also need our own businesses that can
afford to be there, right, that can afford to pay
for the space, and that can put on the experience.
(14:24):
So if you went to Beauty con right, most of
those sponsors that were there in years past either pulled
out or scaled down bigly. Right, you know who stepped up,
the black owned brands, the black owned businesses was ninety
percent of the revenue that came in to put on
Beauty con So stop and think about But those are
(14:46):
businesses that we've been nurturing and developing in our community
and our fund in our not for profit over the
past ten years or so. Many of them we had
nothing to do with their development. But because of what
they've seen us do, the ways that you know, the
ways we've navigated the marketplace and the doors that we've opened,
they've been able to come in and do that. So
(15:06):
now you've got brands like Canvas, Beauty Black Girl, Vitamin Brown,
Sugar Babe like they're now anchoring. They're now anchoring Beauty
Con right at festival. By the way, get your tickets
to Beauty Con La September. I think it's September nineteenth.
Already all the early bird has sold out. Everything is
(15:28):
sold out there. It's just the GA tickets in some experience.
But the point is that we now have in the
beauty community enough businesses that can support this type of infrastructure.
If I had listened to the naysayers two years ago
or even last year, that wouldn't have been the case.
(15:49):
Or if this backlash had happened three years ago, we
wouldn't have had businesses that were ready to step in,
to step in and fill in the gap. Now, those
companies that have pulled out, they're going to lose market shared,
lose market share over and over again because now that
these now that the black owned businesses an't in the space,
(16:09):
they're curating that thing on a whole nother level. Like
the energy is crazy.
Speaker 6 (16:13):
So what did that teach you, like as a person
that's in the program in space of essence about or
not teach you, but like what what what's your plan
moving forward next year about focusing just on those black
owned brands and not always leaning toward like the big
corporate sponsors, Like what we see more of that?
Speaker 1 (16:26):
So we've never done that, right, So that's that's perception. Right,
What we've done is said, Okay, we're going to use
our resources to develop and platform black owned businesses. Gotcha,
that's what we do. Right. We also understand that we
need those corporate dollars in order to make the investments right.
They don't just happen, right, So we've focused, we've we've
(16:50):
we've been able to focus on both, right, and we're
going to continue to focus on both because the other,
the other side of this coin is that those companies
we need, need those companies to pay attention to our
communities because they have the resources to drive scale, to
drive access, to drive structural development and improvement, to provide
(17:13):
shelf space, to provide We can't survive without those things
until we build our own. Our job is to bring
the two together, leverage the dollars in the resources to
provide that growth and development for everybody. Right. So it's
not that we lean in one or the other. What
I'm trying to articulate is that we're now in a place,
(17:33):
and that is where we need to get our entire
community in a place where we can stand on our
own two feet. And now people come in. They don't
come in because they feel they're doing us a favor.
They come in because they now have to compete against us,
as opposed to us not having the resources to compete
and they not having the need feeling the need to
make the investment.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
We reach back out to those businesses like a McDonald's,
like a absolutely At and T, like a Delta that
that said no, we don't want to be part of it.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Do you reach back and say, hey, yeah, We'll be
in continuous engagement with them. This is Look, I don't
take this stuff personally, right, And I say to you
guys all time, I don't have the luxury of being angry, right,
I don't have the luxury of being disappointed. The only
luxury that I have is the love and care that
(18:23):
I have to give to my community and bringing the
resources and my best thinking to it. Not always going
to be the right way, but it's always going to
come from that place. So we're going to continue to
reach out with them. We're going to continue to provide
them opportunity. We're going to continue to show them the data,
the opportunity to scale because they need our community to grow, right,
they need our community to grow. There's a whole host
(18:44):
of reasons why people pull out they didn't support that
doesn't matter to me, right. What matters to me is
that we're able to do what we're doing, We're able
to deliver the product that we're able to deliver, and
that we have the resources to scale it, right, Because
that's the other thing. I don't know of another place
on this planet that you can go engage with those
three four hundred thousand people that are there for those
(19:07):
three four days, right and get the type of safety
and protection. And that's the other thing is like what
I saw a ton of this year, even more than ever.
And I'm sure you guys are there SR too. The
multi generational game is crazy.
Speaker 7 (19:23):
Absolutely, And when you talk about that in the concerts,
right because there was like someone for each generation, Patti LaBelle,
Cardi B.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
You know, every generation had someone that they wanted to see.
That's I felt the second.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah, yeah, well if you felt that the second night.
The first night, you had everybody from Michelle Obama to Lotto.
Speaker 6 (19:41):
See, I didn't get Kalani Cardi B. We was just outside.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
That Friday night.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
That's all I need. You took me outside. What about though,
because I know Cardi B. She did a live afterward.
Speaker 6 (19:57):
It was just talking about her performance, and she was saying,
and she felt like the crowd coudn't hear, so she
was screaming, where do our sound is?
Speaker 1 (20:02):
She was happening, No, so part of it is and
if you listen to what So, I'm not saying that
there weren't sound issues, because over when you do a
stadium of that size, right that the one thing we
learned from last year is that you are going to
have sound issues, especially as people bring in different tech
packages to do their shows. Right. But what we did
(20:24):
this year was we had people, multiple people there correcting
quickly if something was going off course. So something was
going on, of course they were correcting quickly. And in
a stadium of that size, it's very different than arena.
What she was saying was she hadn't done a venue
of that size.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah, I remember she said that, right, Yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
If any artist that you talk to will tell you
that when you do a venue of that size and
a stadium where it's it's closing, you get all the
echo on it, there's always an adjustment that they have
to make. So what she was saying, well, she's not
afraid of it anymore.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
She says she wants to come back, want to come back.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah, we're excited CARDI come back.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
And she did that. That was another thing to a
lot of the artists who had like performances.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
They were also like in golf in like the community
that I saw her then she had grow good. She
was over there and she spoke on the.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Stage beauty come Yeah.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
Like so the artist Kaylani was outside at Treehouse after
she performed, and she talked about it on the stage
like there was a connection to the outside of the
community as it always is. With that being said, I
know that your contracts up in September, right, is it
going to stay in New Orleans?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Is that? Is it a possibility?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Where we look, New Orleans is a special city. It
is the birthplace of the Essence Festival. Right, We've got
a lot of work to do with the city and
with the state, and we're going to do that work.
The idea is, let's do the work. Let's like it
is so special there, right, let's do Let's do the work.
So we're going to do the work. We're not afraid
of the work. Yeah, I read that.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
Y'all are trying to negotiate a new long term deal
with the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah right, yeah, yeah, No, I mean the for us
because of what it is again, it's we're never gonna
be able to compete against a live nation. That's not
what we're here for. Right, We're never our Age or
any of those guys. But what we are going to
do is to create the best product for black people
(22:18):
on the planet, right, And that's and that's and that's
where we're focused. So we're going to focus on partnerships
that enable that. Right. New Orleans is one of those
places that enables that. And we're where we're we're we're fully,
fully focused on making sure that we can get a
long term agreement because it takes us. We don't we
can't plan this thing. Again, it's not it's not like
(22:39):
it's a concert and you get five people together and
you take them on tour, right, or it's a tour
that right, it's not that. It is a deep rooted
sense of community that we need to create and that
takes long term planning. We need to right now be
planning out twenty twenty eight, twenty twenty nine, so we
don't have the problems that we had in twenty twenty five. Right,
(23:01):
So for us, it is important that we have a
long term relationship with a city. We've already had that
long term relationship with New Orleans, and we're hoping to
continue that and we're going to do the work to
continue that.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
How does it feel too? I don't want I guess
bounce back would be the word. Like, after all the
back last year, we see it from tween twenty five,
but to see people say, no, it was a big
improvement for twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
I was reading actual reviews.
Speaker 5 (23:25):
On nola dot com and they were saying, how like
it was much better than last year?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
How did that feel to you? Look, I'm I'm extremely
grateful for my team, right, the team that put and
the next time we do this, I want to bring
them all. I want to bring them all along. Right.
What we've had to do over the past year year
and a half is to make sure that people had
the space and the head space to focus on delivering
(23:52):
the product. And I think they did an extraordinary job
with that. Right, this idea or this notion of of
bounce back or not, In my mind, it's you know,
as ll CUJ says, don't call it a comeback, right.
(24:13):
What we did was we listened to the areas that
made us better, and we took that feedback right, and
we executed it like hell right. And that's what we
do is we execute right. We took that feedback and
we executed it. We also had a lot of feedback
that was non constructive, right, so we had to we
(24:36):
had to filter that out the execution. So the strategy
wasn't any different this year versus last year. What was
different is the execution, right, and so we're going to
continue to continue to lean into that. But it feels
I feel great for my team, right. I feel great
for my team. My team, they have an extraordinary amount
(24:57):
to be proud of, right, and I am extreme proud
of them. For me personally, it feels good to be
able to say to my team, y'all did this right,
because they actually they did it. And the other thing
that they should be extremely proud of is nobody else
on the planet can do this right. So it's not
(25:17):
like we haven't had people try to emulate or copy
what we do. It's not that it's that nobody has
been able to do it, and they do it, and
they do it year in and year out, and a
lot of times it's a thankless role that they play, right,
It's like they do all of that to get cust
out right, and then and then it's like, but now
the love comes in, and I say, I was sharing
(25:39):
this with somebody else earlier, and the week is you know,
black people can hate hard, but they love even harder, right,
and you got to love them more than they hate themselves.
Sometimes you do, right, And so that that's what it is.
But we feel Look, we're excited about twenty twenty seven.
Planning is is in motion and all of these things
(26:02):
that all of these strategic things that we've been doing
are not starting to come to life. You know, I
brought for you guys. I don't know if you saw
this around festival, but this is the reimagined Essence book right,
took us five years to get here, Double side, double
issue Katanji Brown Jackson, who's carrying us on her back
(26:24):
right now, and then all our curators Wow, oh dope,
right right, I'll go to how good is that? And
the idea? Yeah? Yeah, no, we went hard, dude, we
went hard. She did she did film FIRS.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
There you go, now, she did good. She did the
film festival and the film thing about her.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
They did a pitch fest where somebody got to pitch
a movie and they picked I guess five people how
they pick it, and they said, we'll pick one person
out the audience, and the one person out the audience
is the person that actually.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Got the deal.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
So it was it was pretty dope.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I thought.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
I thought that was dope.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So and something for everybody. Film festivals, you know, books, books.
Speaker 7 (27:08):
Authors, you know, concerts, there's something for literally everyone.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Everybody and for every age group, right. And and that's
been part of the challenge that we've been we've been
up against is there are many people who wanted to
remain right for our generation or the generation before us,
And the reality of it is, we can't think that
(27:33):
way right, because where do like I look at and like,
then where would my kids go right? And if my
kids don't get to experience this right, or or or
somebody else's grandkids don't get to experience this, they never
get to get that feeling of scaled black love right
and scale black unity right, and they don't get to
(27:54):
learn how to behave right. So that's the other thing
so that I don't know if you guys saw the
dug the double dutch you want to go to so
like you know, you're you're a kid in from you know,
pick a city, Chicago, and you come with your mom
and your grandmother and this is what your mom and
grandmother grew up doing. And now you get to double
(28:16):
dutch in front of thirty thousand people and get to like,
what kind of confidence booster is that? What kind of
passing down tradition is that? Like? Where where else are
you gonna? Where else are you going to get that?
Speaker 4 (28:27):
So the woman is actually she was pregnant. She she
used to come to She used to teach the kids
in my car show. That's that's my first metage. We
would hire her to come today, but I don't think
about it. Even if you don't know how to do
it double dutch, they teach you right then.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
And that learned. I learned how to double dutch at
my car show. They teach men.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
If the kids older, you should have Laura and Geena views.
I'm serious, like they too, right.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
You don't know why did you dated? So the first day.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
She's just too busy managing the stage.
Speaker 6 (28:53):
I tell you that crushed on that stage a real job,
a real job, and.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
It's a lot of pressure.
Speaker 6 (28:59):
It's a lot of physical like because you're physically there
then you're interacting with people or whatever. That first day
I was like, I'm gonna make it over there, but
by the end of the day my feet was hurting
too bad.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (29:07):
Second day, I was supposed to just go enjoy the festival,
but I ended up being on the HBCU pan because
they needed me to jump in and then by the
time we finished that everything was packed up.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I didn't get the double dutch. I was really trying.
Speaker 6 (29:18):
Wow, Like people was coming over to me, like do
you see the double dutch? Because every time I'm somewhere
and I can double Dutch, we try to do it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
So so two things. One is make sure you schedule
yourself next year for double dutching. And two all the
comments are saying we need.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
You there every year, so thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
You know what, you're a hater. I looked up. You
know what, if you don't got nothing nice to say,
don't say it.
Speaker 6 (29:46):
Then you're gonna say don't nobody be talking about how
you can't pronounce some essays.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
But you know what I mean, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah, it was it was, it was. I mean, it's
it's what it's supposed to be for us. And then
as you look at that magazine, you see the difference. Right,
So we're we're we're we're transitioning from a your typical
magazine on the newsstand to long form content, right that
you'll only find in the magazine. So we're not putting
(30:14):
this online, right, it's it's it's and we're going hard
into serving our subscribers, right, because that's the other place
I think that we've we sort of dropped the ball
over the past few years is not being not deeply
serving our subscribers. So in this, in this you know, bigger,
bigger book, better paper thanks to our partnership with Piece Bureau,
(30:37):
incredible like like just gorgeous photography, right, like original photography,
and that the team just did an extraordinary job of
of reimagining this book. So go ahead and subscribe to
essence you get You're getting something that's even more unique
than you ever had before. This is now something that
you can put back on your coffee table with pride,
(30:58):
you can put on your addresser with pride, you can share,
you can gift with pride, right, and so that's that's
that's where this is all headed. And we're going to
do the same thing. Continue to do the same thing.
That's it on the lawn and then we'll pass it
down here so you can see you can see quality
and uh in journalism. Come back now.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
I hate to put any type of damper on this
because what you did was great for Esthen's Festival the Ship.
But there was a little controversy right before the festival
because the former CEO, Caroline Wango farre a defamation lawsuit
against Sundance Sundown Media and Technology Group in Essence Leadership,
a legging that y'all use her escapegoat following the holly
controversial two thousands, twenty five Essence Festival of Culture.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah, what do you say to that? Well, look, we
we've responded, and as you guys know, when you're dealing
with something legal, there's limited things that you can say, right,
So so we responded, right. We believe that we've done
everything we could to protect Caroline. We were very clear
very early. In fact, I came on here after the
(31:59):
after the festival last year and said that she had
nothing to do with I remember it. So we've been
we've been very very clear on that, and we'll we'll
go through the process, but we've been very clear. We
from the morning after I did an interview, I said
it was the morning after, two mornings after, and made
it clear that she had nothing to do with it,
and and did the same when I came here maybe
(32:23):
the following week, So we were very public about it.
We were grateful to Caroline for the work that she
did while she was while she was with us, and
we wish her all the best, but we definitely did
not do anything to jeopardize her in any way. And
that's just not how we function, right. So if anybody,
(32:43):
I come and I take the heat, right, So that's that,
that's the answer to that, and I think that'll that'll
clear itself.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Up absolutely all right, Well, we appreciate you for joining us,
and I also want to say I'm surprised that he's
outside like he's doing so much when he at festival.
Rich Rich is out there moving stuff around, shaking and
moving out that which is would surprisingly see you out
there doing.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
This, Yeah, and a good fabric should be having on.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
That was that was probably pretty surprising, y'all, just very
hands on with it, which I think you have to
be for it to be as successful as it's been.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
But congratulations, no.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Thank you, thank you. But as that, as I keep saying,
is like that for us is training ground, right, So
those almost you know, however many you know, close to
a thousand people that are working the festival. That's for
them training all those people. You see, they have production companies,
they have talent agencies they have, right, and that's that's
training ground. And so my job is, you know, my
(33:35):
title is the head intern. My job is to go
around and make sure everybody has what they need. And
then I wouldn't know what the issues are if I
didn't if I didn't do that, right. And so we've
got it. We're building that culture into the organization. Is
these people are coming here, they're expecting something from us.
We have to deliver it. And part of delivering it
is being is being present. Right. So so yeah, so
(33:57):
we have it. We're gonna keep doing it.
Speaker 5 (33:58):
And I think the multi generational thing is great idea
because you got to continue to introduce Essence Festival to
a new generation. When Cardi B says I want to
come back, yeah that matters to her generation.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Yeah, it really really matters. But the multi generational thing,
and I get the clashing right. So when you go
there and you experience what you just experienced, it's like, oh,
this is for me, right, And then you come back
and then there's like, oh, but there's all these other
people here. Our children need to see how we behave
(34:37):
right in the environments when we're together, and we need
to teach them how to behave right. We need to
listen to their music and other to understand the things
that our children aren't able to say to our parents.
They're being said in that music, right, So you can't
just shut it off and run the things that they're emulating.
They're emulating those things because they're seeing it and they're
(35:00):
learning from it. If we're not engaged with it, we
can't provide them the support, right, And they're definitely not
getting that support when they go out into the world. Right.
So that's what Essence Festival is about. It's like, come in,
all generations, from all walks of life. We are going
to support you here. You're going to see how to
behave You're going to learn how to engage with each other.
(35:20):
You're going to feel the love. And when you go
back home when things are dire, right, you will know
that there are people that love you out in this world, right,
and they will know that there are people out there
who are going to seek you, who are going to
seek your best interest, and that you don't have to
go find solace in other communities. Your own community is
good enough for you. But if you're not seeing that,
(35:41):
and if that's not being reinforced, then you're not going
to understand it when you see it out in the world,
and you're not going to be able to go find it.
And I think that, more than anything else, diminishes us
as a community. I believe firmly, and I can't say
that there's any scientific fact to this, but I believe
that we are a communal people, right. We do better
(36:03):
when we are in community. I don't believe that we're individualistic.
We live in a society that does everything to individualize us, right.
And I don't mean that you're not an individual as
a human being. I mean as a group of people.
I think our strength comes from community. Our strength always
has from community. How did our ancestors survive in this
country through slavery? It was by them bonding together, right,
(36:26):
It was by them having faith in each other and
taking on the pain each other's pains and taking on
each other's victories. If we now think that we're post
that and we're living in a world where I don't
need you or you don't need me, or they've lied
to us because guess what, they live in community too, right,
and they building community. We were the ones that we
(36:49):
were being told that we shouldn't partner with each other.
You can't do business with your family, you can't do
business with black people, You can't do this, you can't
do this, you can't do that. When you go to Essence,
you realize that you can right over a thousand people
working to serve each other on an everyday basis, right, Like,
where do you see that? Right? Working together? Companies that
(37:12):
compete against each other all year come the Essence to
work together to put on this, to put on this show.
Where else are you going to see that? Right? So
it's not just what you experience as a guest, it's
also the infrastructure that we're building in the people that
we're training up so that they can do that as well.
So I thank you, guys, and thank you to my
team you guys.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
Real quick, One last thing that I wanted to compliment
y'all on the media room that y'all had when I
went over there. I love the fact that all the
media outlets were outlets I had never heard of before.
They were new, they were young, a lot of them
were independent, and they're trying to figure it out, and
that y'all gave them the opportunity because I remember when
I used to just be doing things on YouTube and
social media. I would get denied for festivals because I
wasn't a part of a platform, and y'all had them
(37:53):
all set up. Y'all were helped, y'all had handlers for
them bringing talent over. I thought that was so dope
that y'all were supporting them in that way.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah. Yeah, well again, so thank you for noticing that
those are the things that people don't see, right, And
those are the things that people don't don't fully appreciate.
Because you, as a media personality, or you as a
person that's started trying to start a media company, where
do you go get your big story, where do you
go get your big interview? You don't, right, nobody gives
(38:22):
you that opportunity. So if we don't have a place
where you can get that opportunity, then how are you
going to develop? Who's gonna who's going to see your talent? Right,
That's why we don't we look at it. We're a platform.
We're platforming everybody, right, come here, you get on it.
And we did the same thing with with with podcasts.
I don't know if you any didn't even go up there.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Next year, I'm going to actually take the second day
and like a lot of.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Stuff, not the people already spoke, you worked there, everything.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
I do. I want to see it. Like it was
so much that I was.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Like, Dad, should have your podcast out there the ladies.
Speaker 6 (38:59):
That's actually how we started this conversation. So next year
we'll make sure that happens.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
You should have you had. You know, Daniel Brooks did her,
I think she launched her, launched Our Live did her,
Michelle Obama and then you know the other one hundred
and fifty or so podcasters that that did it. Right.
It was it's like there was like four studios set
up just like this, right, and you go in and
(39:24):
you create your content, and you take your content and
you go home and you go you go do it.
And then what we will do is we will use
our infrastructure to say, here's all the inventory that came
out of it. Let's go talk to our partners to
see about who wants to advertise here. Because that's the
other thing is, you guys, the individual podcasters don't have
the infrastructure to go do that, and they may not
be big enough to get on another system, right, but
(39:48):
on our system, anybody can get on, right. And then
and then we developed them, so it was it's it's
what we're trying to do. Thank you for noticing it.
And that that same thing was the same thing at
the at the book at the book Festival, young writers,
giving them opportunities, giving them getting them book deals right,
same thing at the Film Festival with the micro drama
competition as well as the film competition. Is now you
(40:11):
got another five or six people that are actually going
to get movies out next year that would have never
had an opportunity to do that. And you know, in
our partnership with Heartbeat. So my point is this is
the place where everything you see in front of you
is supported by something underneath you that's driving black economics, right,
(40:31):
and that's that's the whole focus of it. So you know,
but I want to assure people the lines will be
fixed next year. If the lines aren't fixed next year,
y'all can come for me right with. The lines will
be fixed. Rich.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
We appreciate you for joining us. Rich Dennis. It's the
Breakfast Club. Good morning.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Appreciate you guys man. Thank you. Every day clicks up
the Breakfast Club. You don't finish the y'all done it.
The Breakfast Club News
Hosts And Creators
Charlamagne Tha God
DJ Envy
Jess Hilarious
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