When your back is against the wall, your brain has to function at a high level.
Troy Carter
So many black kids aspire to be entertainers or professional athletes because those are the only role models they see that look like them. There are only 300 jobs in the NBA but an endless amount of opportunities as an entrepreneur. With enough hustle, entrepreneurship opens doors to a world of opportunities.
I didn't go to business school. I actually didn't even graduate high school. I ended up with a GED. So everything that I've learned in business, I've learned through experience.
When you have to negotiate for survival, and you have to know how to read rooms, and you have to know who the bad guys in the rooms are - who has the gun in their pocket, who's just going to brandish it, and who's going to actually pull the trigger. So I think that's just a natural instinct that comes with coming from where I come from.
I came up with Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. Those guys, they took me under their wing at an early age.
I'd like to open doors for underserved communities and minorities in entrepreneurship.
The most successful people in the world are the ones who thought of that idea that was 'too crazy to work.'
When I started Atom Factory, the idea was to do something small yet powerful. That name resonated with the mission.
My third hire when I came to Spotify was Tiffany Kumar, who came on as our global head of songwriter relations. The whole idea was to put our heads together and figure out how to build and contribute within the songwriting community.
Once we started making investments, we realized the same service we provided to artists was applicable to entrepreneurs as well.
No one has bridged that gap between music and technology yet.
I like to compare the attitude and energy of an emerging start-up to that of the early hip-hop era. From working at labels like Bad Boy and Ruff Ryders, walking into the Def Jam offices, A Touch of Jazz and things like that, the vibe is that off making something out of nothing and making things work, and that's what I love about start-ups.
You're basically competing with the same exact product. Coke and Pepsi are at least in different cans. Lyft and Uber drivers are just swapping out the mustache for the U on the dashboard, depending on which one they're getting the call on.
I stay away from the arts... writing songs, being creative - those are downloads from God. You can't do data analytics on art.
To me, mentorships and internships are two big pillars in business development. I believe in having multiple mentors.
The way consumers interact with music is different now. It's not an albums business anymore; it's a singles business again, and the industry has gone through that before.
To me, as A&R people and as managers, we're in the business of finding talent. It's no different than working with these engineers who just want to make good products.
The way it works is the manager's sort of, you know, is like the hub of an artist's career.
When you think about brands and movie studios and everybody who is trying to reach millennials, having a captive audience in the back of Lyft or an Uber is a pretty great place.
The problem with when you look at eBay is that you can put a pair of Jordans next to a frying pan. It's an altogether different experience compared to having some editorial around it and well-curated experience.
It's always boiled down to the quality of your music and the quality of your deal with whoever's distributing your music: There are artists who sold a lot of records and didn't make money because of their deal, and artists who didn't sell nearly as much who made a great living because they own their masters.
People are experimenting with streaming, with subscription services, whether it's a Spotify or a Pandora or a Rdio.
Spotify favors hits. It's very much a meritocracy: It's not like radio, where whatever is being played is what you hear. We offer songs up, and from there, it's up to consumers to stream the music or not.
As we look at Hollywood and the controversy around the Oscars, it goes back to the voting block and the lack of people who come from that culture. For example, the NWA movie is a fantastic, fantastic movie. You need people who can look at a piece of art like that and understand the artistry in it.
I found a scrap book that my mom had given to me, and inside was a letter that I wrote to myself at age 19. The letter included my goals and dreams for my life, and even then, I was writing about the management company that I built today.
My mom was not able to buy us the expensive Air Jordans, so if I wanted something that was a little bit nicer, my brother and I, we had to go earn money for it.
There are not a lot of black men in the pop business.
I had this little rap group, and we were called '2 Too Many'... We used to hang out in front of Jazzy Jeff's record studio every day.
Spotify was one of the first services that actually focuses on the consumer because they don't have to spend hundreds of dollars a year on music.
With Gaga - she's not afraid to take chances. You get these dynamic projects because of it. She's completely unafraid.
My biggest frustration is the lack of scale in the music industry. The fact that no one has sold 100 million copies of an album is frustrating.
Backplane will provide a platform and tools for communities to socialize and communicate on a more focused level.
I was Jazzy Jeff's assistant.
We called ourselves '2 Too Many' because we only had enough money for one of us.
The music industry really is a meritocracy on a creative level.
You have a huge demographic shift that's happening in America. Globally.
On the artist side, we made a significant investment in very young artists from the very beginning of their careers and helped them become global superstars.
As important as hustle is, grit and resilience are equally as important because there's a lot of rejection in our business.
The only two things that ever came naturally to me are music and investing.
It isn't that every company is going to be successful. The law of averages shows that 80% of companies are going to fail.
When we're looking at strategic partners, it may be that they're larger partners or big corporations or start-ups. But, when you look at Gilt and places like Amazon and Starbucks, they're all places where it's a lot of foot traffic or digital traffic.
I was just a kid in love with hip hop music. I love music. I love the culture. I wanted to be a part of it in any way.
Actors play different characters, so you have to build a new base around each new movie - with few exceptions, most actors don't have a fan base that just follows them around. With musicians, the fan base just goes everywhere they go.
There was a time when radio stations wouldn't play Gaga's music because it was considered dance. Outside of live performances, the Internet became our primary tool to help people discover her music.
If you can't see it, you can't be it.
Before I even agreed to work with Hennessy and the Privilege Awards, I wanted to do some research on it, look up past winners, and find out more about it.
If you wake up in the morning and your favorite artist isn't on the service that you're paying ten dollars a month for, sooner or later you lose faith in the subscription model.
Money doesn't make me tick. This definition of success doesn't make me tick. Managing some of the biggest stars in the world doesn't make me tick. Making my family proud makes me tick.
I don't think we're out there aggressively looking for deals. Our strategy is that business follows the creative. We're not out there scouring the marketplace for opportunities.
What I like about Bre.ad is the simplicity of it. When you can explain it to people, like 'five-second billboards in front of a link shortener,' it makes a lot of sense.
