[IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING]
Phonte and Big Pooh of the beloved rap duo explain why they eschewed premium streamers when releasing their acclaimed May the Lord Watch doc
Phonte: We just had a way to go direct to our fan base and supporters with our [documentary] in a way that we didn't have on our first album. It’s a different landscape now. We didn't believe in waiting on anybody. This is the story we wanted to tell, the movie we wanted to make. We were looking at what was going on in Hollywood and it reminded us of the music business 20 years ago, post-Napster, when everything went crazy. The label's response was, “We're not selling the same amount of records or making the same amount of money off records that we used to make, so now we need a piece of everything that you do.” And it's like, “Fuck all that. No.”
We saw streamers kind of collapsing and Hollywood in a big state of transition. So rather than getting caught up in that bullshit, it just made the most sense to run our own play and go directly to our fan base and keep working it from there. We keep control over it. We actually have our numbers. We know our analytics. We know what's what. Having that creative freedom as well as financial transparency was ultimately the key for us. I mean, YouTube is a streaming service. Shit, that's the biggest one.
Big Pooh: What's next for Little Brother could be anything. The expectation has always been album, tour, album, tour. I want to get people out of that idea. Whatever we're doing together is Little Brother, whether it’s selling fish plates, executive producing an artist together, or doing another movie. You just gotta wait to see what we got coming next.
The UpRising newsletter is a mixtape for your mind filled with information that's intellectual and irreverent—no skips. Whether it's film, music, art, food or the culture full stop, UpRising will serve as the starting point to your deep dives.
留言