What are the pros and cons of running a festival as an artist? When Paid Dues started, I was selling around 70, records a year. I was the No. Every year after that, the festival grew, but my career suffered, because life has a limited amount of energy. People that were opening for me started to sell more units and I started opening for them. I wanted to go forward knowing that I left something behind, a platform for artists. That was my idea, but I definitely sacrificed my personal career to build that.
And when Paid Dues collapsed, I had nothing. The collapse of Paid Dues had nothing to do with Paid Dues. I created a solvent brand that was in the black every year.
I did nothing wrong, but unforeseen circumstances are the nature of this business. When it all crumbled, all I had was my rap career, which I had partially neglected to build this festival. So I had to get back to work as an artist. I signed to Strange Music and took another label deal, but building my brand back up as a rapper was difficult. The only reason people came to Paid Dues in the beginning was because I was a good rapper. The only reason the young Kendrick Lamar's, Dom Kennedy 's and Mac Miller 's wanted to do it was because they knew me as a rapper, not as a concert promoter.
Then, me as a rapper started to take a backseat to me as a promoter. To younger people, I became the guy that people wanted to talk to to get on; kind of like how Ice Cube became the guy from Are We There Yet?
When Paid Dues disappeared, being an artist fed my family. The pros? The pros are, I know I contributed to the scene. If more rappers in our community, especially people of color, aimed to create things that are bigger than themselves and benefit others in the community, we would be a lot better off.
His journey has been very similar to Paid Dues What kept Paid Dues sitting out on the sidelines? Just finances. One feeds off the other. So it was just unfortunate, but I still learned a lot from that. I guess those are the unforeseen circumstances. Promoting shows is a gamble. At the end of the day, all artists want their money. Often, in the music business, people forget about the fans. I wanted to celebrate home and promote my storytelling ability. I just wanted to tell stories about Los Angeles that represented us without the ego, without my face on the cover, something for the state to document what I saw going on.
At nine months, our child was stillborn. It prevented me from promoting the album and I had to cancel a lot of shows for the first time in my career. It was nine months building up to the album, nine months building up to the baby, everything was building up to that.
It was just a huge, huge blow. So there were no more videos and it kind of disappeared. The label is still very much behind the album and they believe in it. So getting this show off will be a concrete step in a positive direction for me, personally and professionally. Search term. Billboard Pro Subscribe Sign In. Top Artists. If you enjoy our content, please add us to your adblocker's whitelist. We'd really appreciated it. Music Jul 12, Read Full Article. What to Read Next. Jul 2, Hypes 0 Comments.
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