'Ethereum is for Artists' - Latashá, Andre Anjos aka RAC, Bobby Hundreds, & Mike Shinoda

hello hi how are you good how are you good hi oh my god bobby hundreds oh my god it's michael shinoda ms what's up bobby what's up everybody how's it going hey latasha how are you doing good good good oh my god is that rac raku wreck right that's a rock rock we live right now [Laughter] but i think this works even better so let's just jump right in you've already adjusted to this environment and uh without further ado let's talk about how ethereum is for artists and how this ecosystem is so rsa has graciously accepted to moderate this chat uh it's not really a panel it's more of a conversation and a hangout with all of you here so i'll get out of your way and now we'll spend the next 45 to 60 minutes just talking about what has been exciting in this space so yeah we'll take it away well thank you um so i got asked to moderate this about two minutes ago so i'll do my best uh if uh if you guys can help me out here i would greatly appreciate that but but no i mean i think there's there's obviously like a lot to talk about here um i think we all kind of see the potential in ethereum and blockchain and nfts and all the fun stuff that we've been sort of you know hearing about for the past like month and a half um but i think maybe pretty typically i think we maybe should just do some quick intros maybe just brief bio um uh well i think you just nominated yourself so uh oh god i'm mike i um [Music] was i started a band called linkin park i had a side project called fort minor i actually grew up playing piano and um i uh thought i was gonna be a graphic designer and or illustrator um like a visual artist and then the music thing just took off um been into crypto for a few years been into nfts um like not super early i feel like i was like kind of being becoming aware of it on the earlier side of when everybody else became aware of it uh certainly later than uh andre for example um who was like one of the first people i contacted and i was like okay tell me about this what's going on here um and the community has been super um welcoming i think i think we should talk about that too but um yeah i've got a few uh nft uh projects lined up for the future that i have not announced but the one that that people do generally know about is i have a new single called happy endings which i debuted uh as an nft it was the first major label uh song debut with uh an nft tasha do you want you want to go next what's up guys my name is latasha um i'm from brooklyn new york but now i live in l.a i am a singer-songwriter rapper producer and artist um just all around kind of creative i love to just do all types of [ __ ] that i want to do so um got into nft about a month ago honestly my boyfriend actually put me on he's been doing it for like almost three months now and um got into it in a month but it like just went really quickly i've already sold like 26 nfts in um about like three weeks which is crazy and um just been really grateful about the especially the community has been so amazing um along with the fact that i make music but i also make like these visual pieces with the music and um i'm just so happy because the music industry has been a place that i've tackled with for a while and um just it's nice to have a new space for my work and you know allow myself to be multifaceted and stuff so yeah that's me 26 nfts is impressive thank you that's actually amazing i'm hoping today it's 27 because i just dropped another one so let's see what happens [Laughter] i mean i don't know many people who have who've been able to to do something like that's a lot for it to work yeah it just it just kept happening where like one one dropped and then it sold and then the next i was like all right let's keep going let's let's see what happens and in three weeks i was like oh my god i'm up to like 26 nfts gone this is nuts so how did you i know i need to introduce myself but before i get there i'm just because i'm so curious about you and and your work how did you how did you build traction with your audience did your endemic audience already understand nfts that seems to be one of the hurdles with my community is that i it takes a lot of education we're all still learning but you know so but for you what was it yeah so my honestly my community is all like they know hip-hop and that's all they know so like it wasn't about the community it was really like i think the black crypto community was really supportive as soon as i got into the the scene and was just pushing my art and just buying like collections like very quickly and so it was just beautiful and then zora was also really supportive like out of the gate um they just like really was like yo we love what you're doing just keep going they minted my first piece for me and it was just like oh just a lot of love out of the gate and i'm just so grateful for it because i was like i don't know what the hell is going on but let's let's get it going um but yeah and um you know i i talk a lot on twitter people know like i'm always like you know bigging up black women on twitter and just pushing black women crypto so like everybody's like word i'm about to buy everything latasha's talking about so it's just been it's been really dope in that scene so i'm really grateful for that i love it i love that that also pushes against the this narrative constantly that crypto and nfts are just about these white male you know whales we gonna get there bobby we're gonna get there because we got a lot to talk about that too we do i i know i haven't even introduced myself yeah everyone watching i'm bobby hundreds i have a i'm here in la i have a brand uh streetwear brand it's almost a couple decades old at this point called the hundreds um i do a lot of stuff i write i draw you know i grew up like the same way as mike i thought i was going to be an illustrator cartoonist i loved reading garfield and calvin and hobbes and so i thought that's what i was going to do because i like drawing cartoons and then i ended up actually kind of doing that i just do it on clothes um i got into nfts in december through trevor everybody knows trevor somehow uh he had tweeted something it was probably around that people auction at the time which was like kind of the first wave and i was like what is this and you know he radicalized me and then he connected me with d and zora and then d indoctrinated me and then i was fully in and uh spent the first month being entirely confused i'm still more confused than ever the more i learn and um in the middle of january i started having some breakthroughs with it understanding you know wrapping my brain around it i wrote an essay which a lot of people shared it was it was great that just explaining what i'd learned and onboarding a lot of people and then um it just started going from there and february was crazy it hasn't stopped you know not a day goes by where i don't get 30 to 40 texts or dm sayings can you explain an nft like what does fungible mean and i'm like i don't know i i love this thing that you did where you told me about uh you got so many requests that you set up like a weekly zoom call to just like all right just show up at 12 30 on tuesday and i'll explain it to all of you i'm an [ __ ] but it still happens all day right like everyone's can you explain it and it's the same conversation so i just say hey tuesday mornings 11am pst here's a zoom just come in and out ask your question other people will be able to help you along with me and that latosha i think that goes back to your point about how so much of this is really about community right the people who seem to be the most successful the reason why people's like that's he's built a community over the years like people love him it's not like he's just some random artist exactly and bobby i totally big you up for the zoom because i'm thinking about doing the same because it's been really nuts just trying to like explain via text like what this is it's just like nah and i've been telling everybody i'm about to just teach a course whatever let's let's just do this i never want to teach a course but this might be the next thing all right no i i've i've gotten so many texts that are just like hey do you have about two hours of your time that uh you know i could take to like ex so you can explain all this to me i'm like i mean i i get it like but i totally understand it because it is a lot to take in right it's it's a pretty broad topic i mean crypto alone without even getting into nfts is like already like you know a mountain to climb uh so once you get into the nft world it's like a whole another side of it that that i think it's not only just a technological thing but it's also sort of like a social thing and and and it's kind of like a movement in its own right so it it's pretty pretty overwhelming at the moment um i i think i can say that for anybody even remotely involved in nfts it's sort of being uh yeah as much as i complain about it i really the intrigue and the excitement for me with nfts i i haven't minted 26 nfds i've i've i'm not even really much into trading and doing that yet um i'm just really fascinated by the conversation i love just talking about it you know even with a lot of the naysayers i'm like uh mike and i are on a thread where we have a friend of ours who's really against it so much because he he is it's he is so um he he totally understands what is um exceptional about this moment in time he totally understands the technology and he just doesn't subscribe like he's just like yeah i i you know people are doing this people are going to be doing this and he's right about all of it and he's like i just don't like it i don't like the idea of like that's totally fair yeah yeah i don't like his thing is like here's his i think what do you think his biggest beef is it's because of all of the whales running away with the headlines is that really the yeah i think he's really caught up with that the that it seems to be just this cash grab a lot of you know the argument that a lot of people are going to get hurt in this process it's a money laundering it's a pyramid scheme like that one um sometimes he brings up the climate stuff which is of course incredibly critical um but he yeah i think to him it's more it's and not to call out anna mike but mike's wife also she sums it up the best way which is this is stupid we have that conversation so bobby hit me up was it november you hit me up and you're like hey are you guys paying attention to nft thing and i didn't respond to that because i was like uh i'm hearing stuff like i gotta wrap my head around what's happening and then when we finally like in december um i think you're right i think it was about december-ish yeah like okay so like do we get involved like who should we talk to because there's some exciting things going on and my wife was in the conversation too she's just like she was she was at that first stage of why would people pay money for that yeah right like this is stupid how do you guys reply to that here's the argument that i like to make is like okay uh not not everybody buys art you know a lot of people buy art from ikea like and they're happy with that and that's fine so true if if that's what they want to do and and fill up their walls or something like that that's great uh i mean but some other people really value high-end art and you know they exist in their own little world and i do understand like like yeah a lot of the money you know it's pretty the headlines are coming from like the big whales right but i i actually think that there's sort of this like if if you look a little bit closer there's like a whole generation of artists that are being sort of elevated by this that weren't being served by you know their other spaces yeah the visual artists like latasha yeah exactly you guys see um did you guys see the pack um the title collection um no i don't well i remember seeing it but i i don't remember the specifics now i got reminded because he because he quoted a linkin park lyric the other day i was like oh yeah who's that guy so he did this he he did this collection called the title and if you look it up it's basically the exact same image with different names and the name referred to itself like so well there was one called the cheap uh they're all the exact same thing even it's 500 bucks one's called the expensive was 10 000 bucks one's called the unsold which he didn't sell one's called the lucky which was a dollar like they each have a thing that refers to their what they are and what it did was what was so um revealing i mean it it basically focused its its its essence itself on what was really important which is what's the concept of the thing and what will you buy it for exactly the image was inconsequential and like a lot of good uh fine art like it it ruffled feathers and made people uncomfortable like have you ever heard of it's like the banana with the duct tape like people went like i don't understand why anybody would spend so much money the banana's gonna die like because it's not about the art like exactly sometimes you buy a piece of art because it's beautiful and and you want to look at it but other times art is not about that art is about the the concept the story or just the or just the rarity yeah that too yeah absolutely yeah i feel like that's also another reason why so many people have been gravitating to like certain artists is because the story there is something they've never heard before right and that changes everything for people i know a lot of people are like word like i see what happens to women in hip-hop so i want to support what you're doing because you're telling that story for so many other women and not just hip-hop but in music and art and everything right so that is so crucial and i agree with you mike like totally well by the way and when it when when it is about the visuals like latasha i see i see your like some of your work part of the story is you as a creator and as an innovator right so people are buying part of what they're buying is that as you as an idea and then the other part of it is that the visuals just look great like they don't have to not matter they sometimes they matter a thank you yeah i mean you have to have both to me like i feel like the visual got to be dope and the story got to be dope if you want to get something like you know and work right out there so you know that's the crucial part for me right now it's it's a new medium right and that's how i'm i'm thinking about it personally it's it really is a new art form and like poc is a great example of sort of applying concepts that really only make sense in this in the nft world you know there's not really an analog that you could you can't do that anywhere else like he did this other fascinating project which again kind of ruffled some feathers i think he's becoming more of like a conceptual artist at this point which i think is cool but he he did um essentially took michelangelo's uh i forget the the sistine chapel like famous piece whatever but yeah yeah the the yeah the the et moment um and uh and so he took each like in individual block and then reprocessed it through an ai so it was a different so it was a new work technically um and then sold them by parts and it was interesting to see like which parts people wanted to buy and of course like the finger everybody went for that one you can imagine where else what else people wanted to buy because there's some nudity uh but like you know obviously there's some blank spaces that were like you know who's gonna buy a blank space because that's not that interesting but again like fascinating concept and using the technology as like a new medium a new art form and approaching it from that perspective and i i love that i think that's what's what's so cool about this is this is like new net new we're not trying to replicate exactly what's been done before it's like something completely different i mean uh i i didn't even introduce myself but uh andre musician um tech addict i don't know i i love i love all this stuff i've sort of been involved in ethereum worlds for a long time but um you know when when i decided to sort of approach the nft space i had only really seen visual art and i was like okay this is fascinating but like how do i as a musician even approach this and the the closest example i could think of is like okay when i go to a museum and look at a piece i you know i'm there for 30 45 seconds maybe a minute depending on the piece you know and then i kind of move on to the next one so i was like okay how do i apply that to like something that you consume digitally on your phone or or on a screen and you know the the idea was like okay a 30 to 45 second loop of you know of sort of like a diorama like a 3d space with music and you're sort of setting a tone like that was kind of my approach to it and um this is something that could only really exist as an nft it can't really exist um as a painting it's not a painting you know it's it's it's it can't exist on spotify because then it doesn't have the visual you know it's it's it's kind of a whole new medium and i think that's that's what so exciting to me um and i don't know i'm curious if you guys like think about it that way um there are a couple of things that i that like i keep coming back to i'd say there's two two things to me that i keep coming back to one is that when i when i was in school i went to art center college of design in pasadena and i studied illustration and as part of that we had to take um a couple we had to take some other classes in different disciplines um you know required classes and and i remember taking fine art certain really really abstract conceptual fine art classes that i did not want to take and one of the things that drove me crazy about them was that it was all about concept and it was always come up their concept first and then the medium secondary like express your concept via whatever medium is appropriate for the expression of the idea so in other words if i have a cool idea i wouldn't go straight to a canvas and paint about it because the idea there's no connection in the case of if my idea is about for example uh coming out of quarantine and people feeling like socially awkward coming out of quarantine let's say that's my idea like at its core that has nothing to do with paint that has nothing to do with a canvas so the the that class they would challenge you okay express that idea in a way that's more true to the idea not true to the thing that you do i think that this uh that nft the enft space actually opens the door for a lot of that that the idea of a a file of any kind that you can create being you know that you can play with rarity and play with value um to whoever it touches like you know they have a connection to it somehow like i love the idea right now we're seeing a lot of like this is a video it is being sold on an auction like i think later we're gonna see it it being um authenticated the item that is being authenticated and and is being offered in a rare kind of way uh not just be a movie not just be a song not just be a text file and the other thing is just that um i also keep think trying to think of that through the lens of web 3. i keep thinking of it in terms of like how do we do this in a way we're all so sick of huge corporations being in between us and a fan being in between wedging themselves into a transaction um turning us or using us as their commodity as their widget to sell against ads and and um how do we do do the first part while keeping our eyes on the ball of the second part was that too much no no no no that no that was great i like like i guess like hearing you talk about this it sort of reminded me of of like sort of like how this really kind of changes how we value things right um you know the the this idea of i mean yeah like our our industries especially in music is sort of rife with with middlemen and different services that take like pieces here and there and sort of dwindles it down to like not a whole lot left at the bottom for the artist and what what i like about this it's i think there's a couple kind of main things that this this changes is like uh shout out to zora i guess once again because like i think they kind of came up with this concept but that uh essentially like on the internet you know early on like information sort of wants to spread out like wants to like move to the edges like information kind of like wants to be free you know like it feels like that's sort of the natural state of it is that like people want to access content or music or art whatever whatever it is and it just wants to be free-flowing and the way that we've monetized it like what you're saying about like ads and and like that that's sort of like adding friction to it's like okay well this is our thing we're going to charge you for it or we're going to add this inconvenient like weird thing on top of it and and that that was that's been kind of the model for like 20 years you know or 20 25 years how much will you put up with yeah yeah right that's a very negative way to approach i'm not selling you something because you love it i'm monetizing your discomfort or your annoyance crazy that's a crazy thing to do but it works it works on some level but i think it's like showing its cracks with certain types of industries i think music being one of them art being another and i mean even to some degree news and you know uh it's sort of distorting that right uh on on multiple levels so so i i think i don't know that nfcs are the answer for everything but it's some it kind of fixes a lot of that right where it's sort of just it's saying it's like content should be or data should be free-flowing should reach everybody for free but that ownership at the top should be scarce for for the creator or for you know a bidder or whether it's a group of people or you know so it's it's a very interesting sort of way to to to monetize i guess like because it doesn't require you to just to set up a paywall or or um you know like there's no friction there it's sort of like in it i mean i think a lot of people get caught up with this right like this is the point was like why would i want that what i don't value that you know um but there's also this overlap and i want to ask bobby specifically about this there's this overlap with musicians and concert tickets the way they're they're scooped up and resold and that's the same thing that's happening secondary market with fashion right and other things so there's a mechanism in place with an nft that addresses that the creator can set a percentage and continue to make that percentage and if if you go in you know if it's auction style then then the the audience will decide the price and then it'll continue hopefully continue to move and the creator of that i mean if you can imagine like i i loved that the nyan cat creator like sold his i thought it was worth more than what it sold for personally because same it's a world famous joke like it's a world famous piece of art and the cultural artifact right like it's perfect and it's going to continue to get passed around because it's because everybody knows what it is yeah it's that's one of the most compelling parts to me about nfts also is this idea when people say well everyone has that i'm like that's actually what makes the nft more valuable the more visible it is the more it's been seen and saved onto somebody's desktop or screen grabbed on a phone it only makes it stronger that you that someone has the original one the mona lisa is always the example everybody uses but there's a copy of that everywhere everyone has one in their computer or their home at an ikea and so when you see the actual one it means so much it's like seeing a celebrity it's like seeing mike shinoda right like i've seen mike shinoda so many times right music videos on the award stage there's photos there's billboards of him and so when i see the actual mike shinoda it's like holy crap this is him this is the one of one mike and anna owns him [Laughter] but i i just i don't know if that was the right way to look at it but that's that seems to make sense in my head i had a question for you all which was um it's when i talk to people who are really deep into this people like trevor all right this person trevor that we keep talking about but people like trevor or um some of the guys who own the platforms and the artists who've been doing this for a long time it's actually not even nfts really aren't about what's even happening right now it's almost like this is the gateway to get us to where we're going it's like this is what we need to do to crack people's brains open so that they can kind of understand the blockchain because up until recently i still didn't really get i still don't get the blockchain but yes i didn't understand and i didn't really care right because there was no way to really use a lot of this crypto and it just didn't seem very practical to me and i couldn't imagine what life would be like inside of this screen every day and so the pandemic accelerated that because we spent so much time on our phones but also nfts really helped me to see what it was like what andre has been understanding about the ethereum blockchain for many years um something about that captivated you early on like for me it didn't happen until nfts and it seems to be a lot of people on boarded and joined you know in because of nfts and so it's like was this just as as usual art and culture and music right are always on the front lines that's what gets people to enter into the next space right when you're gentrifying neighborhoods you the artists do it first and then people follow the artist right so we're like gentrifying ethereum blockchain i mean to be honest like as yeah like i i've been involved with this since 2017. so you know it was more a lot techier early on but like it's a very interesting subset of people because it's a lot of tech people but they love art and and that's why i think it was it actually made sense in hindsight the nfts were the thing that really kind of made this a little more mainstream versus just like an investment vehicle which a lot of people had viewed crypto as that and that was sort of one of the biggest misconceptions about all this stuff is like when you talk about crypto people assume you're talking about investments i'm like no there's actually like a whole platform that you can create like entirely new systems of coordinate the thing is it's so big that like it's really hard to like keep it um to not be hyperbolic about it because you're like you can run the government on this you know it's like like like you can go there but but you know obviously that's not gonna happen overnight or anything like that but but you know what i mean like it's it's so i think nfts are actually even though they are somewhat complex it is like that first kind of like okay that i get that that makes sense you know scarcity okay i don't need to understand the technical stuff so much i don't need to think worry about blockchains and and whatnot but like uh ideologically i i understand what's what's happening here and i like it you know um i i i think that's cool but but like the the the the whole thing about the it being like a sort of an open platform for me was really that was the north star for me you know it was like okay this is amazing it's like set up right from the beginning because you know in in in music especially it's there's three labels that run run the world and uh always a gatekeeper yeah and and they they just control a lot and and what i like about this is that it's not really it's like i don't think it's going to replace them overnight or anything like that but it's like basically every service that exists out there could potentially be replaced by code and that's kind of a scary idea but also like kind of uh fascinating because like if you think about it like um nobody's safe yeah so so it makes i don't mean the artist i don't think like i'm not really worried about that side but it really like all these services and all these like applications you know um the financialization or the financial side of it which i think is maybe the more hostile side of the music industry uh could be essentially replaced by your fans or or or some kind of other mechanism so so like to me i find that to be like the ultimate leveling of the playing fields so so uh like now they have to compete with zero they need to compete with code you know what i mean so it keeps them honest it's like okay now you're a label are you going to take 50 maybe not you know maybe you're only worth 25 because you're more of a marketing service you know at this point like maybe they are worth 50 i don't know are they worth 80 percent probably not you know how are how are the labels responding to all this they seemed a little late the people that i do know at labels they caught on very late they're scrambling they're a lot of the people that are hitting me up like can i ask you about nfts real quick but what are they doing in response a lot are hitting me up like all the time now to just find out what i'm doing it's a joke because a few months ago nobody was hitting me up and then all of a sudden i got into nfts and like all these homies are like yo what's good latasha where have you been back then you didn't want me no i'm hot you're all up on me mike hey did you have two hours to do you have two hours of your time all day with the two hours of your time so yeah i've definitely been noticing more labels are interested um but i also feel like they're interested because they want to figure out how to you know leverage this on their side you know so artists still will try to get to labels so are they scared are they threatened by this i personally think some are scared because yeah yeah because this gives the power to the artists you know what i mean this this like gives the power the worth and the integrity to the artists and wow the integrity yeah yeah most artists are fighting for that to keep that i know from myself i've been doing music for like eight years now five years like professionally um and most of the time that was what i was fighting for for my creative integrity to keep like my word and keep myself intact you know and i made choices where i didn't go to a label but you know was hurt because i didn't have the money to pay for [ __ ] or deal with [ __ ] and now i got into nfts and like in two weeks i made the money i probably would have made getting signed you know what i mean yeah you know what i mean so it's like a whole different game just the same thing happened to me where my my i did a drop just recently on maker's place and i made more on that drop than i did my entire last two albums um on a very well-respected label you know we put a lot of effort into it like i made more money you know in two days than than the entire that's so that's like i i think that in addition to there are certainly the folks from the labels who are scared of it because just like anybody's things that are different and new and unfamiliar are scary um there are also folks that understand it or are starting to understand it and are trying to be strategic and one of the things they're not scared of it in terms of like um oh it's different and i don't understand it i think one thing that i always tell young artists is that if you're in an existing relationship with a label then and a new delivery model like meaning a new way to get product to a fan shows up and and there's no precedent for what the economic splits should be so if they're used to like like andre you said if they're used to 85 splits you get 15. um they take 85 because they have so many employees and they do such important work and without them you wouldn't be anywhere right and the starting point of the conversation is i get 100 you get zero if that's the starting point of the conversation that is terrifying to them because they're just like well we're still like we certainly have okay and i'll say this like for for them if i'm if i'm at a label i'm thinking well i do have value like we do a thing we do when we could certainly help make your nft drop bigger than you could on your own there's a totally like look at warner records they have a worldwide infrastructure tentacles in every single country in the planet and they could help make your drop really big and for that like the question mark is like the the question is like what for what what what do they spend on that and what do they make on it right and they don't know so what i did for example when i dropped um my new single happy endings as an nft we did ten limited edition um we did one of ten two of ten that type of thing on zora and that was it and i have co-writers on the song i have two other vocalists on the song disney is in the mix like like okay so we got warner universal disney publishers etc like i just went to them and i said look here's what we're gonna do if you're okay with it just give me the green light to give all the money to charity so we don't have to work out splits let's just look at the let's just look at this as an experiment and if you green light it we're going to look at we're going to watch how it tracks um because it really the whole the major hold up is they're going to at some point say like if you sell an nft the industry standard is we take this much and they don't have that right now and they're trying to create that yeah exactly the hardest to the place where they're gonna go they're gonna try and do deals with a hundred young artists and say it's 50 fair right you're not if if i say no you're gonna not let me release it so i guess and then they're gonna go to the big artists and say we take fifty percent yeah exactly exactly like even back when i was uh signing my deal with with a major at the time um you know i i sort of you know i was aware of what i was getting into but also it's like i mean these these rates are ridiculous let's be real you know like 85 or 80 it's like toxic to put it to put it so so um but but then again like the argument is always like well you know michael jackson got that or you know or prince got that or like you know any other literally any other major david bowie got that and it's like who are you they all were upset about that [ __ ] every single one of them upset about it of course no nobody's happy with it but but it is a lot of like well this is how things are done around here you know yeah um yeah and even with small labels like i've done i did a small publishing situation last year just to test out the waters because my whole thing was like i'm from brooklyn jay-z is my guy like you know i'm not signing nobody as long as i can and hold all this integrity forever you know whatever so i was like let me just try this publishing thing and you know i had a bigger name than even the publishing company did right like i had like more clout i guess if we want to call it clout and um the label still tried to pull the whole like no this is what you're gonna get because this is the standard and i'm like you guys are a small publishing company you guys have no kind of like like push like i could probably push myself i'm doing this kind of as a favor and they literally told me my sweat equity didn't equate to their work and i was like you've got to be kidding me right now like i remember battling this like for like the whole pandemic being pissed off about this pretty much but that's how they run and then when i found nft i was like oh well that's pie there goes my resolution [Laughter] it's like i mean i don't know if restaurant is the right analogy but what if it's like you know so the economics are different right you if you're if you're a small artist if you're a small artist making more per unit you make 90 90 per unit or 100 per unit or whatever and you only have to sell you have to sell this tiny fraction of the amount of units in order to make the exact same amount of money exactly and there's then so many artists can be successful because they're monetizing against like volume like you have to sell look at the spotify uh streaming numbers like everybody who hears about these numbers about like you you know you streamed five million uh your song stream five million times on spotify and you just collected a check for ten thousand dollars like congratulations right like that those economics suck no artist likes that the label the labels and whoever else is making money spotify themselves taking all of that money to do all of the things they do it seems so efficient to do it the other way right right and if they can provide a vow if anyone in the equation can provide a value to take you from i'm said the restaurant analogy may be wrong but like i just popped into my head to take you from hey we're a single mom-and-pop taco shop in l.

a to okay we're gonna franchise right we're gonna go bigger and now you're gonna need more staff and more um infrastructure and we're gonna help you do that so we're gonna share in the proceeds of expanding your business like to me that starts to make more sense that everybody's got everybody's on the line for some part of the value and some part of the take yeah that makes more sense definitely i think it'll actually like generate better art you know what i mean because the scale is is like like a more niche artist can can thrive in this environment that caters to like i mean if you're into like hardcore you know techno or or industrial whatever you know noise like so it's some kind of very niche thing that there's like a strong fan base for like you can thrive in that and not even worry about you know the competition that you're dealing with absolutely i feel like that for sure i feel like being like i was doing i mean i'm a i started out in rap and hip-hop and being a woman in hip-hop is all you know you guys all hear the jokes and the stories and the trauma that women deal with in hip-hop and so when i got into this i was like oh my god a safe space where i could just like be myself and like create whatever the hell i want and people [ __ ] with it if they don't all good you know it's so i'm i'm being me and i get to like create my own platform in this way and then people are all like excited about just nft period so they're like word you know this is like a whole new world i'm gonna be the first you know that's a whole thing that people are hype about so it's been really amazing um to just feel like myself again in this world you know i tweeted something kind of along the lines yesterday because this week we are seeing this crazy story unfurl about um these asian american women who were murdered right and so i'm very sensitive to the race talk right now because now the spotlight's on our community and i realized that much of the appeal of nfts which was also what attracted me to the internet to begin with when i was like 15 20 years old was it was a place where i was outside of my body right like i wasn't being judged on my gender my skin color my cl anything and it was just my soul and my art and my ideas and it wasn't influenced by anything that i was wearing or you know the color of my skin and so i think we only have a few minutes left and i didn't mean a hard pivot but latasha earlier we were talking about how there is this perception this misconception of nft's being this you know billionaire tech bro douchey guys on clubhouse yeah like that's all it's about and the representation part of this is so important for me right like the reason why i didn't get into crypto earlier was because i just felt like it was another planet speaking a language i didn't understand discussed by people who didn't include me in the group absolutely silicon valley guys you know who are billionaires like mark zuckerberg i was like that's that and i'm down here i'm a streetwear guy and that's not my community and nfts have now been a place for me where look at you know even just on this call there's three people that are of color like we have a woman in here you know we come from all different backgrounds in the room right now like um it's so important for people like us to be out there like me representing for the streetwear industry and for asian americans like you're a black woman in music to do so i i think if you're everyone's okay with this can we end with this no i just wanted you to kind of speak on that if you don't mind really yeah for sure i think it's it's really complicated still because we're still walking into this with a bunch of people who have mindsets that are from those spaces right we still have probably racism issues in crypto we have all the same issues we're dealing with in real world in crypto it's still here i'm not going to say it's not here i'm not going to say you know i'm not going to try to make this all pretty and fuzzy because there's a lot of stuff going on in here that's problematic and complicated so i feel though what needs to be like the forefront of everything to change it is the communication and i say this all the time especially to zora i'm like as a platform you guys have to be communicating constantly about you know marginalized communities and you guys have to push that agenda in order for us to change the whole metaverse you know what i mean because that's what that's the problem with our world right now you know that's the biggest problem with our world right now so yeah when i first got into this and i saw my boyfriend get into it i was like what is this like it's a bunch of little white boys putting up like weird art like they're not gonna [ __ ] with me like you know what i mean like whatever and and bam andre shots fired no beef andre i'm jake andre's cool i [ __ ] with andre's work i've been checking out audrey and mike's work for a long time and i i love what you guys are doing but i feel like i i constantly am going back to this idea of meaning in the work and of course there's there like i feel it's very important to have a resting work that is just gorgeous and of course that's my heart too but if there's context is there meaning is there story are you going to change someone's life with this piece are you going to change someone's thoughts with this piece that's where i kind of sit with everything and i feel especially watching so many artists in the black community start to thrive in this world i i just and not just black but people of color in general find their ways to thrive um i'm just like so excited for what it could do for the future of us you know what i mean and um one other thing i just wanted to say i have still noticed like issues with economic issues going on with like people of color aren't i feel like a lot of times women of color are receiving like lower end you know bids and things of that nature i've dealt with that i've seen homies deal with it and i'm just like you know this art is just as integral and amazing as this render core art even though it might not be a render core even though it might be photography or whatever whatever right um and i think i don't know if i want standards in crypto but i think we need to start addressing like that all art needs to be seen in this world um so that's where my heart is with this and that's what i've been pushing for everybody really that was amazing thank you thank you natasha you're the best i'm so hyped for this world guys like yeah it's gonna change a lot of things for us man so i'm just grateful and thanks for having me oh yeah all right andre natasha mike this was absolutely amazing i wanted to ask a bunch of questions but i was just like this was going so well that i didn't want to wrap it up that was an amazing note and uh and kind of just seeing through this from hearing you talk from from my side kind of the synthesized synthesization of like what i got from all this thing is that it's not just about one or two applications of it you're talking about a massive first innings of a big transition in power of just the new economy and how can you not be excited about that we're getting to share perspectives about artists and musicians and other industries and they're all coming together but the underlying theme is that you are putting the power in the person not the other person managing uh some other relation and and to me that is extremely exciting and you've done an amazing job uh highlighting that and sharing that perspective from how you've seen the traditional versus what code is really competing on so thank you so much for uh giving us your time today i feel like one thing we should do is we're happy to take on those zoom calls for you and just keep people listening what's happening against the developer side or what the possibilities are from a non-technical perspective this whole weekend is designed for that and uh we're more than happy to uh route this uh and uh and address any of these things because we think the potential is just way too big here so thanks again and uh thank you guys thank you