Tag: The Music Industry

Jrnl Entry No. 6.25.2001

I received word and written notice that my performance at The Italian Job sucks and if my performance doesn’t improve, my employment will be terminated. Personally, I think they should have been fired me because my performance has been sucking. I have no desire, motivation, or interest in really working here. My only interest in working here is paying my bills.

I don’t know what’s going on in my life right now, but I feel like I am in a real slump. I know why but I don’t know what I can do about it. I want to be working at a record label or producing Hip Hop songs for people to listen to, or I want to be doing both. The music industry consist of friends, of friends, of friends. It’s a real coterie industry; from the artist to the executives in charge, they are all friends of friends. I don’t have any friends in the music industry; therefore, it will be hard for me to get a production deal or a job at a label. Sure I could hand out beat tapes till the end of time. Sure, I could send in resumes every three months. Both of which, at one time or another, I have done so, and I got nowhere. So I’ve concluded that resumes and tapes are not the answer.

I’m just breezing through life right now. I think sometimes about what I could be doing to get what I want, but I don’t think I am thinking hard enough. Maybe I’m in slow motion about this because even though I complain about my life, the most important of life’s necessities, I have: clothes, food, shelter, bills paid, car, daughter taken care of.

As far as the music goes, some may say it’s good I’m not desperate and doing it for money. That statement is half true. I want a Range Rover, a Benz E400 Class and a Lexus GS 400. I want a nice 4 or 5 bedroom home, not a mansion. I want a nice amount of money, enough to have to not worry about money. Music is how I think I’m gonna get there, but then again, I don’t have the answers to none of this shit. It is all a toss-up, and where will you land, who the fuck knows. I’m just gonna live the bullshit life until further notice; fuck it.

I make nice beats I know. I also make some bullshit that I don’t like so I ain’t just being eccentric where I think all my shit is the best a mutha fucka could hear. Hell, ain’t nobody got the best shit that one man could ever hear. After one hot song, there is gonna be another one to follow, and another after that, all by three different productions teams.

I said to myself that I’ll probably just one day give up the dream of getting on in the music industry and just do the shit for my own pleasure. People say don’t give up, keep trying and trying. I don’t know, it just seems like a lot of closed doors out here in the world, and I ain’t the nigga to just keep knockin’ and knockin’ and not getting’ no answer. Like I’ve ended other letters, Fuck it. I’ma live. I need to stop complaining about this shit because I’m tired of complaining also. Just realize that I’m trying as much as I can. Life is fucked up and even when you try sometimes you still come up with nothing. So in essence, life ain’t what you make it because I’m trying to make my life what I want, but it seems I ain’t makin’ shit!

WAS THERE A TIME YOU REALIZED ALL THE ACTIVITY YOU’RE ENGAGED IN TO MAKE YOUR DREAM COME TRUE, WAS ACTUALLY NOT MAKING YOUR DREAM COME TRUE?

Jrnl Entry No. 5.24.2004

So I’ve finished my business plan, I think. I plan to take it to the Small Business Administration (SBA) to have the so-called executives there review it for a potential loan. You know me with my pessimistic self, I think they are gonna dis it just because I am black and because it is for an entertainment label. These white mutha fuckaz don’t want us to catch up to them in economic status, but at the same time they want us to be so civilized and polite and cultural like them. Well we can’t be that cultural when we are broke and can’t even afford to go to most of the Broadway shows which feature black stage actors and black subject matter.

I still haven’t found a job yet. It’s been a year and a month now. I don’t know what is going on here with this job situation, if the job market is still tight, if the economy is still down. It seems so, as I only get like an interview per month. Sometimes I think that it is to be that I run my own label like I am thinking about doing. I’ve gotten fired from two jobs in a row. I can’t find another job. Mutha fuckaz in the music industry are ignoring me when I know my shit is good enough to sell. So in my spare time I’ve been writing my business plan. I’ve read a good book concerning marketing and promotion of music. Maybe this is what my life is supposed to be. Maybe it will all work out just fine. I mean, after all, music is the only thing I have a real passion to do, and they say you should follow your passion and dreams.

My passion lead me to move to New York. I guess accounting was just a stepping stone to get me to New York in the position that I am in now to really just make my dream come true. I’ll be — soon and I’ve done like three or four things in life that I wanted to do. I graduated from college, I bought a brand new car, I moved to New York, and I dress in a way that I am satisfied with whether that is dressed up, casual, or leisure.  Those are all things that I take pride in. My body is in good shape. If I had a good job making good money right now, I’d be on top of the world. But job and career are the only things that I am missing at this time.

I’ve somehow gotten a better attitude about Watrina and Queen. It has been a rough winter but we got through it. I guess this spring will mark a new beginning for us, I hope. We have many more fights to get into as I’ve talked to married couples and found out. They say there are more bad times than good. And that has been exactly the case ever since we moved in together. We’ve been fighting ever since September 2003.

Back on the job situation; I’ve applied to part-time jobs and still nothing has come to me. I’m gettin’ grey hair and shit from worrying I guess. I need like $100,000.00 to start this independent label off the right way to make some noise and get some attention in the music industry. I’m tryin to do this for real not just be out in the street hustling my CD for $5.00 like these other non-sense niggaz who don’t know shit about marketing, promotion, business and publishing and a few others topics that are important to know for making it in the music industry.  I think I have an advantage over these fools out here, but I probably don’t. The music industry is such a toss-up, who knows.

I’ve been having sort of a dilemma. If I get a full time job, I won’t have the time to promote my CD like I want to; go out of state with it to colleges and do shows and shit. But at the same time if I don’t get a job, I can’t support myself and help Watrina with the bills and shit around here. She wants to live big and it’s gonna get to her sooner or later that she can do the same financially as she is right now without me, probably even do better. As of now, I’m living off of like $20.00 a week, which is cool with me because I have all the clothes and shoes that I need for right now, going out is not that important to me right now as I did a lot of that earlier this year. And going out hasn’t brought me any important connects, just bullshit mutha fuckaz who want to get in the game just like I do.

I told Watrina that I am not going to shop for the next five years. I said that last summer and I have shopped since then. Last year was practice, but this year I have to adhere to it because one, I have no choice; two, my mind is somewhere else right now. Whereas I say that I won’t have time to put into my CD when I get a job, I do plan on putting most of my extra money in it. 

In the next five years something has got to happen for me for real. I gave myself five years from the time I reached New York, but at age — that five years will be up, and realistically I don’t think any drastic changes are going to happen in the next year. When you really look at it, five years realistically wasn’t enough time to accomplish anything in the first place. 

I came here bare ass, not knowing a soul, not knowing where to go to meet people, let alone people in the music industry. It has just been in the last two years that I started seeing the music people hang out and how phony they are and how disrespectful they are to new artists, even new artists that are right in their face in their town. See, I thought that sending Demos from Warren, Ohio and getting noticed would be impossible. I assumed that being in New York, standing right next to a nigga at the bar who claims he is a manager or that he knows A&Rs; that the response would be different. At least if I wouldn’t get on fast, I would make some progress. I haven’t really made any headway into the industry, and the only way I see that I am going to make some headway is to make that way myself. NO ONE IS GOING TO GIVE IT TO ME! I think I said all of this in a letter before. I guess if I say it enough, it will become a clear concise mental picture (CCP). If you think it, and you can see it, it will come to be. I’m ready. I know I am.

This will probably be the biggest risk of all my life, or at least so far in my life according to me. Some may say moving to New York was a big risk. Well that is their small minds. Moving to New York wasn’t shit. It was a matter of having a good enough job and knowing, thanks to my mother, how to budget my money to cover my living expenses. My accounting degree didn’t hurt neither as a far as budgeting goes.  Now with this company, if I get the money to start like I really want to; it will be the real test of my accounting skill and budgeting. It is going to take some heavy budgeting to get as much advertising and promotion out as I possibly can.