Ryan Leslie Interview on Combat Jack

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benji2

New member
Interesting guy. Talks about life after Harvard, scoring 1600 on SAT's, google algorithims, trained abnormal sleeping habits, etc...


He's building a grid where he can track his fans and has a unique outllook on fan feedback where he gives his direct cell number to fans and ask that they send him a text message directly rather than type a comment on a video page. Out of 23,000 fans that contacted him, he was able to convince 12,500 to buy his album. That's savy marketing!!! He also explains how he made 1 million dollars in Europe touring without any label by getting 30 thousand a show and doing 40 shows.
 
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Anyone that has been following Ryan since the beginning knows what's up.

What's funny to me is how people find it hard to people that dude is sitting
on millions... like this guy didn't graduate from Harvard at 19 lol.

That was probably hands down one of the best interviews i heard.
 
This is a great interview. Ryan Leslie is one of the most articulate and smart people in music.
 
benji2 said:
lol. Out of those 3000 posts you've made so far, I've got faith that at least one of those comments were positive.
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I am not hating on Ryan Leslie or his accomplishments. But that interview was boring.

I blame the guys asking the questions. They had poor skills on how to extract the best info with the best questions. I have seen 10 minute interviews more entertaining than that one.

 
Dope interview. They pissed me off when they kept pushing the Cassie and Puff questions. Like they were trying to get a rise out of him.

I really respect him as a musician and producer. And he is right the internet and social media has changed the game and there will be no more Kanye Cinderella stories of success. He is right Kanye's story is 10 yrs old and the way music was discovered then was still controlled by the major media outlets.

I think it's genius he is working on that "grid" to track fans' moves and demographics like Amazon does its customers. When he gets that poppin he will be the next billionaire in hip hop.
But until that technology gets developed, if I was a new artist I still would sign a 360 deal with a major making only $50k a yr.

Les talking he making 80-100k after cost an album independently. But he makes his killing off touring. As an independent artist you know how much hard work it is to build a social media presence, fan base, a viral youtube song, and the cost to tour out of pocket? I'd rather let a major rape me out of publishing and everything else as long as they do their job and do all that marketing and business side stuff to make me a star. All I need is a good manager who can leverage that fame into other ventures such as reality shows, commercials, endorsements, etc. I know the label gets a piece of that too but a good manager can keep the fame gravy train going even after you get dropped.
 
Haha. Pro Tools ended everybody's chance to be the next Timbaland making $100k a track. Social Media ended the controlling influence of the Major label and radio. Technology just keeps dismantling the music market to where it's hard to dominate the market and make millions.
 
mac_luv said:
Dope interview. They pissed me off when they kept pushing the Cassie and Puff questions. Like they were trying to get a rise out of him.

I really respect him as a musician and producer. And he is right the internet and social media has changed the game and there will be no more Kanye Cinderella stories of success. He is right Kanye's story is 10 yrs old and the way music was discovered then was still controlled by the major media outlets.

I think it's genius he is working on that "grid" to track fans' moves and demographics like Amazon does its customers. When he gets that poppin he will be the next billionaire in hip hop.
But until that technology gets developed, if I was a new artist I still would sign a 360 deal with a major making only $50k a yr.

Les talking he making 80-100k after cost an album independently. But he makes his killing off touring. As an independent artist you know how much hard work it is to build a social media presence, fan base, a viral youtube song, and the cost to tour out of pocket? I'd rather let a major rape me out of publishing and everything else as long as they do their job and do all that marketing and business side stuff to make me a star. All I need is a good manager who can leverage that fame into other ventures such as reality shows, commercials, endorsements, etc. I know the label gets a piece of that too but a good manager can keep the fame gravy train going even after you get dropped.
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I would never sign a 360 deal. Labels saw rappers getting rich with endorsements and side deals. 50's vitamin water, Dre's Beats headphones. Jay Z's Rocawear, etc... I rather use the internet to market directly to my fanbase and keep them labels out of my pockes. I wonder if Rick Ross signed a 360 deal. He's stacking that paper. A rapper should want to devote a certain amount of time out of the day to handle his business affairs. Like Oprah said who learned from Bill Cosby, never let someone convince you that you are that busy where you cant find the time to handle your own business affairs. That's just as important as the art or music itself.
 
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mac_luv said:
Dope interview. They pissed me off when they kept pushing the Cassie and Puff questions. Like they were trying to get a rise out of him.

I really respect him as a musician and producer. And he is right the internet and social media has changed the game and there will be no more Kanye Cinderella stories of success. He is right Kanye's story is 10 yrs old and the way music was discovered then was still controlled by the major media outlets.

I think it's genius he is working on that "grid" to track fans' moves and demographics like Amazon does its customers. When he gets that poppin he will be the next billionaire in hip hop.
But until that technology gets developed, if I was a new artist I still would sign a 360 deal with a major making only $50k a yr.

Les talking he making 80-100k after cost an album independently. But he makes his killing off touring. As an independent artist you know how much hard work it is to build a social media presence, fan base, a viral youtube song, and the cost to tour out of pocket? I'd rather let a major rape me out of publishing and everything else as long as they do their job and do all that marketing and business side stuff to make me a star. All I need is a good manager who can leverage that fame into other ventures such as reality shows, commercials, endorsements, etc. I know the label gets a piece of that too but a good manager can keep the fame gravy train going even after you get dropped.
Click to expand...

Yea, that model was good for the artist back then... the whole sign to a label, let them financially
rape me on the front-end but i can cash out from touring, endorsements, movies, etc on the backend...
The label didn't care about having their hands on anything else because record sales were enough...

Now?

Not so much, if artists were making pennies to the dollar on album sales imagine how much they
are really making in 360 deals. Not only that but people seem to think it's as easy as "hey, they'll
make me famous and i can cash out from all these endorsements" It's only a special kind of talent
who can pull endorsements deals or even a certain level of fame for that matter... if you aren't at
Eminem, Jay, Kanye level then you're ****ed.

Gaga is an example of someone recent, who the label has gone all out for and seemed to cash out
early... but where is Gaga at this very moment? People stopped giving a ****... so if that's someone
of high artistic caliber, imagine a mediocre act coming into a label?

Even artists who have been on labels for years... let's say The Dream for example, what kind of
endorsement can The Dream pull? What kind of products can The Dream sell to an audience?
Even a Brandy or a Keri Hilson or a Tinashe... Schoolboy Q? Kendrick Lamar? Even a Drake...

and all those artists are equally talented but not all of them are brands that can move product...

Kanye can move product, Gaga can move product, Michael Jackson in his days moved product...
it takes a special kind of act with a certain kind of image to be able to cash out from label fame,
not everyone can pull it.
 
I totally agree artists should be business savvy and market themselves as much as possible and stay away from the "devil's 360 deal." But to the average 19 yr old pretty girl or rapper who aspires to make it big, they don't know anything about business or marketing. They don't care to put in that work. All they care about is making music.

I know an industry veteran with 30 years experience in the industry that has an independent label. He is doing everything 100% on his own. He has 4 artists signed to 360 deals. Since he is doing everything on his own and paying for everything, he doesn't have the time to promote all of them. He is focused on only one artist at the moment and everyone else is on the back burner. Unless one of them miraculously comes out with a youtube viral hit, they are not a priority. He is currently shopping that one artist in L.A for a major to take her on. He explained the terms of her 360 deal to me and even had a third party in the room witnessing the signing of the contract and recorded it on video to make sure she knows what she is getting into signing a 360.

Let me tell you 360 deals are super F'd up for the artist lol. Her deal is basically 80/20 in favor of his label plus every penny spent in her developmemt, studio time, travel, etc, is recoupable. Any outside ventures and related to entertainment like commercials and endorsements, he gets a piece and a bigger share than her. He basically owns her for life lol.

I told him that's a F'd up contract lol. He explained why it wasn't. He said she came to him with nothing to offer on the table except a pretty face and potential. No social media numbers, no YouTube views, Nothing. So he is bearing all the risk and cost taking her on and spending money and time developing her; photo shoots, demos, promo videos, setting up meetings, etc. He said if she brought something to the table like a large social media following then maybe he would've made it a 50/50 360 deal.

Now that I know how much money and work it takes to develop an artist, I understand why if a jacked up 360 deal is all that is offered, people take it. The grind is hard to make it big. Most people are not that devoted to grind for years eating ramen noodles. Chief, Trinidad, and Shmurda are the lucky ones to have a viral hit on their own.
 
Zonic said:
Yea, that model was good for the artist back then... the whole sign to a label, let them financially
rape me on the front-end but i can cash out from touring, endorsements, movies, etc on the backend...
The label didn't care about having their hands on anything else because record sales were enough...

Now?

Not so much, if artists were making pennies to the dollar on album sales imagine how much they
are really making in 360 deals. Not only that but people seem to think it's as easy as "hey, they'll
make me famous and i can cash out from all these endorsements" It's only a special kind of talent
who can pull endorsements deals or even a certain level of fame for that matter... if you aren't at
Eminem, Jay, Kanye level then you're ****ed.

Gaga is an example of someone recent, who the label has gone all out for and seemed to cash out
early... but where is Gaga at this very moment? People stopped giving a ****... so if that's someone
of high artistic caliber, imagine a mediocre act coming into a label?

Even artists who have been on labels for years... let's say The Dream for example, what kind of
endorsement can The Dream pull? What kind of products can The Dream sell to an audience?
Even a Brandy or a Keri Hilson or a Tinashe... Schoolboy Q? Kendrick Lamar? Even a Drake...

and all those artists are equally talented but not all of them are brands that can move product...

Kanye can move product, Gaga can move product, Michael Jackson in his days moved product...
it takes a special kind of act with a certain kind of image to be able to cash out from label fame,
not everyone can pull it.
Click to expand...

Anyone with 15 minutes of fame can move product. Brandy was doing Loreal commercials in her prime. Everyone has their 15 minites of fame. Some are just perpetual stars like Kanye and Beyonce. But that's the importance of a very good manager. A very good manager is business and market savvy and understands PR and public perception. A good manager knows what they are working with and how to work it. Look at Miley and Young Thug. Are we talking about them because of their music? You think Miley would be this big as an artist if she didn't put on that provocative show at the VMAs twerking on Robin Thicke? You think that was spontaneous on Miley's part? I'm sure it was discussed before hand with her manager. A good manager is like a good political strategist for a canidate running for office. The campaign needs to start before they become popular.

You heard of Niykee Heaton? White girl who blew up from doing acoustic cover of chief keef on worldstar. She is signed to Def Jam digital under Steve Rifkind and Russell Simmons. She is going to blow up next. Her EP came out and it is dope. Bad Intentions is a dope song. She has a good manager. 2 Chainz reached out to her for a feature on a song but turned it down. This was before she was signed!!! Her manager didn't think it would be good for her brand in the long run and didn't want to be introduced to the world as a feature. A manager can make or break a career.
 
What ever happened to the fan that was suing him because the fan didn't get the reward money for finding Ryan's stolen laptop?
 
mac_luv said:
I totally agree artists should be business savvy and market themselves as much as possible and stay away from the "devil's 360 deal." But to the average 19 yr old pretty girl or rapper who aspires to make it big, they don't know anything about business or marketing. They don't care to put in that work. All they care about is making music.

I know an industry veteran with 30 years experience in the industry that has an independent label. He is doing everything 100% on his own. He has 4 artists signed to 360 deals. Since he is doing everything on his own and paying for everything, he doesn't have the time to promote all of them. He is focused on only one artist at the moment and everyone else is on the back burner. Unless one of them miraculously comes out with a youtube viral hit, they are not a priority. He is currently shopping that one artist in L.A for a major to take her on. He explained the terms of her 360 deal to me and even had a third party in the room witnessing the signing of the contract and recorded it on video to make sure she knows what she is getting into signing a 360.

Let me tell you 360 deals are super F'd up for the artist lol. Her deal is basically 80/20 in favor of his label plus every penny spent in her developmemt, studio time, travel, etc, is recoupable. Any outside ventures and related to entertainment like commercials and endorsements, he gets a piece and a bigger share than her. He basically owns her for life lol.

I told him that's a F'd up contract lol. He explained why it wasn't. He said she came to him with nothing to offer on the table except a pretty face and potential. No social media numbers, no YouTube views, Nothing. So he is bearing all the risk and cost taking her on and spending money and time developing her; photo shoots, demos, promo videos, setting up meetings, etc. He said if she brought something to the table like a large social media following then maybe he would've made it a 50/50 360 deal.

Now that I know how much money and work it takes to develop an artist, I understand why if a jacked up 360 deal is all that is offered, people take it. The grind is hard to make it big. Most people are not that devoted to grind for years eating ramen noodles. Chief, Trinidad, and Shmurda are the lucky ones to have a viral hit on their own.
Click to expand...

Reality is artists will probably still eat ramen noodles after signing that 360 deal.
 
Desire Inspires said:
Ramen noodles are great no matter what deal you sign...
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Something that inexpensive can't be good for you. Just keep in mind Corporations are looking to maximize profits with the cheapest methods. They don't care about your health. Ramen Noodles are fried therefore you should limit consumption right there. I must have eaten at least 2000 packs of ramen in my lifetime before I became aware of how unhealty it was. Here's a recent article that was published:

Holy hotplates! Instant ramen noodles, beloved cheap dinner of college kids and budget eaters everywhere, have been linked to heart attacks and diabetes. A study published in the Journal of Nutrition found that the ramen, along with other instant noodle products, may increase a person’s risk for cardiometabolic syndrome — a risk factor for severe cardiovascular disease and stroke — especially in women.
“This research is significant since many people are consuming instant noodles without knowing possible health risks,” said lead researcher Hyun Joon Shin, MD, in a press release. Shin, a clinical cardiology fellow at Baylor University Medical Center and a nutrition epidemiology doctoral student at the Harvard School of Public Health, could not be reached for further comment.
For the study, researchers looked at the data of 10,711 adults between the ages of 19 and 64, collected via the nationally representative Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 2007-2009. They found that eating instant noodles — ramen, lo mein, glass, Thai, or other — twice or more a week was associated with cardiometabolic syndrome, a collection of abnormalities affecting the body’s cardiovascular, renal, and metabolic systems.
Although the specific cause of the problem was not immediately clear, Shin noted that it might stem from the fact that most instant noodle meals come packaged in Styrofoam, which contains bisphenol A (BPA), a known hormone disruptor — which is also why women could have been more affected in this study. But the food product contains plenty of unhealthy ingredients, including MSG and the chemical preservative tertiary-butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), and is also high in saturated fat.
The study focused on individuals in South Korea, Shin said, as the country has the highest per-capita number of instant noodle consumers in the world, and because, in recent years, health problems there, including heart disease and obesity, have been on the rise. But the findings appear to be quite relevant to consumers stateside too, as the United States ranked sixth globally in instant noodle sales, according to the World Instant Noodles Association, which found that the United States accounted for 4,300 billion units sold in 2013 (coming in just behind China, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, and India — and one spot above South Korea, in fact).
This is not the first time ramen noodles have been publicly maligned. In 2012, a viral video taken from inside the digestive tract, part of a small and inconclusive study by Dr. Braden Kuo, showed just what happened after instant ramen was ingested — and it wasn’t pretty. The stomach worked overtime, struggling for hours to grind up the strands; TBHQ, a petroleum byproduct, was named as a possible culprit. Years earlier, Malaysian health officials issued a warning against eating instant noodles because of ingredients such as thickeners, stabilizers, sodium, and preservatives that have been linked to heart disease, stroke, and kidney damage.
Nissin Foods, maker of the first instant ramen noodle in Japan in 1958 (and the company that brought Top Ramen to the U.S. in 1972), did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo Health.The bottom line? Ingest the cheap and filling noodles at your own risk.


Processed food is the worst. it's high in sodium and has all types of unhealty additives. Some foods even have plastic in them like Honey Buns.
 
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mac_luv said:
Anyone with 15 minutes of fame can move product. Brandy was doing Loreal commercials in her prime. Everyone has their 15 minites of fame. Some are just perpetual stars like Kanye and Beyonce. But that's the importance of a very good manager. A very good manager is business and market savvy and understands PR and public perception. A good manager knows what they are working with and how to work it. Look at Miley and Young Thug. Are we talking about them because of their music? You think Miley would be this big as an artist if she didn't put on that provocative show at the VMAs twerking on Robin Thicke? You think that was spontaneous on Miley's part? I'm sure it was discussed before hand with her manager. A good manager is like a good political strategist for a canidate running for office. The campaign needs to start before they become popular.

You heard of Niykee Heaton? White girl who blew up from doing acoustic cover of chief keef on worldstar. She is signed to Def Jam digital under Steve Rifkind and Russell Simmons. She is going to blow up next. Her EP came out and it is dope. Bad Intentions is a dope song. She has a good manager. 2 Chainz reached out to her for a feature on a song but turned it down. This was before she was signed!!! Her manager didn't think it would be good for her brand in the long run and didn't want to be introduced to the world as a feature. A manager can make or break a career.
Click to expand...

Great example. TechNine is another example of an artist with a great manager. I saw his documentary and he actually recruited the guy to be his manager after noticing how business savy and honest the guy was. 50 Cent would be a great manager but he's got too many other things on his plate like movies and being a boxing promoter. Even Game realizes now how much money they were making under Fif's guidance. That's why Buck ran back to G Unit first chance he got. I remember 50 saying something like Buck cleared 6 milliion in less than 2 years with him. That's great for an artists of Buck's caliber even though that figure seems like monopoly money today. It's a whole lot harder to make that amount these days.
One thing I did notice is Ryan Leslie seems a little dishonest with his marketing gimmick. He's giving out his email and phone number one minute to fans saying call me I am accessible, then a minute later he says buying his cd increases the chance he'll respond to the fan. He then finally admits it's physically impossible for him to read all the emails and respond. Haitan Jack told him he reminds him of an evil genius frpm comic books who becomes a villain because the world has slighted him(lol). He does seem like he's trying to be something he's not though when he mentions trading bars with Raekwon and Pusha T, the concert at the European Castle etc... I think he's trying too hard to be accepted in the urban community. Coming in contact with P Diddy, the cassie situation didnt help. I'm sure he was trying to be cool being something he's not trying to impress her. He should just be proud being a talented intellectual. The cool guy image in the shades is a stretch.
 
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Reality is ... people are still eating Ramen noodles after getting hired.

Music= noodles
9 to 5 = noodles

Pick...
 
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