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25 November 2016
(Hip Hop, Business, Start-ups)
So, yep. I'm going to have a crack at relating this article to business. Theoretically, it should be easy!
Recently I caught up with my pals Spenser & Jax post-gig at the Brunswick hotel. By day, Spenser studies psychology and Jax, he studies business marketing. However, any spare time these guys get is passionately devoted to their start-up hip hop project "Pinnacle".
Now that is one hell of a hobby!
Spencer & Jax are simply two lads pursuing their dream, hoping to monetise it along the way (#phatstax). From the second these guys stole the stage at their recent gig, the sheer enjoyment radiating from their performance was contagious!
It was only a little over a year ago when the already good friends started sharing their beats and creating lyrics. Spenser’s balanced taste in music stems from the inspiration of his Father who is also a musician and the people he looks up to within the hip hop/rap industry.
For Jax, admirably he opened up about how hip hop created a desperately required diversion from a severe bout of anxiety and depression that held a firm grasp over his mental health. His passion and drive to make something come of what he truly loves brought him to where he is today, providing him with a healthy and sustainable frame of mind.
As Pinnacle only launched earlier this year, I asked the guys what they would have done differently throughout their launch phase (AKA How’d ya blow it?). Both guys were quick to bring up the pressure they put on themselves by labelling definitive release dates on their projects before they were one hundred percent ready to go. I’m sure any eager entrepreneur or artist is guilty of this, but it put some serious pressure on the lads!
Amongst my irrelevant dribble, we went on to discuss what the guys are doing to continually improve their craft. Aside from the hours of practice and creating new music, the two spend a considerable amount of time studying interviews with rappers, producers, label heads and the rest. Both Spenser and Jax take valuable insights from the best in the industry and soak that information up like a ShamWow. (I bet you thought the word sponge was coming…)
Impressively, the two also thought outside the box by attending a social marketing workshop to improve their online impact. For any artist or entrepreneur, social media is the single most import tool for making their work visible to the masses. Put it this way, who wants to buy that dude's mixtape with the shitty pixelated image for a DP and does nothing but sell sell sell on Facebook? I can only think of one person who could maybe make that work…
By the end of our jug, we were discussing the short/long term goals of Pinnacle. And whilst Jax's response here is a little tongue in cheek, I feel that if half of the world's business leaders, or in this case, artists went by this motto, without a doubt the world would be a better place.
Jax - “Being through what I've been through, hip hop music in more ways than one saved and changed my life – if we (Pinnacle) can do that for even one more person in the world then I feel that Pinnacle is a success. Oh and bitches and big money $$$$$, I mean do you even have a rap career if you don’t have that?"
Don't be shy, catch these guys live! Give them some love on their Facebook page and follow Pinnacles journey.
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