The Lifeblood of a Movement
Creating a Place People Want to Belong
A Night to Remember
It was Saturday, December 21, 2013.
I can still remember the excitement as I paced around my room, visualizing how this night would play out.
Up to this point in my life, I invested every drop of energy I had into achieving a successful music career. This night here in the cold month of December was the product of continual hard work and many late nights.
It felt like it was becoming more than just music.
My team was the headliner for the show. There was a flyer with our names and pictures on it. The concept of the show was based on my “High Potential” themes that expressed themselves everywhere my music was concerned.
There would be other artists opening for our team, bringing their unique messages and fans with them.
The flyer asked, “Who got potential?”
This concert was during the peak of my music career. What started as recording songs on a cheap computer microphone in my bedroom developed into something larger.
As I began reflecting on this musical journey, I also began wondering how this even happened.
The young man who was recording music in his bedroom at fifteen certainly did not know where this journey would take him.
What was the medium that brought the solo music enthusiast to the headliner of a concert?
An Unexpected Journey
The musical journey started as a silly little thing I did in my free time. At this age, I was obsessed with rap music. This was during the rise of programs like Napster, in which music was widely available to anyone with a computer.
I consumed as much rap music as I could and often had the newest music as soon as it came out.
I can attribute one specific moment in my life that changed me from a consumer to a creator.
I was spending time at a friend’s house, and his brother had some of his friends over hanging out on the porch. As a young kid, and I imagine my friend felt the same way, it was always cool to be accepted by the older guys into their group.
As we joined them on the porch, I noticed a boombox blaring one of the newest rap albums from it. There were four to five guys sitting in a circle, moving their heads to the rhythm of the beat as if they were somehow connected to the radio. After a short while, one guy noticed something that the rapper said in his music, and it blew his mind. It moved him in a way that I had never experienced.
Suddenly...
This man opened his mouth and started rapping over the lyrics, still somehow connected to the beat. I remember sitting there, wondering where these words came from? He was not simply rapping along to the artist’s words, but they were his own.
Did he write these before?
If so, where was the paper he was reading from?
This entire process seemed to be executed from his mind. I felt as though I was witnessing something extraordinary happening. Before long, each member of the group chimed in just as soon as one finished.
It was shortly after I bought a ten-dollar computer microphone, downloaded an instrumental, and tried to make my own song. It turns out freestyle, as they call it, was what I witnessed at my friend’s house that day. I remember trying this. My version sounded nothing like what I had heard days before.
I decided I would write something to record on the instrumental.
Looking back, my words were meaningless. They did not connect to anything about me, only to what I heard other artists talking about.
The Missing Link
This craft seemed to have ended here until I reached the age of nineteen. At a crossroads in my life, I wondered what came next?
I invested in some high-quality musical equipment. The recording started, and before I knew it, I was receiving support from my entire network of friends.
Then came opportunities to perform at different venues around the city.
These were certainly business schemes, not necessarily that someone found my music and wanted to sell tickets based on my talent.
It was after maybe the third show that someone I worked with at a Red Lobster asked me, what is your plan for the music? Yes, the seafood kitchen. This question surprisingly stumped me. This revealed that I had no plan, no big picture for this dream.
Maybe a month after this question, this person was in my home studio and we were creating a song.
What seemed to me as a fun way of expressing myself, this guy saw as an opportunity for business. What appeared to be a hobby with my friends, he saw as an opportunity to take before a much larger audience.
I spent all this time building the structure of the boat; he looked and saw that it was missing the sails.
A Movement is Born
A couple of months later, we recorded our first music video and were performing at events with other local artists. The first few performances were just us. No followers of ours showed up.
Then, finally, there was an opportunity at a performance for a larger crowd. We were going to open for someone I grew up listening to. It seemed like a big deal to me.
At this event, something different happened. My partner in the music business, prior to joining this adventure, had built a reputation in the clubs around the city. He had a large group of friends, each with unique personalities, who were collectively part of this reputation.
These people began showing up with us at the shows. Instead of only two people walking through the doors of the venue, there were around ten. These people were at home in the club. They understood the environment. The environment energized them, and they seemed to reflect that energy back into the environment.
This made the movement seem much larger than just two people showing up by themselves.
For the next year, nearly all these people showed up to every show. Every appearance radiated energy. My friends began joining the group, finding a home in the movement even though many of them did not make music.
This musical adventure proved to be more than I had ever expected.
The Unexpected Element
A highly pivotal point arrived in this journey.
My music partner challenged me. He said he was doing all the work, and I was not doing my part. He was right. I was enjoying all the moments of this journey without working to create value in the journey itself.
I wondered just how big this music dream of mine could be.
The change in mindset led to building my Twitter following to nearly 30,000 followers. The Twitter network led to a music manager finding us from Canada. This led to producers finding us who wanted to be part of the team.
A guy I went to school with just got back from college, having achieved a degree in music engineering. We now had an engineer.
It seemed like many of the things that had been missing at the beginning were now falling into place.
We had a team.
A House on Fire
However, something changed that was not apparent to us. Many members of the hype-crew withdrew from the shows. Before long, it seemed to be just my partner and me at the shows. A couple of loyal fans also followed.
The movement seemed to have lost its excitement.
The energy that the hype-crew brought was not only in themselves or the environment, but seemed to have also energized me.
I reevaluated this dream. Was this really what I wanted? Would being a famous and successful rapper give me the life I wanted?
Maybe a year later, I retired from the music industry.
Don’t get me wrong, I did not leave the music industry because it got hard. I consider the work it took to reach our peak was the hardest. The reason I retired was likely the same reason that many of the hype-crew did.
They no longer found a place to call home in the movement.
Making Sense of It All
Everything that appeared to be essential to a successful music group — the manager, producers, engineers, venues, etc. — proved to be important, but was most certainly not the lifeblood of the movement.
The lifeblood of the movement was the hype-crew. The people who felt like this was their movement, who showed up at the concerts which expanded our musical image.
The most essential part of the movement proved to be the people who found a home in it.
During this time without the hype-crew, of course, we were making songs. These were probably the best songs we made.
However, when we went to perform these songs, the energy wasn’t the same.
If we had had the hype-crew at its peak, at the same time all the other elements attached, I believe we would have achieved much better results in the industry.
So what made this musical adventure feel like home?
For the hype-crew, I believe the concerts were where they thrived. The energy that brought it to life was what they contributed. When the identity of the movement shifted towards the music business, it became harder to see where they fit.
This made me question whether I even belonged.
The hospitality was a key ingredient in the movement’s success.
The word hospitality seems out of place in this concept. Yet, what is finding yourself at home, if not a result of hospitality?
If you were to ask me during this time what a movement needed to be successful, I can guarantee this word would not have come from my mouth.
The interesting thing regarding this observation is that I don’t believe it applies only to a music career. I believe that this is an important aspect of every movement.
What happens at the workplace when it no longer feels like home? People look for different places to work.
What happens when somebody visits a church and receives poor hospitality? They likely feel that this church is not their home.
The same thing happens in families and friendships.
How Does This Concern Me?
If you were questioning whether you could relate to the topic of what I call a movement, we have seen how it is involved in many aspects of life. Maybe there is a better word for it, but this is the one that is especially true to my musical journey.
I am convinced that everyone is looking for a place to call home.
Through many of my adventures, such as music and chess, these people found me. Whether we are talking about managers and producers or coaches, people recognized something about me and what I was trying to do and wanted to be a part of it.
In both scenarios, I was still building the house with limited expertise. For someone to come along and bring their skills and tools to help me, that was priceless.
Think about the great people in history. What is one thing they all have in common? They didn’t do it by themselves. They found people knocking at their doors who had a place in what they were trying to accomplish and let them in.
Are your doors open or closed?