How Curren$y Played The Long Game With His Music Career

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How Curren$y runs his business

Most artists want career growth and they want it fast, sometimes to a fault. But this is where Curren$y is an outlier. From the jump, Spitta has set out to grow both his career and fanbase slow and steady. It’s why he’s stayed in the rap game for almost twenty years, is earning more money than ever, and has outlasted most of his peers who fizzled out years ago.

Curren$y and his longtime manager, Mousa, joined me on this week’s episode to explain how they zigged when others zagged. They talked about leaving Cash Money Records label to create their own, Jet Life. The two have grown the brand into a full-on enterprise that includes apparel, athlete management, products, and more verticals on top of the music label.

They have turned down more brand partnerships than they can remember, and even music festival appearances. They won’t say yes to a bad deal, no matter how big the bag is. We discussed these moves at length in our interview.

Grow like a balloon

Jet Life first got off the ground in 2009. Even back then, Mousa said Curren$y repeatedly talked about growing the label like a balloon. Blow air in it too fast and the balloon pops. But blow into it slowly, then the balloon inflates and stays inflated. That mirrors the growth path they wanted for themselves.

“Look at us, we’re still here,” Mousa said. “There’s a lot of people that came before us and during us who we blew up fast. But what happened? They’re not around anymore.”

TThat growth had to come authentically. Curren$y and Mousa were adamant about staying in their lane and not doing something that didn’t feel right — to them and the Jet Life fanbase. That meant turning down inauthentic TV appearances, sponsored posts on social media, and brand deals, like an air freshener to kill the smell of weed.

This is Curren$y. Why would he do a deal to kill the smell of weed? Come on.

For instance, authentic for Jet Life instead meant creating cannabis products or a nightclub in New Orleans. As Curren$y described it, Jet Life has a “six-burner stove” with different revenue sources, a luxury that allows them to turn down bad-fitting opportunities.

“[Mousa’s] whole thing was being able to survive if one thing fell down”, Curren$y said. “Even though the music drew the attention, the industry is fickle. You see people who rise and think they’re going to build a whole empire. They end up with a warehouse with shit no one wants.”

Touring as the pulse check

In the streaming era, touring is where most artists have made more bank. But for Curren$y, who started rapping in a completely different era in 2004, touring was always the lynchpin of his career.

Curren$y can remember not having the money to pay for beats. Instead, he’d use a Dr. Dre instrumental and release the song for free, hoping it would lead to people paying for his shows. Even now with the various revenue streams Jet Life has built, touring remains a cornerstone of their strategy.

“Never forget where this started,” Mousa said. “Never forget what created this lane for you...without the touring we wouldn’t have the pulse of the fans.”

Shows are how they gauge their fanbase. Attendance starts getting light? It’s back to the drawing board. Apparel sales slacking? Time to revisit clothing designs.

This is also why they prefer solo touring to music festival appearances. While Curren$y admits loving the big festival guarantees, that money is a means to an end. He puts money earned from festivals back into Jet Life, specifically the sports car dealership they own and operate.

Keeping up with the fans

At the height of the NFT craze during April 2021, Curren$y released an NFT-only EP “Financial District”, which also included an exclusive smoke sesh with him. Not to be confused as another celebrity NFT cash grab, Curren$y hoped the drop would bring his Lifers fanbase up to speed with the emerging technology.

“It wasn’t to increase the fanbase,” Curren$y said. “It was to make my listeners aware and make sure they aren’t left behind as far as having Jet Life representation.”

It’s an on-brand move for the pair considering they struck a deal with BitTorrent back in 2014. While most artists lashed out against the pirating software, Curren$y and Mousa, realizing that’s where their fans were, released a mixtape exclusively on the service.

“Things change, the world changes,” Mousa said. “You got to get involved where you fit in.”

Listen to our full conversation on the Trapital Podcast:

0:47 New Orleans folks are immune to heat

2:49 Mousa and Curren$y relationship began in 2005

7:25 Growing Jet Life business beyond a record label

11:33 Turning down non-authentic business opportunities

16:03 Emphasizing touring early in Curren$y’s career

19:20 Releasing an EP as an NFT

24:14 Curren$y’s take on streaming farms

28:36 Macro-view of Jet Life revenue streams

36:46 Touring is cornerstone of Jet Life business

39:44 Performing on own shows vs. music festivals

47:23 Festival money goes to sports car dealership

48:41 Curren$y’s partnership with NASCAR (and problems with Coca-Cola)

55:25 What’s the secret to a great artist-manager relationship?

TRANSCRIPTION

[00:00:00] Curren$y: You can always expand and try new things, but if it feels wrong on the core, then you’re setting yourself up. We never made a move like that. No matter what deal comes across the table ’cause he’s money first. But he’ll tell the people, the check writer like, man, just let me talk to bro. Because at the end of the day, he’s going to hear me say it’s half a million dollars, but he might say it’s a boring job and he might not want to do it.

[00:00:32] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I’m your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.

[00:00:54] Dan Runcie: Listen, you’re going to love today’s episode. It is with one of the most successful independent artists in the game and his longtime manager. We got Curren$y and we got Mousa. If you’ve been following Curren$y’s journey for a while, you know that he was originally on No Limit Records 20 years ago. He left the record label. He then went to join Young Money. He was a little early on the Young Money Train, but he ended up leaving the record label before Nicki and before Drake blew up and he started his own. He started Jet Life, and he’s been building up his career as an independent artist, and it’s been great to see how he has navigated both how he releases music and also how he approached his business overall. And that was a big focus of this episode. We talked about his strategy for releasing music, and Curren$y is someone that is very prolific in terms of the amount of music that he puts out, but it also gets him plenty of opportunities to be able to go on tour, to be able to have several other business ventures that they have through Jet Life and through other areas. We talked about what they’re doing in cannabis as well. We talked about the nightclub that they have, the apparel business, and a whole lot more. We also talked about a few partnerships that you may be surprised by, but I still think that fit well within the ethos for what Jet Life is and what Curren$y is trying to build. We even talked about some of the movie deals and opportunities that Curren$y had turned down. I don’t want to spoil it. It’s a really good one, but this was a really fascinating conversation, is also been great to just see how long these two have stuck together. If you’re a big fan of this podcast, these are the type of episodes that you come for. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here’s my chat with Curren$y and Mousa.

[00:02:41] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we’re joined by the duo themselves. We got Curren$y and we got Mousa here, the artist-manager combination. How are you guys doing?

[00:02:49] Curren$y: Man, we can’t complain. The weather is nice outside and it is been pretty bad out here in Orleans. It’s been a hundred degrees and raining every day, but right now it’s sunny, 86 degrees, you know what I’m saying? I got long sleeves on, top down, having a good day. I can’t complain.

[00:03:07] Dan Runcie: See, that’s the one thing about folks I know from New Orleans, like it could be 86 degrees and y’all are still in long sleeves. Y’all are still in hoodies.

[00:03:15] Curren$y: Well, it is, well, because it is the heat, we’re already adjusting. It’s just hot in here. So now we’ve gone more fashion-forward, bro. It’s like, just fuck it, bro. Wear what you want to wear because it’s still going to be 190 degrees no matter what. So just go for it. I don’t really condone that lifestyle unless you have a car. A lot of my younger brothers I see walking up and down the street, and they definitely look like they’re about to commit crimes because it’s a hundred degrees and they got on the hoodie and I’m, like, weary of, I’m like, hold on, you know what I’m saying, because, fuck, that don’t make no sense. You dressed for action. But if you are in the car, you are in the office, you are in the studio. That’s where that look really originated. People always tell me, II’m dressed like that forever, but it’s been because most of my life has been like tour bus, studio, even when it wasn’t me, I was like a little guy on Masterpiece bus. It was 60 degrees, you know what I’m saying? And these big mansions, it’s cold as shit. So I just grew acclimated to dressing like that. I think I might have spearheaded that. I honestly, I think that I may have spearheaded that, but what haven’t we spearheaded over here, you know?

[00:04:25] Dan Runcie: It’s true, especially folks at New Orleans, folks like y’all are trendsetters. And one of the things that I feel like sets y’all apart is that you’ve been doing this for so long, and you’ve been doing this for so long together. I mean, Mousa, you’ve been managing Curren$y now for, since ’05, right? I know you do ’em before, but you started managing, like, ’05, right?

[00:04:44] Mousa Hamdan: We’re friends before, but definitely since ’05, since he joined in with Lil Wayne, with Young Money, Cash Money. So I think that’s when he brought me on and asked me to come on as his manager.

[00:04:53] Curren$y: Yep. Yeah.

[00:04:54] Mousa Hamdan: And you know…

[00:04:55] Curren$y: As soon as there was business to manage.

[00:04:58] Mousa Hamdan: Right.

[00:04:58] Curren$y: You know, right? While I was just slinging t-shirts, like ordering 28 t-shirts on a month, pressing CDs upstairs at my apartment, that was easy to do. When it began to grow and I saw, like, my two homes wasn’t going to be enough to handle it, you know, what could I do but reach out to the one homie who I knew forever who don’t want to smoke no weed with me, who don’t want to get drunk with me, you know what I’m saying? Like, who’s just like totally, his high is the business, deals closed and stuff gone successfully is him having a drink, you know what I’m saying? So it worked. It works like that.

[00:05:36] Mousa Hamdan: Definitely. I like achieving goals. You know, I’m a goal seeker. And once you achieve one goal, set another one, you know? And that’s my inspiration is to see how big we could really take this Jet Life, how, you know, how big deal this will be, and how long we can make it last. I mean, I thought about this morning, I was talking to one of my other homies, I was like, we’ve been in this game a minute, bro. Like, and he was like, look, I’ve been home for a little while and y’all been doing this a long time. So I say, yeah, definitely, but we not done, you know. We’re nowhere near done. We really just starting, we really starting to grow even more now.

[00:06:12] Curren$y: That’s crazy to say that, and that’s really the truth, to be here in the game. Like, Jet Life, we’re like over a decade, and each year it just gets bigger. That’s really what you want. It’s not a big, hasn’t been just one big explosion. It’s a slow burn. But it is guaranteed. And we’ve always grown. A lot of times you see people struggling, like, not to lose ground in the game, you know, and stay relevant. And that’s never been a problem with us because we’ve been blessed to be able to, like, generate or, like, create our own world, you know what I’m saying? And the people who listen to our music or who dress, some people dress only in Jet Life apparel. And it is because they don’t give a fuck about nothing else, you know what I’m saying? They’ve had their time to see what the world had to offer, and they saw that ours was just uncompromised. So they lend themselves to it a hundred percent. And that’s been enough to sustain, like, the lifestyle that we have. And the people that support us, they like to pass by the Jet Life store just to see what cars we might have outside. So they continue to support us because now we’re going to park more and more shit. Like, they the ones who help us do it, you know? So it’s good. It’s good.

[00:07:27] Mousa Hamdan: It definitely is. It’s really a lifestyle, you know? I think it’s, you know, from the beginning I remember, Curren$y said in interviews as well as told me directly, like, you know, his vision of seeing how Jet Life and how he wanted to grow. He always said it was like a balloon. And I listened, I heard that, and I was like, he’s right. He’s like, you could either, you could blow air in it fast and it’s going to blow big and then it’s going to explode and it’s over. Or you could blow in it slow and it’s going to slowly blow.

[00:07:57] Curren$y: Yeah. Fucking right.

[00:07:58] Mousa Hamdan: Then you show the longevity. And that’s what we did. We’re blowing it slow.

[00:08:02] Curren$y: Yep.

[00:08:03] Mousa Hamdan: But look at us. We’re still here. There’s a lot of people that we saw that came before us and during us who we feel like, oh yeah, they got the light quick and they blew up fast. But then what happened? And you know, they’re not around no more.

[00:08:16] Curren$y: Something explodes, it ceases to exist.

[00:08:19] Mousa Hamdan: It’s done.

[00:08:20] Curren$y: I’ve never seen anything, you know what I’m saying, explode that still had it ever, you know?

[00:08:26] Dan Runcie: Right, oh yeah. You know, and I feel like with y’all, specifically, you’re able to see the trajectory. You’re able to see everything that you’ve accomplished, too, because I look at Jet Life, and it started as the imprint for your record label, but now you have your apparel, you also have the other businesses you have. How would you describe the current businesses? What are the current things under Jet Life right now?

[00:08:49] Mousa Hamdan: Well, we got, of course, like you said, it started with records, Jet Life Records. And then it went to, we started doing tour merch, which grew into Jet Life Apparel. We were in now Jet Life Athletics. So we started to do deals with managing athletes and growing that brand. Then of course, we’ve other stuff that’s not necessarily labeled Jet Life, but we’ve opened up a nightclub in New Orleans, so so that’s something that’s coming.

[00:09:16] Curren$y: We got a big footprint in the cannabis community. We got a couple of other startups, like a coffee shop and a cereal bar we’re going to launch. We already have two films out, so, I mean, if you want to say Jet Life Films is in existence, that is true. It’s so much stuff that we do, but the circle is so tight, like, nobody’s going to tell the other one. Like, bro, you realize what we doing because we are still in the midst of doing it. Like, an outside person would have to come in and really show us how many businesses and what’s all under the umbrella ’cause we really just wake up and try to, like, just make sure we make something happen, you know, every day. If you want to label it and put a name on it, then, it was news to me, right now just listening to how much stuff we have going on.

[00:10:04] Mousa Hamdan: We forgot Starting Line Hobbies.

[00:10:06] Curren$y: Yeah, we got hobby shop bro, like that. See? So the more you sit down…

[00:10:11] Mousa Hamdan: We forget some of the business. But they exist and they’re profitable, right?

[00:10:16] Curren$y: He’s got an auto body shop, it’s still in existence. That’s really where a lot of it comes from, his whole foray into it all was being able to survive if one thing fell down. Even though the music was the one that paved the way and drew the attention, the industry is fickle. So you see people like, we see them rise and you think they going to build this whole empire, they end up with a warehouse full of shit. They can’t move bobbleheads of themselves. Nobody wants t-shirts, nobody wants home furnishing. Nobody wants it, fucking goes that way, you know what I’m saying? And we’ve been blessed to like, now we got two or three warehouses, you know what I’m saying? But we’re moving the shit, you know. So it’s just about staying true and not, we never really tried to do too much, nothing outside of what felt right to us. You can always expand and try new things, but if it feels wrong on the core, then you’re setting yourself up. We never made a move like that. No matter what deal comes across the table ’cause he’s money first. But he’ll tell the people, the check writer like, man, just let me talk to bro. Because at the end of the day, he’s going to hear me say it’s half a million dollars, but he might say it’s a boring job and he might not want to do it even though it’s half a million dollars. So he’ll just check with me, you know what I’m saying? We probably go and do the ‘shit anyway ’cause it’s half a million dollars. But he checks with me because in my heart of hearts, I might want to say no, but I got a kid and shit.

[00:11:45] Mousa Hamdan: I’ll definitely ask him. Do you want to do this though?

[00:11:49] Curren$y: Yeah. And I got respect for him for doing that. The fact that he compromised his money mentality that asks me that much, gives me the strength to be able to say, you know what, fuck it, bro, you gave, I’ll give. I’m going to come and do this shit, you know what I’m saying? And then lo and behold everybody wins, you know?

[00:12:07] Dan Runcie: Yeah. What’s an example of something that you have turned down? Like, Mousa, ’cause it sounds like you’re the one that’s seeing the things and you’re thinking about, oh, this is the bag, but is this something that fits with the Jet Life lifestyle?

[00:12:18] Curren$y: There’s a lot of those, like, TV shit that’ll come across, you know what I’m saying? I hope that he knows, I don’t care. So he would say, I’m going to jump out in front of you, like, you don’t see because these people still come up with more and more ideas. And eventually, they might put, they might table something that we want to pick up. But we’ve slammed them because it’s like, bro, you know, just looking at something where they say, well, he can say it in his own words, but the way they phrase it makes me like, I’ll never put this in my own words, I don’t want to fucking do it. You know, just fuck it, you know what I’m saying? Or like post, they’ll try, you know, they’ll pay you for social media stuff just to say you like something or you can’t wait for something to fucking hit the theaters. And I’m like, you know what? Fuck no. I don’t want to say that. Because as soon as I post this, my fucking true audience is going to say, you know, how much did you get, bro? They’ll say shit like that. I don’t want to play them like that.

[00:13:15] Mousa Hamdan: Yeah. I think we’ve known each other long enough and I know his answers on some things. Some things I won’t even bring to him.

[00:13:22] Curren$y: For sure.

[00:13:23] Mousa Hamdan: You know, we had some stuff like, you know, I’ll be honest with you, like, you know, media companies that come and say, well, you know, let me post this on your page or do this, that, and the others, and it’s clickbait. And he was like, nah, bro, I don’t want my fans clicking on that.

[00:13:37] Curren$y: Yeah, I don’t want that. I’m the one who have to answer for this shit.

[00:13:41] Mousa Hamdan: I don’t care how much it is. And the fans aren’t crazy. They’ll be like, Curren$y, that shit was clickbait, bro.

[00:13:46] Curren$y: They’re like, what? Or you had to, bro? Like, I have all that kind of shit. So I’m just like, let’s save the company who wants to pay us the embarrassment of when they realized this was not organic and it didn’t cross over. Like, now they won’t want to spend any money. They may not want to spend money with us later on, on something that might actually work, you know? So it’s just better to just say, you know, it is better to protect yourself that way. You end up in the long run, you still make that money. A few times people have double-backed because they realize, you know what, that was kind of lame. I can’t believe we asked them to do that shit. And then they come back with something way dope after they’ve researched me, you know? ‘Cause immediately you do a Google search and you are like, all right, cool. We’ll get him to do the new weed spray. Let’s get him to endorse this new air freshener that kills the weeds, man. Like, bro, the fuck? Like, I’m not even living like that. I’m actually a boss and I don’t have to conceal the weed smell in my fucking life, you know what I’m saying? Like, I’m not promoting shit.

[00:14:46] Dan Runcie: I’m even come to you with a deal like that though, knowing you.

[00:14:50] Mousa Hamdan: Yeah, yeah. They’ll bring all type of deals, bro. They’ll try and get you out of character if you let them. You know, they’ll push the button.

[00:14:57] Curren$y: But it feels like trolling a lot of the time. Like, are they trying to see if I would do this, you know what I’m saying?

[00:15:03] Dan Runcie: Right.

[00:15:03] Mousa Hamdan: I don’t think they understand that he’s not saying he’s true to his lifestyle. He is actually true to it. He’s not going to do anything that’s going to bend.

[00:15:11] Curren$y: It’s not about money. We got enough pots on the stove. It’s a six-burner stove. And we have pots with food and all of them are cooking, you know what I’m saying? So when somebody comes with the bullshit, it’s like, all right, let’s just go dip in this, right, quick. You know, like I I’ve done that with music, when I feel like, it is just sometimes I get a little down on myself just based on the climate of music, you know? And I’ll fall back and maybe I’ll just come up here and we’ll just make a whole collection of clothes at that time, you know? And we were able to keep the lights on and shit through the apparel. If I said fuck it from here on end, you know what I’m saying? But it just so happens, like, I get my win and it is fun again, and I want to do it. You know, so we’re lucky as shit.

[00:15:59] Dan Runcie: That makes sense, yeah. It’s a good position to be in, right? You understand your brand, you understand what makes sense. You’re only going to do certain types of deals. And I feel like this goes back to the way that you just go about this industry overall, right? You were early in terms of, let me put out my music and if people get it for free, they may get it for free, but let me go make the money on tour. Let me go make the money with these other business interests.

[00:16:24] Curren$y: Yeah, because I mean, it’s, shrinkage. It didn’t matter how much music, like, what you do, how much you put behind the budget and what the labels do and all this shit. These people were just, our music was being stolen. This was during the time of, like, manufacturing jewel cases and all this shit that the company had to do, so that affected how much money they could give you. And then at the end of the day, everybody had the album a week before any damn, you know? So you can’t feed your family like that. But what you can do, and what I did do is, and also when I did that, it was out of necessity. I didn’t have no money to pay everybody for beats. But I could download Dr. Dre’s instrumental for free. And as long as I don’t sell this bitch, he’s not coming for me, you know? I’m going to put it out for free. People going to love it. They’re going to want me to come and wrap the motherfucker and they’re going to pay however much it costs, you know, so that’s how we did it. You know, that’s just, like utilizing your natural resources. Like, what’s growing in the land? Like, what’s there? Just looked around and worked off what’s growing out of the ground when you don’t have the funds to do it. Like, you know, and you’re creating business. Like, that’s all we’ve ever done. And the more resources and the more materials we gain, you know, from gaining leverage or going up a level, then we start another joint, you know? Cause we got more to start with, ‘Cause we, we did it with zero. So now it’s insane. Like, we’re just throwing darts at the board, like, fuck it, let’s try and start a speedboat racing team tomorrow, you know what I’m saying? Like, fuck, whatever is whatever you want to do. And I’ve seen people do it. I’ve seen Master P do it because he had, like, with the bread to try it, you got to go for it. But what you had, but his circle is, was so large at the time with no limit. Like, first crack some ideas, not the best ideas, but you got love for everybody, so you going to roll the dice with everything they come with. You going to try, see, but what’s working for us is we don’t have that many people, like, around, you know what I’m saying? Like, as far as where the love is, it is right, it is in the room, so we not going to bounce. So if we try each other’s ideas, one of ’em going to work ’cause it was just to, you got 19 people in here trying to, you know, tell you what to do and you want to keep everybody happy. You try, you going to end up trying to, like, start a golf cart company and, like, do spacewalks and sell reptiles and wild pets and then just doing everything that they ask you to do. And some of it’s not going to work.

[00:18:59] Dan Runcie: And I feel like with that, too, is just understanding your brand, understanding what’s effective. And I know last year you had released an EP as an NFT, and I know this was the time when a lot of people were first discovering what an NFT is and things like that. What was that like? Because I know that was something that you didn’t necessarily need to do to reach your fan base and do everything you wanted to do.

[00:19:21] Curren$y: It wasn’t to increase the fan base. It was to make our listeners aware that we are in touch with what’s going on, and we are going to make sure that you guys aren’t left behind as far as having Jet Life representation because we know you wear this shit every day. We know this is all you’re listening to. So if the whole world converted to the metaverse, and everybody just wore headsets and live like that, how will you survive if your life is Jet Life? We got to give you something in this shit too. Rather we understand it or not, we have to learn to understand it, to become a part, to take care of y’all out there because it’s real, you know? No matter how imaginary it may seem, it’s real, you know what I’m saying? It’s intangible, but it’s a real thing. So we had to be able to provide something for our people ’cause they were there, you know? You look out of touch and, like, not sharp, not able to move, you know, then people wash their hands of you. Other companies won’t want to collaborate with us that much because it won’t appear that we are in the know, where if you have a big company that’s not doing anything in that world, they’re like, oh shit, look at Jet Life, well, let’s just fuck with them. Let’s put some bridge in them because they can handle this for us, blah, blah, and that be our representation ’cause we’re far too big to even try to learn and far too big and far too old to even try to learn that shit, you know what I’m saying? So once they saw we did, that makes us look, you know, mobile, you know what I’m saying?

[00:20:51] Mousa Hamdan: We have to exist in the future. You know, at the end of the day, we got to do what we have to do to let everybody, like he said, we’re in the know, you know, we’re aware of what’s going on, what’s coming, what’s worth getting involved with, what’s not.

[00:21:05] Curren$y: And we going to ride with y’all because if it crashes, all us, then it did it off of us. You know what I’m saying? Fuck it. We going to roll too.

[00:21:12] Mousa Hamdan: And even back a long time ago, I don’t know if Curren$y even remember this, we did a deal back then with BitTorrent that we released a mixtape on BitTorrent, and it was ’cause the relationship we had with BitTorrent, they wanted to move away from everybody feeling that BitTorrent was a piracy site, and they wanted to like, well what if we give away something that we actually want shared?

[00:21:38] Curren$y: Yeah.

[00:21:38] Mousa Hamdan: And I remember we did that, I think we had like 156 million shares.

[00:21:45] Curren$y: Yeah.

[00:21:45] Mousa Hamdan: I told the record label that we were in a deal with at the time and they was like, nah, I got to see that. They didn’t believe it. Well, like, what? Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to believe it. And that’s why we’re not with y’all now, because y’all don’t believe the future. Y’all believing what y’all were taught to believe.

[00:22:05] Curren$y: Yep.

[00:22:05] Mousa Hamdan: Rather than having your own mind and realizing things change, the world changes. And you just got to be in the mix. You got to know what’s going on. You got to get involved where you fit in.

[00:22:15] Curren$y: You got to appear agile, man.

[00:22:18] Dan Runcie: Stories like that, I feel, is what set y’all apart because if you think back to that time, no one wanted anything to do with BitTorrent or even LimeWire, BearShare, all these places where you could stream music and I get it. It was all the piracy, all the copyright. But at some point, someone asked to be able to say, all right, this is where folks are at. This is how they’re getting our music. How could we get our music onto these places? Or how could we just think about it in a different way that isn’t just no, don’t do that?

[00:22:46] Curren$y: Watch it come all the way back to the beginning because we stayed true the entire time, that company that needed to wash his hands and kind of rebirth themselves, needed to stand next to something that was pure the entire time so that they could get some of our life, you feel me? Like, that was the way that shit worked. Their name was so sullied that it was like, okay, as far as music is concerned, people know Jet Life will not falter. They won’t fold. They don’t go for fucking the dangling carrot. So if we fuck with them, then they would know, like, well, Jet Life wouldn’t fuck with us if we were really this pirate fucking factory. So it made everything, you know, legitimate. You know, we saw good in them, so it was cool, yeah.

[00:23:34] Dan Runcie: Yeah. It’s interesting too, to make me think about the current thing that people are pushing back on, whether it’s streaming farms, you know, people trying to drive up these streams and stuff like that. What’s your take on that? Because I feel like, for you, something like that’s almost irrelevant because you’re not in this to, like, sell your music, so you don’t care about charts or probably any of that stuff.

[00:23:52] Curren$y: I can’t blame them because it’s not like streams, not like that shit pay you a lot of money, you know? I’m saying it takes a lot of streams to make, like, you know, substantial money. It takes a lot of people. A lot of artists don’t even understand, you know what I’m saying? Like, the motherfucker call me like, bro, you did a million streams in the day. Like, so what do you think? I’m going to buy a yacht tonight, like, that was worth $12,000, bro, you know what I’m saying? That was worth 12 grand. I was like, don’t trip. So I know they need those machines and shit to try and run those streams up. That could be check fraud. Like, they’re trying to fucking, they’re riding the clock, like, here man, we did 80 zillion billion streams in Apple music. Here’s the paperwork. Fucking pay us, man. It could be that, it could be, we need to fucking this shit up so we could get a deal from some other people, maybe Pepsi Cola will reach out to us because they think we going to bring ’em all this attention and fuck them if we can’t. The check’s already here. You know, everybody’s hustling though. It’s not righteous, you know, but none of this shit is righteous. And that’s kind of the ceiling that we set on ourselves by trying to, like, be legit, you know, it’s not like that, you know what I’m saying? So I don’t trip off the stream machines and people with the padded streams or, because I understand why they do it. We’re blessed to not have to exist that way. And on the other hand, we do a decent amount of streaming because I put out a good amount of music, so I’m not going to do a million every month on one project like these other dudes, like, dude, some people only got to come out two times a year because that project will stream a million fucking streams a month every month all year. But what I will do is probably drop every month and still make it that way, you know what I’m saying? Or drop every two months, you know, and I’m still making that same bread. We just work harder, you know, because we’re not doing a lot of the extra shit.

[00:25:56] Mousa Hamdan: It don’t hurt that he likes to record and what you’re going to do?

[00:25:59] Curren$y: Yeah, for sure.

[00:26:00] Mousa Hamdan: You going to hold all the music? The music’s going to sound old. He was writing about a ’96 expedition, right? You got to put it out, bro. Next year, that thing’s old.

[00:26:11] Curren$y: Yep.

[00:26:12] Mousa Hamdan: So at the end of the day, it don’t hurt that he likes to record and the fans like to consume the music. They like the new drops. They don’t feel like they’re oversaturated with his music. They want more.

[00:26:23] Curren$y: Yeah. The only time we hear that word is from, like, somebody outside. It’s like when I’m doing, like, a press run and the people who had to Google me while we were on the elevator and we get up there to interview me, and that’s like some shit they say like, so do you think you know about oversaturation? Like, fuck no, I don’t think about oversaturation. I only think about my folks, like, you know what I’m saying? That’s you. Y’all don’t know. Y’all just tired of saying that Curren$y is coming out again with a project. I’m just tired of saying that. It shows up on y’all fucking thing. You have to mention it. You’re just tired of saying this shit.

[00:26:58] Dan Runcie: That’s them trying to put you into a box. That’s them trying to put you into what they know. But like a lot of people that serve their base, you know what they want and you are giving them exactly what they want.

[00:27:08] Curren$y: Well, I mean, we interact with and we’re around motherfuckers that come to this store all day, sometimes not even, to buy a shirt, like to be like, bro, when is this dropping? Like, you know, to play something for Instagram, when is this coming out? So we got our finger on the pulse of what’s keeping us alive. Like, we check our posts often, you know.

[00:27:28] Dan Runcie: For sure. Mousa, I want to talk to you a bit about the business of Jet Life and everything you have going on. And I know we talked a little bit about how touring is a big place where you all are getting a lot of the money, but what does the breakdown look like from a high level? Like, how much of the money you all have coming in is from touring compared to the other businesses and then compared to streaming and the music itself? Like, from like a percentage?

[00:27:53] Mousa Hamdan: Well, I think, of course, since pandemic, the touring has slowed down. We haven’t done anything, but I don’t think, for a while, I didn’t think the people were ready for a tour, you know, because different cities still had different COVID restrictions and vaccination card restrictions, which would limit the fans of coming to the venues. So it wasn’t a good look. I spoke to some other artist manager, who is like, yeah, he’s on the road, but he’s kind of depressed because shows are not selling out. He feels like he lost it. And it’s not that, it’s just that the environment wasn’t for that. You were going out there too fast looking for the money. The good thing with us was, like he said earlier, that if one thing wasn’t doing what we wanted, we had something else that was doing it. So, crazily, the apparel skyrocketed during the pandemic.

[00:28:47] Curren$y: And I was the one who thought we needed, I thought we had to stop.

[00:28:51] Mousa Hamdan: Yeah.

[00:28:51] Curren$y: I was like, nobody is going to buy a fucking hoodie.

[00:28:55] Mousa Hamdan: He was like, bro…

[00:28:56] Curren$y: There’s no toilet paper. There’s no fucking lights on in the store. Who the fuck is going to order a shorts, and fuck it, we’re selling out of shit.

[00:29:05] Mousa Hamdan: Shit was flying.

[00:29:06] Curren$y: I was watching the news. There’s just one, like, who are these people that are buying? Are they aware that this shit’s even happening? Do they know they have nowhere to wear it to? And they’re just posting the shit in the crib, in our brand new drop. Like, just fucking kicking it. The love was real, and they kept us alive, bro. I bought like fucking three or four cars while the shit was locked down. You couldn’t even, we couldn’t even go to dealerships, and I was buying cars because people were buying fucking sweatshirts. I’m sorry. I’m going to go back here. Y’all continue with business talk.

[00:29:42] Mousa Hamdan: Definitely.

[00:29:43] Curren$y: You know I’m saying? He knows, he knows, he knows.

[00:29:47] Mousa Hamdan: So I think when he drops some music, there’s a jump in streams, you know what I’m saying? There’s a bigger check coming, you know, apparel, same thing. We drop some, a new line or a new drop, it’s bam. You know, everybody wants that, and depending on what it is. But, you know, we tend to drop a good little bit of apparel. So I think now apparel and the music kind of coexist, and both have their times, that one makes a little more than the other and vice versa. The other businesses that are fresh starts are creating a revenue. Of course, we don’t expect the nightclub business to make the money that the record label makes, but it’s an addition. So it is always like our thought of keep putting in the pot. Eventually, that pot will get full or, like he says in the songs, we’re trying to fill up a safe. Once we fill that safe up, we just got to get another safe. We’re not going to empty that safe. We’re going to get another safe. Now we got to fill that one up, you know? So if, you know, at the end of the day, you know, it is Jet Life, we’re going to spread our wings, we’re going to see what we can put our hands on that will create a revenue and at the same time, sticking to our morals and beliefs of what we feel like Jet Life should stand for. A lot of people don’t know, Jet Life, at the beginning, Jets was just an acronym. Just enjoy this shit. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re enjoying it. Or like I tell people, Jet Life has just enjoy this life. So that’s where we’re at with it, steadily growing, steadily trying to get involved in everything that makes sense. You know, If it doesn’t make sense, we leave it alone. So the revenue streams, like I said, it kind of goes back and forth. Apparel definitely is a world of its own now. Apparel is great. You know, we moved from, originally, like you said, with touring. That’s when I realized that the apparel was so good because at touring, we were selling so much what I consider tour merch, you know, which is just the name of the show, the city’s on the back, a picture of Curren$y on the shirt. You know, all the fans want it. They’re like, man, they really love this shit. They’re buying it.

[00:31:56] Curren$y: That was just a tour shirt.

[00:31:58] Mousa Hamdan: So then I was like, well, damn, I’d rather wear our own clothes when I want to go to the nightclub, when I go out to eat, or if I just want to hang around. I don’t want to wear a tour shirt all the time, but I want to wear something.

[00:32:12] Curren$y: And I didn’t want to wear no shirt with my name on it.

[00:32:15] Mousa Hamdan: Right. He doesn’t want pictures of himself.

[00:32:17] Curren$y: I don’t want no shirt with me on it, no shirt with my name on it ’cause like, who the fuck am I? You know what I’m saying? Who am I, you know, to even do that?

[00:32:27] Dan Runcie: Right. ‘Cause that’s more like merch, right? And I didn’t know that people use merch, but like, no, y’all have a clothing apparel.

[00:32:33] Mousa Hamdan: Tour merch. And then we changed it to apparel. Apparel, which you wear on a daily thing, every morning you wake up and you put apparel. You were sleeping in apparel. So we had to reach that. And then every couple of months we just think, what else can we make? What else? ‘Cause you know, we started with just t-shirts, you know, then went to hoodies and long sleeves. And then we’re like, we got to start getting bottoms and we got to get hats and you know, so now we’re, you know, building into accessories and whatever else people may like. And at the same time as well, like I said, we test fitted on ourselves. If it’s something that we don’t want to wear, I’ll always show him stuff like, look, these are some of the new designs. This is some of the stuff that you talked about with me that we created. Now it’s on paper. Do you like it? If you like it, let’s push the button. Let’s go with it. If it’s something you would wear. ‘Cause at the end of the day, if he doesn’t wear it, if I don’t wear it, if the other artists on Jet Life don’t wear it…

[00:33:33] Curren$y: It will sit in the warehouse.

[00:33:35] Mousa Hamdan: Why would we expect a fan or a fellow lifer to wear it? They don’t want to wear something that you don’t even want to wear yourself. So if we don’t want to create nothing that we don’t like. You know, and that’s just, I think our business model with everything we do. We don’t want to do anything that we don’t agree with. We don’t want to do anything that goes against what we stand for.

[00:33:58] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And the point again about the merch, too, I think Curren$y, you had this line in maybe it’s an interview, I think you said, but it’s like, no one’s calling you Sean John merch, right? As you’re telling Diddy like, oh yeah, I like your merch.

[00:34:12] Curren$y: Right. You know what I’m saying? And just, we have to stand on that, you know? And I think we have for a long time, and it made people change the perception of it, you know. Before, like, just, the fact that we stand behind it like that, it made people buy it who maybe weren’t even thinking about it because it made people want to look at it a little more to not like it, you know, like people came in to find like what was wrong. And then it’s like, well, shit’s just actually, you know, I’m going to buy the shirt, you know what I’m saying? Like, they were coming to point out why it was just merch and it wasn’t, you know?

[00:34:47] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Yeah. One other question for you, Mousa, about touring itself and just doing live shows. Because of how well the apparel’s going right now and how the business overall may have changed since the pandemic, do you ever think that you’ll go back to doing the same number of shows that you were doing before the pandemic because of how much success you have with everything else? Do you think it’ll scale back a bit at all?

[00:35:10] Mousa Hamdan: In my mind, I’ve always lived thinking never forget where this started from and never forget what created this lane for you to get into. Without the touring, I never knew how much the merch sold. And I noticed that with a lot of artists, there’s a lot of artists that don’t sell merch, and they don’t know the money that they’re missing. So without the touring, without the shows that we do, like he said, we put a finger on the pulse of the fans. Well, we’ll know who’s coming to these shows, you know, and you can see when, all right, well, the shows are getting a little light, so what is it we’re doing wrong? There’s something that we’re missing. Same thing with the apparel. When sales are a little low then I’m like, well, what are we doing that we used to do better? Or what are we missing? Are we getting laid back? Are we feeling like it just is what it is now? But being involved in it like that, I think, keeps us on with whatever else we’re doing ’cause it’s going to keep telling us, like, this is the pulse of the people. This is what you’re doing. So I think we’ll always do tours. Maybe we’re not, you know, one time we did, I think it was 60 shows in 70 days, which was crazy.

[00:36:23] Curren$y: 63.

[00:36:24] Mousa Hamdan: Yeah, it was, yeah, crazy. Show every night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And they’re like, whoa, when is the break, bro? Like, when are we? So I don’t think we’ll do that. But we’re going to stay out there, you know, as long as the people want to see, and he’s got fresh music that he wants to perform. And you know, he’s an artist, I think, that feeds off the energy, you know. And if the crowd doesn’t have the energy, he’s like, why am I here? Why am I performing for these people? They don’t really want to see me because the energy is not there. So as long as we’re feeling the energy, then I think we’re there. Hopefully, I don’t see it going down no time soon. You know, we’re going to keep doing whatever it is that allows us what the universe puts for us to do, you know? And we’re just going to be there.

[00:37:08] Dan Runcie: How do you look at doing your own shows versus doing festivals? Do you have preferences? I feel like for an artist like you, your own shows where your people are going to be at, right?

[00:37:18] Curren$y: Yeah, bro. This is a whole other show. Don’t do it. We love, we love, we love festival checks. If I had to pick, I like, you know, me at the House of Blues. I know exactly that the people who are in there, like, are there for what we going to do, you know what I’m saying? The festival, I’ve been blessed to be a person that you kind of, you can’t get around me in the game, you know what I’m saying? So when you don’t fuck with me, people speak out to you. You look stupid, you know what I’m saying? You look crazy. So people put me on shit, like just, no, we got to have him on this festival. We got to put him on this. We got to put him on this, you know what I’m saying? And my core people are there, but they’re surrounded by people who are, like, waiting for like the next person to come out and like spit fire, you know what I’m saying? And walk on the crowd, pop, you know, like, I can’t do it. I’ll never do it, you know? So I’m like, I don’t want to put my listeners through it because and they’re in there like, shit, man. There’s, like, a kid who kept, like, elbowing me, you know what I’m saying? Like, some of my listeners are, like, there’s always somebody to put me to the side, like, yo, I’m 51, my nigga, like, this is the shit I’ll listen to. So them, them dudes don’t, they don’t want that. Those ladies, like, who pull me to the side, like, boy, look, you know, I could be… I’m like, Yeah, you don’t have time for, you know, for that. So I like to do just my thing. But the festival checks go directly to the sports car dealerships. Like, those are the checks that get you off the lot though. So, you know, you’re being a fool not to do it, you know? And that’s just business.

[00:39:03] Mousa Hamdan: The checks are good, yes, but I think as well…

[00:39:08] Curren$y: He makes sense with this. I know what he coming with this, but I’m going to tell you, they’re coming to business. He makes sense.

[00:39:12] Mousa Hamdan: Sometimes, I honestly, in a lot of things that we do, I always tell him, I think he underestimates his reach, you know, and he’s too humble to the point of, nah, bro, like, they’re not really here for me and this, that, and the other. Now, I’ll be honest with you, we had one festival show. I was a little worried. We got on stage. He wasn’t on stage. He was backstage, so he didn’t know nothing was going on. I literally walked to the DJ. I said, bro, this is probably our last festival ’cause it was like, there was literally 10 people in front the stage. I said, bro, if he gets out here and there’s 10 people out here, he’s liable to walk off stage, bro, so listen to me. The intro started and it looked like a rush. Like, I didn’t know who. They had about 5,000 people or better rush to the stage. And I like, whoa, that’s more like it. Then he came out, he didn’t see the dead part. He saw that part. He was like, oh, my people are here. They’re here. They showed up. They showed up. I’m like, you just don’t know. They really did show up ’cause they wasn’t here five minutes ago.

[00:40:22] Curren$y: They just showed up.

[00:40:23] Mousa Hamdan: Bro, but then that’s understanding the festivals. You got six stages.

[00:40:28] Curren$y: Yeah.

[00:40:29] Mousa Hamdan: They’re trying to catch everybody.

[00:40:30] Curren$y: I was posting one time, there’s a way to do it, you know what I’m saying? As long as you are vocal about what time you go on, your people will navigate through to get there for you, you know what I’m saying? But you also, you got the people who’re waiting for somebody else ’cause I’m like, it’s a gift and the curse, ’cause, like, I’m, like, the most known unknown. So it’s, like they know they can’t put me on at fucking one o’clock, you know what I’m saying? So then when you put me on at, like, eight, and then there’s, like, whoever the fucking, whoever name was written this big on the flyer, this guy’s coming after me, all right. The kids who are waiting for this guy are, like, have been pressed against the barricade for hours, like since 11:00 AM. When I come out there with my low-impact workout, like they’re fucking dying, like looking at me and I’m like, I get it. Don’t trip. I fuck with this guy’s music too. He’ll be out here in a minute, and I hope he does a backflip on top of you when he does, you know what I’m saying? Like, that shit kind of fuck with me because I’m delivering a real message. Like, every word I write, like, I mean it. So I really don’t want to say it sweating to a person who’s like this, like on the barricade, just like, bro, please stop. We get it. You like Chevys, you want us all to get rich? Fucking shut up. We want to fucking rap about drugs. Where’s the next guy? So that shit kind of make you not want to do it. But then this guy, fucking, he’s also the person who says this like, okay, you also woke some people up to the music you make. Then there’s always, like, when I get done, the people who work the festival, the grounds, are, like, bro, I never heard this shit, but this was real music. Like, I couldn’t understand nobody else’s words, you know what I’m saying? This is fucking good. So I’m like, well, that’s cool. I do leave out there with more listeners than I did, you know what I’m saying? It might be 12, it might be 150. He going to count every dollar for each one via stream, so I understand where he comes from with that. But I always like, I say it to myself sometimes, and sometimes when it gets too heavy to me, I say to the people around me, I’m like, bro, I’m actually the only one who fucking have to go and do that shit. Like, I get it. We all here, we all fucking supporting, but they’re not looking at you, like, get the fuck out. And you got to do this shit for 45 minutes, you know what I’m saying? Sure. There’s some people who are enjoying it, but the motherfucker who’s right in front of you is dying, and you have to continue to have a good time. Like, that shit is like being a fucking Disney World animatronic or, being like a Chuck E. Cheese thing. Like, that’s a rough time for me for sure. But it works, you know? That’s anybody’s job.

[00:43:27] Dan Runcie: It’s a balance, right?

[00:43:28] Curren$y: You know, a hundred percent love any fucking gig that you have, any job you have, bro. I’m sure everybody at NBA, that was their dream, to go to the NBA. Some of those days sucked though for those dudes, you know what I’m saying? So it ain’t always going to be the shit. The situation overall is one that I wouldn’t trade for the world.

[00:43:48] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And you mentioned too that the money that you’re getting from the festivals is going to the sports car dealership. Can we talk a little bit about that? How’s that business set up and how’s that been going?

[00:44:01] Curren$y: Oh, well, me and Mousa, we’ve always been kind of into, like, bringing cars back to life, restoring things, and shit. But I’ve been holding on ’em. But as of late, we’re building a stable of vehicles to kind of release onto the public, but it’ll be like a collection, the same way we come out with clothes. There’ll be like six vehicles put up for sale at one time that we cultivate and put together. We putting together a BMW, a few vintage sports car that we putting together. We’re going to roll ’em all out at one time, you know what I’m saying? So I expect them all to be gone, like, within the week. I expect it to be like shoes. Like, I expect motherfuckers to try it and everybody will blow. You know, everybody try their hands at the shit we do. So another motherfucker with a bigger audience and shit will try to do the same thing, but you know, who cooked that shit up first.

[00:44:52] Mousa Hamdan: Okay. They know, They know where they got the idea from.

[00:44:56] Curren$y: Yeah, they know, too, so it don’t matter.

[00:44:59] Dan Runcie: Speaking of cars and trendssetting, I know you got a partnership with NASCAR as well, and I feel like there’s another thing, too, where not a lot of hip hop artists are doing those deals, but we are just seeing the way things are trended now. Everyone will be following to that. And you got the Jet Life cup series. All right, let’s talk about it.

[00:45:16] Curren$y: Yeah, man. Yeah, man. Well, yeah. People of any other nationality other than the original rebel down home boys were not involved in NASCAR and they fucking, they had it that way. They built it that way, executive-wise, it’s not like that anymore. Now, you know, doors have been broken down, kicked in, and open-minded. People are now there, and it’s made it more accessible for fans. I was shocked when I went that I saw like groups of different people, I don’t want to just say black people, just different people in general because the other side of it, the way it was, they weren’t picking what nationality or what people they didn’t want, they didn’t want nothing else, but what the fuck they had, you know? So it’s way different now in all aspects. It’s not just minorities selling nachos. They driving the cars. They are the ones like turning the wrenches and making sure shit is right. They got headsets on, they out there doing the real thing. And I brought one of my younger homies with me, it blew him away. He’s at school for engineering, and he was just, he was nervous for us to even be out there. I made a few small jokes to my friends when we first got there based on the appearance and how it looked. But it really wasn’t like that once you got down into the meeting. And I read on social media, like I read a few comments. There were some people who were not excited about our presence. There’s some people who weren’t into the collaboration. I saw one thing under a video that I was so sad ’cause I was like, I hope my mom don’t see it. Because the motherfucker was like, what is he coming to steal? And I was like, damn, if my mama sees that, she’ll probably cry, you know what I’m saying? Like, it’ll take a minute for me to get her over that shit. But what are you going to do? You know what I’m saying? This shit, you can’t blame the behavior ’cause it was taught a long time ago. Like, they didn’t pop out like that. That’s what that motherfucker told him to do, you know what I’m saying? And what we doing is playing the hand and telling the people who are receptive and the new people, the younger generation, like, it could go this way instead, you know what I’m saying? Like, we were up in all the suites and eating NASCAR food, you know, and actually, I’m going to say this, I was a little bummed with the NASCAR because we couldn’t get a Coca-Cola badge on our jersey. We wanted to have it because the race that day was actually Coke Zero, Coke Zero 400, all right. So, when they originally had the design meeting for the package, they included Coca-Cola logo because that was the race, you know, that’s when it was coming up. And I think like they did the same thing, like, whoever is involved with the collaborations just did a little brief overview of who I was or what I was about, and they’re like, oh, no. So like, that kind of fucked me up.

[00:48:17] Mousa Hamdan: They’ll be back though. They’ll be back.

[00:48:19] Curren$y: Yeah. But you know, like, I was like, well this still, you know, shit is still hard, you know? But with time, with time, yeah. And I don’t know. And then, and I didn’t like the you got gang with you. I heard over there, I’m sorry.

[00:48:32] Mousa Hamdan: Oh, yeah.

[00:48:32] Dan Runcie: That’s from fans or was that from NASCAR?

[00:48:35] Curren$y: No, no.

[00:48:35] Mousa Hamdan: Coke exec.

[00:48:36] Curren$y: Just one of the brass at Coca-Cola. And I drank a lot of Coca-Cola, so I really do need to stop, but for health and maybe for business, because motherfucker was like, to the representative from NASCAR who was showing us to where we were going to go to sit down, like, in the suite. He’s like, oh, you got a gang with you. And I was just like, damn, like. I’m sure maybe I’m looking at it with a microscope, you know.

[00:49:01] Dan Runcie: But still though, you can’t say that, yeah.

[00:49:04] Curren$y: I really don’t know, I just don’t know. I just was on the fence. I thought about it a lot. I think about it.

[00:49:09] Dan Runcie: But like, they wouldn’t say that if, like, Jason Aldean walked up in there with a group of folks.

[00:49:13] Curren$y: You got a lot of people with you, you know I’m saying? It wasn’t like he said the gang’s all here. If he said the gang’s all here, that would not have hit me like that. People say that the gang’s all here, that doesn’t mean that you got a street gang here.

[00:49:29] Mousa Hamdan: Right.

[00:49:29] Curren$y: But, whoa, you got a gang with you.

[00:49:33] Mousa Hamdan: He could have said, Hey fellas and just kept it moving.

[00:49:36] Curren$y: Yeah.

[00:49:36] Mousa Hamdan: How y’all doing guys?

[00:49:38] Curren$y: Yeah.

[00:49:38] Mousa Hamdan: And you didn’t have to make conversation with us. You were just passing.

[00:49:41] Curren$y: It felt like it was a Chappelle show skit because it could have been where keeping the real goes wrong. Because I was like, half step, like, trying to see if I could make eye contact with one of my friends who felt like maybe that was wrong and I had support in, like, hey man, like, what? But it could have went way south. Like, there could be no more NASCAR ’cause shit if we could, would’ve did that. You know, we just might not have the Coca-Cola on the next one. Or maybe we will, maybe they’re like, oh, shit, man. We didn’t mean that. I thought I did say that gang’s all here. Let’s put a badge on the fucking next jacket, you know, it might work that way. And that’s business and that’s why we’re here talking, you know? And and that’s why it it pays to be true to yourself within your business. And if your circle is small, it’s easier for you to be honest and not worry about if something sounds stupid or anything because, like, we have a yin and a yang, like, you know what I’m saying? Like, that’s what makes it work.

[00:50:37] Dan Runcie: Right. And I think that’s a good note to close things out. And I want to get your thoughts on this question because as you started with the beginning, y’all have been together for a while, even in this conversation, we can see that chemistry between the two of you, that yin and the yang, you understand each other. What do you think is the secret for having the artist and manager that just stay with each other? ‘Cause there’s so many times that, either other artists or other managers that have been on this show and they’re like, oh, yeah, you know, so and so fired me.

[00:51:04] Curren$y: Somebody lied in the beginning.

[00:51:07] Mousa Hamdan: Right.

[00:51:08] Curren$y: Just like, who fucks up anything. You know, like, just somebody lied in the beginning. The artist was signed to nine different managers. Everybody loaned him $1,500 to help him do something. He’s just signing with whoever’s going to fucking give him a fucking chain or watch, and he’s not being honest. Or there’s a fucking, like, a discrepancy on this stack of paperwork or something, and this guy’s outsmarting the artist and fucking going to rob and blind, you know what I’m saying? Like, if that happens in the beginning, the intentions are bad in the beginning, then you’ll see where it looked good and then it fall into pieces because you find out, you know what I’m saying? Like, fucking, when we read for fucking N.W.A, which is one thing I didn’t turn down, I was down to do that. He’s coming to me with movie shit. Do you want to read this? Do you want to do this? No, no, no, no. They’re like, do you want to be Easy-E? And I was like, no. At first I was like, no, like, they should call his son, you know what I’m saying? But then I end up reading for it, and then they end up getting a guy from New Orleans anyhow. So that was cool. I’m like, damn, I probably could have got that shit. But nonetheless, the part that we were reading, it was after Easy-E’s wife went through the paperwork that he did with Jerry Heller and she brought, like, so much shit, attention to him. And when E and Jerry had this talk, it made Jerry cry because he was leaving even though he did so much wrong shit. But in his heart of hearts, he probably didn’t think it was wrong ’cause he took dude from nothing. But it was still bad and he couldn’t believe how quick Eric was ready to shut the shit down. But it’s because he was wrong. Like, once that, there’s nothing you could do after that. Once it get like that, it shut down. That shit is heartbreaking. And we never, like, we have not hurt each other like in that aspect, you know what I’m saying? Like, when I came to him, I was like, look, I don’t, you know what I’m saying, I ain’t signed nothing yet, but this is what’s going on. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That’s that, you know. I don’t know, I’m going to go talk ahead, I’m going to do this and get this and then not say this. You know, he don’t fucking pop up and see I’m doing the show in Colorado and, you know what I’m saying, I didn’t say anything. I just went, flew out and oh no, I made just 30 grand right quick, you know. That there’s just, it’s all on the up, bro. So with that, you know, you stay friends, we friends first all.

[00:53:28] Mousa Hamdan: That’s I think the biggest thing.

[00:53:29] Curren$y: Yeah. If he wasn’t in my homie, then we wouldn’t do business.

[00:53:31] Mousa Hamdan: We started as friends, and then we continued to be friends in this.

[00:53:36] Curren$y: Yeah. All the way through.

[00:53:38] Mousa Hamdan: We’re business partners, but we never was just business partners. We was always friends to begin with.

[00:53:44] Curren$y: Right. So that make you not be able to do no fucked up business.

[00:53:48] Mousa Hamdan: And then we trust each other.

[00:53:49] Curren$y: You know what I’m saying? You can’t do that to your friend.

[00:53:52] Mousa Hamdan: Trust is big, you know. I think he trusts my decisions, I trust his decisions. And then we talk about things, like he said, we were going to always converse about whatever decisions we want make. If there’s ever a thought, I think, you know, this may be wrong or whatever, I’m going to consult with him as if he was my manager, you know what I’m saying? So we’re going to talk and the trust issue, I always hear that, you know, how, why y’all been together so long? I’m like, if you build a business, who builds a business to separate, right? We build a business together

[00:54:24] Curren$y: Who are these people that you’re with? Who’s in your car? Who the fuck are you riding with in the car? Like, who? That’s why. That’s why I said, like, having 19 and 30 motherfuckers. Like, now there might be 30 people in this building at a time, and they all could have a Jet Life chain, they all be a part of what’s going on. But at the end of the day, you know what I’m saying? When it’ll come down, it’ll come down. Like, we got to sit down and fucking, you know what I’m saying, and put it together, you know. Everybody respect that because when we come out the room, we come out the with the right answer. I might have the wrong answer, but this ain’t here. When we come out the room, we present the right answer.

[00:55:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no, a hundred percent right. And I feel like y’all got the right mentality. It speaks to everything that you’ve accomplished up to this date and excited to continue to see where it goes, right? Like you said, this is a balloon, and we want to keep seeing how this balloon continues to grow slowly. So, I mean, congrats to y’all on everything that’ve done.

[00:55:17] Curren$y: Got new music dropping Friday, so if this don’t get to them this week, you, bro, you know for sure, Friday, I got music dropping.

[00:55:26] Dan Runcie: Okay. Yeah. I was going to ask you what else you got coming up and if people want to follow you, where’s the best place for them to check in with you, both of you.

[00:55:32] Curren$y: Car is outside, but I don’t suggest you follow me. @spitta_andretti, Instagram. S P I T T A underscore A N D R E T T I. Twitter, well, I have a lot of fun at Twitter. Instagram has gotten really weird. It’s really, like, tough to figure that out. It’s nuts. Twitter is staying true. Curren$y with an S because they don’t recognize a dollar sign. So C U R R E N S Y underscore Spitta, S P I T T A. And you know what? They had a fake Curren$y when I first got to Twitter. That’s why I had to make that name like that, @CurrensySpitta, because there was already somebody who was saying he was me and he had like pictures and everything. That’s fucked up, yeah, but nah.

[00:56:17] Dan Runcie: And what about you Mousa?

[00:56:19] Mousa Hamdan: I’m on, pretty much all the handles are the same, @mousa504, M O U S A 5 0 4, that’s going to be on whatever, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, anything, you know. I stick to that same handle.

[00:56:33] Curren$y: Oh, we also got the partnership with Sovereign Brands, Villon France, this is our cognac that we are standing behind. That’s just one more thing on the number. I forgot. It doesn’t help your memory. It tastes good. It doesn’t help your memory. I forgot to mention that we were doing it.

[00:56:49] Dan Runcie: Oh, yeah. We could do a whole follow up episode on all of that. All of these deals. Role you’ve turned down, too, but we’ll have to check it the next time. Appreciate you both, man. Thank you.

[00:56:58] Mousa Hamdan: Appreciate you.

[00:56:59] Curren$y: Cheers, bro.

[00:57:00] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That’s how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you’re at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.