one of my earliest memories is in kindergarten, me and this kid named Jesse build this sick ass block fort. The blocks were these foam blocks that could just fit in your hand, and we built 4 walls over our heads that you could actually enter the fort and chill in it. We used every single foam block in the entire classroom, including all of the weird half-circle pieces and shit like that. This kid named Justin came over when it was done, and thought it was so cool and started gassing it up. The teacher came over and was like ‘omg this is sick lemme take a pic’ and Justin poses in the pic with his arm around us like he fucking contributed anything. Little fucker.
I’ve been struggling for a few days with the idea of returning to social media and streaming with this project as if it’s a foregone conclusion that I have to.
My first roadblock was making my first IG post on the Reddd account, where I made a 1:1 square post and when bringing it to my phone, I realized that IG grids changed to 3:4 ratio, which fucked my idea and I couldn’t make it fit.
My second roadblock was some extremely minor one-sided drama which had been brewing for a few days. An artist came back to the scene and had all of the guys I used to book who blew up and went to LA all following him and gassing him up, which kinda had me a little vexed as some of them I was friendlier with just disappeared from my life when they got signed. I followed him on the Evrvdav account, and he didn’t follow me back. That’s fine. Then, he posted a video announcing his next music drops over 2 clips of him performing on Evrvdav shows that I ran from footage that I paid for. (No other footage from his shows. Just the ones he did with me. Because I always tried to make sure there was a paid videographer with the right instructions at shows for the artists to get their footy for this exact situation.) I’m messaging all my music friends familiar with the situation like, all caps, losing my mind that that circle never gives me respect and that they were all liars and definitely hated me the entire time and blah blah. A few hours pass of sitting on the couch with fingers dug into my temples and my face all scrunched up mad, and then I get a notification that bro followed me. I mean, someone in the comments asked for him to do shows and I commented ‘*cough*’ which he liked and then followed me, but still. I was freaking out the whole time and then he followed me anyways. There’s still that like, angry side of me that’s telling me ‘he didn’t follow you until someone in the comments pointed out that he could use you’, but then again, this guy wasn’t one of my friends by any means so he doesn’t really owe me anything.
I just feel slighted all the time by the scene and like I don’t get credit for any of the work that I did. The only times I seem to get credit are when people are mad I don’t do it anymore. Like… Giving me my flowers to tell me I need to grow more flowers and that you’ll likely never pick them for me again is like… idk, broken extended metaphor & false equivalency lol.
I’m really worried to take this shit to social media and streaming and see it absorb me again. Instagram is not my boss, Spotify is not my boss, YouTube is not my boss. I’m not a Content Creator for any of those platforms. I make shit for me, and THEY get the privilege of hosting real content from a human being (because none of their platforms would exist without that.) The moment I have to start making shit to fit their policies and formats and follow rules to even have my content delivered to my own followers is like… I’m not having fun anymore. They’re making a ton of money off of the content and I’m getting a $0.007. Which like, it’s not about money, but also if there’s money being generated then fuck you, give me my money, right?
The ground level side of the credit thing is like… The moment I take my music stuff public, then I’ma start seeing weird shit again. Artist launches an acoustic project with the first and last name of pro wrestlers (re: Reddd Calaway) who’s first song is a cover of a Reddd Calaway song, then pretends it’s a coincidence. Local band who says they love one of my songs completely bites the chord progression on their first single. Rapper from my city steals cover art from a different artist named Cetti that shows on the first page of the ‘Cetti’ Youtube search. Rappers from tour finding a beat I used on a song at a show we both played and jacking it from me to make their own song. People biting my lyrics and telling me it’s an homage in private. Blah blah blah. I’m just not widdit. It’s all whack, and as we saw yesterday, it will consume me for hours and days and I can’t escape it. It plagues me.
So next time any of you ask me to put shit on Spotify, know that I hear you, and I wish I could give you a way to listen to my shit on a centralized platform. But hey, my songs are all free to download here. It’s now your responsibility to get off of the centralized platform that doesn’t allow you to integrate your personal library because they’re fucking greedy and just raised the price again while they ruin your shuffle and invest in AI music.
I think I’m done ranting. Good morning y’all
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