This week, Cory speaks to musician, businessman and philanthropist Aloe Blacc, who is best known for his hit singles, “I need a dollar”, “The man” and writing and performing vocals on Avicii’s “Wake me up”. In this weeks episode, Aloe takes us back to his teenage years, telling us the defining moment when he went from corporate America to landing a record deal and then he offers advice for how young people should feasibly follow their passions. Later in the episode, he very interestingly touches on the current intersection of technology clashing with music and what he thinks the future of streaming will be like.
[00:01:00] Cory Levy: Thank you so much, Aloe, for joining the show today. Really appreciate you taking the time. I’d like to get started by asking you a question. What were your teenage years like? What made you distinct as a child?
[00:01:10] Aloe Blacc: During my teenage years, I was the popular kid in class. I was friends with all of the different groups of kids and by the time in middle school, I was in student body. I was representing my grade in the school government. Then senior year in high school, I was senior class president. I was always just friendly and engaging with all different groups on campus. I think the one thing that made me super unique was that I was into hip-hop and there wasn’t a whole lot of people on my campus that were into hip-hop. I spent a lot of time on the weekends even on the weekdays after school, writing and recording songs with my friends.
[00:01:45] Cory: That was just as a passion project, as a hobby. Tell us a little bit about how you turned music into a career because I know it wasn’t right out the gate.
[00:01:54] Aloe Yes. It wasn’t right out the gate at all. Now, I started recording and writing music in high school as a freshman. Then by the time I graduated, I had created a following in the local area and in Southern California because the DJ that I was working with informed me and instructed me on how to create mixtapes. We would record mixtapes and then take them to local events and pass them out ourselves. Those mixtapes ended up becoming pretty popular. Local radio stations like the college stations, UCI wanted to have us come to the station and interview and perform our songs and then play our songs on the radio.
I didn’t really see music as a career. It was really a passion project and a hobby because I ended up going on to university at USC in Southern California and getting a job in Corporate America, but I always continued to do music because I loved it. I think anything that you love to do, you should always just continue to do it because, one, fulfill yourself, but your proficiency in that activity will grow.
[00:02:51] Cory: Was there a defining moment in making the choice of switching from the corporate sector to a more creative sector?
[00:02:57] Aloe: Yes. I’d say the most defining moment in switching to the self-employed sector was getting laid off from my consulting job. I had interned for four summers during university and I worked for two years full-time. During a big reduction of force, since I was one of the new hires, I got laid off on the chopping block. Then I just decided I’d focus on music for a little bit, maybe I’ll go back to school, maybe I’ll get a Ph.D., but music started taking off and I got offered a recording deal from an Indie Label and I just really incubated.
I started really studying my craft and honing my craft because now I was no longer just a hobby. I was engaged in a contract to make music and release music and sell music and I took that seriously.
[00:03:37] Cory: From the time when you got laid off to the time that you got that contract, how long was that?
[00:03:42] Aloe: I got laid off three years before I got the contract. In those three years, I really dugged my heels in and just started making as much music as I could and failing a lot in the process, but learning from mistakes.
[00:03:56] Cory: If there was one thing that you can pinpoint that has contributed to your success more than anything, what would you say that would be and why?
[00:04:03] Aloe: I’d say being open-minded and taking on things that really don’t feel comfortable. I’m not a trained singer. I am rapper and MC and hip-hop is in my life’s blood, but when I got signed to this Indie Label, they wanted me to be a vocalist. I took that on and I thought, “It can only make me a better artist.” It ended up being true and it also ended up being my career path and my stability in life in terms of financial stability and being able to make so many other dreams come true. Not just my own, but other people around me.
[00:04:35] Cory: I guess before signing that contract that must have been a really challenging time, three years unemployed, no income. What was that like? Was that hard?
[00:04:45] Aloe: Yes. Living with no income is a precarious existence. You want to stay well within your means and so I did that. Moved into a house with four other musicians and we shared rent, but we also shared inspiration and musical moments and all of that was very instructive, informing the path that I was engaging at the moment.
I never really had to worry about what’s going to happen to me in the future, but there was a time where I thought, “I don’t know if this music thing’s going to work out. I’m going to probably start substitute teaching and just take a couple of day jobs here and there, just in case.”
[00:05:22] Cory: Did you do that?
[00:05:23] Aloe: No. Luckily, I never had to take a job. Just right at the moment where I thought I was going to take a job, I got the recording deal, which came in advance, that helped me cover rent for the whole year and gave me the opportunity to focus on more music.
[00:05:37] Cory: What would be your advice to young people trying to figure out what they want to do?
[00:05:42] Aloe: I think, for young people who are trying to figure out what they want to do, there’s probably something you’re already doing that you’re really good at and that you love. I’d say, keep doing that. Even if it’s not a career path right now, it could end up being something that is, number one, just fulfilling to your soul, and number two, could end up being something that yields your life’s income. Take a job, anywhere, that’s comfortable while you develop that passion. There’s no shame in taking a job while you develop your passion, because you’ve got to eat, and you got to pay rent.
If you’re young right now, if you’re in high school or middle school, elementary school or early college, whatever it is that makes you really, really smile, and that you would do, whether you’re being paid or not, that’s something to really focus on and hone in on. Those are the things that will sustain you for the long run.
[00:06:28] Cory: How do you manage your life and time? Do you have any morning or afternoon or evening routines, something you do every single day?
[00:06:36] Aloe: Yes. Time management gets more complicated because now that I have a family, I’ve got kids and that’s basically — they manage my time. It’s all based on keeping things consistent for them.
I would say when I was single and honing my craft, most important thing is to find the times that you work best. I worked best after going out to the nightclub and getting inspired. I’d be in the club from, let’s say, 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM roughly. Then at 2:00 AM, I would go home and I would make a big meal. I’d have a 3:00 AM dinner/breakfast, and then I’d start making music from that time until 5:00 AM.
Inspiration can come at any time, but if you understand yourself well enough, you should find your schedule. Develop your schedule based on what works for you, not based on what works for the rest of the world because the rest of the world is running on a clock that is extremely restrictive, and has a lot to do with the practicalities of everyday life. Your inspiration, your goals, and your focus can be impractical. One day you can show the world how practical it is.
[00:07:35] Cory: I like that. When there are different viewpoints, how do you make hard decisions?
[00:07:40] Aloe: For me, when there are different viewpoints, the hard decisions are made by the gut feeling. If it’s not a yes, it’s a no, and it’s a no until it’s a yes. If I’m just not feeling something, then it’s not worth compromising because of the pressure. With that said, there are so many ways to negotiate that you can concede in one place if you’re getting something that you want in another place. For example, I work with a lot of musicians and producers. If we don’t agree on something, then we make multiple versions, and everybody gets what they want. I think that’s fair. We let the world decide what the best version is.
[00:08:16] Cory: When putting things out to the world, what’s your advice in terms of getting attention?
[00:08:20] Aloe: Authenticity is super important. In my discipline and my field, with music, in order to get attention, people have to recognize something that’s raw and real and true. It’s got to make them feel like the best version of themselves. If you are offering a product that improves your life, and you believe it improves other people’s’ lives, it’s got to be authentic, it’s got to be real. People have to recognize that it’s real for you. When they’re engaging with that product, they have to feel like a better them.
If you want to market it, first most important part of marketing is to make sure that it’s a great product because that is half of the battle. The other half is exposure, and that exposure can come from a lot of the contemporary methods as the social media. But when people see you engaging with your product, or people see other people engaging with the product in a way that is undeniably authentic, it sells itself.
[00:09:11] Cory: Do you have a story of maybe something, like any stunts or anything you did?
[00:09:15] Aloe: Yes. For me, a lot of the stunts that end up getting pulled to get exposure for my music is working with a very niche audience. The niche audience that I work with are music supervisors. They happen to be an important niche audience because those music supervisors choose the music that go on TV commercials, films, and television shows. When they choose my music, I get a benefit of millions of years’ exposure once the song is chosen and put on television or on a film trailer or in a video game.
If I were casting my net very wide and trying to market to the 300 million people in the US, I’d probably not hit anybody. But because I cast my net very small and very specifically to music supervisors, which is a few thousand in Los Angeles I end up with greater leverage. In terms of tricks, my industry is super specific and my practice is super specific. I think there may be analogs for every industry.
[00:10:11] Cory: I agree. What’s something controversial today that you think won’t be tomorrow?
[00:10:15] Aloe: There is this a lot of this pushback coming from the current administration on transgender and the LGBTQ community. I believe in the future, nobody’s going to be worried about any of that stuff. We have much bigger fish to fry. As global warming and climate change ensues it’s wrath on the earth, we’ll have to figure out some things that we won’t even be up to entertain ourselves with kind of the minutia of social issues.
[00:10:39] Cory: What would you say growing up or now as an adult I’m curious, did you do anything that your family thought was crazy, whether that be not getting a job after Ernst & Young?
[00:10:51] Aloe: My parents were definitely of the old school mind that you have to have a job. There’s no such thing as music as a career. They’re super practical. They come from Panama, were a group of working-class families and they worked every day of their lives till they retired and they didn’t see entertainment as a viable career. That said, they trusted me and they’d seen successes that I had in the past and they knew I had an aptitude to engage in this environment and if I chose to, I could probably go back to corporate America or to academia. There were plenty of safety nets.
Even when I made the transition from rapping to singing, some of my friends thought I was crazy like, “Why are you singing. You’re a rapper. You shouldn’t be doing this.” Like I said, when you’re open to change and you take things on it and willing to take that risk, that transformation, the Phoenix from the fire that will probably yield some of your biggest results.
[00:11:42] Cory: Who are some of your artist friends that you work with that mentor you that inspire you?
[00:11:48] Aloe: A lot of my friends are indeed underground artists. There’s a quite closest collaborator, DJ Exile, who has been making amazing music and classic albums in underground hip-hop as commercial hip-hop has changed in a lot of ways. He stayed steady and in making some of the stuff that has really been lauded as classic works over the years. If he doesn’t like, it’s probably not going to do very well. I value his opinion greatly. I work a lot with my band members. While in the studio, I give a lot of freedom to them in terms of how they choose to play pieces that maybe I’ve written or other people have written. On stage, I give them freedom too because everybody’s got their own personality and character.
In terms of mentors, there are business mentors like Simon Fuller, who had signed me to his management company, gave me a great piece of advice because he recognized I was super concerned with owning all of my creations from masters to copyrights. He said, “Control is just as if not more than ownership.” You can own something but it’s about the person who controls that where the decisions get made about, “Where does the money go and how does the product get used?”
That was super important because he’d created and owned American Idol and then he sold it. Not only was he paid to sell it, then he also had the opportunity control it as a lead consultant on how to run the business and continue to be paid a salary. Just smart.
[00:13:10] Cory: For someone growing up right now, what are some ineffective things you see people do in the music industry? What do you see the most time being wasted that if you’re mentoring a young person you would say, “Actually, don’t worry about that. You should spend more time doing XYZ.”
[00:13:27] Aloe: One of the things that I very much despise about the music industry right now or in general is having to tour to continue to build a fanbase, which is the absolute truth about building a fanbase. People are still human beings. We can engage with the artists on our social media and through streaming, but touching, seeing, feeling, being in the same room as is a whole other part of the experience. I fight against it, but I would tell artists that are strictly focusing on their internet game to get out and touch the real world and build a local, real, analogue touchy-feely sweaty human base that can sing your praises and champion you to the next city that you’re going to develop and then in the next city and the next city.
[00:14:16] Cory: Got it. What’s something you know you should do but you haven’t done yet, but that you’re working on?
[00:14:21] Aloe: I’m involved in the world of storytelling. I write three-minute stories. I write songs, but I really love storytelling and I want to engage in longer form. I’m reluctant to do it, but I know I need to write a script for an idea that I’ve had for too long — that script should have already been written. That’s what I’m getting ready to do is start writing a script for a TV show that I’ve got an idea for.
[00:14:44] Cory: Nice, what would you say some of your biggest challenges are right now either personally or professionally?
[00:14:49] Aloe: The biggest challenges are control. As my mentor said, I have ownership of my copyrights, but I don’t have 100% control because I’m in partnership with a record label, I’ve got management. It’s basically getting through the process of everybody agreeing on what is the next song to release and how well do we think it’s going to do and how much money should we put into it? Of course, I believe in every song that I write, but there are other folks that are involved that have more experience with really how things are working on.
I may be blind to my own devices thinking that just because I think my song is great doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to work. It may be a great song but we’ve got to engage really smartly with the way the market works nowadays and how we spend money and how we build a fanbase.
[00:15:35] Cory: Technology is obviously something that has come that has changed the music industry a lot. How do you see the future of music and technology interacting together?
[00:15:46] Aloe: Feels like it’s in a place where it will stay for and remain for a while, the streaming kind of world. I believe that things will probably become more and more specific. Right now, we’ve got huge distributors like Apple, Spotify, basically as a clearinghouse of music. For a nominal fee per month, you can get everything that you want. I think there’s going to be a competitor that comes around and says, ‘’Yeah, but you don’t want everything. You just want this and you should only be paying this because this is all you really want.’’
The pricing points will probably drop and catalogs become much more specific. I think just like everything else in the world that undulates and works in lanes, I don’t know how many generations it will take, we’ll get back to a system where people are buying one song again or people are subscribing specifically to the artist that they want to engage in or with a very narrow group or subsect of artistry that they want to engage with.
[00:16:39] Cory: Do you think we’ll see that in our lifetime?
[00:16:41] Aloe: Actually, I think we will see it in our lifetime. I really do. I feel like it will change over time like your subsect will change over time. You might be strictly pop when you’re in elementary school and then probably by middle school or early high school, you’ll completely abandon pop and go straight for underground super artsy. Then by the time you get out of college, you’ll probably going to be somewhere in the range of adult contemporary that’s a little bit of artsy.
I think you’d be able to queue rate it. You’ll probably be able to pay for play instead of monthly subscription and that pay for play is probably going to be much less than the $1 purchase that the old system was. I think it’s going to turn into a utilities-type of scenario.
[00:17:27] Cory: If there was one or two things that you would tell your younger self, what would that be?
[00:17:32] Aloe: Practice. Practice more. Practice all your instruments, practice your languages. All of these tools are going to be extremely helpful in the future and the assets that will enrich your life and livelihood.
[00:17:44] Cory: Is there anything new that you’re practicing or learning right now?
[00:17:47] Aloe: I’m trying to completely become fluent in Spanish. I should be already, but conversational. The next language I’d love to learn is German because there’s huge market for me.
[00:17:57] Cory: Do you have any books or podcasts that you listen to that you’d recommend?
[00:18:02] Aloe: I don’t listen to any podcasts and the books that I read are generally based on nonfiction like ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’ which borders the line between fiction and nonfiction. It’s like a true story, but it’s mainly based like historical facts so historical fiction I’d say and biographies like Quincy Jones’ book, his autobiography. These are the kinds of things I enjoy reading. I’ve named my daughter Mandela so of course, I read ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ Nelson Mandela’s book. I stick to reality. Even though I’m trying to write fiction, the stuff I read is totally nonfiction.
[00:18:36] Cory: Are there any questions that you think I should ask that I haven’t yet?
[00:18:42] Aloe: That’s a hard one. I’ll just answer one — if I were to live anywhere other than the US, I’d probably live in Switzerland. I find it to be an extremely fascinating country. Really comfortable for me. I love how green it is. I love that it’s the buffer state in the path between warring nations. I hope one day to own an island like Larry Page and Richard Branson and hopefully right next door to them so I can paddleboard over to their houses the way they do to each other.
[00:19:08] Cory: Just stay over, love it.
[00:19:10] Aloe: My main motivation in music, I took this career when I signed a major record deal was to try to match or exceed Michael Jackson’s charitable giving and not necessarily in kind, but in value in kind. He, I believe is recorded have given $350,000,000 worth of philanthropy and charity. If I am responsible for that kind of work, then I’ll know I’ll have done as much as I can, but then heard about the living or the giving trust that Zuckerberg and Warren Buffet and Bill Gates had created and I know they’re going to be giving much more. The anti is up, but at least for artists, I’m competing in my industry, Michael Jackson is the premier giver.
[00:19:51] Cory: What organizations do you like giving to and like supporting?
[00:19:55] Aloe: I believe in the concept of working locally and being a patron in my neighborhood. There’s a Community Coalition of South Los Angeles, which is an organization that helps to improve the schools and reduce the blights on the community.They are successful in setting down around 200 liquor stores, which were completely superfluous in the neighbourhood and fighting to end injustices in the school district systems, willful defiance that contributes to the school to prison pipeline, organisations like Peace Over Violence, that support victims of domestic violence and also spread knowledge and information about how to engage in relationships peacefully.
I’ve created an organization called Artivist Entertainment with my friends and it’s a for-profit organization, but we function like a non-profit in terms of sponsoring local artists, patronizing local artists and giving the artist who use their voice for a positive social change a platform.
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