How The Internet (And A Refusal To Give Up) Took J RillA From Homeless To Hollywood
Joe Ryan III, aka “J RillA” (I’m realer) is not your everyday rapper/producer. He is 25 years old, married with kids, and a God-fearing man. He doesn’t swear, degrade women, or talk about drugs or violence in his music. Just 3 years ago, he was homeless. A few weeks ago, he got the biggest break of his life: Eddie Galan signed the young artist to his Mach 1 Music label in Hollywood.
His story combines an absolutely relentless work ethic with example after example after example of risk-taking persistence. Oh, and he might be the face of a new era: an era where the Internet has shifted the control largely from that of the record label onto the shoulders of the independent artist.
*****
“The music industry is HARD, man. But this is the era of the independent artist! You don’t need the record labels, the managers.“
On September 22, 2011, J RillA cut his management and started over. With no projects to work on and a wife with three kids, he was up against a wall. What happened next rerouted his destiny and changed his life. Before he talked to the press, he came to YouNow (where he has already built a name for himself inside the community) with the exclusive details.
This is his story.
THE BEGINNING
The first contest J RillA can remember competing in was during the 5th grade. It was a rap competition hosted at Atwood Stadium in his home city of Flint, Michigan. Even as a 10 year old, J RillA was in it to win it. His determination did not fail him – the little J RillA won the contest outright and took home the trophy.
Growing up about an hour outside of Detroit, he was convinced from a young age that music was his life calling. However, it wasn’t until years later when he made the decision to drop out of Tiffin University after his first semester in 2004 (leaving behind a basketball scholarship) that he started putting everything into his music.
Fast forward. By 2008, he had lost everything.
HOMELESS
J RillA moved to Wisconsin in 2008. He was broke and had just suffered through a divorce. His ex-wife was keeping him from seeing their twin sons. Faced with the possibility of his sons disappearing from his life, J RillA sold everything and went to court. He was homeless, living out of his Ford Mustang in the cold Wisconsin winter. He tried to hold his ex-wife in contempt for keeping his sons from him. He wanted to be around for his twins so they could see that they had a dad who was trying to be in their lives.
Nothing was more important to him than his family. He had sold all of his music equipment so he could fight in court and pay for gas to keep the car warm. Every few hours, he would let his car run for thirty minutes or so to warm up.
In December, J RillA met his future wife (Stacey Fink) for the first time. He was still living out of his Mustang… not a penny in his pocket. Stacey took him in when he had nothing, and his ill fortunes were suddenly struck with a glimmer of hope. Just 6 weeks after moving in with Stacey, he won a radio contest and his buzz around Milwaukee started to take on a life of its own.
2009, A NEW YEAR: WHEN PREPARATION MEETS OPPORTUNITY
J RillA hit the ground running at the start of 2009. With a place to live and a dependable girlfriend, life was firing on all cylinders for J RillA. He discovered the “103.7 Kiss FM Icon Contest” (103.7 FM is Milwaukee’s largest Top 40 Station) and went all-out… preparing his music meticulously and battling almost 800 other artists as hard as he could for 6 weeks straight.
The endless hours of preparation and hard work paid off, and J RillA emerged victorious.
(*Note: this is a SoundCloud snippet of his contest performance)
As the champion, he got to perform at SummerFest in Milwaukee - which bills itself as the biggest music festival in the world. As news of his contest victory started to spread like wildfire, the city got wind of his performance and just like that “J RillA” was a household name in Wisconsin.
PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH: J RILLA BECOMES A TEACHER
While J RillA was starting to feel like a lightning rod for opportunity, what came next was something entirely unexpected. A local school offered him the chance to teach high school teenagers how to use music as a positive outlet. Moving swiftly, he registered his own business the very next day and [smiling ear-to-ear, he tells me] accepted the offer.
J RillA began teaching the teens how to songwrite, mix, and produce music without swearing. His message to them was,
“If you gotta talk about drugs, violence, etc. – then talk about it. But the outcome should be about positivity, it should be a tale of how you gotta come out of it. Don’t glorify the drugs and stuff.”
He had reached a new personal milestone: he was teaching 6 hours per day in a school, without a college degree. Then without warning, triumph was once again replaced with hardship: his girlfriend Stacey lost her job. Money was tight. With little room for error, J RillA came through when Stacey needed him… taking full responsibility for the finances.
THE INTERNET CHANGES EVERYTHING
After helping his girlfriend regain her financial stability, J RillA devoted himself to studying the impact of the Internet on the music industry. He spent months combing through site after site after site to better understand the changing landscape of music. Surprisingly, he found that many artists and bands still subscribed to the belief that the only way to get their music REALLY out there was to find (and hopefully get signed to) a record label.
Why?
Because record labels used to have control over the distribution channels. Acting as gatekeepers, they would leverage their chokehold on access to the mass consumer in order to maintain their power in the industry.
The inevitable shift of power began with the disruption that Napster triggered within the music industry back in 1999. A decade later, the Internet had empowered independent artists to take charge of their own destiny. Artists were not only able to build, nurture, and communicate with their fan-base on a personal level – J RillA started to believe their musical future would soon depend on it.
The Internet provided J RillA with multiple platforms to distribute and share his music with people from all over the world. He built anengaged audience of supporters who were drawn to his passionate, determined personality. He even showed early signs of an instinctive ability to network; using his extensive web presence to form relationships with music industry titans.
In fact, his relentless research was about to pay off in a big way.
TWITTER, FACEBOOK, AND AN OFFER
In early 2010, J RillA saw on Twitter that the famed MC Lyte (otherwise known as “Lana Michele Moore” – she is the Vice President ofDuBose Entertainment in LA) was planning a tweetup. Come to find out, she was looking for producers. It was the perfect opportunity to get his foot in the door. So, J RillA decided to gamble. He reached out to her personally on Facebook and shared his story with her.
She responded.
As they started messaging back and forth, MC Lyte caught him off guard – she told him she loved his music. At first, her praise surprised him and he found himself letting out a sigh of relief. All of the endless hours he’d spent honing every aspect of his craft, his tireless work ethic… it was actually paying off. He paused, momentarily treasuring the feeling of validation.
Life became a whirlwind for J RillA. Just 48 hours later, MC Lyte surprised him with an official offer to become a composer for DuBose! It was his first offer to join an authentic, respected label. After a trip to Atlanta to meet with Jermaine Dupri went nowhere, J RillA saw the light and accepted MC Lyte’s offer.
PRODUCING MUSIC FOR BET REALITY SHOWS
J RillA got right down to business with DuBose. For his first project, he submitted cues for the Grammy-Nominated Recording Arist Trey Songz‘ reality show on BET, “My Moment“. He held his own, landing a solid amount of cues for the show.
His second project involved another BET reality show, “Toya: A Family Affair“. The potential for the show was strong, as it starred Toya Wright (formerly Toya Carter, she is the ex-wife of the famous rapper Lil Wayne). However, a curve ball was headed J RillA’s way.
The call came from MC Lyte. She told J RillA that the CEO of DuBose (
James DuBose) had changed the direction of music he wanted for Toya’s show. He wanted ‘
film score‘ music, and they needed to know whether J RillA was capable of producing that type of music.
When J RillA assured her that he was able to, MC Lyte said she would call him back later to play the dialogue of the first episode over the phone. Determined as ever to prove himself, J RillA quickly suggested an alternative:
“How about I meet you in Hollywood?”
OH, THE PLACES PERSISTENCE CAN TAKE YOU
MC Lyte loved his persistence and welcomed him to fly out. J RillA called his mom on the spot and asked her if she could book him a flight to LA. With a meeting scheduled and a ticket to LAX, J RillA decided to swing for the fences and bring all of his equipment just in case the situation called for it. He packed his Fantom-G, iMac, and Mbox… everything.
When he arrived with his equipment in hand, J RillA scored the first episode of the Toya Show in 7 hours – which is a fraction of the time that it can take on average [
*Note: J Rilla told me on the phone that it can take multiple days sometimes to score a single episode]. Impressed, MC Lyte asked him to stay another day. The next day, the DuBose board of directors had a viewing of J RillA’s score for the first episode.
Then, J RillA flew home. Next came a call from the the CEO.
“Congratulations sir, you just got the whole show – and the title episode. I’m gonna fly you out to score the whole season.”
J RillA went on to produce the entire show’s soundtrack. While streaming live during one of his recording sessions in LA a few weeks later, the CEO of DuBose Entertainment raved about J RillA’s relentless approach to chasing his dreams (start at 12:30):
Video streaming by Ustream
“J RillA came all the way out from Wisconsin. Everybody always talking about, ‘How can I get in the game? What can I do to be involved?’ This man came out here all the way from Wisconsin to sit in the studio with us. Do what he do. And now? Nobody else can talk to me. Every time I need music, I’m going to him. That’s what it takes! He went the extra mile. So as my favorite saying goes, ‘Everybody wants the muscles, nobody wants to lift the weights!’ He believed in himself that much, I have nothing but respect for him.” ~ James DuBose
TRUE LOVE, AND THE ERA OF THE INDEPENDENT ARTIST
On October 22, 2010, J RillA married Stacey. Life was, in a word, amazing.
He had married the girl of his dreams, started a family, and built an impressive track record (
pun intended). Directly managed by MC Lyte, J RillA had earned the honor of being the
first and only artist/producer to-date to sign with DuBose Entertainment for career management.
Unfortunately, change is sometimes unavoidable.
DuBose didn’t see eye-to-eye with J RillA’s vision. He was spending every waking moment improving his craft and getting his music out there on the Internet on his own - just like an independent artist. He had studied the social web meticulously. So, he decided to go all-in… devoting himself to master a repertoire of tools for building his fan-base. He started using TopSpin, chatted with his fans on Twitter consistently, uploaded and shared his tracks on SoundCloud, spent time building his YouTube channel, improved his Facebook fan page, and refined his personal site.
THE DOMINO EFFECT: J RILLA DISCOVERS YOUNOW
A couple months ago (summer 2011), J RillA discovered YouNow. He saw a ReTweet about the YouNow platform while poking around on Twitter and decided to give it a trial run. With his wife (who he calls his “#1 chief supporter”) sitting at his side, J RillA jumped in on a freestyle contest. He tore it up, winning the contest and taking home $200. All from his studio at home, over the Internet, sitting next to his wife.
He was hooked.
J RillA used YouNow as a platform to accelerate the growth of his fan-base. We selected him as one of our six beta users to
broadcast liveduring our
launch at TechCrunch Disrupt. As the live audience grew, J RillA poured hours upon hours into broadcasting live on YouNow’s
Music+ channel… testing out new verses and gauging the reaction to his music.
He even caught the attention of the Discovery Channel, getting featured in the tech section of one of their shows. He laughs when he thinks about the irony of it all.
“I mean, who would have ever expected to see a rapper on the Discovery Channel??”
Throughout our conversation, J RillA reiterated his commitment to the nonstop, diehard grind. He implored me and any artists who might read this to persist to the point of no return, saying:
“If and when someone don’t like what you’re doing, just go on to the next person. Don’t stop!”
ALONE …
On Thursday, September 22, J RillA made the tough decision to part ways with MC Lyte and DuBose Entertainment. Although he was itching to move on and get a fresh start, he made sure not to forget his humble beginnings – taking the time to thoroughly emphasize his gratitude to the team for how much they had helped him to advance his career.
Explaining why he took the risk and went back to being an independent artist, he told me:
“I’m out here grinding like an indie artist. I take it super serious. I’m a laid back, chill dude… but if you don’t take what I’m doing 100% serious with the effort that I’m putting forth, I can’t continue to help you shortchange my dream. I’ve always lived by the ‘all or nothing’ mentality so I had to stand up for my dream cuz it was there – but nobody else was.”
After cutting his management, J RillA went back to square one and started over. He had no projects to work on and no money coming through the door… but he had a family he still needed to provide for. He had backed himself into a corner.
DISCOVERED
With a renewed focus, J RillA dedicated himself to honing his craft and connecting with his fans on the web. He went back to building up his YouNow buzz and making noise on the web.
Things started to come together fast.
Not long after, some good luck came his way – an A&R guy reached out to him on Twitter. ‘A&R’ stands for ‘Artists and Repertoire‘, and every music label has an A&R person (or a team of A&R people). The A&R person (or team) is responsible for discovering unsigned, talented artists while also shepherding the development process of each artist already signed to the record label.
In J RillA’s case, the A&R person was Ashton Thomas. And, the record label he represented? Eddie Galan’s Mach 1 Music. Plus, guess what - Ashton had discovered J RillA entirely though his presence on Twitter.
THE CHASE IS ON
When J RillA found out Ashton was interested in his music, he took a chance. It is the story of J RillA’s life – when a life-changing opportunity presents itself, show up in person and seize the opportunity to prove that you deserve it. On September 29th, just one week after ending his relationship with DuBose Entertainment, he decided to fly out to LA.
Making the trip happen, however, quickly turned into a nightmare.
The cheapest flight he could find on Travelocity was $77 before taxes from Chicago to LA. But it wasn’t going through. Frantically, he tried over and over again to confirm the flight… only to get the pop-up message “flight amount has changed” every time – to the tune of $500! He almost gave up. Desperate for a miracle, he decided to try one more time. After logging out and signing back in, it finally went through: $98 after taxes.
J RILLA’S DO-OR-DIE MOMENT: IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS
When J RillA arrived in Hollywood, Eddie was in a recording session. Ashton Thomas greeted him at the entrance and brought him up to speed on the agenda for the meeting. The moment Eddie entered the room was the opportunity J RillA had long awaited for.
The only thing J RillA brought to the Mach 1 Music studio was his iPhone. With all of his music samples on Spotify, he didn’t even need his laptop.
J RillA got straight to business. He spoke candidly and with high energy, explaining that he would start with a track called “Wherever She Is” because it combined his writing, singing, rapping, and self-production. He followed that up with an ‘acoustic guitar, pop-record-sounding’ track. In his 3rd song, he switched up the pace and moved to a more up-tempo pop record with a female singer on the hook.
Eddie started waving his arms and motioned for J RillA to stop before the 3rd song was even over. Nervously, J RillA took off his headphones and made his way out of the studio and into the conference room. Eddie looked at him and said:
“I know you’re married, and I can tell you’re a responsible person. I love what you’re doing. Would you like to join Mach 1 Music?”
SIGNED IN HOLLYWOOD (THIS IS JUST PHASE 1 OF J RILLA’S VISION)
On October 7th, Eddie Galan made the signing official:
Having come into the game as a producer, J RillA decided to continue building his resume by producing music. However, that is only where his vision begins. J RillA’s mission is to earn accolades and respect for his ability to produce, and then invest the rewards into himself to birth phase 2 of his vision: his career as a recording artist.
He aims to get placement as a producer on tracks by many of today’s hottest artists, and then turn and invest much of his monetary earnings into himself. This way, he can fuel the start of his career as an artist on his own.
As for the more immediate future, he plans to move his whole family out to LA with him in January 2012. [*Note: I can feel the emotion in his voice as he describes how important this milestone will be for him. He explained to me that in the past, he would stay in LA for as long as 2 months at a time – something that was always very difficult on his family.]
THE INTERNET IS (ONCE AGAIN) REVOLUTIONIZING MUSIC
Something bigger is happening here. J RillA’s story is just a piece of a much bigger puzzle that is finally being put back together. If anyone understands how the Internet is once again reinventing the music industry, it’s the former co-founder of Napster (and current investor in Spotify):
“We have the potential for the first time to get away from the traditional gatekeepers… the gatekeepers to culture, who [used to] determine what you got to listen to and what you didn’t get to listen to and what you heard on the radio. We’re now for the very first time in a frictionless world, where all the best music can rise to the top. In a world that’s truly frictionless, quality becomes hyper-efficient. That’s an incredibly exciting possibly. It ultimately means, if we [Spotify] are able to realize our vision, it could lead to a golden age of music where all of the best music is getting consumed, and heard… and people are getting to discover all sorts of new music that they wouldn’t have otherwise got to discover. We’ve already gotten to see an incredible explosion of interest in music that didn’t exist 5 years ago.” ~ Sean Parker
In J RillA’s world, he got his deal with Mach 1 Music and his former deal with DuBose Entertainment directly off the strength of the Internet. He attributes Twitter and Facebook entirely for getting the attention of MC Lyte/DuBose and landing his first deal. He views the Internet as so pivotal in his career. In fact, all of the friendships he’s had to move on from ended because those friends never understood why he spent so much time either in the studio or on the Internet.
As difficult as it was to let so many of his friends go, he didn’t let it slow him down – telling me that his state of mind at the time was:
“If you can’t get on board with this, then I gotta let you go. There were a million times I could’ve quit. I have 2 kids with my ex-wife (and three with my current wife)… mannn… the hoops I had to jump through. There was a point where I felt like I was losing my mind. But, I always kept going with the music. It’s mind-blowing. Nothing but God. Nothing in the natural realm could make any of this possible.”
HOW THE INTERNET LEVELS THE PLAYING FIELD
Remember when you first started seeing music videos hit YouTube? It used to be that only the labels could shoot great quality, HD music videos and put them on YouTube. Not anymore. In fact, J RillA edited and produced his own music video.
He went out and bought a Flip HD camera and started editing videos on his iMac. He had never edited a video in his life, but he learned how to edit it on the fly and made it work. “Independent artists don’t have time to wait for managers to make these things, man!”, J RillA exclaimed to me.
He considers YouTube, Spotify, YouNow, Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, and TopSpin to be the tools and ‘building blocks’ that he uses to build upon what he calls his “house on the Internet”: his personal website, IamJRilla.com.
THE INTERNET STRATEGY: HOW HE DID IT
If you haven’t figured it out already, J RillA is part artist/producer, part tech early-adopter. When it comes to the Internet, he says that a savvy independent artist needs to always be on the lookout for a new stage to capture an audience. If you see something that looks hot, no matter how early – play with it. Get on and showcase your music. Bring your existing fans and sweep new fans off their feet.
In his most recent example, J RillA was all in when he first saw YouNow. “YouNow is GOING THERE, man” J RillA told me when he started to explain his vision for how future independent artists will express themselves online. His broadcasts on YouNow brought him more followers on Twitter and helped to increase his notoriety.
Preaching his point, J RillA said to me:
“If you’re dope at what you do, there’s no more excuses for remaining undiscovered! It just means you’re not working hard enough to get in front of people.”
THE ACCELERATION EFFECT OF YOUNOW
The secret sauce of YouNow is the challenge presented to the broadcaster of winning the live audience minute after minute after minute. The ‘real life’ challenge of going live in front of an audience like NYC’s infamous Apollo Theatre (where you bring your A game and hope the audience likes what they hear so you stay on stage longer) and living to tell the story has long been a sort of ‘rite of passage’ for artists on the come up.
There is a sense of community to YouNow, where the community is responsible for directing the spotlight on the best artists – and keepingit on the absolute best-of-the-best. It’s a competition to keep the audience’s attention and react in-the-moment to the crowd. Nowadays, J RillA looks at the landscape and says it is ‘put up or shut up‘ for all artists aspiring to the spotlight.
YouNow is creating a stage that the fans control. Anyone can get in line and go live on YouNow to showcase their talent. The decision of whether or not the broadcaster has earned another minute is in the hands of whoever is watching.
J RillA goes on:
“YouNow is a crazy outlet, I mean, look at the Discovery Channel hitting me up! In what world have you seen a rapper on the Discovery Channel? I had to sign a release, all of that. YouNow created that opportunity.”
He can see the big picture of how the Internet is disrupting the game for the independent artist. He ends with:
“YouNow is the next biggest wave… just wait til it catches on. Then BOOM, everyone will have to have their spot. You’ll have to be on it everyday, busting your butt to earn your stripes and be the king of the mountain. I’m glad to be a part of it! It’s another thing in the pot, a go-to tool. I’m telling you, everything is Internet-driven.”
THE STATE OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
In an interview last week at the Techonomy conference with its founder, David Kirkpatrick, and legendary venture capitalist Jim Breyer, Sean Parker painted the picture of the music industry as it stands today:
“In the last 10 years, the 4 (now about to be 3) major record labels have systematically failed to embrace any kind of interesting, new models. They essentially have existed in a storefront mentality, which is a unit sales driven business. You basically walk into a store, whether that store is physical or iTunes (iTunes even calls itself a store), and you buy music – the way you’ve always bought music, with maybe some limited ability to sample, but there’s no social context whatsoever. You can’t see what your friends are listening to, you can’t listen to what they’re listening to – without first buying it.
And until you’ve solved that problem of creating a free tier of experience, where a consumer can look at their friends’ music collection, listen to a few playlists, add those to their collection, and then ultimately there’s a monetization event when the consumer either subscribes or says ‘you know what, I wanna take that music with me on my iPod, I’ll pay to buy it in bulk.’ That is an idea we had proposed at Napster 11 years ago, it was an idea that took all of this time to mature, and unfortunately a huge amount of value has been lost in the meantime.
I actually am of the belief – everyone thinks the publishing business is doing great – I think it’s hard to believe that music publishing continues to scale because the multiples are already so high, there’s so much growth baked into the valuations of these music publishing businesses, and that valuation assumes growth that may not actually exist. Whereas the record business is in such a slump due to the lack of great distribution systems that are able to monetize the direct consumption of music. Now we have that. We are starting to see it with Spotify, we are starting to see it with things like Turntable, to some extent with Pandora. I would be naiive to think that iTunes wouldn’t at some point pursue licenses which look something like the licenses we have at Spotify.
So the market is changing rapidly. We have presided over the largest destruction of value in the history of the music industry over the last 10 years [*NOTE: reportedly, the industry declined from $45B to $14B]. If we can just get the industry back to where it was 10 years ago, we will in effect have presided over the largest increase in value, by definition, in the music industry in the last 10 years. I think it’s an industry that’s poised for significant comeback.”
WHERE ARE THEY NOW: J RILLA’S FAMILY SITUATION
J RillA has a set of twin boys with his ex-wife and three kids with his wife Stacey. In describing the situation, he joked that:
“It’s like the Brady Bunch man!”
Unfortunately, he doesn’t get to see the twins from his “baby momma drama”, but he broke his bank fighting in the courts trying to. To him, family is the above all #1 priority. The difference is, he needed to be with someone who could stand by him in full support to help him achieve his goals in music.
And, how committed to his art is he? The very night we talked, he had actually won $500 in a YouNow contest.
THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND IT ALL
J RillA believes that every little bit of push will ultimately pay off.
“You have to have 100% faith, not even 1% of doubt! Each push that you give… that could be the difference between the failures and the setbacks.”
He is surrounded by the right people, people that he believes God places in his life. He is ambitious, God-fearing, and simply refuses to give up.
That mindset has paid off to the point where he’s not an arrogant person, but he still feels a sort of satisfaction with his risky decisions when he thinks back to all those people who called him and said “go back to college man!”. His voice rises as he gets serious over the phone:
“Don’t doubt me! And definitely don’t doubt God.”
J RillA aims to inspire through all his music collectively. He wants to be an inspiration to other people. He doesn’t shy away from sharing his goal of becoming a millionaire, explaining in detail a vision he has of helping a less fortunate mother with several children… he wants to be able to drop 10 stacks of money into the mother’s hand, not say who he is, and just tell her it’s from God.
THE THREE THINGS THAT GOT HIM HERE
I asked J RillA that question as our conversation came to a close, and he answered:
“Loyalty and persistence and the power of social networking. Real talk. To really make it, you need to focus on the most ridiculous undying drive you can hone in on. I’m the type of person to tell you how to make it WHILE IM DOING IT!”
Oh yeah, and he’s just getting started.
*****
Disclosure: J RillA was one of six beta broadcasters to demo with YouNow during our official launch at TechCrunch Disrupt, and he has become a friend of mine since. ~ John Exley
