Hi!

You liked my Grateful Dead business history lesson a month ago, so I have another music-related business history story for you that has stuck with me from my Record-Store-Owning Days.

2 weekends ago, my friends and I went to the 10-year anniversary show of Chance The Rapper's Coloring Book in Chicago at Ravinia (cool outdoor venue!) and I was thinking about his story.

Chance the Rapper is a Chicago native, philanthropist, and, in my opinion, has created some of the best hip-hop of my generation.

He has mastered blending heart-wrenching chord progressions, instruments, meaningful lyrics, samples, bouncy beats, humor and storytelling. Ugh. I love Chance, clearly.

But the story I like to tell anyone who will listen is that May 2016, Chance the Rapper released a mixtape independently, WITHOUT a record label, called Coloring Book as a streaming-only release for 2 weeks through Apple Music. (P.S. Buy it from a local record store, but if you don't have access to one, linked above)

Not only was it released as streaming-only, with no record label, but it literally became an award-winning project that shifted the way music gets released/rated.

If you don’t remember what the music industry was like for an artist in 2016, let me paint you a little picture:

The traditional path:

• You get discovered.
• You get signed.
• Label gives you money.
• Label distros your music to record/big box stores/online
• Label markets you.

Hopefully, if you are lucky and have the right people behind you, people buy your record.

Chance the Rapper took a chance and was like... "I am going to try skipping the middle."

It was a risky move, but he had already built an audience through his independently released mixtapes, 10 Day and Acid Rap and through how he was showing up in his communities and getting noticed nationwide.

He had been participating in hundreds of open mics, giving back and volunteering in Chicago, contributing to the causes he cared about, and building his COMMUNITY for years.

Chance wasn’t signed to a record label when he released Coloring Book and while he did have an arrangement with Apple to stream it exclusively for 2 weeks, he wasn’t following the traditional record-label model in any way!

Chills when I write....

Coloring Book became the FIRST streaming-only, label-less release to chart on the Billboard 200, debuting at No. 8 in 2016.

10 years ago, this was a big deal. For context, this was monumental because Billboard’s rating system was built around a music industry where people bought albums and of course streaming was already beginning to alter that.

Chance's ideology and then massive success behind this release was something like... "I want people to actually LISTEN to my music and my art. You should count that instead of purchases."

This moment in time was a revolution of this style of music-community-building that is much more popular today.

Because shortly after that, the Grammys changed their eligibility rules to allow streaming-only projects to compete, because it was actually representative of the popularity.

Chills again when I write.... that in 2017, the following year, Chance won three Grammys with Best Rap Album, Best Rap Performance, and Best New Artist.

3 Grammys for a project he released without a traditional record label, and The Recording Academy called him the first streaming-exclusive artist to win a Grammy.

I love talking about and learning about what happened with this record because Chance didn’t invent independent music or mixtapes or streaming or hiphop. Really, nothing he did here was completely NEW but it was something new at scale with a relentlessly invested community he built from the ground up.

Early in his music career, he gained initial traction through Chicago’s open-mic scene, working with other local artists, and stayed ultra-connected to the city as his influence grew, because those values were meaningful to him.

He also put a lot of his attention into activism and philanthropy. He founded SocialWorks, which focuses on Chicago youth through the arts, education and civic engagement, and in 2017 after the fame of Coloring Book he donated $1 million to Chicago Public Schools for arts and education programs.

My point is that with Coloring Book, he already had people who knew his music, followed what he was doing and cared about what he was doing in Chicago because he had spent years building those relationships before it came out. It had nothing to do with being "picked."

I see a version of this happen in business all the time.

Clients come to me and at first, they think they need more social media followers, but they need the publication quote or feature before they can be credible, and they need the speaking opportunity before they can call themselves a speaker, and the big client before they can charge more, and the podcast appearance before people will listen to them, and the industry validation before they can actually build something.

And to their point, okay, yes, I am in personal branding, and I will say that developing your personal brand and your visibility is important, but most of what you hear is the "right way" has been fabricated by the perception of what an "Entrepreneur" looks like online, viewed through your own personal filter or lens.

Visibility matters, but visibility built around somebody else's definition of success isn't the same thing as building a recognizable personal brand around what you care about.

I want to know... What do you actually CARE about?

For instance, I used to worry I wasn't "professional enough" when I was in my 20's, being invited to speak in front of rooms of people who were older than me and more experienced in business.

Someone checked me on that once and said, "What do you think professional means, Lauren? Did you know that the meaning of "Professional" is entirely made up based on your own beliefs and biases?" It altered my brain chemistry.

You get to choose where you show up first, how you live through your message and work, how you create community, and then the institutions that used to be the gatekeepers of your industry will, and I promise you this, eventually catch up.

Don't miss the opportunities that are living right in front of you searching for the "normal way." Nothing about being an entrepreneur is normal.

Chance didn’t make the music industry irrelevant or eliminate record labels or prove that you never need any partnerships but he did prove that you DON'T HAVE TO BE CHOSEN OR PICKED in a traditional sense. He isn't the only person who changed the rules. People do this all the time and it fascinates me.

You literally can start today to build your community, starting with the people who already know you, and some sweat equity.

You too can build something people want badly enough that more people have to pay attention.

You can change the rules! You can zig when others are zagging. Take a left turn instead of right. Change your mind now that you know more.

You can start fresh, iterate and change your current idea. You can even look through an old notebook and resurrect an old idea.

You can change the rules any time you want, friend.

If you enjoyed this little music history lesson, let me know. I nerd-out about these things a lot because I have spent so much of my life deeply invested in music.

Thanks for being part of MY community.

I hope you have a good week! Let me know if I can help you with anything and I'd love to send you some of my favorite Chance songs if you're interested!

Lauren V. Davis ​P.S. If you are curious what it is like to work together, feel free to see what my clients say Let's be real friends on social media! Add me on Linkedin or Instagram, and say hello!

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