Last week, I was lucky to have a conversation with Ibraheem Hamza to discuss ongoing music themes that we saw throughout 2020. This interview opened my eyes to the changes made by the covid-19 pandemic and what social isolation did to the creative arts. I wanted to continue this conversation about the various debates related to drug abuse, sexuality in music, sponsorships, and much more. I decided to reach out to Jewels Clark, the CEO & founder of How to be Social and local musician, to discuss what we can expect moving forward in the local scene.
HYBE Co Ltd, the agency behind K-pop super groups like BTS, has acquired Ithaca Holdings in a $1.05 billion deal. This deal will have the South Korean firm managing talent like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber. Do you think there’s any key cultural differences trying to build your music career in the United States versus other countries?
I was watching burlesque yesterday and one of the things that Christina Aguilera said in the movie was her character. She was travelingfrom Iowa to LA and she goes because there was nobody around me that I wanted to be. And I was like, that resonates with me because, in my life, there’s nobody that’s around me that’s doing what I want to be doing. Some people are doing bits and pieces of it like somebody who’s a creative entrepreneur that has a successful marketing business. I don’t want to do marketing but I do want to be a successful creative entrepreneur with a business. There are people that are getting 50,000 streams on songs, I’m like that’s my next goal, and I want that. There are people that I take bits and pieces of to craft my image and I think that focusing on what a place can give you is the wrong mindset. Focus on what can I give myself first, and there will come a time, there will be a moment where you look at yourself, and you’re saying, there’s nothing more for me to achieve here. And I’ve hit that several moments in my life when I used to live in Commerce, Texas, back in college, I realized that I’m a big fish in a small pond and whenever you get that feeling that you’re a big fish in a small pond, it’s time to move on to whatever is bigger and better and waiting for you. These people that move out to LA or New York, if you move out there because you think there’s going to be better opportunities, but you haven’t taken advantage of the opportunities in your city, you’re not being a good steward of what you’ve been given. And you have to be a good steward of what you’ve been given before you can elevate.
2020 was marked with vocal outrage towards events like the Jennifer Lopez halftime show, which received over 1000 complaints related to the risqué material. There was also the notable debate over the August release of Cardi B’s “WAP”. Do you have any reactions towards critics who state that songs with sexual references give poor values to younger generations?
It’s interesting, you bring up this question, and it’s something I’ve been ruminating on in my mind because I have always struggled with the idea of being sexy. For me, I’ve always wanted to be sexy, but I felt when I was in college, or other parts of my life that it was wrong to be sexy. I was raised in a religious background and so, we were taught to hug men from the side, don’t hug them with your chest, and don’t wear shorts that are too short, you don’t want them to see. You can’t be in praise and worship if you want to wear a dress and there were just so many negative things that were said around it and because I was in my environment at the time, I fed into it, and I believed it. Now, if you asked me like how you are asking me today, what I realized is that there is an innate human desire for skin-on-skin to see the form of a woman or to see a man be chiseled.
I’m all about body positivity and loving yourself where you’re at but I do think there’s something to be said about honoring someone that has put in the work to have their body look and feel their best. I think that if you’re taking care of yourself, that is a natural side effect of what’s going to happen. And so, when Cardi B and J Lo go out on stage, and they show off what they got because they worked their ass off for it, I applaud them. And I think that it’s a great role model for children to say that’s what it looks like to be proud of your body. Now, I think that pushing the ideas of sex at such a young age without giving people the proper education of this is what love is supposed to look like, this is how you’re supposed to take care of one another. I think that’s our biggest problem in our society today is we don’t know how to communicate properly with people that we might not understand that come from different backgrounds. I think the first conversation we need to have is about communication and how we teach and how we set children up for success so that when they do see those things, they recognize that’s not a bad thing. That’s not something I need to be scared of and ashamed of because shame is never a good thing. But rather, that’s the thing that I need to look at and say, is that right for me? And even if it’s not right for me, can I still support this person because it’s great for them? I think those are the conversations that we need to be having around women wanting to show up their bodies.
The 2020 Grammys featured the major comeback of Demi Lovato, whose absence was due to a near-fatal drug overdose in 2018. Have you collaborated with any other creatives who were impacted by the Opioid epidemic? Is there anything that can be done to raise awareness and help musicians struggling with addiction?
Personally, it’s never been a hard drug for me or any of my close personal friends. I’ve had some friends that have been addicted to coke and things like that but they’ve always come out on either side. I found somebody to talk about this the other day. At one point, I thought it was an alcoholic. And so, I started going to A. A, and I will say, A. A is better than the church, those people are the fucking Bee’s Knees, truly loving people because they’re just so accepting. They don’t care what your story is, where you come from because everybody’s got one. what I realized in my experience, and even my sponsor told me this once I told her, but I was, I don’t think I’m an alcoholic and she was, I didn’t think you were an alcoholic either but you’re just so much fun to be around. Because it has to be your discovery and understanding of why you are doing these things?
For me, I realized that there was a lot of trauma around my rave and my sexuality and so to overcome, in a weird, fucked up way, I would just drink so that I would feel okay with it instead of dealing with the negative thoughts or dealing with the actual things that happened to me. I was, I’ll just drink it and that’s what a lot of women and men say, I’ll have a couple of beers and then I’ll want to get laid. And it’s like water, we purposely putting toxins and things that are negative into our bodies, so that we can have sex with someone that we don’t know. Sex is supposed to be a beautiful experience and so for me, I realized that I wasn’t addicted to alcohol, but I was addicted to the feeling and wanting to be close to someone, and the only way that I could do that was when I was drinking. And so now I’m in a very healthy loving relationship because I worked on myself, and I realized that was what was going on. So, I think anybody that’s going through those addictions, it’s never just an addiction, if you want to spotlight the drug. They are going through the trauma, they’re going to meet them, what lead them there in the first place? Musicians use music as a channel to release their emotions and their spiritual beings. Artists, in general, are very spiritual, emotional beings living in a very material world and so when they’re going through that, what you have to realize is that if their mental health is they haven’t figured out ways to effectively deal with their lives and personal struggles without totally damaging themselves. That’s why it’s important to have a good support system around you, but not being dependent on them, so it’s these things artists go through because one, they don’t have a good support system, two, they haven’t trained themselves mentally, to be able to deal with the negative things that are coming with their career, whether it’s peer pressure, or drugs or alcohol because there’s always going to be someone bigger and better than you.
The collaboration between BTS & McDonalds was announced in April this year, around 9 months since the success of the marketing campaigns featuring Travis Scott. During Scott’s sponsorship, McDonalds reported burger shortages across their franchises and various TikTok trends appearing due to the unorthodox business plan. What has the process been like when finding a solid company you want to partner with and are there ever any signs when you know the sponsorship won’t work?
Sponsorships and influencer deals are something I’ve been working on a lot lately and I’ve had a lot of good ones. I want to throw Citri in the Jeweler’s name out there, I’m reading her stuff right now, she is an absolute gem, and just a wonderful female artist. So, we want to honor her in this article. I’m excited about our partnership and then there are people I won’t mention the name, but I was interested in getting more into wealth management just because I wanted to open up my possibilities, even though wealth management is not something I’ve been excited about. I am excited about Bitcoin and digital currencies and so I took this meeting with this wealth management company because a friend of mine from homeschool back in the day reached out with the opportunity and it seemed it was in alignment because that was what I was thinking about recently. And so, I took the meeting. The meeting went great with all this kind of stuff. And then I sent over the contract and I am so blessed and highly favored, I’m telling you because I got too excited and I didn’t send it over to my influencer manager first. I signed it. And then I realized I don’t think I should have signed that; I should wait for it. And so, coming to find out three days later, the girl that connected me to this guy called me I was, I’m no longer working with him for personal reasons. And we chatted about it and after that just didn’t feel comfortable working with them anymore. It just seemed very quickly.
There was a lot of signs that I shouldn’t be taking this deal and so I think that you had to be very wary and I think that was an opportunity from the Creator, to show me, you’re going to get opportunities that look beautiful, that are shiny, this guy was going to invest 50 grand in me, potentially 100 grand into me and I realize from that there are a lot of things that are shiny and great, there are going to be even better people around you, they’re going to tell you to hold up the weight, and pay attention to the people that care about you. Again, that’s why it’s so important to have a good support system. Pay attention to the people that care about you and they will guide you on, this is a good opportunity or this isn’t a good opportunity, so don’t try to do it all alone. It’s hard, it’s lonely and it’s not as fun. So, I would just say when you’re doing those trades, make sure you have a good manager, or somebody that’s a lawyer, that’s friends with you to take a look at it.
Verzuz, a battle series on Instagram Live that was launched by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland, matches up legendary artists and producers like DJ Premier and RZA. When it comes to the writing process, do you have to do any trend research or think about what could potentially become viral?
My songwriting process is all about, what I’m feeling on the inside and I try not to let any outside factors affect that except for the feelings of the environment that that song is being written in, so music not. Now, I have collaborated, I did a thing it was called Halloween Clean, and it was straight up the 32nd collaboration with an artist over in Seattle. His name is Benza on TikTok, if you want to tag him, B E in VA and it was a cool, specific just fun feature idea. And I got to collaborate with a new artist but what I focus on mostly is just producing a lot of content that lights me up in time and posting it. And what helps me understand myself better as an artist is this thing called Human Design? You were made to do something; you were made to represent something and so I pay attention to what post performed well? What did my audience resonate with? And so, I’ll go look at those things and I’ll recognize that’s what I liked about this post or I liked this about this post. I’m going to take that and try it again but try to make it higher quality and make it better, and have a stronger message behind it.
Great two part series on the music scene. I agree with Jewels that humans have an innate desire to see the form of a woman and so I saw no problem in Jlo’s performance. However, the “wap” lyrics just seem too crude and unattractive for my taste. To each his own.