Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Ezhel & Kelvyn Colt on Link Up, Brand-Deals, Ghostwriting in German Rap & Realness in Rap | BAKED

When people could really look behind the curtain. Yeah yo german industry ghost writing

First rapper that is officially getting paid to drop a benz, you know, I was like

Everybody went in like crazy Gentlemen was like oh

fire fire, boom boom, I was like oh my god you know it was for me man

What's up everybody! You tuned in to BAKED onSTOKED. We're in the Friends of Friends space in

berlin. My name is Marvin Game and I have the honorto introduce my guests. We're here today with my

main man Kelvyn Colt and Ezhel. Good to have youtwo here. And here we got the cook Sevko in the

house. Our usual cook uh Christoph is somewheretraveling in the world always busy but uh you

are here to bring honor to his cooking. So uh whatare we getting today? What did these guys wish for?

Yeah Ezhel wished for uh Schnitzel. Schnitzel. Schitzel. The usual turkish Schnitzel. The usual turkish Schnitzel like my

grandma made every time you know. Tradition. Okay. Yeah and there's various types of Schnitzel

the most common known is Viennese Schnitzel,but Schnitzel is actually from italy

so especially from milan and we're doing uh cutlet. Cotoletta alla milanese.

Which is a Milanese Schnitzel.

It's with Risotto Milanese, which is the mostfamous risotto from this area and and we're

going to have tomatoes because a good Schnitzelalways needs acidity like, you know, the lemon

Yeah. We don't do the lemon now we're gonna dothe tomato. So that's the traditional italian way

of doing Schnitzel? I treated it a little bit to bebetter. Okay okay you heard that Italians?

He's telling you whats up! Yeah yeah okay yeah yo but I like yo Ihad no idea Schnitzel came from italy I always

thought it was austria no it's actually yeah rightyeah yeah but it came from ireland to vienna and

the thing about the the Milanese version it'sum it's parmesan in the

yeah in the breading. There's cheese in thebreading. Okay.

My lactose intolerance gonna go crazy today! But there's nolactose in parmesan because it's so old. Okay.

You can eat it. Yeah, we learned some new every day bro.Didn't knew yeah. You can eat as much parmesan

as you want. Okay yeah look okay okay so never mind. Okay bro then we're gonna leave you in the kitchen

all around the globe

So Ezhel,

you're living in berlin now. Yes I'm living! Sincewhen? One year. Oh. I just came when the whole

lockdown things happened so I made it in time youknow if I was like a week late maybe I don't know

if I would be able to come. But now only sixmore years until you are a Berliner. Yeah I'm ready

for this. Yeah what uh what part of berlin are youin if you want to talk about that. In Tempelhof.

Okay so you're right around the corner from Kreuzberg. Yeah. That's where you probably spent a lot of

time recognizing where people are. Yeah definitelyI go there and but I like I like my neighborhood

too I met like most of my neighbors we have like aneighborhood Spti actually that's what we talked

about in the LINK UP song so i go there and ummeet with people, talk and you know it's just fun!

Now i'm just enjoying it. You two guys are alsotraveling a lot maybe not right now but usually

Where do you even live right now? Do you even havea place where you would say that's where Kelvyn

is living? Yeah i mean right now i'm with my familyso when everything started

when the whole lockdown and stuff started i was in L.A.

I wassupposed to be there for a few months until the festival season in europe starts

and at first ihad my um what i remember was like early march and

i was supposed to play a few festivals in france.I had like three festivals lined up so i was

supposed to fly to france, play the festivals and goback to L.A. and then these festivals got cancelled

and i hope you know my french community doesn't hate me for it but i was happy at first because

i was like okay so i have less stress, i can stay in,uh stay in L.A. and then yeah but then i mean they

the press announcement and it was a mess and likepeople started flying out of the country and stuff

and i thought i said to myself okay i'm just gonnastay in L.A. i'm gonna you know take some friends we

rent a house somewhere out maybe in the desert orwhatever make music but then i remember somebody

sent me a picture of a gun shop and like thequeue went around the whole block. Wow. And then

i said am i sure i want to be in this country if something like goes wrong because there's no

proper health care. It's crazy right there. And you knowand then you had the black lives matter protests

and like military presence or paramilitary howeveryou want to call it but these special units and

stuff and i was like okay i have to leave thisplace. So i came back to germany, staying with myfamily.

Then i was still traveling a little bit in europe i went to london for a few days i went to

um uh to oxford, i went to paris, um just cameback from dubai, but it's traveling now is very

very different. Because before i mean you guysknow me i used to fly like multiple times a week

and now i'm just yeah i'm just basically in one place and if i travel somewhere i'm

there like for a week and then i come back andthen i'm here again for a month or something um

but i'm in a very privileged position where i can say i actually enjoyed the lockdown, partially,

because it brought a slowness to my life that i would have yeah i would have never

taken that break that certain - quotationmarks - time off on my own and why i say

you know i'm the privileged position, becausei, you know, i own my catalog, i make my music,

the income off of my music monthly, i do stuffwith brands and so on. So i'm not as depending

not as dependent on the live income. But umi still see how it you know what it does for

people around me and people i work with. I meanjust looking at like my live agents you know the

whole [ __ ] industry is shut down. My homies thatare DJ's and stuff is it's crazy and also to see

the lack of support from the government for that,for that sector, for the culture, because i feel

right now more than ever: Culture is needed. Because people are down, people have a lot

of spare time, they need to listen to music, they need to watch things to be entertained, you see

the stock of netflix shooting up, the stock of spotifyshooting up. The chance to do it because we're so

international connected through the internet soit is possible to have cultural moments online.

Of course it's not the same as having a coupleof thousand people gathered uh together.

But let's not try to always look at the negativeside, let's try to see what you can get out of it.

I was making loads of music like and that'show we ended up making music as well. If it wouldn't

have been for all the stuff we would have probablynever taken the time to be like yo let's link up

let's go to the studio, let's hang out... How didthat link up happen, like, how did you guys meet each other?

Instagram man. Yeah! Yeah, we was justtalking and you know started talking. I was like

yo i think i'm going to come to berlin. I was atmy family's house and you know the frankfurt area

Yeah we met. Did you knew him before i showed you the video last time?

Yeah, i knew him before in the last interview ialso told yeah i watched him before and stuff

like once, but yeah you showed me yeah and nowwe're here together! I also saw a old clip of you

when you was i would say 14/15 maybe. You wasrapping on some old school beats yeah in english

Yeah i started actually um you know likewriting on english. For me, i mean even it

was like a shock when i first heard turkish rap.I mean i was like: Is this rap? You know, i knewrap,

i knew what rap is, but i couldn't link them up, you know, somehow like i was

But then i realized it, but i started um writing english. Ididn't know how to do it in turkish, because all

most of the examples i listened to were english,but then um you know it was the beginning of the

internet whole internet era and then um there wasstill cassettes you know like so only turkish rap

um source that i had was like this cassettes thatuh my friend makes his mixtapes you know and so

with time then um i decided to write in turkish,because i felt like um actually yeah i mean i can

do english okay but actually i want to expressmyself to my people you know and then i felt

like it was more like a mission you know than tomake music for me. Then i started turkish writing

in turkish but yeah i always wanted to do like anenglish track you know just to see how it works i

was like: Yo Kel's man! You know, you you, youknow you do it in english and you know like um

i'll just write you know. You know i say likeman i'll let let's see you know how it goes so

Oh it turned out great, but did you do awhole project together or how is it how

what's the come out of all these sessions? I saw the video and the and i heard the song but

is there more to come? Yeah we have more songs and we'll be continuing to work.

Let's seewhat the time brings yeah yeah you know. Thereception of LINK UP has been phenomenal

and that's i think super super important to see,because i don't think it has been really donebefore in that way

that you know there was german and english and turkish on one song and it's like

All of that together. Together on one thing.And it's also your different sides, all of yourdifferent sides,

all your different sides, coming together being like three, four, five, six artistson one song.

Yeah but first when i saw the name LINK UP i thought okay link up yeah of course theylinked up.

But i heard the song and then i dived into your spotify accounts and i saw and then somemost of it i knew before

but you guys are both known for legendary link ups. It's not like oh yeah

now we are the two artists that never link up withanybody and now we link up, no, it is, it's actually

just one of so many different link ups betweenmusicians or even with brands. Maybe you can tell

me something about different link ups that havebeen happening in the in the past. I would probably,

i would like to know how you and Murda linkedup and how that [ __ ] happened, because he lives

in the netherlands right? Yeah well like uh whenthe first like youtube was around you know i was

like searching okay like: What's rap? Rap history? Youknow things i couldn't reach when i was in turkey

you know um but then i was like yeah let me see,let me see, like i knew i knew there was turks

uh in europe you know so uh let me see how didthey do. So i just tried to, but not just not just

for turkish rap as soon as i had the youtube andi was checking french rap you know german rap

I wanted to hear other languages, too. Then i justwrote dutch rap you know just dutch rap and

pressed enter and then um yeah people come theni saw this like yeah turk his name was like

Murda Turk back then um and he had englishsongs crazy like "Boom Bap". He had crazy rhymes and[ __ ]

Oh you showed me this stuff! Yeah, like backfrom like 14 years ago you know 13 years ago and

um but then he was like um he was in the scenein the dutch rap scene, too. He was known you know

um and his songs was dope. Then one day like um isaw, i saw one of his songs um it's like a turkish

turkish trap and the first time i heard him he'srapping in turkish and i was like wow you know

he just does it so good then i just texted himyou know instagram just like: Yo Murda um howyou doing ?

The track you did is just crazy! It's amazing! So i told him, i just told him

that i know all his songs back then. He was like, he didn't,he didn't believe it. Like really? I was like man,

i grew up with your music and stuff. Then hesaid like he lived in ankara, for a while even.

He came to ankara for four years and stayed there. So i said: Wow man, we had also these things incommon

and so it happened. It was one song, twosongs, three songs, then we were like

man thesesongs are like sounding dope. Let's just make it,make an album and then the singles we dropped they

they blew up. So and yeah that's how it works.The rest is history. Yeah. Also i've seen you, lately i've seen

you a lot with Gentlemen. Yeah. How did that happen? Yeah yeah, we uh, we met you know we wanted to meet

he's making an album uh in german and like so it's like his first time you know, doing this.

And yeah he said like: Yeah i have this song, would you like to you knowdo something?

I was like man, yeah you, i mean, it's like my childhood dream. You know, like you showedme the way,

actually, for all this reggae scene and um then man it's the moment for me.

It's justuh i can never forget this moment man. So i'min the booth, the beat came. Because i didn't,

didn't show them what i wrote. I just showed themwhile i was recording tonight.

I just said like: Tutundum hayale

and just like sang it: Devam! Whenit just ended so quick you know when i,

when i ended the chorus there was like, everybody wentin like crazy. Gentlemen was like oh fire fire boom boom boom

was like oh my god, you know, it was for me man. Wow, you delivered. I just yeah it just came.

Then it was a it was a crazy moment for me. He was actuallytalking about the same moment like four hoursbefore

on the same couch. That's crazy. Crazyhow you delivered and how everybody

had goosebumps in the studio. Yeah. What about youKelvyn? Lately i saw you linking up with Dutchavelli.

How did that came along? Can you tell mesomething about that? How that happened?

Yeah, i mean, generally speaking it wasum Charlie Sloth. So Charlie Sloth is,

i don't know how i should describe. He's likeOG, like a legend in the UK music industry, right.

Like most, you guys know "Fire In The Booth" andstuff right, where people come and they rap overbeats

and stuff and then yeah he does that. He used to have it on BBC 1Xtra.

Now hedoes it on um Apple Music. He's the host there andum he's, i don't know how much i can, i'm allowed tosay about this,

but he's working on something and um i don't know man one day he just hits me up andhe's like:

Yo i want you on a record with - i can'tsay the name right now because - but it's a hugeamerican.

like a super big american artist. It'slike yo i need you on the song with him.

I was like what the [ __ ]? Okay cool, you know, i thoughtat first maybe he was texting the wrong person

or whatever, because the only time him and me hadspoken was via instagram where he was giving me props

for something and then you know we startedfollowing each other and so on and then um yeah

he started sending me beats and he got signed toRoc Nation, right, Jay-Z's management company

and one of the guys that works with him is a friendof mine as well. So somehow they started talkingabout me

and they started sending me these beats and they were like: Yo we sent them to everybody

and we need a fire hook and nobody was able todeliver yet. And i delivered like a bunch of hooks

on like all of the beats within, i don't know, asuper short space of time and next thing i know

it's like we're flying to the UK to a writingcamp. For like a week. Out somewhere in Oxford

and it's like the whole UK scene, like every bigbritish rapper you can think of and we're just inthe studio.

And i took my little brother with me, because he started getting into music and writing

and so him and me we're just writing for peoplenow. Write hooks and verses and this and that

together with them and for them and yeah wejust started making a bunch of songs and then um

yeah one thing led to another and then thishappened. Yeah so we got a bunch of songs with like

a couple of british people that are coming yeah. Are you going more into writing for other people

or is this just happening right? No it just happens, because i have a lot of music and it's easy for me

sometimes to create music. Like it goes very fastand well i, i don't know, probably if you look at

an older interview like a two-year-old interview i would sit there and say i have

not exaggerated maybe almost 100 songs and bynow i'll probably have 150 or something, right, so,

and when i was signed to my old label, i was hardly releasing music and now

this year alone i think i've released more music than in the past two years.

And next year is probably going to be thesame so i'm sitting on so many records

that i might never put out myself. Just becausei've evolved, my style has changed,

i feel morecomfortable singing now, so my singing got betterand whatever. So if you're out there and you need

a song, just holler at me. I got songs galore!No, um, so it's just something i really really enjoy

i just enjoy making music, i enjoy working withothers um and it can be sometimes like when we're

in the studio together, we give each other input,you know what i mean? You'll write some german bars

for him, you write some turkish lines. Yeah yeah,how, um, you know, like how does it go here you know

Ideas for melodies, melodies for better rhymes or whatever it is, you know. This is like the information youknow exchange

Yeah it's a collaborative process,right. You create music for people, so you might aswell

create it with people. It's more fun. Yes,so uh. It's a different thing to write with the artist

than to write a song and give it to a artist. Yeah, that'sno, no, we're not talking about.

Like it's a mutualthing, you know, like it's dope. Classic pop musicghost writing or disco music ghost writing is a

whole different thing. But i mean most rappersthese days probably have ghost writers, too.

But that's not what we're, you know, i think we're all -If people could really look behind the curtain,

yo, german industry, ghost writing, god, it's a handful of people, it's so crazy, but no.

I'm not trying to bash anybody, everybody'ssupposed to do what they want. Yeah, people, i meanpeople

have a different process to things as well. I mean if you look at a lot of some of

the biggest singers in history, a lot of them havenever written a song. But then i wouldn'tmind

if rap wouldn't have that context, whereit's about showing your skills or like if it's

a love song or whatever. Do whatever youwant, but when people are coming with like:

I'm the rapper, i'm the - but you didn't write it,then it's not, it's not matching up for me,

but if it is songs about whatever politics or top topicsongs, do whatever you want but, the MC in myheart

still has just a little bit about, yo if you, if you're really claiming to be a rapper

i'm notsaying you have to whatever freestyle or goingto a battle or some [ __ ] but if they claim onsongs

about they're talking about their skills, then theyshould really have them skills. Yeah. That's howi feel.

But nobody needs to feel like i feel youknow. Yeah no, no i feel you, i feel you, i feel you, it's

it's sad man, it's just creation and it's fun. So youknow and that and that's the thing i see a lot

i feel like i see more in the UK and i see it evenmore so in the U.S., this whole coming together toone place

in order to create for or with somebody. So this whole process of writing camps,

of havingdifferent artists there and whatever, whatever andit's not something i see as much in germany.

I feel things are still very clicky and it's like oh iwill only allow a songwriter or ghostwriter orwhatever

or my best friend in the session but notanother artist that might be able to contribute.

Because um you know there's, there's alsopeople who are like: If you want to work

with my artist, like you have to be signed tome as a producer or as a writer and whatever.

You know everybody has their own way of going about business, but i think the

creating great music should be put first andeverything else is sort of secondary.

Yes, it's two pairs of shoes. You wear the one pairs tomake the music and then you maybe put on anotherpair

to sell them or to market it or whatever, butto make music with that in your mind, it wouldn't work.

But this is why i think our, you know, theindustry of the music is at the current state that

it's at right now in germany. In terms of you havea lot of super talented artists and rappers andso on

but i think a lot of them who are at the forefront of things when it comes to numbers

it is not as genuine and innovative as it couldor should be if you compare it to different

you know other countries but i i think it'schanging, i think it's so beautiful to see

like the whole new underground in berlin you haveall these rappers here and they have nothing to do

with the music that plays on the big playlists. It's like everything but that, it is not melodic,

it doesn't sound like, you know, shisha bar rap or whatever they want to call it, it's like,

you know, people flowing like Hoodrich Pablo Juan andthis and that and they don't give a [ __ ],

they don't want to sign to major labels and i think that is so exciting, because- There are so many

interesting newcomers in germany right now and once they get to the point where they

have enough experience or where they become thefrontier of uh the playlist and [ __ ], then maybe

then [ __ ] will change, because it's not, it's notgrowing out of plastic, it's growing out ofreal underground rap again

and then maybeit's going to be more authentic than all the

like "shisha bar rap" or whatever. And one thing ireally wish that, you know, i would wish that

that it would happen more or that's going to come back is the whole remix culture.

You remember when you used to go on Dead Pit and likeeverybody would get onto "All Of The Lights"-remix

I'm telling you why this [ __ ] is not as big, because wedon't have these DJ Khaled DJ people who be like:

Yo Kelvyn, jump on the song, yo bro come here! No, wehave rappers with egos like: Yo i'm not going to

call him twice. If he's not going to send theverse he's not on the remix. This is and even

i've been trying to set up remixes in the past andit's so exhausting. Even with your closest people

it's exhausting to to force artists to be like yo i got this song maybe when you have free time

most of the time you don't go into the studioand be like oh yeah i'm gonna do this remix

that has been in my laptop for two weeks. You probably go to the studio to just make music

and then it might happen. So it's that i thinkthat's part of it that we are missing thesekey people.

People who push for it. Yeeah that's interesting, because sometimes i, because usually when you know

i go to the studio, i create music and then - butthere's always one or two days that i block out

where i'm like okay today i'm just going to recordfeatures um what i've seen a lot with you also

some of the stuff you play me, like you work withso many artists, like even if you look at me numbers-wise

compared to you, you know, you're 100 timesbigger than me, but it's like, you care about music

and that's how you choose the people you work with. Exactly. Like there was this other guy you showedme

from somewhere like southwest in germany aswell that's like you found them like on a

meme hip hop page or something. Yeah yeah man yeah. Whatare you talking about? It's Newman. Okay. He's young

um he's from Essen and like yeah um i heard him,i just saw him, i saw him rap on an instagrampage

like um where just there's just acapellavideos, you know. So i just i checked him and i waslike

man this dude is different, you know, like hisvoice is dope, you know, like in tak-tak-tak-tak-tak he was rapping and

the way he was you know moving was good and i waslike, okay, let me check. Then i um he had no, he had

no recorded songs. I was like, i just texted him, manyo man, you know, you know what? His heart probably stopped.

He's like what? You know young blood you should, you know, youshould, you should have a song man. You should you

should uh release a song, you should do tracks, youknow, if you just do these videos is dope but i need tolisten

to your tracks. Then yeah, then he made it, hesent a couple of things, then he sent like one track

um then i was like, yeah that's it, i'm jumpingon this and yeah we made the song together.

Nice. I love those easy link ups. Onemore, one last link up i want to talk about isnot

with another artist, but it's you linking upwith Mercedes-Benz. That's probably one of the

biggest link-ups i've ever heard in at least ingerman rap history of a artists and a brand comingtogether.

Yeah. How did that happen? Like howdoes a rapper - First of all, a thing, i think,

that i need to say, people always think i'm [ __ ]part of the illuminati or something, because i have

You not?

No, it's like people need to get straight with what i do or what we do is my manager,

is me and there's like a handful of friends that wework with. That was it. I'm not signed to a majorlabel,

i'm not signed to any brand agency or likea huge management company or whatever, it's like

an independent team and we do everything on ourown so when you see me work with big artists or

big brands or whatever it is because these brandsor artists or whoever actually [ __ ] with what ido

or what we do and what we represent and stuffand with Mercedes a friend of mine from the UK

uh artist, digital artist, so not musician, butsomebody who creates actual art he's a - slash- programmer

um he was working with Mercedes. Webb is his name. Shoutout Thomas um he was working with Mercedes

and long story cut short they were launching theirelectronic car in austria at the Ars Electronica

and they booked me to perform there. So when i wasperforming there you know they had all these super

influential people there and then yeah we justended up having a mosh pit in, in a basically ina church

and like the bass was so hard the windowsstarted breaking and stuff. I'm sorry lord, forgiveme.

But um yeah so it was it was super lit, butthen we also had dinner and we were talking

about technology and all that stuff and i'm reallyinto, you know, that sort of stuff as well.

So, they were kind of shook, because they werelike: Oh damn, this guy's a rapper,

but like he's not a cliche rapper, you know what imean, so they were like okay Mercedes has thisthing

where they have a community of people fromdifferent walks of life that they bring together

also when i performed in texas at South bySouthwest i was at a Mercedes dinner and then um

yeah we just started talking and then over a yearlong period almost um my manager Lina and them

we just kept on going back and forth about howcould we work together and then at the beginning

of 2019, uh of 2020, yeah, beginning of this year orend of last year, beginning of this year, they gave me

the electronic car to drive for some time andthen you know i was cruising around i was enjoyingit

and then you know you have some people whodon't necessarily want to see you in a nice car

um especially as a young black man and stuff andthen um around summertime this year i made a song

with Abaz and X-Plosive, where i sang in the hook: "I know. You don't want me, inside a Benz truck"

and that was just really me channeling that negative energy that people were projecting onme

and instead of going on instagram, on a instagram rant, where i was like: Oh [ __ ] you

[ __ ] this person. I was like nah let me, let me just make a song out of this, right.

So meanwhile my team was already talking withthem about working with me and they were trying

to figure out how we could work more togetherand then they said oh can we listen to some music

maybe we can you know figure out how to do, dosomething together and then we sent them that.

Lina sent them the song and then they were like: Yo this is, this is crazy, like, let's do it.

And that's how that then happened. Crazy, so in the beginning it was one homie working at Mercedes?

No, not even working at Mercedes. Designing uhlike a - Yeah like, like an art piece for a launch ofa car

but it was then and that is what got my - soto say - foot in the door. I was basically just

the way DJ performed. The first indicator. That was thefirst sort of thing that got me in and then you

know the rest started building and they were into,you know, what i do and blah blah blah blah blah

and then they liked the team. It's i think, i'm alsoin that sense, i mean they did something with AsapRocky

a few years ago but other than that i thinki'm pretty much the first rapper and in germany

the first, i guess, rapper that is officially, youknow, getting paid to drive a Benz, you know

what i'm saying, i was like, no, it's crazy, becausetwo years ago, only two years ago i made, i did my

driver's license, because before i never had the,was never - I'm doing my driver school right now.

I'm learning. Well then maybe you can link himup with the homie for the artworks for Mercedes.

Now, so when i, because before i was never ableyou know how it is in germany. It's like somewhere

between a thousand and two thousand euros. Iwas, i was never able to afford it and once

i was able to afford it i was living in london soi didn't need the driver's license then i started

going back and forth and never had the time todo it then my parents literally forced me to do it.

They're like yo you gotta do driver's license. Iwas like nah i would be so rich, i'll have a driver.

I don't need a driver license and then yeah um itwas literally between i would like come back from

i don't know, New York be here for, for like fourdays i'll have two driving lessons i'll go to

Paris, i'll come back have another driving lesson,so it took me almost a year to do it then i got

it done and if i wouldn't have done it there's noway i could have done that campaign so once i got mydrivers.

Do your driver's license! Exactly. So oncei got the driver's license um everybody was askingme:

yo what car are you going to get? What car are you going to get? I was like nah man

i'm not going to buy a car. I'm going to waittill somebody pays me to drive their car.

You already put it out there. Yeah i'll put itinto the universe and that's what's funny because

people always like they look at you, like you'recrazy when you're like, no, you can speak -

you know manifesting - speak things into existence, butlike any successful house of you know success is

a very subjective term, but any successful personwill tell you, you have to manifest what you want

in life. You have to think it, you have to say itand then you have to act accordingly and you will

attract what you want and it's not that you saysomething and it magically just comes to you, but

thinking about, it speaking it out, speaking topeople about it. It will, it will influence your

behavior patterns and they will connect you with it and blah blah blah it's like

you bring, it's like turning a snowball intoan avalanche, you know, and it's this [ __ ] is

true man. I'm the like everybody here's the livingproof. But uh coming back to the Mercedes-Benz deal

let's go like maybe 15, 20 years back or maybeeven 30 years back where something like this

would have looked like a complete sellout inthe hip-hop industry that's probably why you

explain yourself why you talk about this, because it's not like a major hooked it up

it is coming out of actual real work, but doyou think nowadays there is even something like

sellout? Yes. Between brands and artists? Yes and no. I mean i think society has-

there's two things you have to take into consideration. One is that hip-hop

is so heavily tied to selling stuff. It doesn't matter what, be it weed

or cars, you know what i mean, like hip-hop cultureit is the, is the most flashy show-off consumption

genre that is out there which is weird, becauseit obviously also stands for and especially in

your case, for example, right resistance, politicalmaking, political statements, which is something

that also takes place in a lot of my music, butum like if you think back like east coast hip-hop

you had you know Rakim and people like thatand like even them and their covers paid in full

and stuff. You see them in their DapperDan, Gucci and Louis track suits and stuff.

So it's always been flashy and hip-hop was for avery long time struggling to get acknowledged by

these sort of big corporations, because you wouldhave rappers that would make things popular by

wearing them or talking about them in their songsand then there was this guy from this um a french

champagne company, i forgot what it was and theyasked him yo what do you think about the fact

that rappers always mention your champagneand are doing free advertisement for you and

he said yeah unfortunately you cannot decidewho your customers are and that was like yo

what the [ __ ] and after that people stopped, likerappers stopped mentioning it. Jay-z called out to

boycott the brand and their sales slumped you knowand um they would have just sponsored the rappers

it would have been a whole different thingand that's how Jay-z started his own liquorcompany

and so on. So to cut a long story shortproducts and hip-hop go hand in hand and

um when it comes to brands and selling out and notselling out i think it's very much about does this

brand or this particular activation sort of tiein with what your brand? Because as an artist you

are a brand at the end of the day. You can acceptit or not accept it, but you are a brand and

there are things that work with your brand DNA and things that don't work you know and

that's why certain artists can do certain things. Like it is, i'm somebody that's always been super

into fashion. Which and why itmakes sense for me to work with a brand like Louis.

I can't start sell, i cannot start selling frozenpizza. It doesn't work, because it's not part of who

i am and you know what i represent. Yeah. I couldopen up a - i don't know - a restaurant and have

some crazy experimental street food or whatever. That would be more me. What was, what would be the

Kelvyn Colt restaurant? There would be a fusion ofprobably some nigerian food and i don't know

I have different fusions. So if i go inside thereand i say surprise me, just bring me a surprise.

What would i get at the Kelvyn Colt? Oh man. i'llbring you some pounded, pounded yam with egusi soup

and uh a little - What is pounded yam with egusi soup? What's that? That's some niger food.

I will take you to a- Ah you showed me a restaurant!Yeah. Oh like like an example i did this thing with

with Reebok um it was west africanfood there, we had nigerian food then and the food

was crazy right? I only came for the food, i'm sorry,bro. Like and everybody who came said it was

the best food they have had. It was so good! Rememberthere's a picture? I think with you, your dad and

some other people and i'm in the background witha plate, like, eating like this and somebody made

a meme where they like zoomed in on that. Oh yeahand that's, but that's what it's about man.

I come eat at your restaurant every day then. Yeah,you'll be my guest Well i wanted to ask you

one more thing Kelvyn. Yes. When you, i go to yourinstagram page and look at the name it says:

"I OWN MY MASTERS". You don't have to explain to mewhat that means but maybe you can put it in some

simple worlds what it actually meansto own your masters, so people understand that

That's what it means! That's what owning your master'smean! Owning your masters is very, i think, important

as an, as an artist. Every time somebody streamsor buys the music, whoever owns the master gets

a cut of, you know, the revenue that's been generated. Usually when you sign to a major record label or

to any label really they want to own your mastersor they want to own a percentage of your masters.

Basically if you're an artist you should always try to

keep to retain the rights of the master andyou license a percentage cut of the income,

the master generates over a certain period oftime, you license that out so i wouldn't go for

anything longer than five years in an idealscenario. Even less, maybe only as long as the,

you know, the duration of the contract. I learnedit late, but when i learned it, i bought it back.

Like, i was like, you know, take the money, take morethan i signed for. Just for people to understand

you get, to make this, to make it simple, you geta 10K advance, but you will only get 10 percent of yourmusic.

So now your album has to make 100K to getthat 10K back until you will get paid one morecent.

And that, and not only that, they obviouslycalculate expenses against - Of course, of course.

There is so much more to it, but that's just the thing. Just that part you know to think about yo we're

making the money back with the album but iam only recouping with this little percentage

If i would have had the knowledge that i havenow, i wouldn't have signed to major and if i

was to sign again with a major label it wouldbe a partnership. I wouldn't sign as an, as an

artist that's giving away his masters. No, it's going to be a partnership.

And if you want to have that conversation abouta partnership and come to the table with me

homeboy or homegirl what do you haveto offer that i can't do for myself

what muscles can you, can you flex for me that ican't - i have money, i have contacts, i have this

i have that. I've done a lot of stuff nobody be itdoesn't matter who they're signed to. From that

position at the end they don't even want to signyou, because there's no - Yeah i mean, no, we, you know,

we have an offer. There is yeah, of course, there'spartnerships and there's ways but the type of deal

were like your big advance, small percentage, theywill. It's not interesting. Yeah.

And it makes sense at some point that for, for so many people and so many people just,

whatever, release two albums and then they are outof their deal and then do it independently. Yeah.

I'm not sure if this is completely true, but i once heard about David Guetta.

You ever heard about his first two albums went down. I'm not sure if it's true yeah but even if not

it would be such a cool story and it was such akey moment for me to understand. I heard he gave,

he was already a successful DJ spinning for like20K uh a weekend in clubs, but then he's signed

to a label and he gave up all of his percentagesor almost all of them like kept five percent.

But then the label gave some percentage or good amount of money to the features like Kid Cudi

or Rihanna or whoever was on these albums. So thelabel owns so much of this album, so now they want

to make this album the biggest album ever, becausethey own everything of it. So half a year later,

David Guetta is the most famous DJ in the worldand now spins for a quarter million a weekend.

And that's what he would have made out off the music. Yes andhe's out of his deal after two or three albums and

now he's [ __ ] David Guetta. So who's gonna signme. Yeah. That's, from that, like my,

my perspective of "[ __ ] the industry" changed. Afterhearing that i felt like yo with these middle

fingers in front of the major label house youwill not get any further. You won't get anywhere.

Finding and building strategic partnerships withthe, you know, right people, the right entities and

stuff and if they can come to your terms thenthat's that and if they can't, then they can't.

But a point i wanted to touch on from earlierwas what i said like what was one of the things

that helped me during this season where we had, ihad, you know, all these festivals canceled all the

tours moved and stuff it's like every monththere's money coming in from every stream that i'm

generating and right now i'm streaming wise biggerthan i've ever been than, you know, versus to

well, like, i mean you can't measure success onlyby numbers and stuff, but like my peak under being

a major record label was, i don't know, let's sayseven hundred thousand monthly listeners or

six hundred thousand and now i'm like almost twomillion and if i compare to what i make a month

now, like versus to not making any money, butit's a crazy difference so you really have

to think about what you're in it for, you know,do you want that instant cash flow and that

instant bag which was amazing for me. Forthe most people you know it works you know like

uh you know instant cash like. But because wedon't know different. Yeah. Because we only learn

you do some work and then you get money or theother way around you get an advance and then

you do the work so here's 50K give me an albumand there's no more questions to it. What about,

[ __ ] master rights, licensing, distribution. I want to make music. Andthe thing is, and the thing is

like for these days, you know, it's differentbro, if you're popping on Instagram or TikTok

people are not going to offer you 50K. They'regoing to offer you 300K. Tell somebody that's 18 years old

you know maybe got kicked out of hismom's house, living on his homies couch,

selling 20 bags he and there to get by. To sayno to [ __ ] 300k it's like that's - There's noquestions.

You would not ask questions. 18 yearold me probably would not have asked one question.

Yeah. 300 000? Push the buttons! In my case, you know,like i just said, i just first of all i just wrote

every all this uh explicit kind of stuff thatgot me in trouble, but then man like um i knewit,

you know, no label would just like me in turkey. They wouldn't, they no one would

like release this music out anyway man. I'mtalking about all these things you know um and

then you know just i saw how can i distributemy music like by myself you know but then

um i was lucky to do that, because my um whenmy ship blew up you know i was like yeah it's

working. But then label started to call inturkey, but then the their office was like

very ridiculous you know like trying to take,like trying to take everything from you and

you know i was like man you know what i don'tneed it i'll just wait you know i'll just wait.

I already don't have money you know i'll just waita bit more it'll, it'll come up, it'll come out man.

But yeah. Patience. But for my beginning my storywas like this you know. And now you are obviously

making, you're generating a monthly income off ofthe fact that you retain your right. Exactly, yes.

And this is way more than if you would have takena bag at some point with them, right? Exactly.

But one thing that is for sure and it's the samefor everyone: tax office. I'm going to come get you!

A good tax, so you know they're coming for you. Put some money to theside, because, bro, if you're standing there with

the hand open they standing right behind youwith a bigger hand open. True, true.

Let me see. If you want to become a millionaire, you got to make two million. Yeah, definitely taking a while homeboy. Yeah and that's that.

Okay, so then we're gonna let him finish preparingand then we're gonna get some dope as food.

Yes. You ready for food? Yeah always ready. Always ready. Always ready.

Okay so oh-la-la. What, what is what? What is what? Thisis the risotto alla milanese with saffron, parmesan

and usually a meat broth or a meat bone broth,but we're doing a vegan dashi broth today. Nice!

This is also the vegetarian Schnitzel, it's um a Celery-Schnitzel that i blanched in the same dashias well

and this is a baked tomato. Which isa baked tomatoe. Simple, simple but very delicious.

It's a heirloom variety, very tasty, stillvery firm so - It looks juicy. Yeah yeah.

Yeah so um. You start. Gonna go and i'mgonna give you Schnitzel. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for cooking, thanks forthis food. Yeah, thank you so much, i'm really excited about

eating it. Yeah i'malso very so excited about this

Celery-Schnitzel, bro, this is, this is why meateaters laugh at vegan people, because you're like

talk to him about Celery-Schnitzel, but then,it might not be so bad, it might be reallygood.

Yeah, it's probably. I think anything he cooks will probably be great. Oh last meal hecooked,

bro, was so dope. Oh my god! What did you cook? Um korean spicy fried chicken and some

side dishes. With eight different side disheswith kimchi and wow. Everybody enjoy! Yeah enjoy.

Let me see this. Moment of truth. Wow, yo,you've got to try this vegan Schnitzel!

I'll probably not say it's exactly like Schnitzel, but it's dope. Mmm, wow.

Health to your hands. You're making me veryhappy. You're making me happy, bro!

This iscrazy right here! Wow. Well guys, thanks for comingby. Thank you! Such a dope talk right there.

Thank you with everything you guys putout. Better keep the journey running!