Professor Lyrical (Episode 74)

🎧 Join mathematics professor and rap artist Professor Lyrical as he reveals how blending academics with artistry creates powerful platforms for youth engagement while sharing industry insights about authentic success in music.

Through candid conversation and real-world experience, Professor Lyrical demonstrates how education and creative passion can combine to create meaningful impact while building sustainable careers.

This inspiring episode explores:

• Why authentic education comes in many forms beyond traditional schooling
• How to build real success in music without massive marketing budgets
• The power of connecting with your true audience versus chasing viral fame
• Why discipline and dedication matter more than natural talent
• Building genuine fan connections that sustain long-term careers
• Finding creative ways to merge different passions into unique opportunities
• The importance of staying humble while pursuing big dreams

Perfect for: Aspiring artists seeking authentic paths to success, educators looking to innovate their approach, students questioning traditional education models, and anyone interested in combining multiple passions into meaningful work. Plus: Essential insights about building sustainable careers while maintaining artistic integrity.

To learn more about Professor Lyrical or to hear his music, please click below.

https://www.professorlyrical.com/prolyrical

Transcript

Welcome to Mindshift Power podcast, a show for teenagers and the adults who work with them, where we have raw and honest conversations. I'm your host, Fatima Bey, the mind shifter. And welcome, everyone. Today, we have with us Professor Lyrical. He is from the Washington DC area.

He is a professor of mathematics at a local university there. He is a PhD, an inspirational speaker, and a rap artist. His entire career has been centered around youth and young adults, which is why he is here today. So how are you doing today, professor Lyrical? What's up, Fatima?

Thanks for having me. I'm doing great. Good. I like to dive right into it. So you have all this PhDs.

You have a PhD. You you you're really into education. You have a lot of other stuff I didn't even mention. Why rap? The, I I actually always love that question with the, academics and the and the hip hop.

So I was doing rap well before academics. So the the real question for a lot of people that know me is why education. You know what I'm saying? Because that that definitely came later in life. But to flip it, I mean, so the the hip hop has always just been a part of my life since I was a kid.

Love creative writing, everything poetry since, like, I mean, like, first grade. Right? I was that kid entering the poetry contest, the the name, the caption contest. And when I won one of them when I was really little, it kinda made me believe my teacher's hype. She was like, oh, you're so creative.

You know? And I stuck with that and really kind of you know? Thanks to a teacher. Right? Like, that I believe that I was, like, creative and always kinda remember the power of, that I would get to feel a piece of when you'd be in a classroom talking to other kids as a performer and then seeing the attention that came and the the captive audience that the kids would have.

Because you need cool mentors in society, whatever. And all too often, it's hard to get those guests to come through the class. And I just it hit me. I was just like, this would be a really dope path for me to blend in with just the performing instead of just coming and doing some, you know, look at me, jump around, and do my rap thing. Like, what substance are you then gonna share with the captive audience?

So the education thing made perfect sense. So That I absolutely love that you, took your passion and you decided to do something useful with it other than just entertain. I I this that's actually a principle that I teach a lot, especially when I go into high schools. But even in just talking to older adults. Okay.

You know, I I you've heard me say this in off air conversation, but I look at some entertainers, and I'm, like, not impressed a lot. You're rich, you're famous, and you can shake your booty on stage, or you can rap hard, or you can rock hard, whatever the the genre is. But so what? What are you doing with it? Right.

I mean That's what I look at. I I I do give credit to artists who do that well. You know? Like, I mean, we all need the respite and the the break from reality kind of thing that entertainment affords, but it is really nice. I mean, that's what I gravitate to when they're when you feel like it's not just junk food.

Right? You feel like there's some substance in the meal and, you know, you feel it makes you you know, eat look look at marketing with food, really, to to continue it. It's like, if something sounds a little healthy, we, like, feel better about it. We're like, this tastes good and it's healthy. Right?

That's, like, the ideal. And And I I don't think it's much different with the way that we consume any entertainment. It's like we wanna feel like the mind is getting to be as much of a part of it, as possible. So, I I I always love it when it's that way, but I get it when it's not. Because sometimes you just want a chocolate bar.

You know what I mean? Right? Yeah. Well, the thing is doing something with it, that can come in many different ways. Mhmm.

So music can be used to uplift. Music can also be used politically and and has a big history of that. It could be used to make people aware, to get people to stand up and fight or whatever. That's still a usage. It doesn't all have to be butterflies and cotton candy, but it's still a usage.

So, like, I'm still impressed. Even if we don't have the same political views, I love it when people use their skills to do something that as they view as helping Right. Right. Helping animals, whatever. Sure.

So I love that you that you did that. I appreciate it. So right now, I'm gonna let the I'll play a tiny little snippet, just a few seconds, of one of your, more recent songs. So let's just here we go. You sound good down right here, baby.

Follow me for a minute. My skill level is still better than most of y'all. Posterize your poses, you're still posting, but most of y'all. Hit your subject matter, this lack and still have me mad at y'all. Hocus pocus, rabbies lack focus, go take it at a raw.

My catalogs evolve, lyrics are classical, from the pad Alright. Now that you heard that, you guys heard a little bit of what his music is about. So let me ask you, professor lyrical. What would you consider yourself to be most passionate about? I mean, I default to my son.

Yeah. I was I've just spent the day with him as well, so little little biased there. But, that's usually my first answer. I know for a lot of people, they want, like, yeah. We know that.

Like, we know, but, nah, it's like more than that. It's like, I wanna make the music that my son would have for a blueprint. I wanna make the music that he can be proud of. I was just eating with him on the way home from this this school activity, and I said to him, we're we're actually talking about Elf on the Shelf. And, and I was like, you know, it's always a good idea to act like somebody's watching or somebody's listening.

Right? And for me, he's that person. Right? So I'm really cautious about, you know, what I say, what I don't say. So it's hard to say anything but that.

And I think if we don't have that person in life, it's almost like fake it. Like, pretend your grandmother's listening. Like, what would you say? You know? And I realized that sometimes sounds like it could be boring, but I'm like, no.

I wanna say something that's gonna grab my grandmother, but it'll still grab my son, and it'll grab whoever, my my friend in the corner or you or the person in the boardroom. Right? Because if it's if it's true, it should resonate. And so that true resonate part for me is important. Like, just reading a book report and trying to call it a rap probably isn't gonna be the greatest thing in the world.

But to the previous question too, it's like you can get the substance in there. So trying to blend those paths for me, I also extend to other people. So I'm really excited when I meet someone in a whether it's a seminar or conference, education, performing, and you find someone who's who they talk to you. They're like, yo. You got this career that you do, this passion where you blend them together.

Like, you know, how did you come up with that or whatever? And I always flip it, and I'm like, what two things do you really like that don't necessarily appear like they go together? And if you had to, how would you force them together? You know what I mean? And Mhmm.

It it might feel a little, like, life coach or whatever, but I don't think it's too far away from education. You know? So I'm always trying to learn something, try to be a lifelong learner. But when someone's working for you, you wanna share it. You wanna be like, hey.

Look. Look at look at this. You can do this too, but you have to feel emboldened to be able to do something that maybe somebody has told you. Yeah. No one's gonna wanna hear that.

No one's gonna wanna see that. No one's done that before. You know? And so I guess the the the long and short of the answer is is, like, you know, trying to take my viewpoint, being able to share it with somebody else in a way that doesn't just sound like, oh, look at me. Look what I'm doing.

No. You can do this kind of thing too and put your own spin on it. And for me, that has a lot of reward back to me. So that's a piece of inspiration. You know?

Finding that inspiration in music, inspiring others to kinda do something like that. Every every time I go out, I'm kinda leading with that, you know, if I can. And if I'm just up on a stage saying a song, I hope they like it enough that they're gonna find find something else. So if I can, you know, stay centered on those things too outside of just my son, that's probably what does it for me. Okay.

I like I like that. You've taken bits and pieces of your personal life and gave them a purpose that fuels you for what you do. Mhmm. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah.

No doubt. Yep. Now tell us why because, you know, a lot of youth don't feel like education matters. It's boring. It's what's forced on us.

We just do it because we gotta do it. Right. But why does education actually matter? I mean, it's like the the million dollar question. When you're in it and you don't see the reward coming, like, whether you're practicing dribbling moves on a basketball court, but nobody's paying you to play.

Right? No one's paying you to go to school. No one's offering you a scholarship. No one's paying you NBA money. What's gonna make you get up and still do it, right, so that you could get to the level to have that kind of opportunity?

And there's a part of that answer in school other than just the altruistic, oh, you're gonna better your mind and learn things about the world. Right? It's like, let's face it. Most students, most kids wanna hear about how am I gonna better my life. Well, it's the only pathway I know that, like, pays dividends well after the time you get that piece of paper.

Right? It'll pay that dividend. No one could take it away, and it's the kind of thing that gives you opportunity. You might be studying something that has nothing to do with what you're gonna do for a career, but it's like if you learn how to think critically about a topic, and let's say your reward for that is some university bestows upon you some piece of paper that says, I got my credential in this area. Just the process of doing it is like the process of being on the court when no one's watching, and you're out there and you're dribbling.

Right? You're just working on your handle, working on your handle, and you're getting better and you're getting better. Someday, there may be a payoff. But even if it doesn't come, you've benefited from the process of watching self betterment happen in real time. Right?

Mhmm. I I go to court and I shoot every day and I record it. And I remind myself when I watch the videos, I'm like, you sucked, like, not too long ago. Right? And you're looking at this video here, and you just hit 10 straight.

And sometimes we need that visual. Just like I got records behind me on the wall, sometimes you need that visual to say, hey. I went and did that. Right? And how did I get it done?

I was practicing in the lab when no one was looking. It wasn't when the records came out or when the video came out. I was in the lab when no one was looking. I was skipping the the party. I was skipping the fun stuff.

For me, this is fun, but I was I was sacrificing something to get it done when no one was looking and there was no reward. You know what I mean? Education can is is really literally that. It feels crappy. Like, why am I doing this?

You know, once you do have some of those credentials and you start to stack them, they're permanently in the treasure chest. Right? And you can whip them out whenever time requires. It stinks who have to do that sometimes, but it isn't, just a it's a door opener, and it's an opportunity if nothing else. And they they pay dividends when you least expect it.

So I think that's an excellent point. I like the way you you phrase that. You know? It's something that the imagery that you give us there keeps giving, once you got it. And it's not just a one time thing because sometimes people require for certain jobs that you have a bachelor's degree, and they don't really care what the topic is.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can't do it. Paper.

I mean, don't get it twisted. In some cases. In some cases. There there's the other side of that coin. I mean, I know I'm being sarcastic, but it's like, there's a lot of stuff you're gonna do in school that has no relevance to your life whatsoever.

Right. And sometimes it is in math. Sometimes it isn't the subject I teach. Right? It could be in your math class.

You might be have a job with your accountant for the rest of your life. Do you really need calculus? The answer is probably no. You know what I'm saying? You don't.

You need to sign it. Though. Right? Yeah. I also wanna point out another, another what I see as a major, major, major benefit to education of any kind, discipline.

Everything in life that works, anything anytime anybody has success in anything, doesn't matter what the topic is, doesn't matter what the subject, doesn't matter what the career is. 100% of the time, you need some form of discipline. Absolutely. And what I like about education of any kind on any level, it requires some form of discipline. That's right.

And that alone can prepare you for life in ways that'll pay you more than just money. Yep. And people don't even think about it that way, but it's true. I I am inspired by that message always. I rap about that message.

When I if someone says, hey. Spit a 16, it's usually gonna be a 16 that does that. It one of the the hooks to us probably my first major solo single ad was called the focuses back when I just went by lyrical. And it's funny. My son was just listening to the car, so, again, it's fresh on my mind.

Came out in, the the album it was almost called Infinity. It came out in 02/2005, and the single came out in 02/2006 on vinyl. Right? And the hook of the song is from The Locks, and they say the determination, the dedication, and discipline. And just the dope way that they said that with all those d's in there.

Right? It was like, I was using it like my determination, the dedication, and discipline. The focus is back. And so literally talking about staying focused, having determination, dedication, and discipline, it is a secret formula. There's no shortcuts.

If you get a shortcut, you're just fortunate. Something fell in your lap. Don't be don't be patting yourself on the back too hard. If you didn't put in the dedication like you said, you know, it was probably all a house of cards. You know?

I wanna interject about shortcuts real quick. Sometimes shortcuts are like microwave food versus oven warmed food. Microwave food, the heat's there, but it doesn't last very long, and it's cold in just a couple minutes. Right. If you heat up something in the oven, you got that nice crispy edge.

Mhmm. It's the heat lasts for, like, twenty to thirty minutes. Mhmm. It's not the same quality. Just something to think about.

It's like reheated pizza versus putting that pizza in the oven. I mean, it's Oh, yeah. Totally different. Migrate. Like that metaphor.

You gotta you got some verses. You might have some verses in there. For sure. It's all about the metaphors. So let me ask you this.

We're talking about education and how important it is, but what does it look like when we don't get education we need? So I have a strong take on this, and I know that I'm biased. Come from a position of bias here. I've watched a lot of my friends who started out the same as I've done and maybe done something slightly different. There's a lot of examples of some of them who've done way better than I've done.

Those are the outliers is what I wanna say out there. It's not the one offs to pay attention to. We can all say, oh, I have a friend who's a blah blah blah and has done unbelievably well. On average, that's not what's gonna happen. On average, the higher your education level typically is going to turn into longer term wealth.

We know that statistically. There's countless studies on it. Right? So the fact that there are great jobs out there that you can do with your hands or you can do with a certain talent that don't require formal schooling or the traditional academy way of schooling, that's great if you find one of those pathways. But, traditionally, doing something that requires no education or no skill is usually a pathway to no employment, no income, and no sustainability.

Right? Unless you turn to something that's probably fringe, illegal, or probably not that moral ethical. Right? Right. The the tried and true pathways have been tried by somebody usually smarter than us.

Right? And the the alternative ones have been tried by somebody smarter than us. But we can watch with the results of the empirical evidence of what usually happens when people take those tributaries. Right? So it's like we all wanna outsmart the system.

We all wanna come up with the genius way of doing something, that is like playing the lottery in a way. Like, you might have a plan. You might be smarter than me and have a great plan for it. It might have the skill set to pull it off. I don't know if I have the skill set to pull it off.

So for me, what has what has worked is doing what somebody else has done and trying to put my own spin on it a little bit. Like Right. Right. Being being educated is not a unique thing. Right?

But sometimes we feel like we wanna have that secret sauce, you know, and do it different. But it's like, well, if you just look on average, people who do it that way tend to do pretty better over the long haul. So I'm not knocking any other way to do it. I'm just saying in my life and the people that I'm around, again, it's from my own bias. When I look at the people in my world, whether it's academia or whatnot, people that are usually very, diligent, again, that determination, dedication, discipline comes into it, and that have achieved something worth being proud of.

It's usually not by accident. And if you're gonna do something that's in the sciences or whatever, it's usually that methodical, piece of it is embedded into the system of what it means to do the scientific process anyways. So you get that extra benefit in life even if you don't do it as a career. So it seems to me a win win. You know?

I wanna point something out too because when when we use the word education, people assume that we're only talking about college. Right. College education, but we're not. Right. So for the audience listening, we we and professor who agrees with me on this, Education just means that you learn something.

Absolutely. It doesn't mean that you went to college. You education for you might be trade school. It could have been, stuff that you learned on your own. There are people who are successful in careers because they'd studied themselves.

Like, for example, I'm a professional seamstress. I've been doing wedding gowns for over twenty years. There's no school that I can go to to get a piece of paper to officially get a PhD in sewing. If there was, I would have it. I've taught I'm serious.

I I've taught sewing. There's nothing more complex than wedding gowns. Absolutely nothing you could sew that's more complex than Right. Wedding gowns. Right.

Yeah. And and I make and design them, and I've sewn them, and I've taught other people how to do it. It's taken me years Yeah. Of practice, of working in the field. My education was being the alteration manager over at David's Bridal.

Right. For and I was there for ten years. That was my education. That's it. That's where I learned.

I learned while I got paid to learn. Even though that wasn't the goal at the time, that's what it became. Yeah. And, you know, for those of you listening, I want you to know that when we say education, if traditional school is not set up for your brain and doesn't work for you, it doesn't mean that you don't get the education. If you gotta go out there and get it yourself, do it.

If you gotta go online to learn whatever it is you wanna learn, do it. And I'm talking about a principle right now. So the details of what you wanna learn, I don't know what that is. You could you can figure that out, but there's always a way for you to learn what you need to learn to get into the field that you wanna get into. Absolutely.

I'm off my side. And you see that more than ever now. I mean, with with, you know, generative AI and all the stuff that we have at our fingertips now, you can do kinda like the matrix, like, with Keanu Reeves. I know kung fu, you know, kind of thing where you almost can have the information at a snap. But, again, it goes back to let's use your analogy with the with the being a seamstress.

Somebody may hear that story. If they didn't hear the work where you said it took years behind the scene and just say, oh, dope. That's a good gig. I could probably do that and become wealthy. Right?

But they don't hear the work part of it. They don't hear the it doesn't matter how the work is done. In other words, all education is gonna do for you, it's gonna give you some facts, figures, hopefully, some experiential opportunities, some other people who are mentors along the way, hopefully, who are just like guides on the side and aren't trying to be the sage on the stage all the time. Right? But give you sort of, the encouragement you need, right, that maybe the computer doesn't do quite efficiently yet, right, and points you in the right direction to put you around all the experts in the field.

Mhmm. That's maybe what the formalized process does, but it's not any different than whether you take in martial arts. You're gonna go down, you're gonna learn a system, and they're gonna say, here's your belt or whatever the thing is they're gonna do is you've been led down a path with somebody else who's done it before and has just made more mistakes than you. It's all it really is. Somebody's made more mistakes than you and is trying to maybe help you avoid a couple of them to save you a little bit of time.

But still, it's not taking shortcuts. It's just saying, I don't wanna send you into a pothole. That's a little different. Right? So I wanna point out, you just made me think of this.

For for the listeners, most of y'all probably don't realize, but your bet and I know this because I had to hire I had the the one of the largest, one of the highest volume bridal shops in America at the time when I was running the alteration department. And that meant I had to have quite a few seamstresses on staff. Right? So I did a lot of interviews with people, did a lot of sewing tests. I had a lot of people.

And I can tell you some of the best in Emmy Do Me the absolute best sewers that you're gonna find in this country. 98% of them learned on their own. They did not officially go to school. Take that in for a moment. Right.

And that's that's in my field. I can talk about my field. I don't know about all the other fields. You can't do that in medical or law, and, obviously, you you need formal education for those things. And, and certain types of engineering, most of it.

You need do need formal education for those things. But there are a lot of other fields that you can learn on your own. The some of the teachers did that I would trust to sell my own stuff learned on their own. Right. They learned on their own, and then they took in whatever they could, wherever they worked.

So they made it a point to learn. You but I wanna go back to the fact that you gotta be disciplined because if you're not gonna be disciplined, don't expect to be successful in anything. I mean, even even the it's a great point. Even the younger kids who are, you know, let's say, coming up in their gaming. Right?

There's a reason that those kids become elite at gaming on why kids like it. First of all, the gaming industry is made off it's in the name, gamification. Right? They have a reward and payout system that keeps you going along for the next carrot. And so that's even hard baked into the system.

That's what partly makes it so addicting for these kids. First of all, it's social. They're talking. They're playing with their friends these days in most cases, but they're becoming masters mostly on their own. Now they don't forget, though.

They're probably looking up YouTube videos. That's what they weren't doing twenty years ago when people just playing with Europeans. Right? They're so what they're they're watching somebody else do it who's also kind of been through more mistakes than them. Right?

So it doesn't the certification stuff is just the the extra benefit that, industry will use. Right? And and let's face it. Education is an industry as well. Right?

It's to say, here's our value. It's on paper. We stamped it, and we've kind of given you this certification. But you don't need that if you have the skill in an industry that doesn't require the certification. You're actually lucky in some cases if you're in an industry that doesn't require the certification.

Right. But but at least it is worth noting that when credentials become important and they are in a lot of industries, it is certainly nice to have one. And if you don't have one in your industry, you should try to find out a way maybe where you can get it validated so that you can show improve later and say, yo, I did this. I did put in this work. Don't try to pretend like I didn't.

You know? So it's it's catch 22 sometimes about, like, needing the certification because it props up the accreditation board sometimes that that kind of appear in different industries when maybe it didn't need to be there. But then there's other times where you're like, man, I wish there was some accreditation board who would come in and sanctify all this work that I'm doing so that other people could say, oh, it isn't just me telling you I did this. Like, somebody else is the witness. Right?

Mhmm. I yeah. I I I I think this is I love this conversation and pointing out the different types of education that's out there. Sure. I I just wanna make sure people understand because I way too many people out there and and especially our youth and some of these older adults who went through this, and they've already made life choices because of it.

They think they're stupid because they don't fit into our quote unquote education system, which quite frankly is only made for one type of learner. That's right. And and then they end up floating through life and just working at a gas station or working at Walmart or working something else that's minimum wage that's way beneath their intelligence because they think they have to. And I want y'all to know you don't have to. You can learn whatever you want.

You just have to might be creative in the way you learn depending on what it is, but you can. Yeah. It's understandable. Let's talk about the rap industry. You said a few things to me that really prompted much of this conversation.

How's how does someone get their rap music out and successful? Wow. Well, the the getting it out part's the easy part. The successful is the hard part. Right.

It's easier than ever to get your music out if you want you when people say, you know, my material is out, it's available on all platforms. Literally, anybody can have their music out on all platforms now. Right. If you go back to when I was talking about that record, the focus is back. One of the re that was I was signed to a record label called Blaze the World who at the time had Caroline EMI Distribution.

EMI was one of the biggest distributors in the world. Okay. They lost the distribution, but what the gentleman had at that time, dating it back to, you know, 02/1956, is he had the ability to put the stuff on iTunes. Right? And you had to go through a label at that point.

So you had to have a label that was at iTunes. You couldn't just say, hey. I wish my stuff was on iTunes. Today, there's middlemen who've come and kinda filled in the void in the industry where there's many companies out there that anybody can just pay a fee and your stuff is instantly uploaded. Right?

So not everybody knows that, but that's how it works these days. So there's somebody who will take your money and will get it to all of the distribution channels that that need be out there. So your stuff's on Spotify and YouTube, blah blah blah. Right? So that's the easy part.

You can just pay for it. It's getting close to the point where it's very similar in terms of actually getting your stuff promoted. Right? You there are then middlemen out there who will take your money to also promote your stuff. So there's over about 200,000 songs a day uploaded to Spotify.

Wow. We just do some basic probability. Right? If you have no budget, what is the probability that somebody's gonna find your song by accident when you're competing against the top level songs that have massive campaign, pushes behind them. Right?

Mhmm. That are pushed out by major labels still. Right? The Sonys of the world and the Universals, and they they're just it's automatic. Those songs are gonna rise to the cream because they're coming with a marketing budget.

Now they've also made it so that you can pay middlemen to do something similar. Right? Whether it's the illegal kind of stuff or the quasi nonethical stuff where you're paying a bot to watch your video and make it look like someone's watching your video, which a lot of the shady overnight companies have done. And now there's a little bit more of a crackdown on that. And by the way, people in the industry can tell the difference immediately.

There's all sorts of algorithms to know if you've gained the system and tried to make it look like you're more popular than you are. Right? Okay. So there's that. But if you have the right budget and you wanna do it the correct way, you could, for about a hundred thousand dollars, market a decent song that let's just say is, let's use, an academic term grammatically correct.

Right? Like, if it's if it's not awful and it's like it's like that essay, if it's a c paper, right, and it's grammatically correct, it may not it might be pretty blah, but you might get the c or maybe the b minus. You can take that equivalent of a musical song, and with a hundred grand, your song's gonna pretty much be a hit in whatever genre it is. Meaning a hit on, like, Spotify and YouTube. It's gonna have a lot of views.

Right? Mhmm. If If you have the right marketing campaign, you can find even the wrong marketing campaign with that kind of money. Now if you magnify that by times 10, well, you're gonna probably find yourself, with the again, a decent song. Right?

A decent song with a million dollar campaign, you're probably gonna crack major charts like billboard and so forth. That's the amount of money that you're playing within, hundred thousand to a million. So if you don't have that, it's more of a pipe dream, for an artist to say someone's gonna find and hear my song just because I'm good. Right? So we're we're now in an era where anybody can get out, but any good artist might not get discovered unless there's a lot of constant repetition, planning, thoughtfulness, frugalness.

Right? Trial and error, making a lot of mistakes along the way, but it's not for the faint of heart, and it's not for the people who have small budgets. If you do have a small budget, you just gotta be incredibly diligent and really think hard about what you're doing. And, again, like we're talking about in education, find somebody else who's kind of done it and gone through it to save yourself a lot of the hassle. That's just to get heard.

Right? But that doesn't mean you're gonna be good when you do a show, or you're even gonna get booked to do shows, or the people are gonna buy your material or buy your merch. Right? That those are all different strategies, and some people have one or two. It's kinda like basketball.

Some people can shoot, but some people can shoot and they can dribble the rock. And they can play defense and they can pass. Those people end up in the league. Right? Yeah.

The the rest of us will, like, play it on the weekends. Right? You know what I'm saying? So it's it's that kind of thing. So So Hope that helps a little.

What I hear is not just putting it out there, but the marketing of it. Yeah. And so can a can a person become successful without a a lot of a big budget for marketing? Yeah. But you gotta do it a different way, and it does take longer.

Yeah. Yeah. It does. And you have to know, like any industry. Right?

You gotta know what your target. I'll I'll say my formula quickly. It's not for everybody, and it's kind of not traditional in terms of a few things. But I am while I would love to have songs that have millions and millions of views, my typical songs might have a few thousand or maybe a a couple hundred thousand views. Right?

And they don't come with large massive marketing campaigns. Right? It's just not the lifestyle that I'm living, and it's not really where my bread is buttered. I do mostly college shows. I do a lot of corporate stuff.

I write for songs, movies, television, that kind of stuff as well. And I perform and I speak. So for me, what's important is when I come to your school, that that person at that school is recommending me to somebody else to book me. Right? And so for all the artists out there that aren't aware, if you, you know, if you wonder, hey.

What's that artist getting paid to do that college show? They're probably getting paid very well, maybe 10 times more than they would play in your local club. Right? So the average college that nobody knows about, nobody's even hearing you about doing the show, and you might have done a show for a hundred or a thousand or more, could pay you 10 times more than the local club could pay. Because most times, local clubs aren't paying you anything.

But if you're lucky enough to get $3,500 from a club, let's go crazy and say a thousand, You're probably pretty good and have a local fan base that's large if you're getting up around a thousand dollars. Colleges are gonna pay you 10 times that just off the rip. And if you have something to say that's of interest in a college market, right, if you're about something like we're talking about at the beginning, those numbers can incrementally grow, if not exponentially, after time. So for me, that's my world, which doesn't necessarily focus on millions and millions of views. Would I love to have millions and millions of views every time I put out a record?

Absolutely. But the kind of music that's conducive to doing what I just said sometimes isn't the kind of music that's conducive to millions and millions of views. Right. I can be happy with tens or hundreds of thousands of views and be like, wow. I really did it with this one.

You know what I'm saying? So, I'm a little bit more of a what's that? Make it your but it sounds like you're actually making more money than 99%. Yeah. It's more and it's and it's more and it's more the kind of stuff that you can look back at fifteen years and could still be relevant.

Right? Yeah. Because you're not trying to do what's to today. Like, I pay attention to what everything sounds like in every era, and I've been around for a long time. It's like, I never think my music has stuck out as, gee, that's, like, incredibly old or, gee, that's incredibly in the future.

It's kinda right around the area without too too much trend appeal. If you do that, you can have a long career. You might never be super, super, super big at any particular moment, but you can ride out a lot of, you know, waves and gaps and mountains and peaks kind of stuff. I wanna reiterate something you said. Really, kinda you've said a few times throughout this interview.

Those big, big ways getting up there to the top of your game, being the number one person everybody sees, those are the outliers. You're right. That's that's it's not impossible, but it's barely possible. So set realistic expectations, I would be like Yeah. And Yeah.

I I think a realistic one and a lot of people will say, you know, I'm gonna be the next Bill Gates. I'm gonna be blah blah blah. Start with your city. You know? And, you know, KRS was famous for saying this is like That is true.

You'd be be the hottest dude in your block, be the hottest dude in your neighborhood, be the hottest dude in your town, then your city, even your state. It's like being in the mix for your city is a realistic goal, I think, for a lot of artists. And a lot of people don't know what that looks like and don't know how fruitful that can actually be. There's plenty of artists who are just the biggest artist or one of them in their local town and have been that way for years, and they're not household names, but they still have careers. And by the way, they play overseas and get paid to do it regularly.

So Yeah. I could think of a local group I'm thinking of right now. They probably do better than most of these ones that try to go national. Absolutely. It's just like we teach in other areas of business and marketing.

Find your focus. Yep. And find your niche and and stick with that because it's it's I will say, sometimes it's better to have a thousand genuine followers, genuine peep people that genuinely follow you, go to your concerts, go to your events, go to your whatever you're doing, than to have a million and none of them are paying attention. Oh my gosh. You hit it.

The the one with the million numbers, you have no power at all. The one with the thousand follow followers has power because if they put something out to those followers, those followers are gonna do something with that. That's right. The math is on your side. If every time And they'll get their friends to come.

You know? That's right. They will if they like you like that and, you know, it's the concept of a super fan. Right? It's like if you can have a couple of superfans in each town, if you can have a couple people who you know as the artist that you could reach out to, and if you said, hey.

I'm gonna do a show. Could you get 10 people to come to it? If you have those, you're usually set. And those are very, very hard to get, and they're very slept on. And sometimes people laugh at people like that.

They go, ah, look at this. People call them like a stan, like an Eminem song. Right? Like, that superfan stan. Like, that was the obsessive fan.

Right? Mhmm. But people will laugh sometimes at your fans that are like that, and it's like, you gotta respect those people. Those people sometimes like your music more than you do. They know more about you than you might forget about yourself.

Right? And they're invaluable people. And I see artists laugh about that kind of stuff all the time. And I'm like, give me five people like that. Like, to your analogy, give me five people over that over the thousand who just kinda like you.

You give me five super fans, they're gonna be with you for your life. Those thousand people who like what you're doing right now but can't be bothered to change their calendar around to come out and see you when you come to town, they're not paying your bills. Those fans will buy everything you tell them. They buy everything you have, and they'll change their date to be there, and they'll tell other people about you. It's like they're on payroll.

It's like so you can't you cannot find enough people like that. You gotta respect those fans. I agree. Now, tell us, for someone listening, what is what is a big no no? What should they give them some advice of what not to do in the industry.

I think acting like you're bigger than you are. Nobody wants to root for the massive clear victor all the time. Right? I've been in, let me let me use a rap battle analogy. I was in a battle in Portsmouth.

It was called the Iron Mike battle. And, you know, I have a long battle record as a rapper. Right? And I went up to this on the sneak, went up with my crew of three other people. We went there.

We're like, yo, lyrical. Let's go make some money. Right? Let's go up to this battle and go crush these people that have no idea you're even there. Right?

And before they realize that it's too late. So we did this. Right? We went up to this battle. It's called the Iron Mike Battle in Portsmouth.

Portland. Excuse me. Portland, Maine. Portland, Maine is a big city. Right?

Mhmm. Relatively big city in Maine. It's one of the few. We looked to Portland, and the Iron Mike has, I believe at the time, 64 rappers in it. Okay?

And I called and said, yo, I'm gonna come. I'm gonna be I was one of the last people to get in. Waited to the end, so they weren't promoting it. And and at the time, it was and this was probably, like, 2,007 or something like that. It was it was, like, a thousand dollars or something like that, which is pretty big money back then.

Right? Go up, and I I did the first everybody did 64 rappers. Right? That's 32 battles. You met think about how long this can be.

Yeah. They're all battling each other. The crowd's listening. And at the what they did different in this battle is at the end of every round, they ranked the leaderboard. Right?

In first place, we have lyrical. And place all like, yeah. Lyrical crushed that cat. Right? They do it again the next round, and they whittle it down.

Right? It just cuts the number goes from 64 to 32 to 16. Right? It just keeps getting down until you get down to two people. So they did this, and they kept saying my name, and I was doing really well, right, all night.

They're like, by the time you're in your fourth battle, people want the underdog to win. Right? So So when you come out like, yo, look at me. I'm crushing this dude. After a while, people just don't want you to win.

It's just common sense. It's like it's human nature. That is true. That is true. And it's the same thing if you're winning in life all the time.

There's gonna be someone salty on the sideline. It's like, look at this dude. You may not even think you're better than you are. They just they have a whiff of it. Right?

They have a whiff that you think that you're better than you are, and that'll humble you really quick because that person is the one nipping at your ankles to try to take you down. You know? They're not like well, it doesn't have to be, you know, dramatic stuff, but they just might be like, you know, you pass in this sticker and they're, like, throw it in the trash kinda thing. Right? You know what I'm saying?

So Mhmm. Acting like you're already there. And even when you are there, remember not to act like you're already there, I think, goes a long way. So that would be my answer because you don't want those people turning on you that were loving you just a few rounds earlier. You know what I'm saying?

You've got a valid point, and that's probably and I'm not even into rap at all, and that is the number one advice that I was thinking already in my head. So because I think it's true I think it's true across the board with in other industries too, not just in, in rap and entertainment. But I love that you said that. So tell the audience what you have coming up and how can people find you. So I have an album, actually, that I've been working on for a long time.

It's called Doc Duplored. And we originally were trying to get it out, at the February, and then we knew it turned into a 02/2025 project. So, I don't wanna date the project, but it's all produced by my man, Jay Johnson. Jay Johnson has done a few of my singles. If you look up no, which, I have a video for, Jay Johnson produced that, and he's got a low five vibe.

And so we've been working on well over a year, making this album, 15 tracks, all produced by him. It's relatively lo fi. So look for Doc De Plore. That's my actual last name. So it and it features Jay Johnson.

So check that out. We'll be following that up with this, you know, as much performance as we can do, to support it live. But even if you can't come out and check it live, check it out wherever you can hear it and look for it. And for the rest of in terms of, like I know by the time people a lot of times check out a podcast, something's come and gone. But, check me out @professorlyrical.com.

That's my website. All my socials are pro lyrical or Professor Lyrical. I'm in a duo called Pro Quo as well. My old crew, Excal, we're still putting up music as well. So, short for Excalibur.

Shout out to my man, Fee. So those are the projects that I work on. So if you see any of those, Professor Lyrical, Pro Quo, XCal, that's all me. Continue to get to the next step. Right?

Yeah. It's all on ProfessorLyrical.com. And, you know, bring me out to a college that you're at, and I'll be there. Right? I I love that you do this at colleges.

I think it's really cool. Well, professor Lyricle, thank you so so so much for coming on today. Oh, thank you. I always enjoy talking to you, and, I hope that I hope that the listeners really get a lot out of the only little bit of wisdom that you shared today because you have a lot more. But Appreciate it.

We we get into if we give too much, we can't make the mind shift happen. You know what I mean? Yeah. Good point. Good point.

You just you don't wanna flip it three sixty or one eighty. You just give them a little bit. Be like Yeah. It's true. Well, once again, thank you.

Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me. And now for a mind shifting moment. I wanna plant this thought seed in your head. First, go back and listen to this episode again.

Professor Lyricole gave a ton of really good practical advice that applies across careers in general, not just the entertainment industry. But something I wanna point out is, what is it you wanna do? I don't care how old you are. What is it you really wanna do that you haven't done yet or you're thinking about doing? You can go for it.

You do not have to follow traditional paths to get to where you wanna go. That's like keeping you in a box. Why would you wanna imprison yourself? Find a creative way to educate yourself in the area in which you want to reign supreme and go for it. He did and he's successful.

And like he said, you can be too. Thank you for listening to mind shift power podcast. Please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel at the mind shifter. If you have any comments, topic suggestions, or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit FatimaBay.com/podcast. Remember, there's power in shifting your thinking.

Tune in for next week.