Billboard cover star Brent Faiyaz paved the way for many other independent artists. With his success independently, he was driven to create a label where independent artists could thrive, hence how ISO Supremacy came to life. Brent Faiyaz talks about his journey as an independent artist, his advice to other independent artists, why ISO Supremacy supports independent artists and more!
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00:00I really like doing what I want to do, and then I like being able to say no to things that I don't want to do.
00:06The main thing that comes with giving up a piece of your independence is not being able to say no.
00:11It really isn't no deeper than that for me.
00:13So I think I just want to inspire people to not be okay with being told what to do.
00:18You can't grow like that.
00:19How you going to grow if the motherfuckers constantly, no, no, stay down, stay down.
00:23So before people decide they want to do deals and they want to take these large amounts of money
00:28and they want to collab with this person, that person.
00:30I want people to really sit and think about, you feel me,
00:32are they going to be okay with not being able to control this shit?
00:41I was making money selling beats in high school, middle school.
00:44But that's a lot of how I got my friends when I was young.
00:47It'd be like grown motherfuckers coming to the house to get beats off me and shit.
00:51My parents were like, who are these grown adults coming by the house?
00:54What is this going on?
00:56People like my music.
00:57Then I moved out to L.A.
00:58Stayed out there for maybe a couple months before I signed my first publishing deal.
01:02And then everything started rolling after that.
01:04That's the first time my parents actually saw that you could make a living off doing something that you love to do
01:08versus applying for a job and getting paid that way.
01:10But from there I was releasing music on SoundCloud.
01:12My stuff started gaining a little bit of traction when I started singing.
01:15Because before then I was rapping.
01:16D-Pad reached out to me.
01:17Him and I too were part of Selection.
01:19And they said they wanted to work with me.
01:21So we got in the studio when they came out to L.A.
01:23And that's how Sounder happened from there.
01:25We put the band together because we needed a name for the project we were making.
01:28We can't just drop a project under Brent, i2, and D-Pad.
01:31It just doesn't have no ring to it.
01:33So we named the band Sounder after my tattoo.
01:42SoundCloud for us, it really just was the launchpad.
01:45It was the starting point.
01:46Because that was around the time when things were starting to shift from SoundCloud to the pay-for-streaming platforms.
01:53So it was an exposure to them more than anything.
01:55It was almost like YouTube was originally.
01:57When it was just a place for people to put stuff out.
02:00It definitely lets you know what was hot and what wasn't.
02:07Brent's creative vision around visuals.
02:11He's the best out there.
02:12I think Kanye is brilliant.
02:14And I think outside of Kanye, it's Brent.
02:17Labels, ironically, want to sign artists who don't need to be signed.
02:21It's almost like we see you already doing well on your own.
02:23We see your popularity.
02:24Now let me jump on the bandwagon and sign you.
02:26Which really don't make no sense.
02:28So to me, I was just like, I see the type of game they're playing.
02:31It's not really about talent.
02:33It's more about what your streams look like.
02:35What your numbers look like.
02:36What your shows look like.
02:37I thought that if I was really, really, really good, somebody would want to do a fair deal with me because of my talent.
02:41But that's not really how it worked.
02:42So once I saw that classic story, people want to help you push your car when they see you already outside pushing it.
02:47It was that type of thing.
02:48Once I didn't need a label no more is when they reached out trying to do a good deal.
02:51I remember early on, one of the greatest challenges was having to compromise my artistic vision because financially I wouldn't be able to afford the shit that I wanted to do.
02:59And I thought that that was just going to be the case because I was independent.
03:02Up until I realized that that's just the case in all businesses.
03:05Having to kind of minimalize whatever grandiose creative vision that you have in order to pay for what the fuck it is that you really need.
03:12But now I'm really on top of being able to execute a creative vision within a budget.
03:17And I think that's my strength right now.
03:19Not only just that, but also how to see a project out from start to finish.
03:24So to be able to kind of put it through that incubation process and then watch it until it's completely done I think is the most, I don't know, I love everything about it.
03:32The struggle of being independent is that you have to really, the budget is the Bible.
03:38You can't afford to lose $50,000 or $100,000 on a music video that you might not like.
03:45You probably can't even afford to spend that much money on the music video.
03:48So the biggest struggle that me and Bryn always had is like the money.
03:51And for a young talent, when they're like seeing everybody else that's assigned to a major label have these big videos, it's natural to be like, why I can't have a big video?
04:01Why I can't have the same budget?
04:03And it took time for him to learn.
04:05Now he has his own staff.
04:07He has artists.
04:08So now he gotta be like, hey, you gonna let that artist spend $200,000 and then say they don't want to put a video out?
04:14And it's like, absolutely no.
04:16Okay then.
04:17So the backlash at the time grew a smarter executive.
04:28After Wasteland came out and we went number two, we had lost to Bad Money.
04:32I kept thinking of like how I was going to take it further, like where I was going to go next.
04:37How can I make sure I don't never come number two again?
04:39So the label conversations came up again.
04:41So I was like, shh, let me see what they talking about now.
04:43It's been damn near 10 years since I met with these motherfuckers.
04:46Let me see what type of bread they talking about now.
04:48So now the conversations were completely different.
04:51But when I rapped with Stout, I realized the importance of like independence, right?
04:56The principles I built the business around was give the artists freedom, give the artists control.
05:02The artists should own their future.
05:04That was like, no matter what we did, I wanted the artists to feel like with us, they own their future.
05:10They never felt any control.
05:12They felt like they were in control.
05:14And our job was to develop business tools and provide business acumen to help them navigate through the world of independent music.
05:21I had been independent for so long that I unintentionally became like an important figure for people who are independent artists, right?
05:28So I'm like, nah, I can't go to no label.
05:30So Stout kind of was like, bro, like, fuck with me over at UM, we can make this shit shake.
05:34I'll give you the budget, whatever you need, like boom, boom.
05:36So I'm like, it was a no brainer at that point.
05:39When it comes to me creatively execute my vision, they let me do what the fuck I want to do.
05:43What he was looking for was a partner to provide him financial capital to go into other ventures that were creative.
05:50And being that I own also a creative advertising company and as an entrepreneur have played across many different industries,
05:57I think that was the synergy that brought us together.
06:01From the project, from Larger Than Life, I kind of had like a, I guess like a feeling,
06:06like I had like a way that I was feeling when I was working on the project.
06:09Like Larger Than Life, like I felt like shit was going to be big, shit is growing, shit can be, there's no ceiling, you know?
06:14So I feel like if you constantly growing, growing, growing, growing, growing, growing, growing, you will end up being bigger than everything.
06:21So that's like really where I got it from.
06:23The process when we were making the project was like blendings of different worlds.
06:28One day Adele pull up, one day Rocky pull up, next day Big Sean pull up, next day Timbaland pull up.
06:34So the fact that it's all these different ideas kind of like merging together and then there's like mutual people that know motherfuckers,
06:44that kind of know motherfuckers, there's no gate, you know what I'm saying?
06:47It's like the antithesis of that, it's like a bridge.
06:58Everybody on ISO and what we do is like the entire idea of it is to change lives.
07:03That's the whole point.
07:04Like it's more, it's like how many, how many people can we put on?
07:07How many people can we put in position?
07:09How many checks can we put in niggas pockets?
07:11That's what's the most important.
07:12And then from there it's like there's nothing that we can't do because we done touched it on every level.
07:22I think I just, I want to show people that creativity is an ongoing thing, right?
07:25I don't want creators to feel like they got to be stuck in a box in order to succeed.
07:29I feel like they have to fit into any particular mold or approach a career any particular way.
07:35Whether that's, you know, on a label or that's making a certain genre of music or whatever.
07:40Like you can make whatever you want to make.
07:42It doesn't have to be labeled this, it don't have to be labeled that, it doesn't have to even make sense.
07:47And I think that's what I really want to promote.
07:50It's just that freedom of creativity in every shape and form.
07:54You know, I like the independent shit because we can really pay motherfuckers for what they deserve.
07:58So I'm like, I'm excited to really take like creatives who may not otherwise have an audience
08:03or be able to pay bills or whatever and be like, yo, like here's a crazy check to get this shit done.
08:08That's fun as shit. That's the funnest shit ever.
08:16What we set out to do was to create a company that can protect both of us
08:20and it can invest into the things that we want to do in the future.
08:23So that's what Lost Kids has really gone into, right?
08:25It protected his copyrights, it protected my work, it protected all of our efforts, our overall legacy.
08:32And now it's invested into the things that we want to do in the future.
08:36So on a high-end level, everybody that came up with us got rich.
08:42It's the simplest way to put it.
08:43I feel like people just do what we see has been done so many times and worked already.
08:47And now I'm realizing how important it is to break the mold so that like people can see my story
08:51and see what we did and be like, alright, I can do that.
08:53It's just another way to go about it. It don't really gotta be so, you know, black and white.
08:58The thing I want people to take away from it isn't necessarily something they can take away right now.
09:02I think it's like, I want people to be excited about what's coming next.
09:05So you know, yeah, scratch that. I want people to look forward to what's coming.
09:09I don't want people to take away nothing.
09:11If you catch something that you can apply, cool, but I'm still just getting started.
09:15It's not like take away time yet.
09:21Yeah.