Episode 1 - Rakaa Iriscience
Like, you want us on the main stage in Poland or a show that has never done hip hop before? Let's see. Like, we I was trying to talk him in, like, let why don't we just put go you got 2, 000, 3, 000 people. Let's just rock the 2, 000, 3, 000 people. Let's just rock the 2, 000, 3, 000 people.
Rakaa:Let's just rock the 2, 000, you know, why are we trying to, you know, change change Poland? They don't want to.
Ashanti:What's good, everyone? Welcome to the very first episode of the loadout. The podcast where we dive deep into the world of live music, touring, and everything that happens behind the scenes. I'm your host, Ashanti Abdula, founder of Ternwheel, and a seasoned manager, tour manager, and show producer with over 20 years in the gang. In each episode, we'll unpack the highs, the lows, and the in betweens of the tour life.
Ashanti:From crazy road stories to expert tips and exclusive interviews with artists, managers, tour managers, and industry insiders, we got it all covered. Whether you're a die hard music fan, an aspiring tour manager, or just curious about what goes on backstage, this is the place for you. Today, I'm thrilled to be talking to Rakaa Taylor, better known as Rakaa Iriscience from the legendary hip hop group Dilated Peoples. Rakaa is a rapper, brand and culture consultant, and founder of the creative strategy agency Angles. He's worked with top companies like Supercell, Red Bull, and ASICs, and even won a Clio for work with Weeb Maps.
Ashanti:Plus, he's still razor sharp on the mic. Full disclosure, I had the pleasure of working with Dilated day to day during the directors of photography campaign, and I've been their tour manager from time to time even. We're gonna deep dive into some wild tourist stories, the challenges, and the triumphs of life on the road with 1 hip hop's most iconic groups. Rakaa, Rakaa Iriscience in the mix. Yes, indeed.
Ashanti:Man, it's good to have you here on the show, especially as the first person we have on the show. I'm super excited. Obviously, we know each other. We kinda go back a little bit, at least a decade. Right.
Ashanti:But, you know, dilated goes back way farther than that, and you probably got way more tourist stories than actually, I know you got more tourist stories than anyone that I know for sure. Let's pick it back to 92. What was y'all's first tour, man?
Rakaa:Our first real tour, I think, probably would have been word-of-mouth 1, and that was with Jurassic 5 and the Beat Junkies.
Ashanti:Yeah. I was looking back at your tour history and you got you know what's crazy? For someone who works with y'all, you know, on and off for the years. It's kinda odd. I look back at your tour history and y'all toured pretty steadily from, like, 98 all the way to, like, 2, 009.
Ashanti:And then there's, like, a there's, like, a year pause and then 2011, and there's either spot dates or a tour all the way through, do you know what I'm saying, until until basically now. So
Rakaa:Yeah.
Ashanti:Bro, you like, do you does it feel like that? Does it feel like you've been on the road that long?
Rakaa:No. Not really. It only really feels like we've been on the road a long time when we're on the road. You know what I mean? It's like it's 1 of those type of things.
Rakaa:But, you know, time flies, man, and it's speeding up. It feels like time speeds up. It flies and it gets faster. So, you know, as I as I think back and someone's like, yeah. You know, next year, 2025.
Rakaa:And I'm like, 2020. Jeez. So, you know, like, we've been too yeah. We we we toured pretty consistently. We performed consistently since, you know, the mid nineties working off of, oh, no.
Rakaa:No. I'm tripping. Before we even did, the word-of-mouth tour
Ashanti:Mhmm.
Rakaa:We did, Rage Against the Machine and Gang Starr tour.
Ashanti:Yeah. Yeah.
Rakaa:I think that might have been our first tour. But either way, it was around the same time. But, yeah, we've we've toured pretty consistently since the late nineties. We took some time off to do solo projects and then we were we were out not as dilated, but doing, you know, Evidenced doing solo tours, I was doing solo tours, Babu, the same thing. And then, you know, as those cycles wind down, we would get back into accepting dilated offers, especially overseas, but US tours as well.
Rakaa:And then, yeah, it was pretty it was semi consistent until, I would say, until right before COVID. We we purposely, took off 2019. We toured 2018. We perfect purposely took off 2019 because 2020 was our anniversary year. So we were kinda I think we might have done 1 show in 2019, something real light because we're doing big deals for 2020 to, to celebrate the anniversary of the platform, the first album.
Rakaa:And then COVID hit and that pretty much, you know, wiped everybody, the whole the whole industry out for a couple years. So we're just and then more solo projects and more other things happened and I got more into the Google side. So we're just kinda getting back into the swing of things right now.
Ashanti:Yeah. With that said, actually, I mean, y'all, it's extensively extensively tour tour Europe over the years. And I mean, like, look. Let's look in at some of the tour places, and I'm like, bro, where like like, how do you get an offer out of, like, this most random place? Couple of things.
Ashanti:Number 1, from what I understand, at some point, you pretty much took over being the agent for Dilated. Right?
Rakaa:Yeah. Different times, I've been our booking agent, mostly for international. We always I think, except for short little stints where I took over for the US, we we always had, like, pretty much always had North American representation. And international, I took over, you know, as I saw it early and wanted to make sure that that we touched the world before it turned into 1 of those things where, you know, you know, a lot of groups, unfortunately, they wait until they can't book shows, and then they try to go find international audiences and whatnot. But for us, I grew up with Hendrix friend and like just listen to music and these things I started to realize that, you know, the the world's a big place and, you know, you could you could plant these seeds early and they'll, you know, they'll sustain you.
Rakaa:So, yeah, we toured a lot of those place a lot of the places that we toured that were not as as known as far as cities were concerned. A lot of those were music festivals and a lot of times the music festivals are outside of the main region. So, you know, you know, some people, you know, their egos are like, no, you gotta go rock this big this club in a big city. I'm like, I'd rather rock 20 times that a minute amount of people hour away from the big city at this music festival, you know. So that's how that's how we did it.
Rakaa:But we still got clubs. We still we would kinda mix them up, especially in Europe. We would like, you know, summer tours. The the festivals are pretty much on the weekends, and so we would do club dates during the week and then festivals on the weekend.
Ashanti:How did that begin? Like, did you have those connections or were you just did you go through a phone book of Germany or, like, how did you saw like?
Rakaa:Yeah. Well, early on, at least early on in our career, a lot of the people that were booking the shows, a lot of the promoters were also hip hoppers. They would be DJs or or or or, you know, retired b boys or graffiti graffiti artists, emcees themselves, producers. And then they would get into booking shows and they kinda grew in that scene. So just from being in the circle of things, especially at the time, I was a member of Zulu Nation, being a member of Rocksteady Crew.
Rakaa:You know, I was I was building some really strong cultural connections around the world and, we just ended up being as we perform at these places, you know, the promoters would, you know, introduce themselves. We'd be cool. We hit it off. And then if we get let go of an agent, they would start reaching out to the scene, like, yo, we wanna book Dylators. They reach out to a DJ partner of mine or a graffiti graffiti cat or b boy, b girl, whatever.
Rakaa:They would reach out to people in the scene and some kind of way would get back to me and through doing that, I started developing my own relationships and started to realize that, you know, it gets stepped on a lot. Like, by the time the offer gets to you, it might go through 3 or 4 hands. You know, and you start to realize how much you're really worth if you deal directly with the people as opposed to becoming, you know, part of that scene. So we started dealing directly with people. I mean, we've had big agents over there as well.
Rakaa:And that was good if we wanted to just get placed on a tour, somebody else's tour, and they could make a call and plug us in, but that wasn't really doing what we wanted to do to really build up our own our own notoriety and our own, brand and base out there. So yeah. Just connected with the culture, connected with the community, and through that, people started reaching out directly. I started to realize I could I could do this myself, you know, very well, very effectively, and kept it moving that way.
Ashanti:Where, going going back a little bit to, like, from your first tour to your second tour, how different was it for for you personally? Like, was it just I mean, for the group, was it just a major difference, or were you guys just getting into it? I mean, you know, your first tour, you don't know what the hell you're doing. Yeah. So, like, explain to me, like, how that felt.
Ashanti:And then from that first tour into the next tour, what what kind of
Rakaa:things you brought with you? Main thing that I took away from, you know, that I remember about growing in our tours and just our shows in general was the the length of the show. You know, when we first started touring, we'd be up there doing, you know, a hot 15 minutes. You know what I mean? And we put all our energy in the 15 minutes, blow out our voices, we're going crazy.
Rakaa:And, you know, where we are now, like yeah. Festival might be 40 minutes or an hour or something, but some of these club dates, we've done 2 hour club dates, you know, things like that. You know, that's not our normal club time. Usually, it's like 75 minutes or something like that. 90 minutes.
Rakaa:But we've done like 2 hour, 2 and a half hour club date. Like, we've done like crazy time. So I think that was the biggest thing is, you know, you having a lot more material, having a lot more to remember, having to pace yourself differently, having to take care of your voice differently, you know, if you're doing 15 minutes of versus an hour and a half. The size of the physic the physical size of the stages, you know, it was just growth all the way around. And, you know, that caused us to have to be a little bit more responsible, you know, to be to maintain that professionalism, make sure we were gonna be right for the show itself.
Rakaa:You know, we couldn't treat the hour and a half show the same way, you know, headline show the same way we're doing a treating a 15 minute intro set, you know, or whatever the case may be. So that was probably the biggest the biggest thing. And then also, from our first tour to tours happening after that was recognizing how expensive it can actually be to tour. You know, you start getting an offer like, yeah, we're gonna pay you x amount of 1, 000 per night to go do the show. You do the math in your head real quick.
Rakaa:Like, oh, we got 30 shows. We're about to come back and put a down
Ashanti:payment on a house.
Rakaa:And you get back and they're like, okay. There's a 1, 000 a day for the tour bus. And then, you know, this amount's advanced to show and you gotta pay for the crew and you gotta pay taxes and, you know, you gotta do this. And by the time you get it, it's like, alright. You know what I mean?
Rakaa:Like, it's it's not Business. It's a business. It's a whole business. So, you know, you gotta, you know, plan accordingly and set expectations accordingly.
Ashanti:Did you when you guys first started, did you have a crew or did you kind of build your crew, like, over time? I assume you were on Capitol at the time, right, when you went on
Rakaa:your first tour? We had a crew as far as, like, in the streets, you know what I mean? Like, you know, like that kind of crew, but we didn't have like a, a professional crew, you know, we would hire, tour managers early on. You know, we have various people, but 1 of the biggest 1 of the tour managers that really helped show me how tour management actually works, how touring works, and was also somebody we could always count on was a guy named Lalo Medina.
Ashanti:Okay.
Rakaa:So Lalo, he was working with j 5 and he was working with other people as well. I think he works with, what's his name? White Stripe. Jack,
Ashanti:Oh, Jack White.
Rakaa:Yeah. Jack White White Stripes. He works with him now, but, Lalo working with Oso Motley, I think. He was working with a lot of people, and he was just a really solid, you know, he he knew how to really solid tour manager, really cool dude, still is, really cool dude, and he could think on his feet and make things happen, you know, you know, as needed, like, on the fly. So I learned a lot from him, and he was also really communicative.
Rakaa:He had a he was organized, like, it was a way to do it. And then later, we work with, like, with Francisco, who was, you know, who Lalo brought on originally as a as a, kind of an assistant team when we were we're doing the bigger tours. But we've worked with a lot of different people. We had a dude named Kiko Mara, who is, out of out of Colorado, out of Denver, I believe. He worked at the Fox Theater in Boulder, and he was a sound our sound tech for a lot of tours.
Rakaa:He also worked with Jurassic 5. So, yeah, we over the years, we've had some some really good people, you know, early on. We had a, you know, a a good base of people to make sure that everything was going right when it came to touring.
Ashanti:I think that from my from my side and having tour managed, not only you guys, but actually, there are times when when I was at the label or when I've worked before where someone couldn't, you know, manage somebody and they just couldn't afford a tour manager. Right. And once again, for the economics of it, I had to just jump in and be a tour manager. Right?
Rakaa:Right. And I learned
Ashanti:kind of my flow of it. But, ultimately, what I learned was once you understand the flow, especially if it's more than 1 person. Right? Because the flow of 1 person is pretty easy to get down pretty quickly. But when it's multiple people, really learning the flow of those people, how they interact with each other, and then what are the needs that everybody has, As long as everyone's needs are taken care of, the show goes well.
Ashanti:And then outside of that, you have to take care of the needs of the venue, take care of the needs of kinda everyone, all partners involved. You're really cut you really are the glue of, like, making sure that everything runs, smoothly for that night. So I give it up to some of the big you know, some of the I know tour managers on these massive, massive tours, and I'm like, bruh, I don't even wanna see, like like, Kendrick's team, people like that. It's like multiple tour managers. You know what I mean?
Ashanti:It's like tour manager plus assistant plus assistant. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, what so so how tripped out were you after the first few tours when you were making those calculations, like, oh, we're getting paid this much. And then you're like, oh, damn. I we didn't realize we had to pay for all this shit.
Rakaa:I mean, it was a it was definitely a rude awakening. It's 1 of those things that, you know, you you can't be mad that you don't get the the answers to questions you didn't ask. You know? So, like, it to me, it just became a situation where, it became really important to to know what to ask and to know how to set those expectations. Because what what happened is, you know, I was some kind of way a lot of the times.
Rakaa:I'm not sure how it happened, but over the years, I became kind of like a point person for the group. You know, a team captain, if you will, I guess, outside the studio. Inside the studio
Ashanti:Well, I can tell you why.
Rakaa:There might be Ev or Babs, but outside the studio, like, what what why why is that?
Ashanti:You have the personality for it.
Rakaa:Right. Okay.
Ashanti:It's simple, bro. You either got like, I don't I mean, I don't mean to cut off your thought, but III used to go to the, IPR in different places and give these talks about being a manager, being, you know, in this business. And I would just tell everybody, you might as well go ahead and stop doing this, this vocation you're doing right now unless you have the personality for it. You either got the personality or you don't. That can't really be taught.
Rakaa:Yeah. You you
Ashanti:gotta know how to, like, like you said, like, being able to think on your feet and get things done.
Rakaa:Yeah.
Ashanti:Other people might crumble or fall, but I feel like you have that personality for sure. So that's why.
Rakaa:No. I appreciate it. And and I
Ashanti:should chose for you. You didn't it doesn't matter. Yeah.
Rakaa:It was it was definitely a lot. It was a lot to deal with because part of what comes with that is navigating the other side of the personalities in the group. You know? Like, it it becomes you know, it's not always an easy thing to have somebody that's in the group that we're we're all on 1 side of the line together at 1 point, and then suddenly, you know, I'm being asked to to kinda move back and forth across both lines to say, okay, guys, we gotta do this and try to smooth things over and make things happen for the bigger picture. So, you know, it becomes it becomes a little bit of, it becomes a little trying sometimes to navigate that primarily because that's not where we started.
Rakaa:Like, what we start you know, business you know, we started recording music in, you know, in the studio. You know, that's I'm I'm very happy to step back a little bit and be like, okay. What should we do here? What what should we make happen here? When it comes to the business side of it or to the live side of it, I'm much more involved.
Rakaa:So, you know, we had to kind of figure out how every all the pieces fit. We had to kind of figure out how we were gonna, work with each other in that way. The record label is calling me, you know, management is calling me, agents are calling me, merge people, whoever it is, they're calling me to make these decisions and then I have to go kind of figure out how to if they if they make sense, how to, you know, push them across the line and push them through. So it becomes a little bit it becomes a little hectic. But, yeah, maybe I do have the personality in general to be able to step back from it and look at it all big picture and then figure out the best way to to implement these things.
Rakaa:But, yeah, it was it was a little bit it was a little bit crazy at different times to, to deal with that, you know. But ultimately, we all respect each other and that's that goes a long way, you know. That goes a long way when you're when you're in a group, you know, that respect being a base, that appreciation that, you know, we're all here for a reason and that we all bring something different to the table. But it's just about being able to to move. And then you and then you also gotta keep in mind that during the same time, you know, Ev is really focusing on his solo career at a certain point and also doing dilated, you know, Babu has always had a focus on his solo career.
Rakaa:The way we set up that Babu's deal was different than our deal. So he had the opportunity to to take all the, you know, get all the benefits of being, you know, in a in dilated peoples that, you know, from the label to management to everything else, insurance, everything came. But he also had a little more flexibility and freedom. So he immediately, he was out doing solo baboon duck season projects on sequence and and nature sounds, I think, and like other things that, you know, we weren't able to do Right. Until until a little bit later.
Rakaa:So, yeah. It it, you know, there were a lot of dynamics. The dynamics kept shifting, but we moved to work.
Ashanti:I think the, just speaking of that, I think a lot of people,
Rakaa:a lot
Ashanti:of younger artists that, that I've talked to and spent time with and around, they tend to kind of lump all everything together and don't realize that, like, the music business is different pieces and there and there's businesses inside of that business. Right? So recording and releasing music is 1 part of it. And touring is a whole separate business. Right?
Ashanti:Yeah. A lot of the the artists that I talked to, I'm like, you set up a touring entity. It's a completely separate thing, and it's a separate business with its own set of insurance and its own set of people that are working at certain times and its own set of life. And then merch, merch is its own separate business as well. Right.
Ashanti:Right? You can't yeah. You you sell merch usually based off of your shows and things of that nature, but they are separate businesses, and you kinda have to treat them as such. Yeah.
Rakaa:Yeah. Absolutely.
Ashanti:And, like, nowadays, I think that, you know, obviously, touring is very different than it used to be. If you can, you know, think way back even if you think, like, early nineties, a lot of these a lot of the bigger cast would play, like, large large, markets, New York, LA, blah blah blah. A lot of these minor markets weren't being played at that time. They've got and hit the road. They were still selling records.
Ashanti:As that kinda changed and records started to maneuver and streaming became a thing, Now you see Lil Wayne hitting Jack, you know, Ames, Iowa. You know what I mean? Or, like, all these little minor markets. So I guess I said all that to say, like, the touring businesses, it's what's making money now. Touring and touring and merch is is what it is.
Ashanti:Yeah. Yeah. Are you feeling like you when did you feel like you saw that shift? Did you ever feel like you saw that shift? Is that something that you guys, or or you specifically were aware of?
Rakaa:Yeah. I mean, you could feel the shift happening. We we were always kind of a unique group in the sense that, you know, we always felt that, you know, the record label didn't get on board with us because they really respect the culture or record labels that we we've had multiple labels, but they didn't really get with us because they respect the culture. They didn't really understand necessarily what made us special, you know. We got 2 MCs and a DJ and some turntables and some microphones and, you know, it wasn't, gimmicky, you know, it wasn't anything like that.
Rakaa:But because the people were showing up, because the you know, we invite them to a showcase and they couldn't get in because, you know, the fire marshals would tell them it's at, you know, at capacity and it's aligned down the block outside, they can't get in. Or because DJs were keeping us in rotation and these things. They they I think a lot of the times, the interest came from them recognizing that we had a direct connection with the people, and they didn't wanna lose out on that. So as a result of that, we always had this kind of thing where we were, you know, too small to push. Like, I have said, too small to push, too big to drop.
Ashanti:Yeah.
Rakaa:But we were kinda caught in this weird middle ground, where we weren't making pop music. You know, we weren't consciously making pop music to try to break into the charts. But the music that we did release was making enough noise where they weren't gonna let go of us. Like, they're, like, this is this is good or, you know, like, you know, situation capital, like, they had decimated their entire hip hop departments, basically. I think they when we got over there, it was just it was just the Beastie Boys, to be on if I re if I recall correctly, they didn't have any hip hop.
Rakaa:And the Beastie Boys was even with Grand Royal, and they had their own office down the street. They weren't even in the capitol building. So they were trying to rebuild and they wanted to rebuild off of something that had some cultural base and integrity and significance. So, you know, they they came to us and we saw, like, a clear path to move on. And it was working really well until, you know, industry politics do what they do, and capital and priority merge, and that wanna try to make us fit that model and it doesn't, you know, it creates friction.
Rakaa:So, you know, there was there was definitely changes that we felt, streaming have been just the Internet in general, you know, becoming a much bigger, factor in music. It kinda decentralized things, you know, for lack of a better word, and we could definitely feel that. But at this by the you know, at the same time, because we didn't really have that label understanding and that label support, we already hit the road. Like, you're talking about before, like, we were in these cities, we were already doing these festivals, we're already in these places internationally that a lot of people have never been. So, you know, from that standpoint, yeah, we saw it and we recognized early that we can't really control what the label's gonna do, what the label's not gonna do.
Rakaa:We can't spend their money for them, you know, we can't force them to spend a dollar they don't wanna spend. That's not they're not contractually obligated to spend. So it was up to us to go build out our own base and our own relationships and tell our own story directly to the people and that's what we did. And this is, you know, a lot of a lot of what happens now is that these, you know, kids that lump things together, like you were saying, a lot of them were came up in the 3 60 deal era. So they lump it together because it's kind of been presented to them as something that's lumped together because that fits the labels.
Rakaa:But for us, we already knew, like, this is something where we gotta really put our whatever we're working on, we gotta put everything into it. But we can't be con we can't not tour because the record isn't multi platinum. Like, we're headlining this festival, and there's multi platinum artists opening for us because they don't have a connection to the people. They have a connection to the program directors at radio or whatever. Right.
Ashanti:Right. Which is a very different thing. So you did it the smartest way, in my estimation, which and a lot of people aren't gonna be able to do that either. It's, like, kinda just always be hitting the ground and being out on the road no matter what, outside of whatever's happening at the label or what's happening in the in the business all altogether. There's only a few, like it's funny because there's a lot of indies that did it, but y'all happen to be on a major, but operating as an indie, like, group.
Ashanti:You know what I mean? I mean, to me then, you probably were able to to pretty much protect your prep your price for a long time, I assume, since you were doing it on your own.
Rakaa:Yeah. We were able to protect it. We were able to really, you know, carve out our own lane and really build it up from that side, and and the numbers have gone up. It it's it's always interesting because we have been able to do it our ourself on that side, but But at the same time, as we're talking about, the the nature of the industry has changed. So, you know, the the access that other people have to the space means that there's a lot more traffic now.
Rakaa:Right. So on 1 hand, yeah, we're able to protect our price. We're able to make sure that our guarantees were constantly growing. We're able to really build that up regardless of what was happening with the with the actual records. But at the same time, there were a lot like a flood of a flood came, you know, of many, many more people through, you know, digital access that didn't exist before.
Rakaa:So on that, you know, from that looking at it that way, we were kind of I wouldn't say lucky, but we we definitely played our cards right in carving out our lane before we needed to find a lane ourselves. You know, we we made our whole lane into something that still serves us well to this day. To this day. Yeah. We have our fans.
Rakaa:We have our our connection with the with our people directly. We know how to perform. And, you know, to be honest, a lot of a lot of our our ability to do that also came from the fact that by by rocking the way that we rock, we got a reputation for being able to rock a show. Ever been able to go anywhere just with our energy and the skill and the and and the the foundation of what we do to rock a show. So we were getting a lot of calls, like, last minute, you know you know you know how it goes in Europe, you know, everything's running in a week before the show.
Rakaa:Somebody's pulling out the show and the promoters are scrambling to try to make it work. And so they would give us a call, like, yo. Get dilated, fly out, and and do this. And so 2 things happened there. 1 is well, a few things happened.
Rakaa:1 is we got good relationships with promoters because we were the the the people that were coming to save the day. 2 is we got in front of a lot of people that we ordinarily may not have been able to get in front of, you know, and we were able to let our skills show through, and show and prove on stage that we could do this even without being number 1 on the charts or whatever the case is. And 3, is that because these were last minute calls to come save the day, the the offers were a little higher than they would have been if we got the call when they were doing the original bookings. So that kinda helps set precedent in all these different places, that our number is pretty high, but we're gonna come in and kill it. And it doesn't matter what's happening with the charts, like, book them too, but you you book us, it's gonna be a, you know, real life real life show.
Rakaa:So all those things kinda work together in our favor and and help keep us in, you know, keep us in the place that we're able to we're able to do now, which is to still go tour the world as we want to and go take these shows. And we don't take it for granted. We don't think that we could just dip out and not say anything and just because we want a tour, we're gonna go headline a festival. But, you know, we have done enough individually and collectively that we keep that fire lit. And when we like, right now, when we're getting geared up or we're we're hitting the road more, we're doing these shows, the numbers are where they need to be, you know.
Rakaa:Shout out to, to Ivory and Zinger. You know, they, you know, they've been in the mix in in getting these numbers up and, you know, different things like that to to to put us where we're in a comfortable place to keep moving.
Ashanti:Keeping that poll star looking good. Yeah, man. It feels like a lesson for, for anybody who's who's looking to do international work. Gotta keep that passport clean and be ready to go.
Rakaa:They just Yeah. Yeah. For sure. They start to stay in shape. You never know.
Rakaa:It's like a like a fighter. You know, like these UFC fighters or whatever. Like, you never know when somebody's gonna, you know, weigh in, you know, miss misread it, weigh in or get disqualified or pop hot for something. So stay in the gym, stay sharp, keep your skills right, and, you know, keep like you said, keep the passport current.
Ashanti:Yeah. At
Rakaa:least everything is taken care of because you might get that call that could change your life. You step into a last minute situation and and and walk away with a belt or def or or at least with your stock at a higher level than it was before. Now you're in a position to to negotiate and make things happen. So
Ashanti:What's the biggest show you guys play?
Rakaa:The biggest show we've ever done was Woodstock, Poland. So Poland had Woodstock, Poland had never done hip hop before. I think they said they had, like, a rapper 1 time that was in the electron in the electronic I'm sorry. The, the dance tent or the electro tent or something. They did, like, a guest appearance with a DJ, but they had never had, like, an official, hip hop artist come in and they called us to do it.
Rakaa:We're like, Poland is always great for dilated. Like, that's 1 of those countries that always shows a lot of love and we were shocked when we finally went out there, how much love we got there, so we always went back. But doing Woodstock, Poland, they called us and they're like, yo, it's gonna be, yeah, a 1000000 people over 3 days, and we want you guys on the main stage. We're, like, you want us on the main stage in Poland or someone that has never done hip hop before? We'll see.
Rakaa:Like, we I was trying to talk him in, like, let why don't we just put go you got a DJ set? Can we just rock the DJ? We got, like, 2 1000, 3000 people. Let's just rock the DJ set. You know what I mean?
Rakaa:Why are we trying to, you know, change change Poland? They don't want I didn't want hip hop. But, no, they were like, yo, like, you know, we wanna do this. The promoter, you know, the the owner of the festival, the person that runs the festival, he he checked you guys out. He really likes your work.
Rakaa:He wants you guys to be the group that that brings hip hop to the festival. So, yeah, we went out there and we didn't know what to expect, man. We it's all rock. Like we got there, it was like biker gangs lining. It was like a whole day.
Rakaa:We were like, yo, this is crazy, yo. Like, I don't know how this is gonna go. I look at Ev. He's over there tapping his feet. He's nervous.
Rakaa:Like, that's what just people's like, what do we expect? Like, there's a rapper to get the name of the group, but there's a rock group on before we go on. We peek out of the crowd. You can't even see the back of the crowd. Like, it's, like, 300, 000 people or something out there.
Rakaa:And we as soon as we hit the stage, we just killed it, man. Just rocked it. And it was 1 of those things that really let us know. Before that, it was hip hop alparque in in in, in Bogota, in Colombia, and that was like a 100000 people. But but Well, you Poland was 33 times.
Ashanti:Like, how that's gotta be such different energy than, like, a club show. Like, I mean, how do you even do you know what I mean? Do you just go up and not try not to look at anybody and or how does it, like?
Rakaa:It's weird because from my perspective, at least, when I rock a club show, I'm rocking a room full of people. Mhmm. When you rock a 100000 people or 300000 people, it's like you're performing for the ocean. It becomes 1 big wave of you know what I mean? Like, you could 0 in, like, somebody has a big flag, somebody's fire in the sky, there's people, you know, that are holding up signs, you know, could be, you know, pictures of your face.
Rakaa:You know what I mean? Like, there's, you know, that they printed out. Like, there's things like that that happen that make you zone in or maybe, you know, you find 1 person that's just going crazy, wrap it along, and you give them some but for the most part, like, a quarter million people will have you know, you you're talking about 6 figures of people, that becomes like a like a thing. That becomes like a big That's a whole thing. Yeah.
Rakaa:The wave. Even the wave and how they're jumping because the sound travels to the back, it takes a minute for it to get back there. So, you know, you're like, oh, yeah. It's up and it's like you can see it kinda go back as the sound or sometimes, like, they'll even have to have, like, another set of screens, like, halfway through the crowd because the people that you're the people in the back are so far. Otherwise, they wouldn't even be able to see the show because that's how far back they are.
Rakaa:So, yeah, it it's crazy, man. It's a crazy feeling.
Ashanti:What was the smallest show, you guys ever played that you that you can remember, fan?
Rakaa:I I remember we did a show. I think it was on I feel like it was on the word-of-mouth tour. Maybe it was on the word-of-mouth tour. I feel like it might have been, like, Atlanta. Maybe it was Atlanta, but it may have been, like, 50 people, 40 people in there.
Rakaa:Like, it got so crazy that, if I'm not mistaken, I think at 1 point, like, Lalo, our tour man, like, brought, like, the George Foreman grill, went to the steak, and started making sandwiches on stage. It was it was a it was ridiculous. It was it was a ridiculous situation. But, yeah, like, that that was probably if I remember correctly, that was I think that was 1 of the word-of-mouth tours, and we just laughed about it. It was funny to us.
Rakaa:Like, it was like, alright. We're not gonna win them all because, you know, every other show is sold out 2 nights this, that, and the third. And, you know, we hit 1 where it's like, oh, that didn't that didn't go well. You know what I'm saying? Okay.
Rakaa:You still
Ashanti:gotta you still get up and have to perform and and do what you
Rakaa:do, but but You still
Ashanti:feel it for me. Making, sandwiches on stage is pretty fire.
Rakaa:Yeah. You know, you gotta get that foreman you gotta get that foreman cracking. You know what I mean?
Ashanti:If you had to pick a tour and be like, wow. That was cool. I don't wanna do that again. Which tour would that be?
Rakaa:We did a tour we did a tour with D'Angelo. That was a weird tour for us. Like, I remember the first day we did, like, the Greek theater, and it's like Diluted People's Lucy Pearl and D'Angelo. And we're like, and that was another 1 of the I think most deaf was originally supposed to do that tour, which still was kind of weird, but it made more sense.
Ashanti:A little bit more sense. Yeah.
Rakaa:Yeah. But they called us and we're like, alright. So we went out there and we did our thing, But it was a weird kind of crowd. It was like Mhmm. Girls that were there to scream for D'Angelo when he takes off his shirt.
Rakaa:You know what I mean? Like, I remember seeing, like there was, like, times where it'd be, like, pimps with, like, a whole stable. You know, you know, you know, it was, like, a whole different it was a whole different different vibe for us. And, you know, we had to kinda go out there and earn it every night and, you know, people people got into it. It was a cool vibe, but, you know, you know, like, these people are they're they're having a good time, but they're really here for D'Angelo.
Rakaa:You know what I mean? It was 1 of those things. You could look at the crowd and be like, oh, these girls are dressed up. Okay. This isn't.
Rakaa:These women are here for not they're not trying to see me and Babs and Ev, like, you know, rocking rocking the stage. They're ready to have somebody do how does it feel and see, like, some abs or something like this.
Ashanti:And you weren't giving them the abs,
Rakaa:I assume. No. Yeah.
Ashanti:I feel it.
Rakaa:I feel it. I mean, they're there. They're there.
Ashanti:They're always there. Are they visible? I don't know. But
Rakaa:they're there. We did, a Lincoln Park tour. We did a dilated Lincoln Park, and then I don't
Ashanti:know if it makes sense musically, but it made sense for that time because that was what was happening. You know what I mean? I can't Yeah.
Rakaa:No. There was, like, a mix. They were doing that kind of and and to be honest, we we we agreed to do this tour dilated at Lincoln Park they're gonna have somebody else open and we're like, okay, Lincoln Park, they kinda do, like, rock wrap fusion or whatever. But then by the time the tour happened, this was in Europe, By the 2 time the tour happened, they had added 2 other rock groups to the the wall, Puddlomutt and Edema who were, like, you know, 2 rock groups. And, so we're like, alright.
Rakaa:So I remember, like, that was 1 of those things. Recipes to Chester too from Linkin Park Recipes. But we could that was another thing, like, that was a rock crowd. That was a Linkin Park and rock crowd. That wasn't a dilated crowd.
Rakaa:So much so that whenever we would get off our tour bus at the venue, we had a separate group of people on the other side of the fence that were not coming to the show. They just wanted to come meet us and do, like, a free meet and greet in the parking lot. Because they're like, why are you doing this tour? Like, you've never been here before. Why would you come here with Lincoln Park?
Rakaa:Like, it was 1 of those type of things.
Ashanti:I tour managed you guys on that show going up to, it wasn't Ukiah. It was like Northern California. I can't remember
Rakaa:exactly where. Eureka. Eureka. Yeah. It was Eureka.
Rakaa:Humboldt County.
Ashanti:Humboldt County. I know we talked about this, but I'm just gonna say here, I I tour manager on that show, and, I think there was a lot of expectation that there'll be a lot of partying happening afterward. Yeah. So there was some frustration when I was like, can we box all this stuff up from backstage while you guys were performing? Yeah.
Rakaa:Like, you can just write it boxed up.
Ashanti:Yeah. They were like, wait. What? I was like, yeah. Yeah.
Ashanti:No. We need everything boxed up. We're gonna get out of here. They're like, they're not gonna stay. I'm like, no.
Ashanti:We're gonna roll out. You know? But I'm pretty sure that there's no 1 at that show, especially with how it was a Halloween show, everybody was partying hard.
Rakaa:Right. Right.
Ashanti:I can guarantee you no 1 would would have ever expected that you and I would be in your hotel room 2 about a hour and a half later at the casino that we stayed at making sandwiches and eating sandwiches and talking shit. Like, I'm sure they expected us to you know? Yeah. I mean I people are so used to glamour, and there is some glamour to it or whatever, but, really, it's like that hour of, you know, you hurry up and wait. You know what it is.
Ashanti:Get there. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Ashanti:Do your do your 75 minute set. We out. You know what I mean? Like, that's that's kinda how it is. You know?
Rakaa:We've partied we've partied around the world. We've done the done done the after party thing. And there's certain times when it's fun to do or we're getting paid to do it and then it's that's makes it even more fun to do. But for the most part, yeah, I'd rather say thank you, make sure our bread is right, make sure everybody gets to the hotel safe, and call you up and be like, yo, you got the box of fun. Let's do it.
Rakaa:Yeah. You look for that. Like, when we would go, do Boulder or something like that, like, Kiko and all those guys to check from around midnight, Those dudes, they had a they had a house in Denver and they'd be like, you know, you know, you wanna come to the club, you wanna go do something. It's like now, they're like, why doesn't everyone just come to Chuck's crib? I I remember 1 day, it was we're on the word-of-mouth tour, I think word-of-mouth 2 maybe, And Kiko was, like, yeah, every after this, let's I'll go to Chuck's house.
Rakaa:And it turned out to be, like, a jam session downstairs in the basement with, like, Maceo from Dayla and the drums and all us freestyle and they're barbecuing in the backyard, like, it was like a it turned into, like, a house party. Like, you know, it was so so much fun compared to all the club parties and catered food and all that stuff. You have somebody barbecuing and playing drums and messing around freestyling hanging out. It was like, this feels like an adult version of what we grew up doing. Like, you know, this is this is this is fun.
Rakaa:So, yeah, like, somebody is like, man, don't don't even show, I'll make some homemade we'll cook something or we'll go pick up something local. And just chill, relax, watch the game or watch the fight or go do whatever and then just get get where you're going. It's like, ah, it is a nice break. It is it does feel like you get to recharge your batteries a little bit and not be stuck in this performer or, like, this this performer brand mode, like, you could just be a person and then do what you gotta do. So, yeah, I I enjoy that as well.
Rakaa:I could see them being like, yeah, this is cool. I needed that.
Ashanti:I have a similar story that went absolutely the opposite way. I'm I'm so excited that you, took the time to join us today. I really appreciate you doing it. I know you got a lot of awesome things going on, and I'm still you know, always just happy to be able to still call you a friend and, even spend time with you these days. Anything else you wanna leave anybody with?
Rakaa:Yeah. If you just if you're in the industry, if you're a tour manager, definitely get that ternwheel app, get it popping, really get that account set up. If you're an artist, and you want your business right, then make sure your tour manager gets that Turnwheel app and gets a subscription, gets it set up. But, yeah, man. It it's great to see your growth as well.
Rakaa:Great to be able to call you a friend as well to be able to work with you. And and, you know, there's there's obviously much more that we're gonna be doing, but, you know, just to see the growth and to be able to take something that you have a very strong grasp of, you know, a strong understanding of, and turn that into some into a a product that can not only drive good business for you and your family and other people around you, but also improve the industry and improve the lives of the artists and and the people that are using it and make you know, if if if the road is managed more efficiently and effectively, then that benefits everybody.
Ashanti:Yeah. Absolutely.
Rakaa:To be able to take that have that vision and and turn that into something real and not just leave it on the on the on the board, but actually bring it into real life, man. You know, bravo to you. I'm real proud of how you how you've handled it. And, you know, you I've never known you to be a shy person, but to be able to go put yourself out there also on social media to go travel and and and visit these things that really make this happen. I'm I'm excited to see what happens with Ternible moving forward.
Rakaa:Yeah. I mean,
Ashanti:it wouldn't it wouldn't have all been done without you either. So thank you for your help with it as well.
Rakaa:Happy to, man. Happy to. I appreciate it.
Ashanti:And that's a wrap for today's episode of The Loadout. Huge thanks to Rockahara Science for joining us and sharing his stories. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite podcast platform. Follow me on social media at probably Ashanti or at ternwheel on all platforms. Thanks for tuning in.
Ashanti:Until next time. Keep buying those tickets. Peace.