Rap Pop•Tarts Turns 1

Rap Pop•Tarts turns 1 years old.

In conversations with friends and acquaintances alike, I’m usually forthright about the fact that I have interests beyond the cushioned world of children’s furniture. (If you didn’t know that already, well, now you do.)    

It’s not as if there’s not enough to do at Nugget, a company that has grown from 10 people to nearly 100 people in the past three years; or not enough to learn about being a CMO, a position of authority and responsibility more befitting a seasoned, grown adult than a little boy in his first real job. (For the record, I am 31 years old.) It’s not that the kid’s furniture game isn’t weird and bizarre and fascinating, because it absolutely is. 

It’s just that I miss doing other things, and over the past few years, have kept making infrequent, half-hearted attempts at them, every time running headlong into the same stubborn reality: it’s hard to break out of the rhythm of what you do every day. 

So last year, when my friend (and director/writer) Holland started talking to me about his project with esteemed music journalist Yoh Phillips, called Rap Portraits, I wasn’t shy about my interest in getting involved. I didn’t have the time to be an active partner in the project (see: full-time job, growing company, graveyard of dead projects and ideas from past 3-5 years), but I did have, for the first time in my life, exactly what a nascent RP needed: some seed cash. So, unexpectedly, suddenly, and without much reservation, I did that most quintessentially capitalist thing one can do, and became an investor. 

Financially and aquatically speaking, I was leaving the shallow end of index funds and ETFs and wading into something far more exciting, and significantly more irresponsible: the deep, choppy waters of hip-hop documentary film studio investing. (So hot right now.) But more importantly, for the first time since Nugget really started to take off in 2019, I had broken out of the rhythm of my every day.

My excitement about Rap Portraits came from more than just the fact that, if it didn’t work out, I could probably write it off. It also came from the fact that, of the assorted half-dead creative projects in my wake, many had either danced around or directly attempted to serve as the kind of nuanced, intimate space for hip-hop that Rap Portraits was now setting out to provide. In this venture, Holland was the man behind the camera and at the editing board, and Yoh, a writer I had read and admired for years from afar, was opening his rolodex, conducting interviews, and giving voice to the brand through his unique and immediately recognizable prose.

Holland and Yoh brought me on for more than just my ability to provide upfront funding, and I tried to honor that trust by doing my best impression of whatever I thought an active investor does (Nugget has none, so I really was going off my imagination). I popped onto calls when I could, shared ideas where I had them, plugged in people who I thought could fit into this thing we were building. In the case of Christian Arnder, who I met through a chance encounter with Nugget, we ended up finding the visual glue to the entire enterprise. (I mean, are you even kidding me?)

Throughout the year, I regularly thought about those earlier projects I had worked on, specifically my music blog/online magazine, Super Empty. About how many times I had felt this same level excitement, then gotten tired, distracted, behind, whatever… and it had gone off the rails. This time it was different, with a whole team of talented people ready to shoulder the load. One person missing a week wouldn’t make the whole thing go dark. 

And for 52 weeks, it almost never did. Five short films, more than a dozen “In The Viewfinder” interviews, 20+ email newsletters, five Big Homie Tips, three Rap Portraits Bowling League events from LA to Chicago to Durham, and on and on. It wasn’t fully sustainable, and the flow will need to switch up for a little while, but goddamn was it an opening statement. 

In a year full of big moments, one small one stood out to me more than the rest. In late August, in the comments section of an In The Viewfinder interview with Atlanta, GA rapper and Shady Records signee Grip, a viewer wrote: 

It was not. Rap Portraits has only ever been intended to mean one thing: rap portraits. In a way, it was just a silly, incorrect theory. But in another way, it represented more. Even in our early form, it felt undeniably like a mini-moment, a minor revelation: people weren’t just watching our videos, they were starting to interact with, conceive of, play within, some kind of constructed Rap Portraits universe, specific to a vision that Holland and Yoh had created. After all, how farfetched would it be, really, for Rap Portraits — this treasure trove of thoughtful and reflective conversations with artists — to have a double entendre for a name?

It was barely a blink of a breakthrough, but it was a breakthrough nonetheless. We put up a version of the galaxy brain meme to celebrate the occasion. A simple in-joke that spoke to the early adopters who made up the RP community, it quickly became one of the most-liked posts we had put up to date.

In the comments, yet another RP variation emerged, this one even more of a personal favorite for me than the last: 

YouTube subscribers? Twitter followers? Throw it all out the window. Do people care enough about the thing you’re making that they’re spending time playing around with nonsensical variations of your name for fun? That’s all I care to know.

Well, I also care if they’re saying things like this:

Rap Portraits, Rapper Traits, Rap Pop•Tarts — whatever you call it, our stake is in the ground. Our tart is in the toaster. The right people are noticing, and even more will take notice very soon.

And yes, that’s my opinion as a totally professional, completely unbiased, very serious, investor.