Youngboy Never Broke Again Not Wrong Now Ethika the Prophesy
Half dozen years ago the leaders of Ethika, a lifestyle brand based in San Clemente, California, realized they might accept hit some kind of jackpot: Turns out, the hip-hop community had an affinity for their boxer briefs.
"We got lucky," says Matt Cook, Ethika's CEO. And then they reached out some relatively unknown rappers at the time, including Auto Gun Kelly, Meek Mill and Kid Ink, Cook says, all of whom "were wearing the production and loved it."
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Soon, Ethika was partnering with its artist fans to create custom apparel and enlisted the acts to record exclusive songs for a serial of annual mixtapes that the brand releases. Ethika has at present collaborated with everyone from Lil Wayne to Casey Veggies, recently dropping a new thirteen-song mixtape chosen The Prophesy, featuring original tracks from NBA YoungBoy, Ski Mask the Slump God, Mozzy and more. The deals are mutually beneficial: The songs are given away for free, while artists earn royalties from the custom trade and the line builds its brand and customer base through the various partnerships.
Ethika'south outset RGB mixtape was released in 2017, featuring Meek Mill, Lil Durk, Child Ink and more. That was followed by RGB ii last May, which clocked more than 10 million streams with tracks by Lil Wayne, Kodak Black, Lil Skies and 2 Chainz. With the contempo release of The Prophesy, Ethika is planning to drop ii mixtapes a year moving frontwards with another RGB installment planned for this summer.
"Never idea I would be designing a pair of my ain underwear," says Yung Pinch, who contributed a track to The Prophesy. "I'm super stoked with the manner they came out! Crazy to see how many people have taken eye to 'The Beach Boy' and it's dope I got to bless the fans with an exclusive tape, 'Sunset,' on the Ethika mixtape that was released with the new underwear."
Billboard defenseless up with Cook to hear more about Ethika's music strategy and where the visitor is headed side by side.
What was the idea behind the music strategy?
I got involved in the brand in 2012. At that time, they were just selling product to athletes. And so we started to exit to retail. I felt similar underwear was a category that could be applicable to everyone — it didn't matter if you're a surfer, a basketball player or you lot played the pianoforte, you still wore underwear. Music was the concept that was the connection for people. I thought if we could get a music program going that aligned with the brand, in the manner that the hip-hop culture does — information technology'south a little more edgy and it's more fashionable — nosotros would have the potential to appeal to a huge group of people. And then the connexion to unlike genres of people and athletes and musicians and and then forth was the driving cistron. We had a lot of ambassadors that were musicians only nosotros thought, "Let's take it a footstep further and put out a mixtape."
Do yous pay the musicians?
They requite usa the tracks and then we own those. What we do is we design a pair of Ethikas for them. They get the royalty off the pairs that nosotros sell; that'south how they make the coin. We've got a decent platform to push through our retail aqueduct and our [e-commerce] channel and thus the ability to expose people.
Lil Wayne, for example, did an exclusive runway for us. We've also done signature pairs that we've sold at retail and everywhere for him. The exclusivity's important considering if it's not sectional, people could just get listen to the music somewhere else.
How do you lot go acts to create original songs for the make?
We put out the RGB mixtape two years ago. Once we did the first one, then everything — our second RGB then The Prophesy that we only did — was easy considering nosotros did a lot of promotion around the first i. We did a party, we did a look volume, we printed out catalogs. All the artists got gifts and nosotros flew them out. So when the next project came up, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Lil Wayne, for instance, wasn't on the first i just he wanted to be on the second one. So nosotros didn't even have to ask some of the guys; they wanted to be on information technology considering they wanted but the make alignment and the exposure.
How do you select the artists you lot want to participate in the mixtapes?
We've had Meek Mill to Lil Wayne to 2 Chainz. We've had Kodak Black, which is more of an upwards-and-comer. We've had Lil Skies, who'due south an up-and-comer, simply been pretty hot this last year or then. And so we've got some guys that take been peradventure a niggling bit older but are still a niggling bit relevant, like Chevy Woods or Kid Ink or Casey Veggies or what not.
And so this last mixtape was all almost us going out and finding all these new young artists that are making a proper noun for themselves on YouTube. They'll create music, put it upwardly and start to get a following through HotNewHipHop or Lyrical Lemonade, and all of the sudden they've got like xx million views on their video. So nosotros thought, "Permit's get and create a mixtape that's just the young, new guys and put that out" — we'll have a rookie mixtape and and then we'll have a veteran kind of mixtape.
We are going to exercise 2 a year. The first i's the RGB and that's just the concept of red, greenish, blue, like an additive color. Those colors together are more powerful than individually, and so that was a concept. And then, The Prophesy, nosotros're going to do one of those a year. That's the states predicting, "Hey, these are the guys in the hereafter that are going to exist large."
How do you release the music?
Nosotros promote and release the music on our site and on SoundCloud. So nosotros accept partners that nosotros give special releases with. Like last twelvemonth, Complex got Meek Mill's song a day early. Then nosotros'll do some strategic partners to go the music out because it can't be paid for. If it's paid for, then it violates the agreements that the artists take with the record labels. And then information technology has to be complimentary. I recall we have like xi million streams on our last RGB mixtape.
We're currently building a music studio in our office building. We have plans to do some things similar a business model around the music considering we go fed a lot of younger artists because of the older artists that we piece of work with. Nosotros take people coming to u.s.a. all the time. We'd like to practice something in music simply with a partner, with a Universal or with an Epic or something like that, where nosotros could work with them on doing information technology because nosotros're not experts in publishing and distribution of content in music and then along.
How has the music program been a game changer for the brand?
We get a lot of traffic from Instagram and our email lists. When we pull together a Meek Mill and a Lil Wayne and a ii Chainz and a Kodak Black and a Kid Ink and a Slump God and Mozzy and NBA YoungBoy, and so yous're talking about 30, twoscore, 50 million people inside the group that is pushing out, "Hey, this is the mixtape that I'yard a part of. Go listen to information technology." That exposure flips on a switch and it drives people to the site. People are listening to the music but they're also buying product and then they go return customers for the states.
Cameron Baird/Ethika
Source: https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/ethika-underwear-mixtapes-lil-wayne-meek-mill-prophesy-8492781/
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