While I’m at SxSW it gets a little hectic, so unfortunately I didn’t have time to do a full post. Instead I wanted to share the wise words J. Cole shared on a SxSW panel today. Many musicians still live in the mind state where they complain about lesser talents being more famous than they are, while waiting for the hand of God (or Perez Hilton, or Warner Brothers) to come out of the sky to make them a star. Waiting for someone else to make you a known entity works just about as well as trying to find short cuts to success. It doesn’t. Talent is key, but drive, commitment, having a great team and working hard are equally important, if not more. That is why you’ll sometimes find “lesser talents” having mainstream success. Because they worked harder and for longer than those artists that have a sense of entitlement based on their (perceived) level of talent. Or like Donny Goines says: “If you don’t know my name, I’m not working hard enough.”
“In this day and age, when you have so much control, you don’t want to be the [up-and-coming artist] relying on [TV Stations] to notice you and put you on TV. Coz really, they don’t need to do that. It’s the TV business so they could just be like “we’re gonna put the stars on tv all day and that’s that.” To even have a “somebody save me” mind state is wrong, in this day and age when you have so much control and power. Talent is important and it will get you far, but talent almost doesn’t matter if you don’t have vision and marketing and something different about you.” – J. Cole