Today’s show features two pioneers in culture and NFTs seeking to give back to, and support an important cultural community. In this episode, Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger Welcome Fred Frenchy and Nirojan Yamunarajan, the Co-Founders of Culture Shock Galleries, a black-owned NFT auction house representing culture-influencing artists, icons, and brands. Listen in as Fred and Nirojan share how they came up with a massive and ambitious project to celebrate Hip Hop culture industry wide. Join the conversation as they discuss how they’ve moved so quickly, what inspires them to tackle this project, and the surprises they’re preparing for you. You won’t want to miss this inspiring episode!
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Listen to the podcast here
Fred Frenchy And Nirojan Yamunarajan Of Culture Shock On Hip Hop Roots & Fantasy Trading Cards, Plus: Dcentralcon’s NFT & Defi Extravaganza, And More…
All you NFT curious readers, check out this episode to learn how the crew at Culture Shock Galleries is taking edutainment to a whole new level for hip-hop and culture.
What’s on our guests’ top five MC list.
Why DCentral Con, November 10th to 12th in Miami, is a can’t-miss event for NFT lovers and is $100 less for Edge of NFT readers. All this and more on this episode. Enjoy.
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This sponsor spotlight episode features Fred Frenchy and Nirojan Yamunarajan, Cofounders of Culture Shock Galleries, who are pioneering the first ecosystem of its kind to connect, educate, activate and empower a diverse group of both Black and non-Black creators and collectors on the blockchain. Culture Shock Galleries is all about NFTs that drive the culture forward, dropping premium, exclusive and rare digital collectibles and original art from traditionally underrepresented trailblazers who architect, influence and positively impact and contribute to their community. Let’s hear a little bit about each of them.
Culture Shock: Our artists are not only exceptional in what they do, but they also understand the cultural codes, nuances, and aesthetics that fly with the audiences of the celebrities that we’re signing up.
Fred is Culture Shock’s CEO. He is an entertainment and music executive with many years of experience working directly with powerhouse brands in the industry via the International Promotions Department at Universal Music Group, IGA, Interscope Geffen A&M and through his own international celebrity booking agency, Fred Frenchy Corp, with presence in over 25 countries working directly with A-listers, including Lady Gaga, Eminem, Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, Floyd Mayweather, Busta Rhymes and more. Frenchy is also Mike Tyson’s international agent and business venture partner since 2009.
Niro is the Director at Culture Shock. He had cofounded and exited multiple tech startups, including the entertainment media publishing technology company, Tagroom, acquired by NASDAQ-Listed Business in 2014 when he was 23 and the enterprise SaaS tech company, Simble, IPOed on the ASX in 2018. He has led digital innovation, brand strategy and design, new media and intellectual property development projects for blue-chip companies, startups and public figures, including Red Bull, Corona Extra, Canon, Intel, Disney, Lucasfilm, Star Wars, KPMG, Mike Tyson and more. This is incredible to have you here. Let’s start the chat. Welcome to the show.
It’s a pleasure to be here.
I appreciate you coming on this episode. Being a hip-hop head from the time I was very young is near and dear to my heart. I’ve been looking forward to this one since Josh told me we were doing it. I’m super excited about it. One of the things that we love most about doing this show is hearing the origin stories of the projects that come on. How did the idea for Culture Shock Galleries come about? How did this amazingly accomplished team come together?
I’ll give you a little bit of background and Frenchy can cut in. Frenchy and I met years ago. We crossed paths in Perth. Frenchy’s wife lives in Perth and is good friends with my ex-business partner from a previous company that we exited. She called me up one day and was like, “You’ve got to come to Perth and meet this guy, Fred Frenchy. He is Mike Tyson’s agent.” I said, “What do you mean in Perth? What is he doing here?”
At first, I didn’t believe it but then I went up there to meet Frenchy and we got on a house on fire. We had a lot in common in how we thought about business and were certainly very creative aligned. We started collaborating on each other’s projects, counseling each other on what we were working on, understanding our individual networks and what we’ve been doing. It was an informal start to our relationship.
We found common ground primarily in our desire to give back and help the community from a creative angle. We explored a lot of different ideas and certainly where we ended up as being a very iterative approach. We have explored, built out and developed multiple products and projects to get here. The first iteration was a company called Culture Shock Studios, which still runs now. We set that up as an intellectual property development company. We wanted to produce content and create new business ventures but we wanted to do it with the lens of co-creating IP with a lot of the talent that Frenchy has worked with so that they had ownership in their creation.
We have certainly found and this has been something that has driven everything that we’ve done in our business is that, particularly, IP developed by the culture, the Black community, in particular, has driven and influenced mainstream culture but the creators often do not benefit and capture the full value of their IP that they’ve created. It’s primarily because they’ve often done deals that prioritize some upfront fee versus ownership, backend benefits, equity, royalties, etc. That was the basis of setting up that business and we’ve partnered with a whole bunch of awesome talent to produce content IP, documentaries and original animated series concepts. We’ve produced and developed a fitness franchise concept with Mike Tyson. That has been super interesting.
When we started to see all the activity and noise around the blockchain and NFTs start to take off at the beginning of 2021, we thought, “This is such a fantastic medium for us to keep doing what we’re doing but through blockchain technology and the smart contracts be able to do it even better.” We ensure that the creators of this IP were able to be minted on the blockchain effectively as the creators. We follow that thread and benefit from all the exciting activity that could happen from the IP that they developed and not have to worry about middlemen and gatekeepers along the way that cut them out of deals without them maybe even knowing about it. That was how Culture Shock Galleries came about.
That leads directly to the next question and I can see why people will be excited about working with you. To inform the reader here, you already have a diverse group of over 60 NFT designers under management. I want to know how you were able to onboard such a large number of designers so quickly. What creations can we expect from them?
The core of our mission is to give back. When we decided to embark on this NFT situation, we wanted to do it in a way we’re thinking outside the box. We definitely created a talent agency first even before creating the platform because we noticed that there were a lot of diversity-driven artists that were exceptional but they couldn’t even put themselves out there.
What you explained is that through our ability to be close to certain top-tier celebrities, we created this system where we had artists on one side and gave them the opportunity to collaborate with top-tier celebrities to create content and sell their platform. It was a no-brainer for some of the artists. We had an advantage there. We spend a lot of sleepless nights trying to select those incredible artists. That was at first challenging but we liked it as well because we gave the opportunity to a lot of those amazing artists that without a system like this, they wouldn’t be known.
We signed over 70 artists. Most of them are diverse, especially from the diaspora. We have artists from the Philippines, Pakistan, India but a lot of Africans as well like in Nigeria, Zimbabwe and an amazing artist from Senegal. We selected those guys, decided to work closely with them and gave them the opportunity to create an amazing piece with the people who are busy around us like top-tier celebrities.
The conversation with those artists was pretty smooth and easy because we came to them in an organic way. Also, what is important to highlight here as well is that the way we work with those artists is that we give them a certain amount of freedom as well. We don’t want to lock them in a situation where they ultimately have to work with us exclusively because we cannot be an expert on everything.
What they do with Culture Shock Galleries, they stay with us but I invite them to go and try to see what’s out there. With my experience working with artists and celebrities, when you give them some type of freedom and then you give them this ability to go and check for themselves what’s good out there, they always come back. We have a great relationship with them. So far, we’re successful with those artists.
Let’s get a little bit more specific. You guys did this Africa Drop that sold out. I heard some rumors about a metaverse and some collectible trading components. What are the specific collaborations that you’re working on that you’re excited about? I know they’re all amazing.
First of all, that was a very great surprise because we went and then decided to go into this ecosystem as an outsider. There are a lot of amazing platforms out there already. We can name a few. The way we wanted to approach this NFT thing was our own way. We built a closed platform. It’s not everybody who can come and make their artwork on CSG. We’re selecting everybody that can make their artwork.
What we’ve done is that we selected a few different artists to create a team collection about Africa with no promotion and nothing. It’s just to start and try something out to see if we are in the right direction. Fortunately, we’ve been able to sell everything pretty quickly and it was word-of-mouth. That gave us a signal saying, “We’re in the right direction.”
After that, Niro and I decided that our priority was to sign as much talent as possible. When I say talent, it’s the iconic legend of the culture, Black culture, pop culture or urban artists. I don’t like this terminology but this is how they call them. We sat down with several of those icons. The cool thing about it is because we can sold organically without pretending to know everything about the blockchain and NFT, we managed to sign them pretty easily. I don’t take all this for granted because I’m from this industry. At first, we reached out to the low-hanging fruit.
You got Bobby Brown, Cory Rooney and Caleb Fernandez. These are some incredible folks that you brought into the mix here.
One of the things that are a point of difference for us on other platforms is our artist network. We’ve had celebrities and talents that we’ve met with that have wanted to go and explore the industry with it being new. They’ve gone and met with other platforms and artists. Most of them have come back to us, the main reason being, the creative vision that we have around projects for them speaks to the culture. That’s largely based on the fact that our artists are not only exceptional in what they do, graphic design, CGI, special effects, all of the above but they understand the cultural codes, nuances and aesthetics that fly with the audiences of the celebrities that we’re signing up.
We like to talk about the Edge of NFT as the intersection of technology and culture. They are coming together in a way that wasn’t possible before. It’s a subtlety and you get it right. It creates amazing connectivity with an audience.
In addition to that, specifically in the hip-hop industry, it is very specific. You cannot cheat them. You need to be able to know the codes and know what this industry is about. The first impression when you come with something new to this community is that it doesn’t work because they don’t understand it and don’t want to touch it. Ninety percent of them are skeptical of those types of projects because the nature of this industry is that they’ve been fooled a lot in their contract like a bad contract, bad deal or bad negotiation.
To them, going to something new like this with all those new languages and terminologies, they don’t want it. What we’ve done with Culture Shock Galleries is that’s where I come into play, knowing them and the way they operate, we’ve been able to break a lot of things. Meaning we came to them speaking their language. If you talk to someone like Kurtis Blow, for example. He is an old-school artist, legend and icon of hip-hop. If you start talking to him about the ERC-721, he is going to be like, “I’m good.”
The thing is that we have those types of artists. It’s straight to the point. It is what it is, what it does and how much I can make. We break it like this and then we speak to them that way. At first, we spend a lot of hours with Niro singing down with those artists and explaining the whole ecosystem of the NFT and all that. We’ve seen that it’s complicated for them. We decided to approach it the way our approach is with all the different artists that I work with straight to the point and we’ve been successful at it. That’s how we work with the industry.
Speaking their language helps and probably doing it with a French accent doesn’t hurt.
To that point being international, I’m from Australia. I’ve got an Aussie accent. Frenchy is Frenchy. We are a massive point of difference to a lot of the people that we meet because we’re different. From an attention point of view and that icebreaking component, that’s certainly present.
Culture is at the center of everything we’re talking about here. We understand you have an upcoming ICO with something called the Culture Coin. How does that play into this whole ecosystem? What should we expect there?
He wants to develop a coin that we can integrate into our system and platform that we’re developing but also speaks to what we’re about and our mission. Not only will this coin be able to unlock benefits for those who hold it across a lot of the NFTs that will be dropping so special unlockables and perks that some of our celebrity partners will be offering. The main component about this is, by using this coin, we want to be able to benefit the industry. What I mean by the industry is to effectively establish an unofficial hip-hop union but one that has been longing to be created and primarily to help support talent.
Legacy talent, new and emerging talent, those are hard done by terrible deals and can’t get out of them because they can’t afford the legal cost to fight these battles. Also, a talent that has found themselves in dire straits and can’t afford medical care. People think they’re super-rich and famous because they know of their music but the deals that they did were so bad that they don’t have the money that you and I could ever possibly imagine.
Culture Shock: We’re living in a world where there’s so much division. If you can look for the common thread, you will find that there is such a thing as common unity; you just have to look for it.
For us, it’s about saying, “When you buy this coin or transact with this coin, you know for sure that whenever you are able to transact with this coin, you are supporting Black and the culture.” That’s super key. Particularly, with our third-party relationships, retailers and brands that we’re talking to and we’ll partner with that will offer the ability to transact with Culture Coin on certain product lines that they’ll be launching, you will know for sure when you do that and then it’s going to be Black-owned and supporting the culture in some way. First and foremost, it’s a vetting mechanism that we’re spending a lot of time putting together to ensure that consumers can see that when they have the ability to use that.
Secondarily, these foundation components are contributing towards what we’re developing in this space of being able to give back so that proceeds generated through Culture Coin transactions go towards this foundation, which ultimately our community will be able to vote on who they want to deploy these funds to if and when someone applies to receive a grant. It could be medical costs, housing-related, education-related, legal-related but all within the vein of the culture and people that our community wants to support.
The common story and theme from so many artists and performers from the early 2000s all the way back to the ’80s and even before are bad deals. The opportunity to translate everything they created, their persona and capitalize on that now, the nostalgia and love that people have for them and to be able to capture some of that value for themselves and, to a degree, start to true-up what’s a meaningful service to a lot of these people, it’s amazing. It’s one of the beautiful things about what NFTs can do. We’re just scratching the surface.
To that point, it’s undeniable now. Hip-hop is one of the driving forces of society. Globally, in Europe, Australia, South America and Africa, everybody watches, sings and dances hip-hop. That’s sometimes unfortunate to see those architects, the people who shaped that culture, being so desperate with that situation. We wanted to do something to give back and also give them the flower while they can smell them. It’s very important to do things like this. In the movie business, you get sad with all those union types of things. Models in the fashion industry have a union as well. Why not hip-hop because it’s one of the number one cultures and industries now? We wanted to do something about that.
To add to Frenchy’s point to finish that off, us saying that we’re going to do this is one thing but we’ve been very careful and precise about who we’re partnering with and bringing to the table to validate this project and show that we aren’t a bunch of guys saying, “We’re going to do this.” The people in the industry that are trusted, veterans and have proved that they’re about supporting the culture and people, we’ve been conscious to develop relationships with them to bring them on board to validate our project through their involvement. If we don’t have trust from the community by the artists, celebrities and potential consumers then none of this matters. The story is one thing but putting the right people together that add weight to the credibility of the story is key especially in a community that has a lot of distrust around all of the above.
There is a great book, The Speed of Trust. The thesis of that book is, “The more you degrade trust, the slower things go in business, relationships and all these things. The more you can build trust and people could feel secure in that, decisions, pathways and everything starts to open up very quickly.” That makes a lot of sense. I want to talk to you guys about a specific project, The Culture Cards, the official hip-hop collectible cards NFT project. Tell us what it’s all about. How do we play the game?
That’s a great segue because we created that fantasy game to bridge the gap between the pioneers and these new emerging generation of hip-hop artists. We wanted to celebrate not only the artists but for everybody that contributed and impacted their culture. People from the DJs, producers, graffiti artists, dancers, music executives, radio personalities, all the people that helped shape their culture, we wanted to celebrate them. We brainstormed a lot on how we could do that. The collectible aspect now is very hot. We created a game where it’s a fantasy game powered by collectible NFT cards like trading cards.
The first phase that we own is a collectible phase. We have three artists working on those assets. It’s like trading cards. We have different types of statistics on the back and all that. We created those cards and the game consists of building your ideal hip-hop world. Some buyers will probably be more like West Coast, the ’90s and gangsta rap. They’re most likely going to buy Snoop Dogg, Eazy-E, NWA and all the different things around them.
Some artists and buyers will probably buy lyrical, boom bap and East Coast. They’re going to go with Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One and EPMD. There’s a big educational component as well because we want to show the hip-hop enthusiasts that they were pioneers as well that shaped our culture and who they were. People are going to be like, “Why KRS-One has such a high number?” If they go on their website, they will see their achievement, what they’ve done for the culture, who are these and all that.
That’s an amazing way to give back to those artists as well because what we’ve done is that we made those cards all officially licensed. We’re personally reaching out to those artists and saying, “Instead of doing a regular fan art like everybody is doing and then making all the money and they’re giving you everything, we want to collaborate with you to create that card. If you want to make money then why not?” You also want to be back in the forefront as well with the culture. That’s the type of thing that we want to do for them.
There are a couple of things I want to add to what Frenchy has mentioned. One is that, with Culture Shock Galleries, anything can be an NFT. One intellectual property is sitting on a new garage like unseen photographs, videos, producing original artwork. Creativity is the limit. There’s a lot more thinking around that that goes into the development and production of those styles of NFTs for our CSG marketplace.
The hip-hop cards, however, because we’ve developed a fresh take on what a collectible card looks like, we’re leveraging the fact that this is a new medium and it doesn’t need to be a still flat card. People have seen this and go, “I want my version of this card.” It has been beautiful to see people go, “I want to be a part of this. I totally want to do my card. How can I get involved?”
When we talk about fantasy games, it’s a real challenge for us because hip-hip isn’t like football or basketball where there are stats that we wait, player activity and performance against that we can create a fantasy game around. We had to think about, “What is acceptable criteria around these artists but also the architects like record label producers, DJs and executives? What is a criteria system that the community will agree with that can validate these guys in a way that doesn’t have to do with streams or album sales?”
Depending on when these artists came out, you can imagine some of them would seem like they’re terrible, even though they’re most people’s top five. Developing those criteria again in council with some significant hip-hop industry veterans has been interesting. It has been well-received by the artists that we pitch it to because they go, “I love seeing myself in this way.” We have a score. That water cooler talk is very real. When there was a top 50 rappers list, people were like, “Why am I this? Why is he that?”
Part of this is also fan-driven scoring. We’re not coming up with the numbers. We’ve built a platform. It’s private so we haven’t opened it up to the public yet but we will. We’ve been sending it out to a whole bunch of hip-hop heads and industry veterans that are also contributing their scores for these individual criteria for each artist. It has been pretty interesting to see the results of that.
What about rarity and scarcity among this collection? Any specific rules or criteria around that we should watch out for?
We created four different types of cards with different standards. Every artist has 556 cards. We have 500 silver, which is rare, 50 gold, 5 black and 1 diamond. That’s the scarcity of the card. There’s only one diamond so that’s the card that everybody wants to have. We’ve been able to attract a lot of different artists. When we explain the game that way, they love it. There are also different tiers. For example, the iconic status, which are all the Biggie, Nas, Jay-Z, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Big Pun and all those iconic artists. You’ve got legends, phenomenal, outstanding, stars and emerging. All those different criteria as well are defined. We had fun doing that.
You’re already accomplishing something pretty grand with this. As someone who studied jazz piano, I would love to see eventually some reaching back even further. I remember the famous collaboration where Ron Carter played on a couple of hip-hop records where they brought the roots of the music from jazz into the domain. That stuff would be awesome.
This is what this card game is about, celebrating these contributors that people don’t even know about. This was a conscious choice of talking about the architects and not just the rappers. There are all these people that have contributed. This is where the next layer of the game gets quite interesting. Build the value of your ideal hip-hop world based on the themes that you’ve chosen like West Coast, the ’90s, gangsta rap, for example. The points of the individual cards that you accumulate will contribute to the overall value of your world. If you have a gold, black or diamond card versus a silver, there are additional points associated with that same card but ideal pairings are when it gets interesting.
If you’ve got two cards that are supposed to go together because they’ve been influenced by one another, an obvious example is being something like Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre but also, let’s say, Steve Rifkind and Busta Rhymes. Even as far back as what you’re saying, it influences further back when to credit the style of an artist that’s gone and popped off. If we recognize those connections on our platform and you own those two cards, they’ll contribute to bonus points within your world. It’s serving as an educational component around why this person role has more value.
It’s a very ambitious project because we don’t want to sign just 20 or 30 artists. We’re going after the whole industry. We’re going far back from a Kool Herc to a Young Thug.
This is secretly an edutech-tainment project. You’re teaching history here and exposing so many young aficionados of hip-hop about where this all started. This is freaking amazing.
It’s also drawing on nostalgia. I talk about this frequently on the show that collectibles and tradables in the physical form are primarily rooted in nostalgia or things from the past, whether it’s baseball cards or whatever from a long time ago. The most valuable things are the older and rare things but so far, in the NFT world, it hasn’t taken that form. It has taken the form of new creations primarily.
In fact, NBA Top Shot released a throwback set. The Michael Jordan Card would definitely be worth something if you went back in the ’80s and ’90s. This project has so much rooted in the history of hip-hop and the nostalgia that drives it. There’s something special about that. We haven’t seen a lot of it yet, surprisingly.
That’s the reason why there are different types of cards as well that we’re not revealing in the first phase. We will have a different type of card, for example, a moment of hip-hop where we’re drawing the card of an amazing moment in hip-hop. For example, when OutKast received their Grammy Award, MTV Award or Source Award when they say like, “The South has something to say,” or Jadakiss on Verzuz which was a big moment for hip-hop.
All those types of things, we’re going to have those types of moments as well. When Eazy-E went to the White House, those types of things we’re going capture as well in those cards so people will have nostalgia. We’re planning to do a different collaboration where we’re going to portray and highlight fashion goods or even musical elements of hip-hop. For example, the iconic Biggie Coogi Sweater, LL Cool J Kangol hat or Run-DMC Adidas. All those things are important to the culture and impact the culture in a major way.
I want to note, Joshua and Jeff, I appreciate you noticing that because one of the early iterations of a company that Frenchy and I started was centered around MasterClass.com but teaching specifically to the audiences that we want to help. The language, style and backstory are being able to speak to those audiences about things that they could and need to learn and from the people that want to listen to. The style of the content that we wanted to develop was very different to speak to the audience that we were targeting.
Although we didn’t proceed with that company for a multitude of reasons, that philosophy is much embedded in how we operate. We do want to educate and inspire because entertainment is great. This industry is awesome to be able to entertain and also to offer and create opportunities to be an entrepreneur. It’s an easy way to be an entrepreneur without having to have significant startup costs associated with the traditional business but at the same time, this is also an opportunity to educate and inform through entertainment. I love that word, edutech-tainment. It’s super key and drives what we do for sure.
There are two things. 1) Jeff got me masterclasses for a year for a holiday present way back. I get that intimately. 2) We had Tom Bilyeu on the show. He is bringing in a lot of his education and business coaching into his world. I don’t see why you guys can’t take this concept to the future as well and support future hip-hop stars in the making, do some masterclass with some of the proceeds and enhance this game into the future.
What we’re creating is new interaction as well. We have those pillars and new generations. Automatically something is going to happen. A lot of beautiful things will happen for the culture. We’re going to be able to reconnect. People are talking about this disconnect. There’s a big disconnect between the ’80s, ’90s, 2000s and what’s happening now. There’s a big gap. There’s a real disconnect between what’s happening now and what happened a couple of decades ago. Even though they’re very ambitious, those types of projects can bridge the gap and bring those two generations back together. That’s what we’re trying to do and have them control the narrative.
Culture Shock: Instead of chasing some goal, which people think will bring happiness, hopefully, the next generation will prioritize purpose and mission and see that it makes all of it worthwhile.
You’re establishing a foundation to make a meaningful contribution to the space and to a lot of artists’ lives, The Culture Cards, Culture Shock Galleries, Cult Coin, all of it. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. We can spend all day brainstorming with you and talking about it. You can see we’re passionate about this. I feel like we have a lot of shared ethos as well.
We wanted to take a moment to take a step back and get your personal perspective on a few fun questions. We call them Edge Quick Hitters. It’s a fun, quick way to get to know you a little bit better. We usually look for single-word or few-word responses for them but you can feel free to expand if you get the urge. Do you guys want to dive into some of those?
Let’s do it.
I’ll guide you through them here. Question number one, Niro, we’ll start with you. What is the first thing that you remember ever purchasing in your life?
Funnily enough, it was a poster. I don’t know if you remember the one but it was Tupac, Suge Knight and Snoop Dogg. Tupac got the Moschino belt. It’s black and white. That was probably it but maybe even sooner than that, I wouldn’t count it as a purchase. I probably like trading my lunch for this. Dragonball Z discs when I was in home school. I remember that was a Super Namek Piccolo, a gold one that I had traded.
How about you, Frenchy?
It’s Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall album.
That might be the first MJ appearance on the show.
You don’t have MJ before?
In all of our 60-something episodes, no.
We’ve seen some amazing Michael Jackson artworks.
Number two is for you, Frenchy. What is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
I’ve sold a shirt.
How about you, sir?
It was my family taking advantage of me in probably selling one-hour-long shoulder massages for $0.20 or something.
Niro, for you, question three. What is the most recent thing you purchased?
It would be an NFT.
Anything, in particular, you want to share?
It’s a good one from an artist you would know of. That’s what I’ll say.
How about you, Frenchy?
I have three phones. I broke one of them and I bought a phone.
Question four, Frenchy, for you. What is the most recent thing you sold?
It was an NFT.
Care to share which that was?
It’s an NFT that I have from one of the artists that we manage. You can double it.
Niro, how about you?
Same, it’s one of the NFTs.
Question five, Niro, for you. What is your most prized possession?
I don’t value things. Although we’re even in this space of digital goods, I wouldn’t say they’re prized possessions but this one is an interesting story. I own this memorabilia, which is a hand-signed Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali and Tiger Woods Upper Deck Collection from a little while back. I bought it with my university scholarship money at that time. At retail, it was $7,000 with an additional $500. I bought it in a dip when I was twenty for $3,500. Now, it’s worth about $50,000. It’s more of a nod to my younger self back in a good investment choice at that time.
Frenchy, how about you? What is your most prized possession?
It’s a Wu-Tang CD, Enter the 36 Chambers. To me, it’s the most valuable thing that I have. It’s interesting enough because I experienced war in Africa, in Congo. That was the only CD that I have and I was listening to get me through the day during all those crazy times. I know this album by heart.
We’ll stick with you, Frenchy. If you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service and experience that’s currently for sale, what would that be?
I would buy a 1 or 2-hour dinner with 2Pac, Big, Michael Nix, Bob Marley, Marvin.
Niro, how about you?
I have an obsession with anything new, exploration and out of space. It would be maybe Richard Branson like a Virgin Galactic experience or something like that.
Let’s stick with you, Niro, on this one. If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would that be?
It will be understanding. We’re living in a world where there’s so much division. It seems like if you’re not with us, you’re against us. Something that has made me successful in my world is the ability to understand and relate to people that are the total opposite of me. If you can look to find the common thread, you can find that there is such a thing as common unity and you got to look for it. That would be the trait.
Frenchy, how about you?
I want to repeat back on what Niro said. We’re yin and yang. He is definitely understanding. I found the perfect partner for this journey. We’re two different people but I managed to work together if he is crazy. For me, I would say determination. No to me is not an option. I’m dyslexic so to me, no means on. When you tell me no, it’s like, “I need to go.” I like to make it happen.
Let’s do the flip side of that thing. Question eight, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would that be? Frenchy, we’ll start with you.
There are too many. I wouldn’t eliminate anything because that’s who I am. Even if I eliminated those bad traits, it wouldn’t be me. Sometimes those bad traits push me to do good things. I know that I have to better a few things but I wouldn’t get rid of them.
Niro, how about you?
I’ll probably say hustle for the sake of hustling. Instead of chasing some goal, which people think will bring happiness, whether it’s money, fame or whatever it might be, hopefully, the next generation prioritize purpose and mission and see that it makes all of it worthwhile because it’s going to be hard either way. It’s damn difficult to do anything. Unless the end goal is truly worth it and connects with you then there’s no point. That’s why there’s a lot of burnout in our industry because it’s a hustle for the sake of hustling.
Question number nine. Niro, we’ll stick with you. What did you do before joining us on the show?
I was asleep.
Frenchy, how about you?
I was singing to my wife because she is pregnant.
What was the song?
I was singing to the baby. It was listening to Wu-Tang. That’s a classic.
The last of our core questions here, Frenchy, for you. Question ten, what are you going to do next after the show?
I’m not going to sleep. I’m probably going to work out in my room.
Niro, how about you?
I’m going to start my day. It will be an early start for me in a long time but I’m keen to get my day started.
We got to throw in a bonus question given the topic of the conversation and that has got to be for each of you, top five MCs. We’ll put some criteria on it. You factor in flow, wordplay, lyrics and also the body of work.
I was born in 1991 so my answers might be different from Frenchy. I would say Tupac, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and Big Pun are up there. Last but not least, it’s a tricky one between Jay-Z and Kanye West. I’m probably going to lean toward Kanye.
The fifth one is always hard.
Big is there for me. Nas is up there. I would put Pun and Jay there. I would put Busta because his body of work is nice.
We’ve got a special guest for our first hot topic, Michael.
Let’s line up the hot topic here and get into it. We’re going to talk a little bit about DCentral Con is about to take the NFT and DeFi world by storm. It’s where the world will converge to celebrate art, fashion and creatives together with the future of finance. We got here Michael Huynh who is a huge member of that team and is pretty much working 24 hours a day.
They put together a killer event, NFTCON, that we have the honor to be a part of and moderate some of the sessions. Michael, how many hours of content were put together? How many people came to that event?
For the hours of content, I believe it’s about 72-plus hours of content. In terms of view rates, we had almost 100,000 views based on those live stream views alone. We’re going to be continuing to push more into it. We’re going to be clipping up each one of them. It was virtual. There was a lot of content to go around.
We’ll be featuring some of that content too on the show if people look up for that collab.
We’re so excited about DCentral Con. We know how much work you have been putting into it. Give our readers the basics of what they can expect and why they can’t miss the event of the year?
Our event is going to be happening on November 30th and December 1st, 2021. We have already launched our first wave of speakers. We have 80 plus confirmed speakers on the website. Our goal is to hit around 300 to 400. We’re going to be having four stages. The first stage is going to be all dedicated to NFTs. The second stage is the DeFi stage. It’s all dedicated to DeFi.
The third stage is the demo stage. It’s more for gearing towards newer companies. The fourth stage is going to be a metaverse stage, which is going to be a 50-foot dome that’s going to have a 360 projection on the inside of the event. That’s going to be outside in our parking lot because it can’t fit inside the Convention Center. That’s how massive it’s going to be.
We’re going to have a special code that goes out for our readers. You’re kind enough to give them $100 off. Thanks so much for doing that. Anything else that folks should know in terms of how to prepare to get their MetaMask wallets ready?
Get your MetaMask wallet ready. We’re going to be having an NFT gallery and also a few different types of auctions there as well. We’re also going to be curating a whole expo floor. We’ll have some people that have merch that accept crypto with our event as well. Our event is dedicated to NFTs and DeFi. It’s because we noticed that there are not a lot of events that are curating specifically to those marks.
Especially for us too, we’re very blockchain agnostic. We do have a lot of Layer-1s that are going to be attending. I believe the count is fourteen-plus Layer-1s and Layer-2s that are going to be present at the event. Even if it’s not MetaMask, maybe it’s going to be your Terra Station Wallet or even your Capital Wallet for Cosmos and everything with a lot of the different types of companies that we have going on.
Are there any speakers that you want to talk about at this stage?
We do have a lot of them from DeFi Summit and NFTCON. The purpose of that is also to bring them into the physical setting. In terms of speakers, there are a few large speakers that we can’t announce yet that are going to be attending. The ones that are on the website, if you go to DCentralCon.com, you can see some of the lists of the speakers. We have Avery from VaynerMedia coming back.
Culture Shock: We’re at the beginning of this space, and aligning with the right people who get it, have the same vision, and can support and help each other make these projects a reality because they’re only in our minds until we can make them real.
We also have a few other ones. For example some of the hedge funds and VC funds are going to be there. We make it to where it’s very diverse in terms of what type of speakers they are. We also have SushiSwap and Tor from Secret Network that is going to be speaking there as well and a whole bunch of other companies that are going to be potentially announcing some news #Alpha at the event.
We’ll have a big announcement to make as well. We are excited to do some podcasting there about all the after-parties you have going on. I love working with you. I love what you guys are doing for this space. Thanks for popping by. I know you’ve got back-to-back meetings every day, 24/7. Thanks for spending a little time with us and giving our readers the scoop on what to expect.
Also, for the code as well, it’s EdgeOfNFT100. If you guys go onto our Eventbrite or some of our ticketing software, you’re able to put in EdgeOfNFT100 and receive $100 off general admission and VIP tickets so that you guys are able to start purchasing tickets for the event.
We do appreciate it, Michael. Thanks for sharing that with us. I’m super excited about it. We’ll see you here real soon.
Thanks, guys.
That’s a wrap for our episode overall. I can’t express enough how grateful we feel to have you on the show and sharing your vision with us and have a little bit of fun as well.
Our first official drop is going to be on November 10, 2021. It’s TheCultureCards.io. If you want to join our whitelist for that, it’s going to be with the Big Punisher. Big Pun is the official drop of these culture cards on our platform. Obviously, he is an iconic artist. Unfortunately, he is no longer with us. Rest in peace but I’m excited to be working with his team and looking forward to it. We’ve had a lot of excitement on the initial announcement. He’s got a real loyal following and is keen to be launching with that. That’s his birthday as well.
Before we go into the last announcement that we wanted, we signed a great partnership with Drink Champs, which is the number one hip-hop podcast. They share the same vision. Their show is about celebrating the pioneers and giving back to the community. They’ll give them the flowers while they can smell them. We’ve partnered with N.O.R.E. and EFN. We are happy about this collaboration.
It’s super enjoyable and fun to be on here with you.
We appreciate you. Thank you.
We did say we had a little giveaway that we were going to do also for our readers. It’s two Official Hip-Hop Collectible Big Pun Silver Editions and one Official Hip-Hop Collectible Big Pun Gold Edition, which is hugely generous. We appreciate it. A huge thank you for that.
This is all about aligning with people in the community. We’re at the beginning of this space and aligning with the right people that get it, have the same vision and are able to support and help each other make these projects a reality because they’re only in our minds until we can make them real. We need more people out there in the world helping and working with us and vice versa to make these projects a reality. We love that you had us on here. We’re looking forward to continuing our relationship with you.
It’s much appreciated. We have reached the outer limit at the Edge of NFT. Thanks for exploring with us. We’ve got space for more adventures on the starship so invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to iTunes, rate us and say something awesome. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole.
Unless the end goal is truly worth it and connects with you, then there's no point. Click To Tweet
Do you want to help co-create Edge of NFT with us and help us build this amazing ecosystem? Keep an eye out for our Living Tree NFT drop that will plant the seeds for unparalleled opportunities to help craft the future of our planet by planting tens of thousands of real trees as well as co-create and participate in our show, exclusive events, killer contests and other NFT drops. There’s so much more as well. If you want to get on the whitelist, drop us a line at Contact@EdgeOfNFT.com or tweet us at @EdgeOfNFT and we’ll share with you the steps you need to take. Lastly, be sure to tune in next episode for more great NFT content. Thanks for sharing this time with us.
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We have reached the outer limit at the Edge of NFT. Thanks for exploring with us. We’ve got space for more adventures on the starship so invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to iTunes, rate us and say something awesome. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole.
Remember, we always invite you to co-create and build with us at Edge of NFT. We’re unlocking a whole new way to connect and collaborate with us through our own NFT drop, Living Tree NFTs. Through this project, we will be planting tens of thousands of real trees. This is going to be the foundation of everything we do with Edge of NFT and our community for years to come.
On top of that, Living Tree holders like you will co-create and participate in our podcast and access exclusive events and killer contests. You’ll be frontline for other NFT drops as well, as long bright future of branching opportunities to come. Get on the whitelist by dropping us a line at Contact@EdgeOfNFT.com or tweet us at @EdgeOfNFT. We’ll share with you the steps required to get in.
Important Links:
- Culture Shock Galleries
- DCentral Con
- Universal Music Group
- IGA
- Niro Yamunarajan – LinkedIn
- Culture Shock Studios
- Africa Drop
- The Speed of Trust
- The Culture Cards
- Masterclass.com
- Tom Bilyeu – Previous Episode
- Michael Huynh – LinkedIn
- NFTCON
- MetaMask
- Terra Station Wallet
- Capital Wallet
- Cosmos
- DeFi Summit
- Eventbrite – DCentral Miami – NFT & DeFi Conference – Crypto Basel
- Drink Champs
- iTunes – Edge of NFT Podcast
- Contact@EdgeOfNFT.com
- @EdgeOfNFT – Twitter
- VaynerMedia
- Secret Network
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