Grouchy Greg Watkins, Founder at AllHipHop.com

Grouchy Greg Watkins  00:04

We want to welcome all of our listeners to another episode of MRP, Minority Report Podcast, with Erik and Kerel. Each episode we talk with real operators and leaders in media, tech and business. And joining us today is Grouchy Greg Watkins. For those of you who don't know Greg, Grouchy Greg Watkins, is an entertainment business pioneer and entrepreneur. We are excited Greg's here. Let's jump in and get to know Greg. Well, Greg, welcome to the podcast. How are you? Thank you very much. I'm very glad to be here. I listened to the podcast. So it's an honor to be one of the esteemed guests. Thank you both for having me.

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Erik  00:46

Oh, thank you. Now that means a lot coming from you. And I know we've got some really, really fun questions for you and trying to get to know you a little bit. You said you're living your childhood dream. You're living it. Can you tell us what that childhood dream is? And how you're living it right now?

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  01:05

Yeah, well, you know, early on, I would say, people always think that I'm making this up, but I mean I was around two or three years old when I realized that I wanted to do something in the music business. My parents had bought me an old tape recorder, you know, one of the ones that had a handle that pulled out one speaker and you know, the record, play button, stop, rewind, all those things going across it. And I would just listen to a Three Dog Night album over and over again. I was infatuated with the machine. I eventually started taking it apart and looking at the insides of it. And not only was I infatuated with the music, but I was also infatuated with the tech. And that just kind of carried on throughout my life. My father had reel to reel machines in the basement of our house. So I learned how to thread tapes. And he had shortwave radios so I would listen to radio stations around the world and then open up the back and look at the circuitry. And around the same time hip hop was growing in popularity around the world. It was still a subculture. This is probably 1985. And that's when I started break dancing. I grew up in Delaware. And in the area I grew up in, Brookside, had just been integrated. I mean, I got there probably in '83, '84, it had just been integrated in like 1980. So there was still a lot of racial tension in the neighborhood. My dad is black, my mom is white. And so you know, living in that environment, there was a lot of racism. But right across a bridge in my backyard, we could walk over and behind us was another area, which was majority black, it was called Kimberton. And so there were basketball courts there that everybody did all different kinds of things on. It's the mid 80, so you can guess what was going on the basketball courts for the most part, but what else was going on there was breakdancing. People would put up their cardboard, and they would break dance. And I remember riding my bike up and seeing, you know, a cipher circle. And I squeezed my way in, and I watched the people break dance. And that was it. I couldn't get away from the way they dressed, how cool everything looked, the dancing. And that was my first real lightning moments, like, oh my God, the hip hop, I've got to be a part of this. And so I started learning how to break dance, movies like Beat Street and Breakin' were just coming out into the movie theaters around this time. And I was all in. And then from there, started rapping, started producing, started using real equipment to produce. Eventually I got into a recording studio out here in Delaware that was one of the more advanced studios. I would save my money, walk to the studio, make my demos, try to send them off to record labels to get signed, going back and forth to New York with my friends, you know, trying to hustle off demos. I mean, all the things that you hear that a rapper might have tried to do to get put on, I was doing along with some of my friends. And by the time I got out of high school, I had already set up my own record label. You know, we live in Delaware, which is the home of corporations and incorporating here is very easy. So I was able to incorporate, get my first record label going, started selling tapes and getting tapes pressed up. Another pivotal thing, Philadelphia, for those who don't know where Delaware is, which there surprisingly is a lot of people, it's right in between Baltimore and Philly. So it's not like we're some small place in the Midwest. It's a small state, but we're right in the middle of all of these urban metropolises. So Philly had a record pressing plant called Disc Makers where you could pay to have your tapes and your records and you know, advertising, whatever you needed done, they could print it up. So we started getting our own records pressed, started selling them. Around '93, '94, I got on the internet, and realized that I could sell my tapes to people in Germany and France and the UK, specifically Europe, they were buying these things, versus where I was putting them in the record stores. - now, I had no business experience at this point, so I didn't know anything about billing and receivables. I didn't know anything about net 30, 60, 90, 120, how to negotiate those things, I would just send our records off to a one stop who would put those into record stores. The concept of a supply chain, right? I had no clue that it would take so long for my money to come back up to me, issues that we still deal with today, right? And that lack of knowledge and how to deal with that eventually forced me to rethink the record label. I had a small office on the main street in Delaware, in Newark, Delaware, where I lived. So I was really trying to build something, you know, it wasn't just being run out of my mom's house. And it just didn't work out. But the internet was coming up. So I registered a bunch of domain names. AllHipHop.com was one of those domain names. And the initial goal of AllHipHop was to put out records - just trying to see if I got any sitting around here - the original AllHipHop was a record label. So they originally had the AllHipHop logo on. So, that's what AllHipHop initially started out as a record label. And that's Jeffrey Dahmer on the label, as well, that says, eating the competition. And my partner, my current business partner, Chuck Jigsaw Creekmore, he designed that sticker for the AllHipHop record label. So he had majored in journalism at the University of Delaware and he wanted to be a writer, and he is a writer. He had an online platform and I would always ask him, "Hey, yo, let me get the excerpts of some of those interviews, let me put them on the AllHipHop.com website so it can look like my artists are next to these big rappers." And when I saw the amount of traffic that was coming in, I just started putting up daily news, had some rumors going, had some features going. Just kind of the outline of what AllHipHop is today. Eventually Chuck and I shook hands, we decided that we were going to go into business together and really turn AllHipHop into the first daily hip hop news, you know, website, and that was '97. And here we are almost 20 years later.

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Erik  08:04

It goes fast, doesn't it? It's interesting, and I love hearing the story of how to build such a successful website and destination for music, news, so many different things and the impact it's had. I want to ask you a little bit about Chuck because I want you to talk a little bit about as an entrepreneur, what it's like having a partner early on and the advantages of having a partner when you're running at it in business.

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  08:34

Definitely, definitely. I mean, you know, having a partner allowed me, the AllHipHop brand, you know, to really tap into his strengths. I mean, first of all, I was very passionate and adamant, because my record label didn't work. And I felt like the music was being overlooked by the gatekeepers. And so my mentality was, okay, gatekeepers want to try to keep us out, we're gonna kick the door in. And that's the kind of passion that I have, even though it was from a record label standpoint. I was saying, "Okay, well,-" you know, because in '97, '98, we were selling mp3s, people were buying mp3s that far back. And so I was like, well, I'm gonna use this alternative method to get my music out and say, you know, screw the record label, screw the industry, now I can go direct to consumer. Chuck has the same kind of passion and drives that I have. So I didn't have to motivate him in any way, shape, or form. And we both fed off of each other. And that really was intense rocket fuel for the brand because we were both self starters. We both woke up every day and said, let's build this, let's do this. We had a purpose in mind, and we went right after it. And, you know, he's a brilliant writer, he's a brilliant businessman, so to have these skills that, you know, strengthen what I was lacking, and vice versa, was just critical. And it's not always easy, especially when you are partners with somebody for this amount of time, but we've also been friends since high school. So our families have always been intertwined, since we were kids, basically. And so it wasn't a big jump, or a hard decision for me to make. I knew this was going to be a good decision.

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Kerel  10:36

Greg, first, congratulations, as you said, 27, 28 years you've been at it, you know, a lot of publications don't make it, as long as you guys have made it, especially during that timeframe of '96 to now, right? Going through the internet bubble and coming back up again, and everything else in between, right? What's been the sort of secret to your success? What do you think has kept you guys not only around for so long, but thriving for this period of time, too?

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  11:09

Well, I think it's two things, you know, thinking forward about technology, how the audience is consuming this technology, audience habits, the fact that we're actually a part of this culture so we understand it, and you know, the growth of it, quite frankly. Hip hop culture, when we started was still kind of trapped in magazines. And the internet afforded a level of, and still affords a level of interactivity that you obviously can't get out of a magazine or, you know, just old school book. So I think the key ingredient is remaining flexible, following the audience where they are, and really understanding how to leverage technology. And that technology piece plays into a lot of different things, whether it's being ready for cable after dial up went away, building out our first content management system, being ready for the rise of mobile, adapting to social, the rise of programmatic, all of these things really shaped, obviously, all of our industries. But a lot of times people look at AllHipHop, and they say, "Oh, it's a hip hop website, hip hop, hip hop music," without really thinking about what's going on underneath the hood. I always tell people, you know, hey, look, you know, we're running a business that has, you know, 5 million unique visitors a month and there's a lot that goes into that, whether it's building the infrastructure, the tech stack, the ad stack, managing writers, managing the business side of things, and then trying to grow. So, yeah, it's been an interesting ride. But the secret I feel has been just remaining technology forward.

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Kerel  12:57

Gotcha. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Because I was also thinking about, you know, in my eyes, when you guys started the company, people had different opinions of it. But I feel like that mid 90s period is the golden age of hip hop in my eyes, right, and that is a great time at the same time, the Internet was coming around and allowed you guys in Delaware, right, where at that time, it was like hip hop was like, you're either New York or you're LA, right? And here you guys are coming out of Delaware building one of the sort of key editorial places for hip hop music at the time, which again, I think technology plays a big part in that. You touched on a number of different things that I think consumes you from day to day whether it be the technology piece, the editorial piece the business side of the company, and everything in between, what does a good day for Greg look like?

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  13:56

Oh, I've got a nine year old and a five year old, a good day to me looks like being in bed by 8 o'clock. (laughs)

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Erik  14:02

(laughs)

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Kerel  14:04

Erik and I can both agree with you on that one. (laughs)

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  14:07

That's a good day for me, and they don't wake up until, you know, seven. Give me til seven guys, you know what I mean? A good day for me is, there's a saying, you know, "a day without stress brings a night without dreams." You know, you dream when you're stressed out is the the thought behind it. So you know, a good day is when everything kind of just rolls right and there's not too much friction, which doesn't happen too often. This is a very dynamic business, whether it's, you know, the news that's breaking on a daily basis or as we started the pod talking about chasing around the ad dollars. So yeah man a good day for me is probably like everybody else, you know, it just kind of rolls along smooth, you hit all your goals, sales get closed, writers are doing their jobs, we're breaking stories and you know, I can go to bed without worrying about anything. (laughs) That's a good day for me.

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Erik  15:02

Nice. Nice. Greg, I want to take you back to some of those early days in Delaware. And I'm thinking about, you know, all the success we're talking about, all the hard work and all the grind, but I'm also thinking about, like, when you moved to Delaware, and that was new integrating into that part of town, you know, your mom, your dad, what were some difficult things you saw your mom go through when moving into a place like that and maybe some difficult things that your dad went through too that you've seen?

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  15:32

Oh yeah. My whole family. I mean, so maybe about a year before we left New York, because when we got down to Delaware, I think I was six. So when I was like, four, three or four, I was sitting out at my house. I was originally born in Albany, New York. And so you know, I was sitting on our stoop in Albany, and four Catholic kids, you know, dressed in the outfits came from their school, and "n*****, n*****, n*****" And I'm sitting there, I think I might have even been eating some ice cream, that's how young I was, you know, I'm looking around, like, who are they talking about? And then all of a sudden, my neighbors came out, chased the kids away, my mom came and grabbed me. And it wasn't really until I saw all of the commotion going around around me that I even realized that they were talking about me, and that I was somehow being targeted. So from that young age, I know it sounds crazy, but I became aware of my race. I became aware that I was different than some of the other kids that I grew up with. So by the time I got to Delaware, being in that environment, it was a very racially charged environment. I mean, literally a year before we got there, they had flipped the school bus over because there were black kids on the bus. So it was very common to be chased home from school by white kids. My mother constantly called "n-word lover," you know, we were half breeds, which, you know, they were using it in an offensive manner. So the racism aspect of it, I grew up with it. It was very intense all throughout my life. And, you know, from another vantage point, you know, I've got five brothers and sisters, you know what I mean? So my household growing up was very intense as well, because my dad was an alcoholic, you know, so it was very common to see him coming home drunk stumbling, and his alcoholism progressed all the way up until I was a senior in high school. Now, let me backtrack. My dad went to Livingstone University in North Carolina, HBCU, brilliant guy, majored in Chemistry, had a job at what was called Stewart Pharmaceuticals, which became ICI, which eventually became AstraZeneca. And, you know, he had a big position, and they smelled alcohol on his breath, he got fired, caught a DUI charge, crashed a car, you know, all of the kind of drama that surrounds alcoholism. But that put him also on a trajectory and saying, oh, I gotta get myself together. He stopped drinking and started going to AA, sobered up. He's been sober for 30 years, no drinking for 30 years. But that early environment drove me outside, if you will, you know, so I was outside a lot. Thankfully, in those times, a lot of my friends were dealing drugs and doing things that I didn't participate in because of hip hop, Public Enemy, KRS-One, Big Daddy Kane, Ice-T, they all had messages in their music that advised us not to do those things. And so it wasn't any real choice for me, but to either go to college, which I did, majored in music business or go into hip hop and physically do it, which I also did. You know what I mean? So, you know, hip hop really helped shape my identity because I never went through an identity crisis. I noticed a lot of times they say, mixed kids can't figure out, are they black, are they white? No, there was no identity crisis with me. I knew I was black and how society viewed me. I knew that I was into hip hop culture. I knew hip hop is a culture and it has its own language, its own style, its own dress, and even the white kids were participating in it, if they were down, you know what I mean? And that was really it. It was a wild environment to grow up in. I mean, you go to the grocery store, or you go into a 711. And, you know, you might end up in a fight where you're smashing things and trying to hit people with stuff, really just to protect yourself from racism. 

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Kerel  16:43

Isn't it interesting to see too, right, like everything that you went through growing up and now the industry that you play such a big role in, is really one that attracts people from everywhere, right? Like everyone is attracted to the hip hop culture, not just not just black kids or, or Caribbean kids, like everyone is attracted to the culture.

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  20:25

That's why it's a global business. That's why it's one of the biggest exports that America has ever produced in terms of art and music and culture. That's why it springs up everywhere in the world and has a localized version of it. Because it's something that's inclusive, it has its own identity, it truly is a culture. And even back then, we could separate. It's a little difficult now, but back then you could separate who was who, based on the way they dressed and the words they used, you know what I mean? You could say, okay, I can look at this guy, whether I know him or not, and tell that he's like me, or I could look at another guy and look at his jean jacket and say, oh, he's into Led Zeppelin, he's a head banger, you know? Or we got the golf people over here, you got the punks, the skateboarders, like, all of those things were subcultures at that time, that eventually just kind of melded together into you know, what we have now in general society. But hip hop is still one of those genres that has these unique identifiers. You know what I mean? You can still look at somebody for the most part and be like, Yeah, I can tell they're into hip hop.

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Kerel  21:31

Yeah, even in our business in ad tech, right? You see so many people from different walks of life on stage, and what do a lot of people rock on stage now? You see them with Dunks on or Jordan Ones on? I mean, that's hip hop. That's hip hop. (laughs)

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  21:47

Yeah, yeah.

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Erik  21:49

Greg, I want to say thank you for sharing your personal experiences, what it's like, and that's real life, man, you know what I mean? And I want to thank you for sharing what it's like to grow up, you know, where you grew up, and your family dynamics and everything that y'all went through, and I can't help but think about now where you are, you're a parent, and you know, your nine year old and your five year old may or may not ever be exposed to some of the things that you lived through or went through. What are some of the things that you feel like you pass along to them that, you know, help them understand how to kind of understand you a little bit? Does that make sense?

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  22:32

Yeah, definitely, of course, of course. Well, you know, first of all, thank you for acknowledging that, you know, I'm very big on being open with my story and my challenges because there's going to be listeners out there who relate to these things, you know, they're going to relate to the alcoholism. I mean, I went through a period of time coming into the music business, which plays into the answer to your question, but I went through a period of time coming into the music business where I was like, oh, my God, what do you mean, open bar, everything is free, I can drink as much as I want and get smashed for free? Like come on, let's do it! And that lasted for a while, and progressively got worse until I put the brakes on it. And so I don't drink, I don't smoke, you know, totally sober, the whole nine yards. I always tell my friends, you know, yeah, I'm the square dude in the group now. I went from being the worst to being the squarest. But, you know, it's because alcoholism is a disease that's passed on through genetics, whether people agree or disagree, it doesn't matter. It's a fact. And now that I have a nine year old and a five year old, I know that they are going to be predisposed to that. But if I can do my part to break that so that they never see it, they never smell it, you know - I mean, I remember being two years old and smelling beer on my dad's breath or him taking me to the bar with him. You know, stuff you can't even do now. You know what I mean? Sat me down at Space Invaders while he sat down and drank. So those are the kinds of things that my children just are not going to be exposed to. So one, the thing is, is what I don't expose them to, and then two, what I do expose them to, are all of the things that I do, you know. So when I go to have speaking engagements, I bring both of them, I let them sit up front, they watch me get on stage, I teach them, you know, in their language about business. And I mean, when my five year old was to he came out of his room with a tie around his neck and a briefcase said, "Daddy, I want to be a businessman." I say, boom, you're on the right track. You're thinking the right way right now. My nine year old, you know, same thing. He wrote me a business card, I mean a Father's Day card the other day that said "I'm so thankful to have a dad who's famous." And I said okay, you know what I mean? They can see that I'm doing something that's a little different. And so I'm trying to keep them very open to the fact that yes, you could go to college, but you can also run your own business. I mean, you can be an astronaut, I'm very into space and physics and quantum mechanics, like I'm into those things. And so I make sure that they are exposed to that kind of thinking, that kind of broad thinking. Exposed them to music, you know, basically the concept of STEAM, you know what I mean, science, technology, engineering, arts and math, I try to weave all of that into our daily experience together.

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Erik  25:25

Yeah, that's great. That's fantastic to hear. I think there's a lot of people that can maybe feel pieces of that, or all of that, and relate. And I think that's huge. You mentioned exposing your kids. Now, you also expose other kids and young adults, I'm talking about at historically black colleges and universities. I know you've spoken at a number of them, what do you generally encourage the students to kind of understand, especially about like ad tech and business, tell us a little bit about what you talk to them about.

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  26:00

So usually when I'm at an HBCU, depending on what class I'm talking to, because sometimes it's the general entrepreneurship class, I worked very heavily with Del State University, which is HBCU here in Delaware. So when I work with them, it's either Mass Comm or Music Business. And specifically with the Mass Comm Department, I am telling them about advertising in ad tech. A lot of times with Mass Comm, they're only focused on PR, public relations, you know, being in front of the camera, journalism, you know, that's all good. I talk about those things with the students that are adamant in that as well. But a lot of times, the freshmen and sophomores are still trying to figure out what direction they're going to go into. I'd say, "Hey, listen, you really want to make a difference, you need to go into ad tech, in this sector, less than 2% of the C level execs are black, or women. And you know, there's a huge opportunity, because in five or six years from now, the majority of the country is going to be multicultural, they're going to look like you and I, and there's not enough of us in this space." So then when I tell them, "and it's a trillion dollar industry, where you can probably make your way into a position that pays you way more than you would ever get in any other sector coming in to the industry depending on how you treat your studies for the next two years, you know, there's a real opportunity for you to have a career path. We're in Delaware so it's only a $25 bus ride to New York, it only takes an hour and a half. You are in an industry where they want your skills, and most companies are looking for you," but there's no real pipeline, you know, built for these companies to tap into students. And then I can't speak for all the HBCUs, but at Del State, I'm working with them to really up their advertising and ad tech curriculum. So I'm taking a page out of Kerel's book like he did at Kane University and I'll be teaching the students the history of advertising and advertising tech and how we got to where we are so that they can have an understanding of this landscape as soon as they come out and you know, really be chiseled up and ready to go should they have an opportunity to get hired. But yeah, I tell them, "Hey, listen, this is a business where your skills are needed. If you take these next two years, and in addition to whatever else you're learning, if you really dive into what is happening in ad tech, you know, the podcasts for you to listen to, books, courses for you to take online, in addition to whatever I'll be teaching you, you can really unravel what looks like a black box when it comes to mass marketing and, you know, put your flag down. They get excited.

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Erik  28:55

That's huge. 

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Kerel  28:56

I love it. Especially the teaching part because like you said, big industry that we're in and a lot of kids at school don't know about it. And once we get back to school in the fall, Greg, I gotta figure out a way to get you up to turnpike to come guest speaker at my class as well too.

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  29:13

Hey man, I used to hang out on that campus all the time. It was girls I was after. (laughs) I would go up there all the time. My little Suzuki Samurai, I had some big rims on it [inaudible]. So I would love to come back and hang around that campus. Do something positive.

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Kerel  29:30

Love it, love it, love it. What's something that you wish you were better at?

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  29:34

Something I wish I was better at... You know, I think I could evolve into - and I have to evolve into a better salesman, right? Like, I am versed in sales, selling tactics, but you know, when you look at someone like, let's just use Jordan Belfort you know, The Wolf of Wall Street. You know, he was like a an aggressive, "close, close, close the sale every day!!!" you know what I mean? Like, I would say that. And if I don't evolve to that, then I will hire people who are like that. But, you know, I do think that I could do a better job of packaging and selling, better at sales. I'll put it to you like that, you know. And that skill set is going to be even more important as we move forward because like we were saying, the beginning of the podcast, Kerel, it's getting harder and harder to capture these dollars, whether it's the dollars that were committed to us post George Floyd, or as the DEI talk actually transitions into a general market, you know, we're going to need to be closing deals. And that doesn't just necessarily mean ad tech sales, that means, you know, doing deals, getting deals done.

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Erik  30:50

Yeah. Greg, I want to ask you a little bit more to expand on, specifically that. I mean, I think you have a unique vantage point in not only being an owner of media, right, but also having seen not just maybe the last 5, 6, 7 years of how some of the discussion has now bubbled up, right? And some of the discussion has been mainstream, almost right, the talk of budgets, the spend, but you have a unique vantage point where you've seen it build up to this moment. Can you talk a little bit about, like, what's happening and the lack of spend and the lack of commitments that you can see and maybe even feel from a first party perspective?

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  31:34

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely, you know, usually what happens is, this model of arbitraging, right, arbitraging of an entire brand. So let me backtrack a little bit, you know, for the first, from 2000 to 2009 AllHipHop was direct sold. We had probably about 18 employees, you know, six full time salespeople, we had a 10,000 square foot office in Newark, New Jersey, and we were flying. Then the recession came, and we had to scale back a little bit. We were the first non owned and operated property to launch an Interactive One. At the time, it was all hip hop and Black Planet, they just acquired Black Planet. Interactive One thing kind of went crazy because of the recession. 2009 we helped launch the Vibe Lifestyle Network, that did well until they were bought out. But then we went and we didn't help launch Complex, but we were one of the key partners in the Complex network in their early days all the way up to their exit to Verizon in 2016. 2016 I brought the inventory out to the marketplace on our own, because Programmatic was just starting to bubble up, did that for about a year and a half. And we helped launch The Arena Group, Maven. And we were probably the first publisher of scale to go live in that platform. Anybody in this industry knows what happened with The Arena Group and all of the drama that went with it. We knew that was coming because we were there from the beginning. So after the Sports Illustrated stuff started bubbling up, we left and brought the inventory back out to the marketplace on our own, which is where we are now. That was 2021. So middle of the pandemic, we take our inventory out, and start monetizing it on our own. In the middle of all that the George Floyd stuff happens, these brands commit all these DEI dollars and to be quite honest with you, from my standpoint, it's just been a lot of lip service, you know, a lot of feel good press releases. Some brands have committed spends, you know what I mean, but it was not nearly the windfall that it was set out to be. Another thing that happened is in the middle of this we have our supply chain, there's a lot of intermediaries in between these brands, like AllHipHop. And unfortunately, because a lot of the black owned brands have never had any type of investment, these are a lot of companies that have been bootstrapped, they may not understand Programmatic or they may not have the technology to really operate efficiently and so it's great that you commit these dollars, but if they can't flow through the supply chain to actually reach the publisher, and instead they're going to MFA sites, made for advertising, they're going to fraud, they're going to companies that, you know, are keeping the majority of the dollar before they pass it down to the actual black owned publisher or to content farms so that they can reach scale. It's just turned into a free for all for those dollars. And those dollars really don't make it down to the black owned publishers unless you start cutting people out of the supply chain and trying to go as direct to the holding companies or the agency as possible. And for a lot of brands that is is not possible. Thank you for talking about that as a media owner, and as someone experienced there, so thank you. Yeah, I mean, I've got a solution for that coming down the pipe. We'll probably talk about that before we get out of here.

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Erik  35:14

I like that. Greg, I gotta ask you a couple questions and one of them is, I think, not just gonna come from me, but from all the listeners too, tell me about "Grouchy" because you're not grouchy at all.

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  35:27

Yeah, it's a nickname my mom gave me early on, you know, now don't get me wrong, I can be grouchy. I always tell people, if we're hanging around in a club, you know, it's dark, and you know, the hip hop is playing. I've never been a dancing kind of guy, or the guy that I'm in the club doing all the moves. Nah, you know, I'm probably hanging out against the wall or sitting at the bar watching TV. So it kind of -

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Erik  35:53

but your heads nodding (laughs)

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  35:54

My head is nodding. It has to do with the look, the shape of my eyebrows. But really, it really came about because I was in the kitchen one day, on my laptop or on a desktop, I was on a computer, I don't know what I was using. And I don't know, I was bickering with my mom and she was like, "Oh, you're so grouchy, you're grouchy just like your Uncle Abe. You're so grouchy, Greg!" and I was like, "Oh! Grouchy Greg." I'm like, "that will be a perfect screen name for AOL." And that became my handle and it just stuck. And I frequently say, and it gets a little weird at this age to introduce myself to another grown person as Grouchy Greg, but and the listeners will agree, you just don't forget it.You know what I mean? And I'm like, okay. And then also another thing that happens is, because it's an icebreaker, and people now feel as though they know me so when they come say, "Hey, Grouchy what's up, you know, how you doing?" it makes the relationship seem a lot warmer. It's a very weird effect, but I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna ride this thing out. (laughs)

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Erik  37:04

(laughs) I love it.

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Kerel  37:08

Greg, what's one book or movie that every person should read or watch?

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  37:13

Alright, well, I'll say the book I'm reading now. It's actually an audio book is I'm reading Elon Musk's biography by Walter Isaacson. And it's fascinating because I had a very narrow view of Elon Musk based on his tweets, you know, you know what I mean? Like, it's easy to look at the stuff he's saying in the media and kind of lose respect for him. But as I started to delve into his story, his trajectory, the companies he's building, how he's built them and brought them to scale really helps put my daily challenges into perspective. Like I said earlier, we're still trying to figure out blocklists and ad tech, and he's already got, you know, the Falcon 9 getting ready for Mars and make humans an interplanetary species. I mean, that's a hell of a North Star. You know what I mean? So I just find it fascinating. Now, I'm still not the biggest fan of his politics and all those other things, but from building a business and building the business, it's just a fascinating read or listen. From a movie standpoint, I'm only about a half hour in but there's a movie called Putney Swope. I don't know if either you have ever heard of it. But Putney Swope came out in 1969 and it was made by Robert Downey Jr.'s father, Robert Downey Sr.. And it's about a black advertising executives, well, he works on Madison Avenue, and he's a janitor. And the chairman of the company dies and all of the shareholders, they can make a secret vote. And none of them want any of the other ones to become the new chairman. They're all hating on each other. So they all think they're going to be funny, and they vote for Putney Swope without realizing it. And so this janitor becomes the CEO and Chairman of the advertising agency, and he's a black guy. And he's militant, and he brings in Black Panthers, and they refuse to sell liquor and they refuse to sell toy guns, and they do all these crazy ad campaigns. Then, you know, they end up doing an ad campaign for the government, which goes crazy. And then they end up selling out basically in marketing toys and guns. I mean, it's satire. And it's really funny. I mean, Antonio Vargas is in it, it's his first ever role on film. And, you know, there's people throughout the movie that you would recognize, but it really touches on the kinds of things that we still deal with today as crazy as it sounds from 1969 all the way up til 2024 with racism in advertising and marketing. It's a crazy movie, man. I recommend everybody take a look at it.

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Kerel  40:04

I'm definitely gonna have to check that out. Now I know a question that your followers are definitely gonna be interested in hearing the answer to, what's in your music rotation right now?

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  40:14

Ugh, I don't know if they're interested in hearing this. I've got a nine year old and a five year old, you know, so, it's a lot of Geometry Dash, which is a game music. There's the Toilet Bowl Cleaners, bunch of poop songs, you know, songs about poop, kid's songs. But I've been listening to a lot lately, Madlib, he has an alternate character named Quasimoto. And he put out an album in 2000 called The Unseen. I don't know how it got past me. You know what I mean? I didn't start really listening to it until maybe like, six months ago. And I mean, it's like, one of my top 10 albums. Like, it's really dope. I've been listening to a lot of These Sacred Souls, which is, you know, you hear they're song on Instagram all the time, "Can I call you Rose?" They have a new song out called Let Me Feel Your Charm. Banging, that's a banger. You know, I collect records and I collect music, so, you know, a lot of the things that I listen to are, sometimes skew a little old. Like, my girl, sometimes she hates riding with me in the car because I listened to doo wop, you know, I listen to a lot of black music from the 40s and 50s, in particular, which unfortunately, is kind of working its way out of the minds of pop culture. And, I mean, you don't hear Chuck Berry that much on the radio anymore. You know what I mean? You definitely don't hear The Five Satins anymore, but these were like, you know, huge stars in the 50s and 60s. So I listen to a lot of that. Every year in June it's a ritual, I listen to the Hustlers Convention, which is considered the first gangster rap album in history. It was recorded in 1972 by a guy named Lightning Rod. Lightning Rod was one of the last poets. And this was a side project that had Kool and The Gang playing all the music. And it's a concept album, yeah it's a conceptual album about two guys who, one guy comes out of jail, and they get together and their whole existence is getting an invitation to the hustlers convention so they can hustle other hustlers and then it ends up in a shootout. And you know, I don't want to, no spoiler, the ending is crazy. But I only listen to it in June, because the song starts off "it was a full moon in the middle of June in the summer of 59. I was young and cool, shot a bad game of pool and hustled all the chumps I could find." So you know, it's like that, you know what I mean, it's tight. Yeah, so that's it, a little bit of kids, you know, some 2000s hip hop. I mean, I listen to new hip hop, I like the new Metro Boomin and the Future album, you know, I'm still getting my head around those two, obviously, you know, that turned into a huge event for hip hop culture with the Drake and Kendrick feud. That's kind of where it blew up. So I still been listening to that and trying to get into some of the younger stuff that's coming out. You know, it's not easy. But you know...

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Kerel  43:19

(laughs) I hear ya.

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Erik  43:20

Greg, when you go back, when you go back and your go-to always, I read in an interview is Gang Starr.

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  43:30

Oh yeah. Oh they stay in rotation. You know, I was blessed enough to meet Guru, obviously Premiere, being with them in DND Studios, which isn't even there anymore, but was a legendary recording studio. But I knew Guru in the early days of AllHipHop, I met him at various events, you know, got to shake hands with him. But when I was out hustling my demos in the early 90s, they came to a small club in Delaware and I couldn't get in so I stood outside waiting for them to come out. They never came out, but Lil' Dap, who is one of the members of Group Home, which was their collective, he came out, you know, I gave him my demo, was like, "Yo, make sure Guru or Premier get it." You know, obviously I never heard anything back, but it was just amazing that years later a group that was so pivotal from their first album, No More Mr. Nice Guy to Step In The Arena, those two albums in particular, just were part of the music that was like the backdrop for me between like, '87 and you know, '91, you know what I mean? And really shaped the way we thought, how we approached hip hop, the production of it, so yeah, still a big fan of Gang Starr, yep.

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Erik  44:51

Amazing. Alright, Greg, I gotta ask you, you had a little tease what's coming up in the future?

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  44:57

At AllHipHop TV coming, fast channel, you know, hopefully that'll be out of the pipeline in the next month. We're coming into the homestretch now and we're about start shopping it around to the different, you know, what are they MVPDs... (laughs) You know what I mean, like-

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Erik  45:16

(laughs) All new acronyms to learn.

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Kerel  45:18

(laughs)

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  45:18

All new acronyms and additional-

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Erik  45:20

You've conquered, you mastered and conquered all the other ones, it's time for the new.

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  45:25

Here come new ones. And you know, the fast world is like a whole new world. Not too hard to learn, it's just new acronyms and right now I'm really going through the process of understanding how the content management systems work, what the big platforms want so we can really produce something that is going to get as much buy-in across the board as possible. And then the other big one is, I've got my own supply side platform coming. I've been working with a very big company to stand up a supply side platform focused on black, Latin, Asian, indigenous people, bipoc audiences and publishers, because I know their pain points so well, because I'm one of them. And I'm so involved in ad tech and understanding the supply chain, I just see where the opportunity is to cut out so many people that are in the middle and disintermediate some of this and get the dollars flowing where they should be going to the publishers, and not to content forms and MFA sites. And you know, there's a really big opportunity to do this because, as I stated, you know, five years from now, this is going to be the biggest pie when it comes to advertising. So I'm just working with some of these companies to get them in position, in the right position, and do it with a black owned brand. You know what I mean?

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Erik  46:52

That's awesome. That's great. Alright, breaking news on the pod times two.

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  46:56

Ha! It's comin'.

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Erik  46:57

That's great. Fantastic. Greg, we'll have to have you back on and we'll talk some more about that later after all that happens. That's great. What are some ways that our listeners can stay in touch or follow you?

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Grouchy Greg Watkins  47:09

Yeah, LinkedIn, Grouchy Greg, Instagram @grouchygreg, Twitter @grouchygreg, email grouchy@allhiphop.com. I'm all about networking, I'm all about working with people. You know, we don't live on an island. I'm ready to work and do business. So contact me if you think we have some sort of a working relationship we can build.

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Erik  47:34

Fantastic. Thanks so much, everybody, Grouchy Greg Watkins, thank you so much for hanging out with us and spending some time with us. And for everyone there listening, you can hear other awesome great episodes wherever you find all of your audio and video, just search for Minority Report Podcast and look for the logo. Thanks, everybody. And thanks again, Greg.

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