Background
Mint Season 5 episode 20 welcomes IBN INGLOR, the web3-native rapper who shares his story behind entering web3, why he believes NFTs are the perfect medium for music artists, and his mental model for using membership NFTs as a way to build a sustainable token-based community.
In this episode we discuss:
- 00:57- Intro
- 11:06 – Danger Zone Crowdfund
- 19:17 – Getting Started in Web3
- 20:18 – Time Management
- 22:28 – Why NFTs are a Good Medium for Music?
- 25:58 – Membership NFTs
- 29:54 – Inspiration With Issuing Membership Cards
- 36:16 – Outro
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
IBN INGLOR: https://twitter.com/IbnInglor
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Ibn Inglor, welcome to mint. Thank you for being on my guy. How are you doing?
Ibn Inglor: Doing good. Tired to shit but making it happen man.
New baby and everything, I was told behind the scenes.
Ibn Inglor: Yes, yes. Kick my ass.
How do you find time to do the creative stuff and be a full-time dad?
Ibn Inglor: Robbie pulling energy out of the air, I just be fucking particles like, every whatever could keep me going for like a minimum amount of time until I crash. That’s pretty much it for real. Like it’s just because it’s so nonstop that I have to basically just keep going and going and going until like I just crash out for like a couple of hours and some shit like that. It’s like, yeah.
Intro
We love to see it though. The hustles as well and alive. I think a good place to start this episode is Ibn, who are you, man? What does the world need to know about you? But more specifically, how’d you get your start into crypto?
Ibn Inglor: So, my name is Ibn Inglor, I’m an artist from the south side, far south side of Chicago, place called Altgeld gardens. I started making music professionally in 2013. That’s when I established the Ibn Inglor name and the brand. Multiple publications, I was making sure that my name was seen every day or every other day when I was releasing music, whether it was a fake short drive, DJ booth, on Smash, fucking pursuit of dopeness. Ruby Hornet, if you guys know about them, like I was making sure that like, I was recording songs, mixing them and putting them out like the very next day or two days after I had just put out another song because I’m like, people need to see my name, know my name. And the more familiar they get with my name, then the more or the faster I become a household name. So, when I got into crypto on web three, it was around last year, around March of last year, but I really got into it like fully, fully, like around May. So, when March came, my friend was telling me about it. I minted a couple pieces on Zora. And then I basically just like walked away from my computer. I was just like, no, I don’t know if I’m you know, I don’t know what’s to this. I’m very naive. I’m very naive about the space. And it was new waters. So that was another thing that was kind of of hesitant on it. It was a whole bunch of live shit going on at that time. And then that was before you know, baby number two.
So, March came minted some pieces that didn’t dip, went on a trip in April, and then my dad passed early May or no mid-May. So that kind of like, stifled like any initiatives to learn about web three, or any like ambitious need to figure out what was really in this space and shit like that. So come late, like a couple of weeks after my dad passed, I want to say I’m so either my first or my second piece on catalog, because I got hit up by Alex Cyber who used to write for pictures and planes, or I don’t know if he still does, but he writes your pictures and planes. And he had contacted me about like, yo, like, you know, I’ve seen you signed up to be on a waitlist. I used to listen to your music and shit back in 2000, like, back when I was in high school. That’s what he said, and I was like damn. And he was like, yeah, like we’d like to, you know, push an application through to get you, you know, on board and I want to catalog, and I was like, alright, that put my song up there. Within like five minutes of like, my first mint. I got a bid. And oh, yeah, I was like, what the fuck? I was like, okay, cool. I kind of like not that I downplayed it at all, but I just didn’t really up it like I was supposed to. And then my lady was the one that kind of told me like, nah, like, you know, you may, you know, you officially made you know, money off your music like you did that that’s what just happened.
So, I had to kind of take it as a win and because it really was, and then I went on to sell a second piece. And then I was like, okay, cool. That’s what I started, after the second piece was so and I kind of had time to wind down from, you know, my dad leaving, I built my PC, so I kept my I kept my mind pretty much working and then at that time, I was like fucking I’m just gonna do a whole deep dive into Twitter and web three and I just hopped on Twitter, start following people. I was not active on Twitter for like the last four years of my career up until like this fucking world came to be the world that I wanted to jump into for real. So, when I did that, it was lovely. It was like a lovely, yeah. So that’s kind of how I really got into it. I was like, testing the waters and one foot in one foot out.
That’s wild. So, this hustle that you keep talking about, like, that’s how I met you, right? Like the, like, one of my questions to you is like the root of your household, like where do you find the root of like, what’s the root of your hustle? What’s the root of your curiosity? Because I got this DM from you saying like, hey Levy, I’m doing this crowd fund you know, like, it’s similar to Daniel Allen, I’d love for you to check it out. This, this and that. And it was like, alright, this guy is like, this guy knows what to do. Like he, like I bet on people, I like buying collections from people who know and understand the hustle for the most part. And I remember just accepting it shortly after even you see like, you messaged me at 146, I accepted it. I was like, I bought it. I love that word. Where does that come from? Where does this like hustle energy come from?
Ibn Inglor: Right. Like that has like, personally for me? Like I’m like a real like cutting out the middleman type of guy. So, I want to deal with like people one on one. So, it was one of those things where man like it was just this knack that I’ve always had. And it’s like, no, I want to go directly to the person. So even before like web three, I was like, me and my friend Brandon. Like we’re fucking scouring the internet for emails and editors to hit up and pitch and pitch like pitch for the publication’s issue like that. So, when I’m telling you like, I found every email for like the co-owner, the co-founders of fader and the president of fader. And I emailed all level, and they get back to me like just also like some, you know, so I was like, What the fuck? So now like, I have like a, I have a very good relationship with Andy Cohn, Andy Cohn, who is the former president of faders to the point where like, I was getting free, I was still getting like free fader magazines and shit like that just all based off of my professionalism when I, you know, when I’m contacting people, because I don’t want to ever feel like I’m not like asking for anything. I’m more so trying to build and build a relationship with you more so than anything. So that’s why a lot of the times when I was sending out all those DMS, I was letting people know like, hey, I’m taking a shot in the dark here. You know, like, I don’t normally do this, but I’m just, you know, going out on a whim. And I just really, if it connected, that I was never like pushing people to just buy it, I was letting them know, like, hey, if the story resonates with you, if you fuck with me, you know, and you feel like man, okay, I want to back this kid. I want to support what he’s got going on, then boy, we go from there, we build from there.
So, check this out. So, I reference your DM. When artists asked me, what’s the best way to find collectors and to build your name, I always reference your DM, I send them a screenshot of the DM that you sent me because that was a great DM and it got me to buy and you know, typically people would get very uncomfortable doing that. Right? That the discomfort of feeling like you’re bothering someone, the discomfort of feeling like you might get rejected or whatever the insecurity may be, but you just like, I assume you just fired off to a bunch of people.
Ibn Inglor: What fucking, you know how many crowd funds I looked at. I look, bro, when I tell you I was, this is the different like, I don’t know, like I get in this mode where it’s like, okay, if I have to make something happen, I’m gonna try my best to make it happen. And nine times out of ten I damned make it happen. So, I was like, I know what I priced my NFTs for my crowd fund. So, I checked other crowd funds, and I was looking at people who bought at that same price point. And I was like, I’m gonna, I didn’t look at who had more Eth to buy or if you if you spent five Eth on a crowd fund. I wasn’t looking at that I was looking at the people who were spending point one or point two five. You feel me, and I was contacting them. So, I was like, hey, like, you know, this is what I have going on in the space. I’m new to the space. I’m trying to learn myself around this space. And this is just what I have going on. And this is my story. And if you fuck with me, you want to, you know, contribute to what I have going on, I fucking greatly appreciated and showing off like you know, nine times out of ten majority of people got back to me, some people didn’t, which is like, you know, it happens because it’s a shot in the dark. But you won’t know until you know until you try it first.
I really resonate with that as a podcaster. Part of my job is just to consistently reach out to people and to try to stay competitive and get better guests on and there’s even sometimes situations where I reach out to people for a year and they ignore all my messages. They ignore all my messages until they finally reply to one, that’s after a year. Right. So that like a lot of people that come into this space as well, like new independent artists, even like people who come from the label background, I always tell them, everybody’s here to make friends. Everybody wants to hear your story. You just have to need to have that persistence. You need to have that drive to be able to know how to chase it, essentially.
Ibn Inglor: Yeah, right. Yeah. And, man, that hustle, that initiative, you know, it’s like a little tinkering, I come from, where I come from, it’s also like, plays a big part. And like, you know, why I am, how I am. And, you know, nothing was ever given, nothing will ever be given, especially like in a hood and a trench position like that. So, you really kind of got to, you know, get out there and get your own. You know, my mom always telling me shit, like, you know, you have to go through your own bumps and bruises throughout life. Like everybody has to go through that. So, no matter what you go through, like, I don’t know, man, you got to, to make it in this world you got to have some type of fucking hustle about you, some type of grind, for real, for real, are you really do. And I used to pinch pennies for Pokémon cards, like, it was like, kind of embedded in me, like at a very, very young age. Like we would gamble them for Pokémon cards. So, like, what the fuck like, it was.
What is an outreach then?
Ibn Inglor: Yeah.
Danger Zone Crowdfund
So, let’s talk about danger zone for a sec. Okay, because that was that iconic crowd fund that that helped put your name on the map in three. I remember it was around the time where other artists attempted to do crowd funds, some failed, some succeeded. Yours was one of them kind of succeeded and didn’t really well. Then you got onto different platforms. And you’ve actually like built a name for yourself in the space. Right. And I actually really enjoy music even more recently, you have a new project going on with membership NFT cards that we’ll get to in a minute. There’s so much to talk about, but I want to wind it back. Okay. The mirror crowd fund, the danger zone crowd fund, the one that I got the DM about? How did that come together? Why did you feel like web three was the perfect platform to do that, beyond the ability to raise money? Okay, beyond the ability to see that how artists were getting liberated creatively, maybe that is a core reason? I don’t know. But is there any, like, what’s the story behind that?
Ibn Inglor: Man, it was like it was literally a whim. Like it was another shot in the dark. So, when I got told about NFTs, I start building out the world before even NFTs I started building out the logo for danger zone in general with just a skeleton with the Thunderbolt over his head. So, once I really established that as the logo, I hit up my 3d designer, and I told him like hey, I would like to turn this into a coin. So, we made one coin at first. And this was just like, I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do with the coin for real. And then it’s kind of gradually, everything graduated. That’s kind of like what happened, everything literally fucking graduated from being this until like this. So, we started with one coin at first and in my mind, this was like early, this was early in the year, early March and the crowd fund didn’t drop until October. So, I was already working on like the assets and didn’t even know what the fuck I was going to do with them until it came time to actually do what needs to be done with them. So, the first, my whole game plan at first was like, okay, I’m building utility around these coins, I’m trying to figure out how I want to release them, where I want to release them and what price points are released in that. And I was going to drop each coin on Open Sea, and just kind of push it out that way and just kind of you know, figure out how I can tell my story through open sea with the coins and have people still kind of see it all at once. And it just didn’t really make sense on, it just didn’t. The way to do that, I just didn’t really see a vision for that, for people to actually be resonating with me as a person if I only dropped them Open Sea.
So, stepping back a little bit, when I realized you know what was going on in his space, we ended up making, we went from one coin to ten coins because I was like hey, let’s kind of like let’s make a couple of different variations of them. And he was like alright, so we made like ten coins total, we dropped three on the crowd fund. And we released a couple other ones throughout like some not incentivizing people but more so like rewarding people because I want the coins to have like, the coins will have future utility. That’s why I’m kind of like only letting them out to like specific. I want to give them to people to like specific, what I’m gonna say interactions, so, people who contributed to, I did a party bid. It was my first party bid ever. I will say the party bit was like, way more stressful to fun and get started than a crowd fund, weirdly, but I didn’t incentivize anybody to contribute to the crowd. I mean to contribute to the party bid. I was more just kind of like pushing and promoting it. Then when it got funded in the big, I started, we Airdrop everybody silver coin. But don’t back to the crowd fund, so basically, I’m gonna jump, I’m gonna jump for a little bit so.
So interesting because I know the story is so big and I know the prep behind is so big. So, hearing all the intricate details is amazing.
Ibn Inglor: Because it’s like when I tell people it was a lot, it took a, it was a lot, and it was like it took so long to kind of piece together. And I felt like how everything came together was within God’s speed and God’s time, everything hit right when it was supposed to hit, I had up another 3d designer to make the full-size skeleton. And he had only made the full-sized skeleton like the for the podium, for the podium NFTs. And those were the three NFTs. So, I hit him up. I want to say like when I realized that I was going to do mirror, I hit him up like super last minute like hey, can we do two more poses? Because I need three poses for the podium NFTs for the top three people who win the podium, so he managed to get me the fuck in. And I told him like I need them by October 1. So, this was like November like 27th to 28th or some shit like that when I had hit him. And he was like, man, I’ll try to get them to you within that timeframe. Like it’s no promises, but I’ll try.
So, all the assets hit directly on time, I had all the coins I needed to figure out which coins I wanted to release. I had the podium NFTs at the same time to figure out which ones I wanted to put up. And I’ve seen and then jumping back a little bit, I’ve seen how I even found out about mirror. I’ve seen Daniel Allen crowd fund. I want to say one random night, I think the night that he dropped it and I was like, Wow. I was like damn. Like that’s how, you feel me, that’s how you tell a story. very intricate, very detailed, very informational. He hit it on a mark right out the fucking gate and I was like, damn, and he was given, what he was given away was kind of similar to what I was doing also. So, I was like, okay, we both were thinking about this idea. So those next three to four days, I wrote out my whole crowdfund like I didn’t have anything written prior to that but once I’ve seen his, I started writing my crowdfund who first, I want to figure out how to get on there. And at this time, you cannot get on there without a right token.
Right.
Ibn Inglor: I did my right race pitch. And I wasn’t, I was still new to the community, I wasn’t really on Twitter like that for real, so when I did my pitch, I got zero up both except the ten I gave myself.
To support yourself.
Ibn Inglor: I am like shit, I gotta make, so I gave myself like 10 up votes and then the day after Daniel Allen crowd fund, I believe that’s when mirror opened, the first tool that they opened up to the public was fucking crowd fund. And I was like gunned it, I just gunned it, I just went for it. I was in the fucking discourse, I was in up heavy and I was just figuring out okay, what to do, what I need to do, when I see them open up the tool, I shot man, I went on there, I was typing day and night, I didn’t go to sleep till like six in the morning, waking up to like waking up at like 10, start hopping right back on the computer, writing it out. I’m not a very good writer, so I was using like this tool to help me write each sentence and shit like that. Like I was like making it to where that like it’ll rework my sentence in a way that I wanted it to sound and come off because I’m not like that great of a writer. So that helped me a shit ton and bro yeah, my lady didn’t like fuck with me at the time. My son was all up on my ass because I was like, on the computer just fucking typing away, day in and day out, up until I think Daniel Allen released his crowd fund like November 25th or 26th, crowdfunded open the 27th. And I dropped. I dropped my crowd fund on the first of October.
Getting Started in Web3
So, tell me more about the team behind that because it, after you’ve been in the space for a while, and you educate yourself and you’re participating in conference or in discord, you can kind of get a holistic view of what’s going on and try to navigate it potentially individually. But in the beginning, if you’re new to the space you need helping hands. What was your experience with that?
Ibn Inglor: It was me; it was just me.
Was it?
Ibn Inglor: It was just me. So, my producers Aaron and Brandon, they weren’t really in the space like, for real, for real. So, when I even did the crowd fund, I got data so fast that I wasn’t even, I was so lucky that I was able to tell them about. So, I told them my app there, it was all done, and it was launched. So, prior to that, it was literally just me, just straight me, it was the grind that I had to get on discord and stay up on a day in and day out talking to people, just politicking and just being me for what happened to Twitter spaces.
Time Management
So, how do you find the time between creating and then doing all the other stuff that you need to do as a creator in crypto because like, everybody loves you for your music, right? But you also have that, you need to have that entrepreneurship mind, you need to have the operational mindset, you need to have the administrative mindset, you need to wear all these different hats. And that could actually take away from like your creative energy that you use to kind of build up your name as who you are today.
Ibn Inglor: It’s a balance, I guess I would say it’s really a balance, is knowing when to cut it off and when to cut it on. Because when you cut it on, you have, you give yourself, let’s say like, okay, I’ll give myself probably like a week, a week of straight connecting and politicking and reaching out to people. And then I’ll set aside a time to actually work on music because for so long I’ve been disconnected from my music. So, whenever I get the time to do it, I go full force with it. And once we got the crowd fund funded, we are actually, my producer is from Scotland, Aaron, he’s actually from Scotland. So, he came up to the states and we worked on an album for a whole month to fully finish it out. Excuse me, get it mastered. Get it mixed, rerecord everything we needed to rerecord, remix everything that we needed to be remix because, again, well, first, we’ve been working on this album for like the past six years. So, danger zones have been in a work since like fucking 2017, 2018, we’ve made a song like one to two songs every like one or two years or something like that. And then as time went on it, it propelled to be just become this this project that it is today. So, you know, for the longest time, I didn’t have time to sit with my music and create and stuff like that. So, I had actually more leisure time to jump into web three in the business side, because I wasn’t being, I wasn’t in that creative mode, as frequently as I would, as I would have wanted to be. So, I just took the time to just politicking and grow and build and connect with people. So, it kind of worked out for me, but it’s balanced is it, that’s what it really is, is balance and knowing the time to shut it off and knowing the time to shut it and cut it on.
Why NFTs are a Good Medium for Music?
Let me ask you, why do you think NFTs are such a good medium for music artists? Like what is it about it that allows the individual to get liberated beyond the crowdfunding, right? In the form of distribution, in the form of fandom and all these different components that would otherwise be more or less controlled by maybe a middleman in web two, for example, like how do you think about that?
Ibn Inglor: Freedom, freedom to do you know what you want to do and build it to building a team around you as the artists and not having to cater to any company or association, no shit like that, it’s the freedom at the end of the day, it’s the freedom that I can release any song that I want to release, what I’m making on a phone memo, or I’m making in my fucking bathroom, or whatever, I can release that, and people that still appreciate it, the same way that they appreciate something being fully mastered and mixed on iTunes or Spotify or some shit like that. And getting you know, because I don’t ever like to talk numbers. So, it’s pretty much that get into respect, given the respect to the artists, and letting them be the artists they want to be. And not holding them back in no way form or fashion. And when you build a team around just the artists, you kind of see like, how much happier you know, the artist is, how much less stressful he is when you have a management team that’s like, being able to man like, what I want to say, navigate for you, when you do have a lot of family shit going on, when you do have, you know, very important you know, just real life shit happening. And the weight of a label is a weighing down on you because it’s like, no, you don’t have to, you know, I don’t have to cater to you guys. Like this is my career and I’m moving at the pace that I’m moving at. And I have a team around me that’s making sure that I’m if they’re not moving at my pace, they’re moving faster than me, because they’re always making sure that whatever happens is in good, you know, good faith and good favor of my career, stuff like that, while I’m building with real life stuff.
So, when I’m able to jump back into what I need to jump back into, it’s like I never left. So that’s what I like about it. That’s what I think that it means, you know, for a lot of us artists and we all talk about it all the time. And it’s just the freedom and the freedom bro for real, for real because without that, like you know, we get held down or we get stressed, and we get in this depressive state or state and shit like that. And we kind of just ball up and curl and go away and don’t really have the time to you know, when we do that, we’re missing out. If we don’t have a team around us already, we’re missing out on opportunities, opportunities that’s to come. So, if I’m, you know, shutting down and shutting out and I don’t have a team around me, I didn’t build this team around me, then I’m like, stifling myself in my career once again, because, you know, that’s what’s happened before we’re all get depressed and not be reaching out to people and not be connected as keeping these relationships up, because that’s what matters. And then once they fall, it’s over with, but I have a team around me that could keep the relationships up, while I’m dealing with myself and my families and shit like that. And I’m dealing with, you know, whatever it is, and I’m still there, those relationships are still being kept up at a high level because of the team around me. That’s just, I come back. And it’s like, okay, cool, like, bro has been talking to you, Isaiah has been talking to you, Aris been talking to you, cool, cool, I’m just, now it’s just following me up and getting me back in a loop of things. So that’s what I like about it.
Membership NFTs
You know, part of tokenizing your music is like introducing the financialization of your art to the world, right. And being able to do that, in a way where you now introduce another element to your music that otherwise didn’t have, wouldn’t have existed in traditional music, right? Being able to bet on you as an artist, and then being able to trade off that and actually have upside as you grow, as you develop, whether it be a speculative growth, whether it be an actual data proven growth, whatever it may be, you have that now, you know, but one thing as collector that kind of prevents me from selling an asset, even if I see an opportunity to sell or whether it’s an asset or however you want to define it, is me leaving the community and no longer supporting the creator once I sell that NFT. Right, which I think is super interesting, because you introduced a new concept. And I don’t know if it’s new, but you’re one of the first few people that I’ve seen actually implement this concept of membership NFTs. But doing it in a way where you’re recognizing your collectors, you’re sending them this like little, this little card right that sits in their wallet, and allows you to kind of recognize that they were an early supporter even if they were to sell the NFT because that’s part of the game that the collector plays right, and you recognize that as a creator right? Can you talk more about that, why like what was your mentality mental model behind introducing the membership NFT, they actually came out really beautifully designed as well, so props to your team. Can you walk me through that?
Ibn Inglor: Shout out Isaiah, his management and that man fucking doesn’t sleep at all man. It was an idea that was actually brought to me and I kind of like I thought it was you know, amazing to kind of do because Isaiah knows that my biggest thing is making sure that the people who supported me from the start like y’all have my heart, you feel me. So, it’s like I’m very appreciative and I don’t want no one ever feeling like they’re not being appreciated when they’ve supported me and you know, put their faith and belief behind me because that’s not, I’ve experienced that before, that’s not something anybody has to ever do. So you can get told no, you can get told that I don’t fuck with your music, I don’t fuck with you as a person but when you do, that’s why I, you know want to keep the gratitude going and keep it rolling because yeah, I want people to make money, I want people to you know, I want my floor to rise, I want people to be able to feel like they made a good investment you know, even if their initial reason for backing something wasn’t for even an investment or anything like that. So if you’re able to make money off the coin that you know, that you bought and still get the perks from the you know, from everything and being a day one supporter, I feel like that’s like you know, it’s got your cake and eat it too and I feel like that’s what’s kind of making, that’s what’s gonna make a lot of people feel a lot more value in the long run than just like oh damn like, okay like you said, I have to leave this community after I’ve you know, I really fuck with this artist, I fucked what he’s doing but hey, I might want to sell this piece and so I don’t want to be, I don’t want people to be having to, I don’t want to give people that ultimatum to be like oh like No, do I want to sell or do I not like, do what you want to do but hey, this is what’s going to happen, even for like the collectors on sound like my first like 50 to 70 collectors on sound, my collectors on catalog, the party bid contributors and stuff like that. I feel like all of you guys have been like, helping build the brand, the Ibn Inglor brand, the danger zone brand and I appreciate it deeply. So, this is my you know, this is me showing my appreciation. And you know, the NFT way, the web three way, for real, for real.
Inspiration With Issuing Membership Cards
That makes a lot of sense. I guess when you were putting together this card, right as a way to recognize these collectors, so it incentivizes participation, but also the ability to trade off your art, right, essentially. Did you use any, like references in developing that? Did you have like any, I guess, any fear in doing something like that, like any concerns came to mind. And the only reason I asked because I think it’s such a good model that other people should be replicating. And I really, I want to wan to strip this thing down and kind of like break it down even more.
Ibn Inglor: No, we had, we had no worries we had, it was nothing that was, we didn’t really, I can’t say that we, what’s the word I’m looking for? I can’t say that we were inspired by any other cards. And I’m like that, we kind of was just like trying to figure out, because when you know, when I have my head down, and I’m focused and stuff like that, it’s more so just like, okay, what can we create? You know, originally, we know, like membership in NFTs was something that was already floating around the space and stuff like that. But we’re just trying to see how we can do it for ourselves. So, when we came up with the, when we came up with the designs for it, it was like, okay, well for the crowd fund, for the crowdfunding backers, and contributors, let’s just make it the album cover because this is the album that they contributed to. And then for every other collector on all the other spaces, let’s just use their logo to kind of symbolize you know, let the association is what I like to, we talked about it, but I also like to make descriptive, you know, in a way. So, it’s like, you backed. You backed. So, what I’m trying to say, for me and for anybody in the space, they’ll know exactly what you contributed to at the beginning. So, whether it was catalog, whether it was sound, whether it was the crowd fund, they know where you stand, and they collected and collected base no matter where, no matter where you go.
So, that’s why I wanted to make it, I wanted to make it specific on each platform, instead of just making one NFT card, membership card. And just like dishing it out that way. It’s like no, I want to make it specific, because certain people, it was only 16 people that contributed to the party bid, I want them 16 people to feel, you know, special in their way. Because they, you know, is the love is reciprocated. So, I want them to feel special in that way. And then it was 42 people in a crowd fund. That was the first believers in the space, you feel me. So now I want you guys to know that this is specifically for you. And then so forth and so on. But yeah, it was something that we thought about all along at heart and like if we really wanted to do and stuff like that. And I was trying to figure out how we can build it all into the experience of buying the album and mixing the album and stuff like that. So, when we got like down to the nitty gritty was like, okay, but everyone who was holding our membership NFT card can because a lot of people love token gated access. A lot of people love token, you know, token gated, and I feel like that’s another thing that’s going to help push the artists brands and the true believers is making it, building a world around the artists and making it so with that, you can’t access unless you contributed in a way. So, yeah, I feel like you know, having that and having that be like something that people who did it at heart that’s what really mattered to me. You know, that’s what really, that’s what I really you know, fuck with for real.
I love your focus on bringing value back to collectors and creating unique experiences and showing appreciation. It’s not something to take for granted when somebody drops $150, $300 on supporting like, that’s typically like a concert ticket. Right? So, like a really like well-known artists, for example, right?
Ibn Inglor: Exactly.
Most people in the traditional music industry will spend like 20 to 50 bucks on a T-shirt. Right. But you’ve created a way to, I don’t know, I just I really recognize your willingness to create interesting experiences for your collectors and recognizing their support early on.
Ibn Inglor: All right, I really appreciate it because it was just on the tip of my tongue, but it was one, it’s like every time I sell an NFT, like, I don’t take it for granted because this is not, you know, a place where it’s just supposed to happen. You’re not supposed to sell an NFT you know, so don’t feel obligated that this is just what you’re supposed to be doing. Like no, take every NFT that you sell. You know, don’t take it for granted. Take it like a heart because you cannot sell another one and you need to move and work as if you won’t sell another one. And that’s how I like to move because it’s one of those like I come from man. I mean, my background bro like, man this shit. Like, I’m very appreciative of this whole space and community, like, deeply, so and I really care about the space, and I care about the integrity of the space. So yeah, whenever shit like, you know me selling NFT happens. I’m more than grateful, l more than grateful because it could be like, I can go, you know, I feel like a lot of people misunderstand this space. And they see the numbers that people were making and they feel like they can come into this space and make $10,000, $15,000 off overnight.
Overnight. Yeah.
Ibn Ingor: No, buddy, no. And then I’ve seen a lot of people try to get into the space and get discouraged that they didn’t get the support that they wanted, that they thought they were going to get out the gate because of what they’ve been seeing. So, it’s like, but I don’t know, man, I get so frustrated with that shit that it makes me so mad. But you know, because people, people feel like they’re leaving money on the table. And it’s like, how are you leaving money on the table? That’s not yours on a table that’s not yours. How does that happen? How is that possible?
Outro
I recognize man, you’re really commemorating like the mint moment. And I think it’s something super special. I’m excited to see how you kind of progress in the space and what you do next. Before I let you go, we wrap this up? Where can we find you? And what can we expect from you next?
Ibn Inglor: Man across the board, Ibn Inglor. You can expect, I want to say music videos coming from the danger zone album, the world being built around Danger Zone, Danger Zone is Altgeld gardens from, you know, Altgeld gardens or from the trenches or from the hood. So, whenever you hit danger zone, you know that it’s associated with Altgeld gardens, I am ready to you know, jump into my love for gaming and my eSports stuff. And doing a lot of work in that field because outside of music, our game heavy. And then also the one of the biggest things that we’re going to do once the album is available for mint. One of the things I’m really excited about is the scholarship fund, during the danger zone Endowed Scholarship Fund, giving back to my community, giving back to the kids that’s from my hood, that graduate from my high school, giving them the opportunity to have a scholarship for any instant University on coding. So doing that to also bring more people to web three. And also, you know, we want to build, we want to bring more builders into the community, we want to build, we want to bring more people into the community, we want them to know, like what’s going on in this space and shit like that.
So, giving them a scholarship for computer sciences, you know, it’s something that I’m like, let’s do that. That’s what I want to do. But you have to graduate, and you have to you have to graduate you have to be from the gardens. I take pride in my high school because my class, the class of 2011, when we first got to, when I first got to Carver, my high school was Carver, I went to a military academy. So, my first class and when we first got to high school, when we first got to Carver, Carver was on academic probation, so the school was about to get shut down. So, bro I’m like so my class, our class was the test to get our school off academic probation. And now Carver is one of the top like schools in the city right now, top military schools in the city right now. So, I’m like I don’t know, I’d like, I’ve never been like a real preachy guy or running for mayor and type of guy like oh, I’m gonna do this done in 30 but I really fuck with my school. And I really focus on my community like I fucked where I’m from like my family is damn near like one of the founding families of the gardens like we’ve been, like the high school I graduated from, my mom, my uncle’s my Auntie’s all graduated from the same high school.
Wow. Wow.
Ibn Inglor: Like it’s crazy. We’ve been in the gardens that long like that shit wow.
Man, I love that, I love your mentality, and your willingness to give back and not forgetting where you came from. I think it’s a really unique trait that will allow you to go further and further and further and not get too lost in the sauce, as I like to say, because you can get, a lot of people can get really caught up in the day to day of what they do, but you’ll it seems like they’re always finding a way to kind of bring it back to where it was. And just continuously remember where you’re from. And I love that. I love these initiatives. I love also the eSports take on kind of showing the world the side of you beyond music and that you are human, and you are very approachable, and you love doing shit just like every other person does, you know and yeah man and normalizes the experience. We love to see it.
Ibn Inglor: Yeah, Overwatch, I play Overwatch and getting impact but like, I’m really big on like, first-person shooters.
Ibn, this was great, man, thank you so much for being on, we’re gonna have to do this again soon. But till next time, keep killing it and we’ll chat soon.
Ibn Inglor: You as well.