What A Supporter Did With His ChilledLyfe Sticker. Buy Them At Dopeboy503.bigcartel.com

What a supporter did with his ChilledLyfe sticker. Buy them at dopeboy503.bigcartel.com

It’s been said that rock stars have the best jobs. But unlike some jobs, the position of rock star isn’t handed to you on a silver platter. For some, it took years of grinding away at dead-end jobs before the opportunity to do music full time became a reality. We’re all jealous now, but take a look at what these music idols were doing back in their younger days.

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The D.C. Fish Carryout store on 14th Street wasn’t just selling fish dinners. The Columbia Heights carryout’s 53-year-old owner has pled guilty of using the store for selling crack-cocaine, according to sources.

Washington City Paper reports:

According to government evidence, owner Suk in Hyun entered into an agreement with two other men—Timothy Hill and Craig McKoy—to sell the drugs from inside his store and away from the view of police beginning in July 2011. McKoy met with cocaine users 10 to 15 times a day, seven days a week on the 3400 to 3600 blocks of 14th Street NW and then brought them to the carryout shop. There, Hyun placed a call to a cocaine dealer, and Hill came to the store to transfer the drugs. He paid Hyun a percentage of each sale.

Officers discovered 17 digital pocket scales used to measure drugs, tens of thousands of plastic bags, and one pound of a K2 in the carryout. Hyun’s sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 18 and he faces up to 30 years in prison, a $500,000 fine, or both.

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"It's not radio. It's college radio. There's nobody listening. Nobody. Maybe, like, three guys in a dorm somewhere."  After a then-senior at Boston University Howard Stern crafted "the single worst moment in radio history" after toppling over a pile of carts (long-lost cousins of the long-lost eight-track), halting a spin of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" in his hit 1997 box office biopic "Private Parts," the eventual "King of All Media" was convinced that his radio career had ended after mere rotations of a 33 on campus radio station WTBU.  In the film, a friend incredulously listens to Stern's drama over the gaffe. "It's not radio. It's college radio," he counters, seemingly more as fact than an attempt to ease the budding air talent's horror.

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Biggie’s “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems” rings true for most individuals who run into even a little bit of cash, but on the same token, for some rappers, making money is no problem.

As album sales dwindle across the music industry, the richest musicians no longer depend on royalty checks from labels to fatten their bottom lines. Rappers see themselves as brands now, and in any field, the best brands make the most money. As Jay-Z once famously rapped, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.” It's since become the model for how hip-hop artists accrue wealth.

With figures pooled from Forbes, celebritynetworth.com, and therichest.org, we briefly explore how 20 of the richest rappers in the game stepped up their hustles and made millions.

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                      Every hour of every day, there’s a talented musician somewhere on the planet who makes the decision to put their artistic side on the back burner in favor of a more stable career. Although they vow they will pursue music in their spare time, just this simple mindset shift could mean that writing songs and playing gigs will always take a back seat to almost everything else in life.

In a way, it hurts too much to do music when you make this decision because it reminds you of all the dreams you had and gives you the feeling of being a failure. Even the most committed musicians can be ground down to nothing after years of playing empty shows and sending out hundreds of demos with no reply. But once you start to recognize the common mistakes you’re making, you will be able to avoid them and get on with the real work of consistently creating music that your fans will appreciate.

Music Career Killer #1: Not working on your music every day

You can spend your whole life learning music marketing and still fail if you don’t have great music to promote, but you can suck at marketing and still do well if your music is on point. The ideal, though, is to find that perfect balance between marketing and music creation.

Commit to working on your music skills for an hour a day, and do your marketing in any additional time that you can spare. It can help to make this into a little game, so every once in a while go back three months in time on your YouTube channeland see the kinds of songs you were writing then. Over that time period, you can really start to notice an improvement if you work on your music and songwriting daily.

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