The artist-entrepreneur-investor Mr Eazi has no on-off switch. Who he is in the recording studio, on stage, and on the boardroom are the same. With business and music, Mr Eazi has found parallel industries that allow him to be the same person. He’s founded both emPawa Africa and Zagadat Capital to feed his business appetite. The former invests into African artists and helps them scale. Meanwhile, Zagadat Capital invests into tech startups, most of which are inside the continent. Then there’s Mr Eazi, the Afrobeats artist. He’s collaborated with the likes of Beyonce and J Balvin, and also taken center stage at Coachella. After taking time away from music amid the pandemic, Mr Eazi is back in album mode now. Holed up in Cape Town currently, Mr Eazi has plans for two new albums this year. I caught up with Mr Eazi to cover his never-ending pursuits in music and business. Here’s everything we chatted about: [0:22] How Mr Eazi is balancing artistry and entrepreneurship [1:40] Similarities between music and startups [6:19] Taking equity stakes in artists and what an “exit” looks like [10:50] How Eazi measures success for Empawa artists [13:00] Eazi’s investment thesis for startups [18:10] Startup success trends in Africa [21:30] Lack of capital is biggest challenge to Africa’s startup scene [29:45] Raising awareness within the continent [32:20] Biggest obstacle that African artists face [36:52] Uncleared sample on a Bad Bunny song [40:45] Impact of Western companies investing into Africa [47:35] Mr Eazi is in album mode Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Mr Eazi, @mreazi This episode's sponsor is Symphony. Put your fanbase growth on autopilot with the first AI-powered platform that brings all your artist marketing workflows in one place. Learn more at symphony.to/trapital Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Mr. Eazi: part of me deciding to be an artist was reading the book, the Jay-Z book, Empire State of Mind. And that was when I saw it clearly and I was like, oh, wait a minute like this music is a business and the music gives you access, it gives you access to capital, access to the network it puts you, gives you a seat at the table [00:00:20] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital Dan Runcie, this podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more. Who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:00:48] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we have the one and only Mr. Eazi, the artist, entrepreneur. How you doing man? Welcome to the pod. [00:00:56] Mr. Eazi: I'm good. I'm good. I'm chilling. What's, going on [00:00:59] Dan Runcie: Me. I'm good, man. Trying to keep up with you. Trying to keep up with you, man. [00:01:03] Mr. Eazi: I'm trying to keep up with me, bro. [00:01:06] Dan Runcie: Well, let's talk about that because you are someone who sits at this intersection of artist, investor, entrepreneur, and you are doing all of those three jobs and more. And it's also happening at this moment where the entire continent of Africa is booming from an entrepreneurship perspective, booming from a music perspective. [00:01:29] How does it feel right now? How are you operating being at the center of that? [00:01:34] Mr. Eazi: To be honest, I just feel like it's a blessing to be born or to be existing in this time. where like you said, everything is just like taking shape and, you know, yeah, it's exciting and it is for me. It's like every day I'm seeing opportunity left and right and just figuring out what is fun and what is doable and just, you know, going from thinking, oh, I'm an entrepreneur, to oh, I make music. And, it's similar cause it's products at the end of the day, on the bottom line, it's like you're selling music or you're selling some other product. And I thought they were two different things, but you know, I'm seeing how it's one and the same. [00:02:17] It's just exciting to realize that I don't need to be two different people like I still be the same me and operating both walls. [00:02:27] Dan Runcie: So how are they similar for you approaching both music and startups? [00:02:32] Mr. Eazi: So I feel like every artist is like a. because the artist has a brand, has a feel, it's like a service product, it's an emotional product, right? And every artist, you know, that IP, there's an IP with every artist, and the artist usually needs investment to scale. And like coming from, like when I went outta school straight into an incubator program called 440NG and I kind of, there I learned how, you know your idea and your business, you know, you have the idea, you put it together, you iterate as the business keeps on going. So what you thought was the business at the beginning, you know, your customers could give you feedback and then you realize it evolves, it accelerate and you are trying to be as lean as possible and grow to the point where you have that critical volume to sort of like ask, what's the word as, proof that this is a valid idea either via customers or via revenue. And then you try and get to, you know, you try and scale, and you figure out what's your, unique value proposition is, and that's like where the startup, what's your unique value proposition? [00:03:46] Who are your customers? What's the idea? You take it to market, you test it, you go get investment. And it's the same thing with every artist so at the time where I decided to do music full-time, I was in an incubator program, and so I just started to see the similarities with the music. I'm like, okay, let me test it, put it out, people listen to it, you know, gimme the feedback, you know, and the point where I decided I was gonna take the music as a business was when like I got the first person reach out to me and say, Hey, I want to pay you for a verse. So that was the first signifier to let me know that, okay, maybe I'm onto something. [00:04:22] Then I started to have my early fans then Lauryn Hill reached out and said she wanted me to come play at her show. And I thought it was a fluke until I found myself in America performing in Lauryn Hill, coming out to say, I love you, thank you so much for coming. And like all of that is like with a business, with a traditional startup, it could be different things, but for me, the revenue, the number of users, aka the fans, all of that were signifiers. [00:04:51] And then I just needed, you know, the capital to take it to the next level, right? So I think those are the similarities, and I've tried it when I started emPawa it was at the beginning, it was to test if they were one and the same. So I was like, okay, Y Combinator send, you know, picks a few, start a couple of startups, you know, does incubator program put funding and whatnot to them? [00:05:18] And then maybe 20% of them you know, end up working on, and I did that with 100 artists across 11 African countries, over 30,000 entries then picked 100, then gave them the same amount of money, created the emPawa YouTube channel to host their videos, service it the same way, and in the end, start to see the ones that organically started picking up. [00:05:41] And we had success with that. So for me it was like, oh, wait a minute it's one and the same. I've proved this. And that's when emPawa then turn from, you know, the, program I was doing to actually full service music company, because I had proved that it was the same and in the same way you invest in a song. [00:06:01] I remember the first Joeboy song, the visualizer cost me $500, and then the song ended up having like 30 million views in like a year. And you know, Joeboy just went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So, I start to say, okay, there is a process here and perhaps we could do it with other artists, you know? So to answer your question, that's how I see both as, you know, one and the same in a way. [00:06:28] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And I wanna talk about emPawa specifically because this is you bringing so many of those startup concepts to music like you said, you saw Y Combinator is doing. How could you apply that here? The difference though is that with Y Combinator, the promises of course, an exit, so they're hoping this companies get acquired. [00:06:47] They're hoping that they go public in music though. What does that look like for you as someone that is taking equity stakes in the artist? What does your return look like? What does your exit look like? [00:06:59] Mr. Eazi: So, I mean, first off, the return is like when you invest, you know, you invest to create the content, you put it out, put some marketing, and you start to see, you know, the streams coming, the revenue coming, the artist is now doing live shows, getting endorsement deals, you know, you could get four, 5x, 10x multiples, you know, and time. [00:07:24] so that's, one. But secondly, like on a developmental standpoint, you could develop the artist and then a big label comes and says, oh, we wanna upstream. So upstreaming is like a sale. It's like an exit, and you could still have passive rights to get passive income, on the artist. So those are like the kind of like returns and the kind of like exits. [00:07:48] Plus you could just invest in the IP, buy it up, and next thing somebody wants to sample it and then they have to write you a big check. And it could happen now, it could happen in like 10 years, in 15 years time, you know, you could have a record just lined. I'll give you an example, recently the Joeboy record that didn't make it to the Joeboy is one of my artists. [00:08:09] The song didn't make it to his album, and so we then licensed the song
