Every Wednesday morning features a new newsletter from NGL on how culture influences business, the future of the media, and the pods, songs, and memes you should be paying attention to! This week touches on our journey before dishing on Hova’s new partnership with the National Football League and more. To get the newsletter delivered right to your email, sign up here!

“Stake in the Ground”

It’s been an exhausting eight weeks. All for good reasons, that is.

For those of you who don’t know, we formed an LLC in April called Powder Blue Media in an effort to turn our endeavors with Unplugg’d and Forty-Two into a legitimate business. We then got into the Wildfire pre-accelerator program (run through Northwestern’s startup incubator, The Garage), and have been participating in workshops, meeting with mentors, and simply grinding on this entire endeavor.

I’ve really enjoyed this experience, working full-time on something I’ve created without the pressures of school and social life influencing our progress in the same vein it does during the school year. The teamwork, the advice we’ve received along the way…these are the kinds of things I know I’ll look back at 20 years down the line in a positive light.

With that being said, one inherent issue with a ten-week program such as Wildfire is the pace. We’re tackling complex problems and adjusting on the fly — which often takes organizations years to get right — all while being told one thing this week and a completely different thing the next. Given this nature, it’s tough to focus on one goal and really commit to it, which is where we’ve found ourselves stumped, frustrated even.

This week, though, we arrived at a semblance of clarity. We’ve been so worried about how we acquire customers, how we make sales, how we pitch this thing, that we’ve forgotten what got us here in the first place: passion for the craft, passion for creating high-quality content. Not that sales and customers aren’t important (they are), but the reality was that we’re a content compnay, and our priority should always be to put out good content. We said we put a stake into the ground earlier this summer, fully committed to our brand, but we never truly, really did.

So we’re doing that. First, for us, it means defining what we want to be. We looked at Unplugg’d and explored the idea of “being unplugg’d.” For us, being unplugg’d means engaging and fostering real, authentic conversations. It means formulating original opinions on subjects important to you and communicating them in an earnest fashion. It means going beyond the mainstream narratives and tired, overused arguments to bring a unique perspective and voice to the table.

Moving forward, the majority of our coverage will focus less on fitting into specific buckets (such as sports and movies) and more into longform stories on topics a) you care about and b) we’re passionate about telling. We’re committing to what we’re calling “Millen-Z”: the older portion of Gen Z who oftentimes associates with millennial culture. Plus, we’re planning on holding events starting in the fall, which will include live podcasts (such as a recording of the ‘Whistles’ podcast featuring Jeremy Larkin and Co.), panels on topics such as student entrepreneurship + rap and the N-word, shows (live Hot Takes Show 👀👀)…the possibilities are endless. This will be a great way to build on our brand beliefs, and it’d be awesome to see you all participate alongside us.

In the end, if you support our vision and projects such as this newsletter, if you want to see it all enacted and put out into the world…awesome! We love having you here, and being on this newsletter is a great way to keep up with what we’re doing and join our community.

We’re also looking to talk to you all about your media consumption habits and our brand. For 30–45 minutes of your time, we’re giving out $10 Amazon gift cardsas a token of appreciation. Slots are filling up quickly, so sign up as soon as possible here.

Furthermore, if you’d like to support us on Patreon for as low as $1 a month, we’d be incredibly grateful! As you move up the tier scale, you receive access to exclusive merch, content, and more, so if you have any questions on the difference between, say, “Huge for the Brand” and “Grand Pooba,” don’t hesitate to reach out.

Finally, if you enjoy this newsletter, consider sharing it with one other person. A lot of work goes into it, and I’ve been ecstatic with the response from you all after the first one.

That’s all I got for our journey. Until next week!

Meet the NFL’s New “Live Music Entertainment Strategist”

Leading into this upcoming NFL season, I was pretty much out on professional football. Yes, I’ll continue to root for my Chargers, but the chapter of my life where I followed the league obsessively has all but passed.

This is for a myriad of reasons, chief among them the antediluvian approach and groupthink that the elite class running the NFL employs. For example, the act of beating your kid and telling your fiancée, “You need to be terrified of me, too, b — — ,” bears no repercussions in this league, but take some of the wrong supplements and bang, you face a four-game suspension. And that’s before you even get into concussions and the Colin Kaepernick debacle…

Yet the move to pair with Jay-Z is a necessary step in the right direction for Roger Goodell and Co. Not only does it build a modicum of swagger for the NFL — an area in which they’re desperately trailing the surging NBA — it’s also a sign that the league recognizes that their past “too-big-to-fail” mindset was flawed and it’s necessary that they change with the times. As Roger Goodell told The New York Times yesterday, “We don’t want people to come in and necessarily agree with us; we want people to come in and tell us what we can do better…I think that’s a core element of our relationship between the two organizations, and with Jay and I personally.”

This move also illuminates something obvious: Jay-Z is frickin’ killing it. Not only did he become the first rapper ever to pass the billion-dollar threshold earlier this year, he also has a thriving variety of revenue streams that are only growing, along with partnerships such as his creative director position with Puma. It’s interesting to see how his mentality towards the NFL has changed so dramatically, given the rapper revealed in “Apesh — ” last year that he turned down offers to perform during the Super Bowl due to his disgust in how they handled the Kaep situation.

Nevertheless, I can’t promise this partnership will lead to definite success for professional football. What I do know, however, is that when it comes to Jay-Z, whatever that dude touches turns to gold (just like his cologne, coincidentally!). The NFL took in roughly $16 billion worth of revenue last year, and in truth, they’re probably making what they deem to be a calculated business decision moving forward.

Jay often says that the way forward is to engage in conversation, not to cancel the offending party. This partnership attempts to make change from the inside, changing the very DNA ingrained in the NFL.

TL;DR: chalk me up as cautiously optimistic.

TWIC: Peak Podcast and Remembering Mac Miller

This Week in Culture explores a curated list of stories, podcasts, memes, and more things you should be following from around the web.

Mac Miller’s ‘Swimming’: A Reminder That We Are All Human (Unplugg’d)

Photo Illustration by Nathan Graber-Lipperman)

Yes, I’m plugging an article from us here. Regardless, I absolutely loved reading Staff Writer Bryce Phillips’ reflection on the one-year anniversary of Miller’s passing and the legacy his final album left. This quote really does it for me, too:

“The recently-passed one year anniversary of his last album has put him back into the mainstream consciousness, but for a portion of people, he has never left. His life and death still offer a reminder of the fleeting nature of life, as well as the delicate balance between beauty and ugliness.”

Bryce goes on to explore how he grew to appreciate the rapper’s style and art over time, and how he’s viewing Mac’s passing in a different light given the death of his grandma last week. It’s a powerful lens for the author to explore, and I highly suggest giving the piece a read, even if you don’t necessarily identify as a Miller superfan.

———

Have We Hit Peak Podcast? (The New York Times)

This article came out a bit ago by now, but it explores something we often joke about at Unplugg’d HQ: the idea that nowadays, everyone has a podcast.

It’s true, though, and the numbers are staggering. There are now over 700,000 podcasts; between 2,000 and 3,000 new shows launch each month. Similar to the music industry, given this influx of podcasts, there simply isn’t enough money to go around. The download and listener metrics need to be so incredibly high in order to get serious traction (and therefore attention from sponsors) that the monetization aspect really isn’t there for the average Joe.

Another interesting development this article touches on is the culture surrounding podcasts. Plenty of Medium self-help posts and books from “podcast experts” are popping up at an increasing clip, which leads to another thing we often joke about. Sometimes, the smart business move isn’t to hop in on the trend; rather, it’s to profit off of those joining the bandwagon (see: Levi Strauss, 1849 Gold Rush).

Because, in the end, if the author of that Medium post — the one advising you on how to set up a successful podcast — is accomplished enough to be an “expert,” then why aren’t they working on their own podcast full time?

———

What’s Next for the USWNT and Their Equal Pay Lawsuit? (The Ringer)

Ever since the USWNT won the World Cup this past summer, the team rode a seemingly-endless wave of applause and celebration. Past the floats and hilarious Instagram floats, attendance for the NWSL has increased, too, with a Portland Thorns game setting a league record with 25,218 attendees.

This article hammers home on a key observation, however. Will the snowball continue to roll, with the women’s soccer team forever setting a precedent on how we think and talk about women’s sports? Or will the national attention slowly fade away, ultimately becoming nothing more than an every-four-years conversation?

After all, we know they won’t stop fighting for equal pay. It’s on us to keep talking about it, acting upon it, and supporting them until they accomplish their goal. When they win, we all win.

———

Dyson: James Dyson (How I Built This)

I plugged HIBT a bit last week, but in all seriousness, you don’t have to be actively involved or invested in the entrepreneurial community at all to enjoy this podcast. Host Guy Raz does a phenomenal job weaving together the stories behind successful entrepreneurs and the ventures they built; on this episode, the guest is Sir James Dyson, the British founder of the Dyson vacuum.

In exploring Dyson’s story, one thing’s quite prevalent: this is a guy who lives and breathes product design. Before setting his sights on creating a vacuum that didn’t use bags — a project that took him five years to perfect and over 5,000 prototypes he made in his backyard shed — he helped design a high-speed watercraft and his own, original “Ballbarrow” (which used a ball instead of a wheel). While the former was wildly successful, the latter was a dismal failure, and Dyson took those lessons to heart in pursuing his eventual defining invention.

This is one of those guys, one of those stories, that I found, put plainly, inspiring. Yeah, to this day, Dyson products might be a little bit on the pricier end, but when you hear the journey it took to deliver that product to your front door…there’s nothing like it, really. Some folks are just wired for innovation, making new things over and over. Dyson is one of them.

What I’m Listening To: ‘The Lost Boy’

YBN Cordae’s new album is everything Chance the Rapper’s The Big Daywanted to be.

The funny thing is, I actually liked TBD. It obviously doesn’t come anywhere close to the peaks of Acid Rap and Coloring Book, but some of the songs (such as “All Day Long” and “Let’s Go on the Run) have firmly earned a spot on my playlist. I think the problem Chance is facing moving forward is time, the undefeated champion of everything. For those of us who fell in love with the immature kid who recorded a mixtape while facing a ten-day suspension for smoking weed, it becomes a little awkward when he starts rapping about the wife he loves and the charities he’s championing. He’s an awesome, phenomenal human being, and yet, to be brutally honest, that may be what makes his new art no longer that interesting.

But that’s all besides the point. We’re not here to talk about Chance, who, coincidentally, appeared as a feature on The Lost Boy. For those of you unfamiliar with Cordae Amari Dunston, the 21-year-old artist started gaining notoriety for remixing popular rap songs. Along with releasing three mixtapes under the stage name “Entendre,” Cordae ultimately joined the YBN collective in 2018. While there was real traction surrounding the mixes and tapes, it wasn’t until Cordae became heavily involved with YBN that he really started taking his musical career seriously.

That’s why The Lost Boy, his debut album, is such a big deal. First, Cordae does a great job of mixing up his sound. Sometimes, he’s relaxed and mellow, commenting on topics such as the growing dangers of social media use (see: “Thousand Words”). At other times, though, he’s straight menacing, eerie even. The phenomenal “Nightmares Are Real” provides a space for Cordae to reflect on his journey, particularly the downs of getting kicked out of his house and the death of his grandma.

Second, the features on TLB are top notch. The aforementioned Chance verse on “Bad Idea” makes a splash, while appearances by Anderson .Paak, Arin Ray, Meek Mill, and Ty Dolla $ign all integrate into the arc of the album seamlessly. Don’t sleep on Pusha T’s fantastic feature on “Nightmares are Real,” either (pun intended). After this and “Palmolive” earlier this year, can we officially proclaim King Push the King of Features? I’m leaning towards yes.

I can’t claim to have known about Cordae or YBN before The Lost Boy, but I’m bumping the album on the daily at this and don’t see anything changing in the near future. The artist is most definitely on my radar moving forward and he should probably be on yours, too

NGL is an O.G. sneakerhead, diehard Chargers fan, and huge advocate of ultimate frisbee. You can follow him on Twitter here.

The NFL Aims High in Attempting to Mend a Broken League