Kosha Dillz: Help Yourself by Helping Others
Posted by Kosha Dillz on Jan 13, 2011 | 0 Comments
It’s 7 in the morning, and Kosha Dillz has already put several hours into his music career. That sentence is true pretty much every day of the year, and stories of Kosha Dillz driving 700 miles for one gig or playing 6 shows in one day have become underground legends. Today’s he got a guest post for Audible Hype about Reciprocity — the foundation for any successful career…
Help Yourself by Helping Others
By Kosha Dillz.
Sure it’s a crazy concept. You’re trying to book your own shows 24 hours a day. You wake up, shower, drink coffee, open up that lab top , and Facebook like it’s your job. (is Facebook hiring?) It’s really not. You spend most of the day “liking” your own music on youtube to sync in with your 4000 friends and by the end of the week, you have once again promoted yourself to people all so much.
We get it.
You’re trying to blow up. You are trying to grind. Your rap group and band deserve to win because you are the best and you are deep and your lyrics are meaningful.
Ask yourself this…what have i done to help another band out today? (silence…)
Hmm…when’s the last time you helped a band out? (tick tock, tick tock, tick tock)
On my first tour in 2008, the Spare Change tour, I routed across the entire U.S.A all by myself and was primarily helped by other musicians. They let me stay at their house, eat food out their fridge, do my laundry, and pay me sometimes out their own pocket for the love of my music. My music? Wow. I thought I sucked and only started to be successful so recently. After all that, they even wouldn’t let me give them my tee-shirts for free. They insisted on paying for them.
Other times there wasn’t much to go around and I might have need to sleep in my car in a gas station. I remember calling up Killah Priest and asked him what to do, and he told me to leave the car running at the gas station ( it was dead winter). I thought I’d die from smoke inhalation, but I remember that can only happen if I am in a garage. I woke up freezing and also a new man, for it was the first time I volunteered to sleep in my vehicle. Not only that, but it was the first time I was getting some really cool and personal advice about a shitty situation and I appreciated it. Obviously I sleep with the car running now if it goes down because I want to stay heated in Boise Idaho during the winter.
Does that sound like you want to have that? It’s not a bad story.
Sometimes its good and sometimes it’s not good. Sometimes the road sucks and sometimes it sucks less.
The fact is that we are so concerned with what it is for us, it can always be a lot worse. Self centered egotistical musicians, which is about 99 out of 100 of us, have issues with entitlement. Imagine me speaking to Killah Priest who has kept a successful underground career based on the notion of being cool and helping others out along the way after selling over 400,000 albums at one point and being on over 1,000,000 albums sold.
Whether it’s giving experience or friendly supportive calls to musicians you know, telling your people to come see other bands on tour, or going to random bands shows you find in the local paper (even if you are a rapper/MC) just to drop some gas money in their bucket and buy their CD, the attitude of gratitude to be in this D.I.Y arena will help you survive within yourself. What does that mean?
Fact is people help you out for the sake of helping out. We are all living the dream. They might not even like the music but might find someone who will, and they want to support, all of us.
After you read this, please repost someone’s video they have been pushing on your twitter page. Pass off a business deal to a friend. Help link fellow musicians that need gigs or places to stay. BUY someone’s CD at a show and go to the front of the stage and support so you can see the others behind you.
3 guarantees come along with this…
- 1. You will make some new friends you never had. (maybe not the band, but other people might like you for this great change)
- 2. You will feel different inside, and also own a CD, t-shirt, or expose others to music they might love and play at their weddings (all because of you).
- 3. You won’t worry as much about yourself and your own agenda, because you will be acting selflessly and thinking about others.
Please note that I do not guarantee anything else (fame, riches, more shows, more merch sales) although that might come along with helping other bands that will do the same for you. As you finish this article, please ask yourself this again.
- What have i done to help another band out today? (silence…)
- Hmm…when’s the last time I helped a band out? (tick tock, tick tock, tick tock)
Let’s change what’s in those parentheses.
About the Guest Author
Kosha Dillz → http://www.koshadillzworld.com/
Kosha Dillz is a blackbelt in DIY kickboxing and former collegiate wrestler turned rapper, that incorporates his faith and culture in his music. He tours the world on a frequent basis,writes articles, does publicity, has his own college booking agency OY VEY!, and has thrown OY VEY events in LA, Chicago, NYC and Austin. He
pays taxes every year under the profession, Jewish rapper. His project The Jet Lag Ep is available for Free download on DJ Booth .
follow him on twitter: @koshadillz
like him on facebook: listn.to/koshadillz
contact him at rapperfriends at gmail.com