The Web3 industry has experienced tremendous growth in recent years, from a niche that saw a glimpse of the future of the Internet, to a reality that built that future with the brightest minds and creators.
The space has also gained support from a number of influential people, absorbing big names from outside Web3. One of those people is world-famous rapper and entrepreneur Snoop Dogg and his son Cordell Broadus, also known as Champ Medici.
Over the past year in particular, Broadus and Snoop have been at the forefront of combining Web3 technologies such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the metaverse and blockchain with the music industry and its large community.
In November 2022, Snoop Dogg and Billy Ray Cyrus, among many of his other Web3-related projects, bridged music communities across the genre spectrum as well as blockchain networks with a music NFT drop.
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Broadus has been instrumental in bringing his father’s legacy to life in this new era of digital innovation. Cointelegraph sat down with him to understand what goes into bringing a legacy artist and communities into the Web3 space.
He explained that he was introduced to the metaverse in 2020 and shortly after, his father was contacted by Crypto.com. When the studio staff brought up digital assets and NFTs, he remembers that no one understood the concept well enough to take it seriously.
“I took it upon myself to really learn it so that I could put it into a language that my father could understand, and not just my father, but the entire culture.”
Broadus said he wanted to be a “bridge” to bring people into this space so they could learn how to digitize their businesses and not just rely on the methods of the past. He felt that many musicians were unaware of the potential of their unreleased music, which in some ways is equivalent to digital assets.
“People don’t care how big you are, they don’t want to just see you drop your own NFT. They want you to support the community.”
When it comes to Snoop himself, Broadus said his father should trust his judgment. He recalled urging Snoop “for years” to remake his first album, Doggystyle, released in 1993 by Death Row Records.
He explained that over time he believed that the idea of re-releasing music “just became ingrained in it.” [Snoop’s] head, so when the [NFT] The idea came that he was super receptive to it.”
However, this was something he and his team understood more clearly after they launched a pilot on OpenSea, where Broadus and his team released 250 Snoop songs and sold the stems and license for those songs.
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— Snoop Dogg (@SnoopDogg) April 21, 2023
Broadus and the team started by releasing 500 copies of the single “High” for $500 each.
“We sold out that first day and made $250,000 on that first single. From there it was the numbers, and the numbers don’t lie. Then we only did it for 30 days and by the last 30th day we had made a total of $3.5 million,” he recalls.
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Broadus explained how he saw a lot of creators buying those songs and stems and turning them into EDM and country songs.
“It was a cool way to see your community collaborate with big-name artists like Snoop at a reasonable price, because we’re in a way democratizing what collaboration looks like for musicians.”
He said this kind of collaboration and creativity wouldn’t have been possible without NFTs, calling the experience “uplifting.”
“If I hadn’t understood this community and this space, the idea would never have gotten off the ground.”
This became even more real for Broadus when he visited NFT NYC and experienced musicians first-hand who purchased the NFT song that resulted from their pilot.
“To be able to be in public in New York and hear five different artists show me their songs that they bought from our pilot program and see how happy they were to be able to be on the song with Snoop and other Death Row artists was huge for me. That touched me the most.”
He also recalled a moment at a Sandbox event earlier this year where he was talking to major “decision makers” in Web2 and Web3, and realized the importance of their efforts and presence in the space to their broader community.
“I wanted to make it a priority and take it upon myself to showcase not just my father, but the entire culture and make sure they were in that room because there was no representation. I was probably one of the only black kids in that room and I wanted to make sure I could change that.”
Snoop, Broadus and the team behind their efforts in the space have continued to build on this momentum with their latest venture announced on November 6, Death Row Games, named after the legendary Death Row Records that Snoop acquired in February 2022.
Death Row Games builds on a new legacy built in part by the teams’ gaming-related presence in the Web3 space, including Snoop’s Snoopverse in the Sandbox metaverse and Dr. Bombay with Yuga Labs.
He brings to gaming the same lessons he learned from bringing his and his father’s legacy into the Web3 space.
“It’s the same ideology and mentality when it comes to bringing in diverse creators and telling stories from different parts of the world and minority communities.”
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