Brent Faiyaz’s manager for the COLTURE partnership

It’s 9pm on a Wednesday night in Miami and Ty Baisden is still going about business with an energy level that belies the time.

“I’m a firm sleeper who gets my eight hours,” says Baisden, his Georgian laugh drawling. “But what I don’t do is bulls-t. So subtract tauri-t and you have a lot of work time and a lot of rest time.”

This philosophy has anchored Baisden since entering the business as a manager in 2008. During that time, the Atlanta native has closely observed successful creative/business partnerships, including Disturbing Tha Peace Records with Ludacris and Chaka Zulu and Grand Hustle Records with TI and Jason Geter.

Given the fragile nature of most manager-artist relationships, Baisden wanted to apply that collaborative model to the right act. “I said to myself, ‘I have to find an artist who wants to be a partner with me, where they do all the creative and I do all the business.’ Then we can build a company together and we will be protected because of the company It is our protection. “

In 2014, he found an ideal artist partner in Brent Faiyaz after discovering him on SoundCloud. “It was not an easy thing,” Baisden recalls. “I’ve had executives tell me, ‘Don’t associate with artists; this is stupid And I’ve had artists who were like, “No, I’d rather do something with a major label.” Brent was the first artist to really believe in the overall process of this kind of partnership.”

Over the past nine years, the business alignment between Baisden’s firm COLTURE – an acronym that stands for Can Our Leverage Teach Us Real Equity – where he is head of venture and innovation – and Faiyaz’s label Lost Kids has yielded several successes. Among them: Faiyaz’s 2020 EP, f–k the worldpeaking at #20 on the Billboard 200, followed by his major debut at #2 with his second studio album Waste land — against multi-week No. 1 hit Bad Bunny A Summer Without You – in 2022.

Then in 2023, Faiyaz’s F*ck the World, It’s a Wasteland tour grossed $5.3 million and sold 68,000 tickets across 18 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore. Separately, in 2023, he launched his own creative agency, ISO Supremacy, in partnership with UnitedMasters. (Baisden is not involved.) ISO joined forces with PULSE Records in an artist development joint venture, and in May struck gold with genre-bending R&B singer Tommy Richman, whose “Million Dollar Baby” spent two weeks at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Splitting her time between Atlanta and Miami with a staff of 22, Baisden, 40, works alongside COLTURE co-founder and head of creative services Jayne Andrew and partner Paris “PK” Kirk. The three are also co-founders and equity partners in COLTURE Holdings, which houses the company’s non-music businesses.

“I don’t manage the artists,” Baisden says of the business he has built with Faiyaz. “The aspect I have in the game is to see another black man succeed in whatever he wants to do.”

What COLTURE achievement stands out in the last 18 months?

Our company vertically integrated and built Brent’s Tour (2023) from start to finish. Usually management will hire to get it all done. I worked with Callender from Wasserman Music to route and negotiate the deals. Meanwhile, I took care of all the budget. Jayne handled all the band details, creative direction and made sure Brent was comfortable on stage, while PK handled all the lifestyle events and the afterparty. And we each share our time, going to different (tour stops) and booking the buses, the merchandise and the trips.

That is not the business of managers, but we are not managers; we build businesses. To build a business, you need to manage your budget so you can determine your margin. Brent’s tour benefited because we controlled every dollar spent. I just think it’s really cool. So many people go out on the road and make no money. The artist gets paid, but when it’s time to take stock, you come out in the red. Many times when you have other people managing a big lift, you will be blindly overloaded.

How does COLTURE’s partnership with Faiyaz and Lost Kids work?

Christopher Brent Wood (Faiyaz’s birth name) and I are business partners. When Christopher turns into the artist Brent Faiyaz and I operate on behalf of the latter, then my position is manager, for which I receive a percentage. That’s probably the best way I can put it. We are 50/50 partners in Lost Kids, under which we have several businesses. That was basically our handshake at first. Those projects and his tours are the financial seeds for Brent and I to go out and make individual investments. Lost Kids gave Brent the opportunity to invest in ISO Supremacy with his high school friend Darren Xu, and now they have a huge hit with Tommy Richman. Beyond music and publishing, our largest investments under Lost Kids involve real estate in Atlanta and Dallas and over 20 startup companies, including Athletic Greens, Therabody, Audio Shake and Seed. And the great thing is that three of those four companies—Seed, Audio Shake, and Athletic Greens—are run by women.

Lost Kids also sponsors annual initiatives on behalf of women executives and entrepreneurs.

We just wrapped up our fourth annual Show You Off grant program, awarding 12 women $10,000 each in grants to run their own business or launch a new idea. One of the policies of the grant is to reward women of color who come from the DMV area (Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia). This year was a tough one, with new ideas involving STEM companies, technology (artificial intelligence), electric batteries, etc. To date, we have donated approximately half a million dollars or more to businesses led by women of color.

What additional customers and businesses are under the COLTURE umbrella?

On the producers side, we have Nascent, who is just finishing his project, It doesn’t grow too soon, which we will distribute independently; Jordan Waré and Dpat, who both worked with Brent. We have a partnership with (podcast) Million Dollaz Worth of Game to help (former rapper/co-host Gillie Da Kid) build a music division. We are premiering their artist N3wyrkla with Troy Carter’s Venice Music. We also collaborate with (pop duo) Emotional Oranges on cast and creative direction when needed. Then, in the same kind of partnership that I have with Brent, there’s a Canadian artist Kalisway, who writes and produces funk and R&B. Finally, we’re helping actor Malcolm Mays (from Starz Raising Kanan) launches his music career to diversify his business.

What is the biggest issue facing the freelance community right now?

An indie company can put out a song, and the song can blow up, but more than likely, the company doesn’t have enough infrastructure to make sure everyone is paid fairly based on their contributions to the album that just changed the artist’s life. The artist and label will get big checks, but the songwriters and producers will probably get paid a year or two later, depending on how skilled their manager is—if they even have a manager.

Where do you see COLTURE in three to five years?

We have a 10-year plan that outlines parent company COLTURE Holdings to generate $100 million in revenue by 2030. That’s the goal. Over the next three years, we are launching our full-fledged media department, including TV, film, podcasting and digital content. The sports division is growing and we are continuing our real estate operations. We’re basically building a community and a pipeline for disruptors who can either stay in our ecosystem or build their own businesses.

Additional reporting by Shira Brown.

This story originally appeared in the June 8, 2024 issue of Panel.