I read an interview where you talked about bringing equity and residual income to visual artists. On your Instagram, you posted a caption saying that was an important issue you intended to solve. How did this come to your attention, and how are you working towards solving it?

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Being an art collector for twenty years, and now having a big stake in the market as far as African American and African art — for example, the big Kerry James Marshall painting that sold with Sean Combs, the entrepreneur. Imagine if he'd been able to get royalties on that sale as a living artist. There's going to be some changes happening, and I'm working towards that. I've got a Sotheby's show on September 20, and all of these things are leading to create communication and a relationship with the auction houses and artists. I was telling the artists, I wouldn't be able to buy your art if I didn't have residual income coming in since I was 17. Once an artist's work is gone, it's gone — but I can go to iTunes right now and play my music.

You recently graduated from Harvard’s OPM program. How did your experience there influence your thinking and approach to business?

The program changed my life because it gave me structure. Most creatives don't understand the business, which is why we're still talking about artists getting royalties in 2018. But if we had more [business] educated artists understanding beyond the craft, the institutions would have a harder time with them settling for anything. I'm an artist and have to talk to five people to get to fairness [on the business side]. It was a one-week elective course, Launching New Ventures gave me all of those tools. I built No Commission from school, which is how I was able to figure out how to get artists 100% of their sales, and still produce a show and maintain ownership of the company.

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How did your arts venture No Commission first come about? Was it a thesis project or something you were already working on?

I was curating a lot of big shows during Art Basel, and I was able to see the infrastructure [of this industry]. The gallery wins, the fair wins, the collector wins, and the artist has to find their way home. I was taking care of so many artists that had sold-out shows. I decided that, one day, I wanted to make a show where the money went 100% to the artist. We've given back millions already.

How did J Cole come into the executive producer role on your album?

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He played the role of young mentor to me. I'm not too cool where I can't have a young mentor, being as I'm a young OG. We were playing each other music, and then we started talking about things other than our projects, books, different things. One time, I was playing him songs from the album — before I had all these different sonic elements to the album, before separating them into four boxes. What I played you guys, where it stopped, he was like, "That's the record. The other records you're playing me, they're huge, but I don't think you need it." And I'm like, "Are you crazy?"

I was caught up in the wrong things, and even though I would feel it wasn't the right time when I was playing those other records, it didn't matter because I was coming back. He assured me I didn't have to do that. Even with not shooting expensive videos: they're well done, and I came up with the concept of no treatments, up-close-and-personal, with the artists in their elements. I ran that past him, and he was like, "Yes!" Why shouldn't he get that credit when he brought so many gems to the table? My generation needs to learn how to get along with the new generation anyways.

This is the first album in a series.

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Yes, one of four. This is all authentic — what I feel, hip-hop. The next one is going to be R&B. See how Poison is curated? Everything is going to be curated like that. Beauty and the Beats, Return of the Showtime, Global Mindset — with all the international artists, I want everything to feel seamless and flow into each other like conversations.

The Young Thug song on the album is so crazy! How did it happen?

It came from me wanting to give him tracks. He recorded five songs that day, and then we had a conversation about his brother who's lyrical, like a Rakim. [Thug] was telling me how much he loved rap, like rapping-rapping, and lyrics — but in his field, he's in a different era where he's gotta do his thing. I felt like my album was a good place for him to flex a skill that might not be comfortable to his core audience, but would be respected [here]. I was playing him the Nas verse and getting him in a lyrical mood, and I pulled up this beat that was for DMX, and was like "I would like to hear you on something like this." And he was like, "Turn the mic on." He went in there and did that song in one take. I let every artist have their freedom on this record.

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I had a hard time connecting — like, how am I going to get back in the game and vibe with artists I don't vibe with lyrically? I figured it out. Talk to them, produce them, take them out of their comfort zone — that's how you get the Thug record.