I launched a podcast last week and interviewed Oddisee. Here’s why.

Content isn’t exactly worth what it used to be worth.

Marcus K. Dowling
3 min readJul 11, 2016

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I interviewed Washington, DC area-born and Brooklyn-based emcee Oddisee on my debut episode of Getting Over With Marcus K. Dowling because he has established a standard of excellence as an artist that is largely defined by his level of global awareness and digital age savvy. By cultivating a loyal following around the world, he’s been able to thrive as an independent artist during an era when the record industry’s restructuring economics have dimmed the careers of other creatives.

Related to this, it’s apropos that we take a pause for Kendrick Lamar and ask…

How much a dollar really cost?
The question is detrimental, paralyzin’ my thoughts
Parasites in my stomach keep me with a gut feeling, y’all

We’re at a place now where I, as a full-time freelance content creator who puts out anywhere from 15–20 pieces per week, am hitting a wall wherein I sometimes feel as if the sometimes diminishing return on investment on my work leaves me commercially and spiritually worthless. There’s days where I feel like with each keystroke that I’m just adding to a media cycle that’s making it an inarguable fact that we’re rigging pop culture with internet-aided techno-dynamite and are blowing it to smithereens.

As well, there’s a corollary thing taking shape that says that we’re about to blow mainstream society sky high with the same tools that we turned pop culture into ashen terrabytes of audio-digital-real life fuckery. We’ve done this because we’re all running too afraid of everything else and burying our heads into our smart phones and chasing Pokemon to notice the societal Armageddon taking shape, but that’s another article for another day.

How much a burrito bowl really cost?

Fast fashion, fast casual food and streaming audio and visual services are now constantly teaching us that literally everything has been reduced to worthless content. However, if you contextualize when and why the content is delivered and how that content is received, that’s where the value is.

Oddisee has an uncanny ability to release music when, where and how his fans want to receive it. Thus, Oddisee is succeeding at doing something similar to what I’m trying to do as a written, audio and video content creator. Therefore, on this podcast, I speak with him about how a rapper evolves into an artist-as-brand, and how that allows for skilled craftsmanship to become sustainable entrepreneurship.

I asked questions to Oddisee because I desperately needed answers as my literal life depends upon them. He gave them to me. Given that this podcast is available for listening, he gave them to you, too.

Thanks, Oddisee.

Subscribe to Getting Over With Marcus K. Dowling on iTunes.
Visit Random Nerds here on Medium.
Check out the Chunky Glasses music podcast.

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Marcus K. Dowling
Marcus K. Dowling

Written by Marcus K. Dowling

Creator. Curator. Innovator. Iconoclast.

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