Episode 235: The Genius Marketing of MF DOOM
The hip-hop community was dealt a big blow with the passing of iconic rapper MF DOOM last week. And while MF DOOM was one of the dopest rappers and lyricists of his era, there was a lot more that went into his success than his talent. In fact, his marketing was one of the biggest factors in his success. In this episode of Super Duty Tough Work, Blueprint and Illogic break down the genius marketing…
Episode 234: The 90 Days of Discipline Results Show
If you’ve been paying attention to the show, then you know we started another 90 Days of Discipline Challenge to ourselves in October. We also invited our listeners to join in on this challenge, where we choose a goal and focus on it for 90 days to see how far along we can get. In this episode, Blueprint and Illogic play the calls from our listeners who participated as well as go over our results. …
Episode 233: Dealing With Artistic Burn Out
While we often speak about the need to be as ambitious as possible when it comes to achieving your goals, we’ve rarely spoken about what happens after you do. One unfortunate thing that can happen is feeling burnt out and that is where we find ourselves this week as we push into the final few weeks of our 90-Days of Discipline Challenge. In this episode, we break down how easy it is to feel artistically…
Episode 232: Bad Situations That Are Good For Your Art
If there’s one thing that this year has shown us, it’s that the future is uncertain and unpredictable. Along with that unpredictable nature comes a lot of ups and downs. Good situations and bad situations. But how we view to those bad situations plays a big part in how we handle them. In this episode of the most infamous podcast on planet earth, Blueprint and Illogic breakdown how certain bad situations can actually be good…
Episode 231: Dating Ambitious People
One of our most popular episodes in the last two years was one titled “Dating Uncreative People.” In that episode, we laid out all the challenges that creative people face when dating people who aren’t involved in the creative arts. This time around Blueprint and Illogic speak about what it’s like to date ambitious people, why it’s so different from dating regular people, and how to make it work! If you’re a super-ambitious person you…
Episode 230: Vangarde Album Liner Notes with Mr Lif
Although we’ve had legendary underground MC Mr. Lif appear on the show before during our real estate episode, we haven’t had a chance to chop it up with him about music. That changes this week, when Blueprint and Mr Lif sit down to speak about his brand new collaborative project Vangarde with producer Stu Bangas. It’s been a long time since we’ve done an interview so get ready because when two artists chop it up…
Episode 229: How to Keep The Buzz Going
For most artists, one of the things we look the most forward to is releasing our creations to the public. As a result, release day is right up there with birthdays and holidays for us. Unfortunately, the excitement of that day doesn’t last forever. Eventually, the buzz that we had around our project starts to fade. And when it does the inevitable question becomes how do we keep the buzz going? In this episode of…
Episode 228: The Truth About Price
One of the most difficult things artists struggle with is setting their price. Half the time we feel like we are charging too much and half the time we feel like we’re not charging enough. In this episode of the most infamous podcast on planet earth, we break down six guidelines that should help you the next time you’re trying to figure out what to charge for your product or service. Episode 228 of Super…
Episode 227: Full Production or Quick and Dirty?
While attention to detail is a positive trait for an artist to have, it isn’t without it’s drawbacks. One of the biggest being the constant need to chase perfection in everything we create. Many of us put incredible amounts of time and resources into creating full productions that we hope have a big impact. But other artists aren’t so hung up on perfection, instead choosing to make content quickly that is timely but might not…
Episode 226: The 90 Days of Discipline Challenge
One year ago, we challenged ourselves to lock in on our art and commit more heavily for 30 days. At the end of that challenge, which we invited our listeners to participate in, we reported back with our results and played voice messages from other people who participated in the challenge. It’s been a year since then and we are now releasing the projects that we finished during that first challenge. So we decided to…
Episode 223: Fame Versus Ownership
Because we do speak about ownership quite often on this podcast, it is always refreshing to see the conversation happen on bigger platforms. This week that happened courtesy of some viral tweets by Kanye West, who took to twitter to voice his dissatisfaction with his recording contract. He posted his contract for all to see, pointing out that even though he is now a billionaire, there is no way for him to ever get ownership…
Episode 222 – Did Nas Finally Get It Right
While we’ve done our fair share of criticizing Nas for his hit-or-miss albums, it always comes from a place of love because we know what he’s capable of making some great music. With the release of his latest album King’s Disease, Nas has once again got our attention, but this time for the right reasons. In one album, it appears that Nas has addressed all of our past criticisms and finally gotten it right. In…
Episode 221: Pharoahe Monch Versus O.C. Catalog Battle
While it’s very common for hip-hop fans to debate about who the best rapper or producer are, it’s very rare for them to restrict those debates to only the artists catalogs. In this episode, we decided to debate which artist has the better catalog–Pharaohe Monch or O.C.? But instead of making it a barbershop debate where there is no score and no winner, we break down the competition into four categories, assign points to each,…
Episode 220: The Book Announcement Episode
If you’ve been listening to this podcast for the past year or so, then you know Blueprint has been finishing up his next book. The book is finally done and preordering HERE. In this episode, Illogic interviews Blueprint about the new book and gives our listeners a sneak peak into what to expect from Blueprint’s latest offering. Episode 220 of Super Duty Tough Work is THE BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT EPISODE. Hit the link to watch or…
Episode 219: The Traps of Young Adulthood
Although we are both grown men who seem to have our stuff together, it wasn’t always that way. We had a lot of rough patches along the way, most of which occurred during young adulthood, due to some unsound decisions we made. Looking back now, we have realized that there are tons of traps for young adults that are disguised as rewards. In this episode, Blueprint and Illogic break down seven traps that young adults…
Episode 217: Friendship Killers
As they say, good friends are hard to come by. Unfortunately, many of us have had no problems making friends, but keeping them is a completely different story. Sometimes we lose friends due to their actions and other times we lose friends due to our own mistakes. In this episode, Blueprint and Illogic break down the biggest things that kill friendships so you can know where you’re going wrong and protect yourself from so-called friends…