Hi,

This week's newsletter is dedicated to breaking down Russ's recent interview on the Behind the Wall podcast with Daniel Wall.

After watching the full thing, it’s genuinely one of the best artist interviews I’ve seen in a long time with lots of gems applicable to artists, creators, and creative professionals everywhere.

Let's get into it below.

This newsletter highlights:

Let's dive in ⬇️

Most artist interviews usually have just a few takeaways, yet this interview is filled with lots of them. It’s an inside look into how Russ thinks, operates, and approaches his career as one of the most successful independent artists of all time.

Here are some of my favorite gems:

If you’re familiar with Russ and his story, you’ve probably heard him talk about dropping 11 albums that went nowhere before deciding to drop singles on Soundcloud that eventually catapulted his career.

While I was aware of those 11 albums, I had no idea what the tangible number was of how many songs he dropped before he started catching a wave.

Russ apparently dropped 300 songs before hitting the Billboard charts and by his own estimate, had to make somewhere between 150 and 200 songs before he felt like he was actually getting good. He talked about how his seventh or eighth mixtape was the first one he can still play today without cringing, and he was around +100 released songs deep at that point.

While Russ kind of breezed over that story, it very much resonated with me for a few reasons.

a. He was creating and releasing songs at scale even when he didn’t think they were perfect. He mentioned it took him over 100 songs until he thought he was good…that means he didn’t wait or withhold from dropping to perfect his craft - he aggressively released music, built momentum, and built the muscle of releasing. Almost like a startup building in public - he was less concerned with the product being perfect and more concerned with building the muscle and taking as many shots on deck as possible.

b. Even when he got good, it still took a long time for it to connect. Like…the level of self-belief is actually crazy haha. That means from the time he got good, he dropped almost 100 songs until one really started heating up. Most artists quit after 5, 10, or 15 songs…Russ did it for 100. The level of self-belief you have to have at that point is almost borderline delusional lol.

What’s also important about this is that he created a system that allowed him to scale at that level - because he recorded, mixed, mastered, and produced everything himself, his ability to create and release music was limitless. He could make as much music as he needed to until it connected without worrying about studio expenses racking up.

This same, undying self-belief approach is applicable to anyone.

Confidence in the form of delusion to keep going even when you don’t have any evidence that it’s working.

While Russ acknowledged he needed a level of self-delusion to succeed, he also spoke about the importance of having nuance with it.

Russ put out 11 full projects and at some point realized the strategy wasn’t working anymore, so he switched things up.

Being certain about your abilities is one thing…

Being so certain you're right that you refuse to analyze something that isn’t working and never changing is another.

After those 11 projects, he analyzed the game even further and noticed the first song on a project usually gets the most streams. He noticed SoundCloud was where the attention actually was, even though he'd been resisting it…so he switched to a song a week.

It’s an interesting point that a lot of people don’t talk about when they tell you to “keep going”. Persistence isn't just running the same play over and over if it’s not working. It's staying in long enough to notice which play stopped working, then changing it.

Russ is still employing that same strategy - dropping the bonus songs from an upcoming deluxe as individual singles until the last one comes with the album. Even for an artist at Russ’ level with a fanbase, he understands how hard it is to get people to listen and is willing to play the game his way to get the most ears possible.

This was one of my biggest takeaways from the whole interview.

Russ pointed out that a .300 hitter in baseball is likely good enough to be a Hall of Famer, and a 40% three-point shooter in basketball is considered elite. Even with both of those percentages, players miss more than they make. It’s about shots on deck and continuing to keep going even when you’re missing.

Then he shared his own numbers: he released over 500 songs and out of those 500, only 26 of them have a plaque. If you do the math, that's roughly a 5% hit rate from one of the most commercially successful independent artists ever.

It’s kind of crazy when you think about it…

That 5% hit rate might seem small or inefficient but look at what it got him:

The ability to create a 26-song set full of hits, which is basically an arena show. He needed to keep pushing through the other 474 that didn’t connect in order to land those 26 that did.

The big takeaway here is shots on deck and volume - it takes a lot of attempts to find success and it’s important for artists to avoid getting discouraged if only a few songs in their catalog find success or it takes time.

This part he thinks is an unpopular opinion and it’s an interesting one.

His position is that greatness cuts through the noise, point blank, irrespective of marketing spend or promotional push.

He uses the example that one of his favorite songs he's ever made has around 8 million streams. He shot a $160,000 video for it and flooded TikTok with content. 3:15, a song he likes slightly less, has +1 billion streams. He's spent hundreds of thousands on individual songs (over half a million on one) and watched them do nothing.

I know what you might be thinking…easy to say from the guy with a fanbase and a huge budget to say that budget doesn't matter LOL. But hear him out…if it were pay-to-play, every major label single would go platinum and yet they don't (and they have the budget and the audience).

What he's really describing is the idea of detachment: that the audience decides what they resonate with, not the artist. In his mind, he gives every song the same shot (visuals, TikTok, the whole push) and then accepts that some connect and some don't, and that the difference isn't something he controls.

That doesn't make him like the 8-million-stream song any less…it just means the audience preferred something different than he did, and he's not going to spend a year ruminating over it. He just puts the next one out.

The practical version: give every release the same shot, let the audience choose their favorites, then keep dropping.

This section of the interview was fireeeee to me. While the entire music industry is talking about superfans right now and how to reach them, Russ is actually about that life and has been since the beginning of his career.

He knows his first 5 fans ever by first and last name (he literally rattled off a few of them in the interview along with where they were from) which is INSANE.

He also created a group chat with about 10 fans from around the country for years, going all the way up to 2022. When he played the Hollywood Bowl that year, he flew every one of them out to be there and celebrate with him.

Without hyping it up too much, that's probably one of the best superfan stories I've ever heard. Those people will become fans for a lifetime and never forget the bond / connection they have with him. Russ has since moved his community to Discord, where he still knows a lot of people by name and brings fans up on stage during his shows.

The payoff shows up in how those people describe him. Russ mentioned that fans have told him that watching his career feels like watching one of their friends blow up.

Actionable takeaway: if you're an artist with 1,000 IG followers, you have an opportunity to know a meaningful number of them by name and build a special relationship with them.

Russ also talked about his approach to content - for example, for his song Nasty, he posted 160 iPhone videos on TikTok. He didn’t film any polished, properly produced piece of content in the entire campaign. It went gold in under a year with no adspend.

For contrast, he mentioned a song he put $300,000 behind that still isn't gold seven years later.

He's not saying content doesn't matter…he's saying trying to produce super high quality, polished content doesn't. His volume of scrappy beats scarcity of expensive.

This might be unpopular again…but I kind of agree with him. Every week I see content that either looks like it’s shot on iPhone or intentionally produced but maybe not that high quality go viral and elevate an artist’s visibility. At least a few times per month, I scratch my head and wonder how that specific piece of content took off…it really makes me question how important high quality is anymore on socials (and actually makes me wonder if we’re making a return to lower, DIY quality).

This is the one I'd suggest focusing on if you're an artist who thinks their work needs to be perfect before starting.

He talks about how he recorded his song Psycho Pt. 2 in a Toronto hotel room while literally holding the mic and the pop filter in his hands. He had logic stock plugins on the vocals and one mastering plugin. Despite being created in a very DIY way, the song has a billion streams. His first album was made the same way, and he notes it's the only platinum album written, produced, mixed, mastered, and engineered entirely by one person.

He's used the same vocal preset for 12 years and doesn’t care to switch things up. His approach is an argument against waiting. He was clear that you should never let the absence of the right plugin, engineer, producer, videographer, etc be the reason you didn't do the thing.

In my personal opinion, while a song needs to sound a certain threshold of good, I genuinely don’t think all the bells and whistles matter for most artists. Obviously you want to be proud of your work but spending too much money on mixing + mastering because you think it needs to be perfect feels questionable in the current landscape - fans are overwhelmed and overstimulated. Very few people are actually going to catch what might seem obvious. Now…the mix + master shouldn’t sound bad, but if you don’t have the financial means to record or work with a big engineer, it’s okay! It’s about releasing music and building the muscle.

One of my favorite perspectives from the interview is that the pillar of confidence is competence. One doesn’t become confident because they decided to be, they become confident because they put in the reps and know they are capable of whatever the thing is.

Russ also made a point that real confidence is going after things knowing you’re going to get hit but you don’t let it stop you.

He shared a story of the time he was at Dr. Dre's house, sitting in the back of the room while Snoop Dogg was recording. Mid-session Snoop turned around and told Dre he should work with Russ, that his pen game was strong.

Dre told Russ to let him know if he hears melodies.

Terrified, Russ went into the bathroom next to the studio (close enough to still hear the beat) and recorded voice memos of melody ideas until he had enough to come back in with. Long story short, Sting ended up singing one of those melodies on that album.

His perspective on it is that once the mic was in his hand, he knew what to do, because he'd done it a million times before. The reps and competence are the confidence. There's no version where you feel ready first and then do the work.

Check out the interview below:

Hopefully this was helpful on your journey.

Thanks for reading, until next time.

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