- [Cole] Thanks for having me, this is cool. I was a big fan of season one. Can you see if someone could
bring a carton plushie? I just want it on the
couch in the back. Alright, voila. My name is Cole Bennett, owner and founder
of Lyrical Lemonade. Wait, one second, can I say music video director? I don't know what to-- - [Interviewer] However
you like. - However I'm saying? Alright. Being in the creative industry, you kind of had to figure
it out yourself, and make the decisions
for yourself because no one knows this
brand better than I do, and what I want it to be, and I relate that back
to a quote of Quentin Tarantino when
he worked on Reservoir Dogs. You know, that was his
first feature film, and he said that, you know, there were PA's on set that
knew more about film than him, and you know, production,
everything, but he said that no one
in that room knew how to tell that
story better than he did, and that's kind of how I
feel with Lyrical Lemonade. You know, in those
early moments, I wasn't looking for advice,
or mentorship, or anything because it was something
new, it was something fresh. It hadn't been done before, and the only person who knew
how to get it done was me and wherever I took it, and here we are. I want people to think of Lyrical Lemonade as
an experience. I want people to hold a
different memory close to themselves, whatever
that means. Whether you went to an
event, you watched a video, you have a piece of merchandise, I want it to just be a feeling, and it should bring some
sort of emotion to you, whatever that may be, and the specific emotion
that it brings to you is what makes it special. Growing up in Plano, there's nothing out there. You know, it's cornfields, it's the middle of nowhere. So, you play football,
you listen to music, you, you know,
do what you can. There's not too much to it. My dad, he passed when
I was two years old. So, growing up I just
didn't even know what it meant to have a father. I remember when I found out
that he had committed suicide, it just made me look
at things differently. Some people would be like, "It was a selfish decision," or whatever it may be, but I kind of looked at
it as it was a sacrifice that he had made for our family. We were dirt poor. We had nothing, and he had just some issues and some problems with,
you know, with my mom, and there were so many
things going on that he was kind of holding
us back in a lot of ways. That's how he felt at least, and I think that he
made that decision to give us the best
life he could because he knew what
my mom was capable of. She was working three jobs and doing anything she could
to make sure we were okay. There was a Christmas where
she sold our furniture to get us Christmas gifts. She was always working nonstop and she was always creative too. Like, if she was working
a sales job, I remember she would get
candy and stuff, and put little slogans on it to hand out to her
customers, you know? She was just a marketer. She was creative,
she was driven, she was passionate about
getting it done at all moments. I remember one moment she
wanted to write a book, and then she opened the bar, she was just doing everything. I remember having anxiety, but when I started to
get to that point where I was beginning to
understand how much my mom had really done for me
my whole life, and how much she did for
me and my two sisters, and thinking in my head, "I don't know how I'm ever gonna be able to repay my mother." That was an anxiety, and there was nothing
that she couldn't do. If you put her mind to
it, she could do it, and that's me, you know,
that's how I feel I am, and I got it from her. Where I'm from is definitely
in the middle of nowhere. It's cornfields and a lot of people
listening to country music, but there was a pocket of
people who listened to rap. That was me and my friends. I got put onto it by my older
sister when I was a kid. She showed me 50 Cent, and the first album
I ever bought was Get Rich or Die Tryin', and I would literally sleep,
you know, or wake up and it would just
be playing the whole night. When I was eight years
old listening to 50 Cent, that was way more exciting to me than listening to a country song that felt like it was written
lyrics by someone else. Something about it made
me feel connected to it and wanted to hear more. In eighth grade, freshman
year of high school I had a friend actually who moved from Chicago to Plano. His name is Bernie. He's a great friend of mine, and he showed me Chief Keef,
and Alex Wiley, and Vic Mensa, and all these different artists that were coming up in
Chicago at this time, and I remember listening to, it was an Alex Wiley song, it was a Chance the Rapper song. I remember watching the video and thinking, "This is the best thing I've
ever heard, I'm hooked." And from that point on, I just dug into the Chicago
local scene. I didn't listen to
anything else. I couldn't have told you
what was on the radio. I really couldn't have, 'cause there was so much going
on in Chicago at that time. I was watching from afar for
a few months, and I was like, "I need
to go experience this." And I would start going to
the city whenever I could. Once a week, twice a
week, three times a week, and go to any show I could and just experience it
up close and personal, and I'd bring my camera whenever
I had the opportunity to 'cause I just wanted to
capture content, and from there, I mean, the love, it just
grew immensely and there was no looking
back at that point. I knew for a fact that
this is what I loved. There's a moment in time when you realize what
your passion is, and I realized what my
passion was at that moment. I saved up for a GH4, and then played around
with settings, shot what I thought looked good. Obviously, if you were
to critique it there were some errors,
and some problems in there, but you know, it was
really just, you know, that's the basis
of what art is. If you love it, if feel
good about it, then you're doing it right, and that's how I had felt. I think everything
was self-taught because I didn't know anything
about what I was doing, and through all the errors,
the mistakes, and everything, you kind of learn how
to figure it out. When I was getting into
the Chicago hip hop scene, blogs were a very, very
relevant thing. - A lot of people aim towards
these different blogs, like, man, they shot
shit for this, you know what I'm saying?
Like, you gotta... You gotta be like, "They
shot this shit for me." - It was the way that you'd
find out about new music. I wanted to start a blog
and just, you know, highlight some of these people that no one was talking about, and those were the first
thoughts of Lyrical Lemonade. I was 17, my mom owned a
bar at this point in Plano, and I remember she had a
website and I was like, "I want a website." Like, I need to do what
you're doing, so give me the contacts, and she gave me his
contact information. I remember he was going to
come over a night that week to help me build the website, and I knew I wanted to have one word that had
nothing to do with music, and then a word that had
something to do with music, and I remember it was like, I want it to be a fruit
or a vegetable, I knew that much. 'Cause I wanted it to be
a cool way to market, and just have fun, and I wanted the colors to pop, and I knew that, and then we were going
back and forth with ideas and my mom said,
"Lyrical Lemonade." And I was like, "I don't
know about that one." And, then I thought
about it for a little bit and I was like, "It's perfect." And that's how it started, that's how it started. - Lyrical Lemonade.
(group laughs) - First line, you know I
got the Lyrical Lemonade. - Shout out to Lyrical Lemonade, it's delicious. - I was a shooting videos,
I was shooting recap videos, I was writing on the blog,
I wanted to do everything. I wanted to throw a show,
that was my next challenge. I wanted to bring this community that I built on the internet
from an hour away, you know, from the city, and I wanted to bring
everyone together, and I wanted to throw a show and see these people's
faces come together, and I wanted to see people
enjoy it from the crowd. I wanted to see people
enjoy on the stage, and there's this building
called the Music Garage. It's a classic recording
space in Chicago and they have a rehearsal room, but you can also rent that
out for shows. It's 90 person capacity. I booked it for $150. I was mowing lawns and
I saved up, and I booked it for $150, and I said that the show is
going to be free admission. So, I asked all the artists
that they could come out and perform for free 'cause no one was
performing at shows really. So, they're like, of course. No one, you know, we're just bringing people out, and we're just doing
it for the love of it. I remember a ton of
people showed out, and I got to meet so
many people, and really see, for the
first time, Lyrical Lemonade coming together in a
moment where I was like, "Wait, this is something more than I could have
ever imagined." And at that point, that was like my first wake
up moment of, "Oh, this is something." But that was a very special
night that I'll never forget. The biggest thing for me
always was to set my next goal as
a realistic goal. So, when I threw my first
show with 100 people, I was like, "Oh, there's this
one venue that holds 250 people that
I wanna do." And that was, you know, it was tunnel vision to that. Then once we did that, and we sold that out,
I was like, "Okay, I think we could
do Reggie's Rock Club, which holds 500 people." And we did Reggie's Rock Club. So it's like, it was about just inching
up that ladder one by one, you know, one step at a time. You know, you can't go A to Z, you have to appreciate
every letter within. You gotta go B, C, you know, you have to go all the way down. A lot of people, you know,
have really big dreams, but big dreams can slow
you down sometimes because you are trying to bite
off more than you can chew. So, this section, make
some noise. (crowd cheers) All right middle, make some
noise for me real quick. (crowd cheers) Throwing a show at The
Metro, that was the goal, but I think I wanna book
someone outside of Chicago, I think it's time to
take that step, and I was a big fan of Uzi
and Carti at this time, and this is February of 2016. Uzi's from Philadelphia. I was like, "I have no idea how to get
in contact with this person." So I Googled, "How to book Lil Uzi Vert." And, an agency website
popped up, and I clicked on it, and I called a few numbers, and before you knew it, I was on the phone with
his agent, and then on the phone with
his manager, and at this time Uzi was
going for $8,000 and I needed to put down
a 25% deposit on him. So, it was $2,000 and I'd
saved that up from, you know, videos here and there, and I put all the money I had into the booking Lil Uzi Vert
at The Metro. - I say, can I perform all
the favorite songs we have? (crowd cheers) - [Cole] I remember
announcing the show, you know, 'cause everything was
so important, right down to the, you know, the flyer, and the
illustrations, and everything. This was all so important to me. The packaging, the presentation,
it had to be perfect. I still wanted to have that
Chicago centric theme to it. I remember announcing the show and people were just blown away. They were like, they couldn't believe that it
was a Lyrical Lemonade show, that this was happening. At that moment I felt
very accomplished just because that was the
first moment where we did something
that was bigger than the city. You know, it was taking a
step outside of the city, but it was bringing it
to Chicago. It was exciting. It's a very exciting moment
for me, and that show went on to change
my life in many, many ways. So, I was gonna go to DePaul because it had a good
film program. It was difficult, school
and working were always, they were in this constant
battle for top priority, and when that summer happened in between my freshman and
my sophomore year of college, that was when I really
broke in there because at that point when
school was out my only priority was
Lyrical Lemonade. So, I remember coming
back for sophomore year, things were a little
bit different. School started to kind of
fall down on the priority list 'cause I was just
working nonstop. You know, I would
shoot a video, put it out the next day. I was editing it until
6:00, 7:00 AM. I had class at 9:00 AM. You know, I was trying
to make it, and I remember I would
always make it to class. So, I would just sleep all
through class. I remember people would
look at me and just be like, "This dude is just slacking,
he doesn't care about this." Craziest moment of my career. Most pivotal moment in
my career. Meeting Dex, I loved Famous Dex, and I loved what he was
bringing to the Chicago scene. He was having fun, and showing
energy, and just being goofy, and showing a side that
a lot of people from Inglewood, Chicago
don't show. I was fortunate enough to shoot
a behind the scenes for him, and he had saw the BTS I did, and a couple of weeks later,
he called me. He's like, "Hey, let's
shoot a video tonight." And I'll never forget
where I was, I was pumping gas in
my sister's Prius, and I went to his
house in Inglewood, and we shot Hit Em Wit It
in his basement, and I remember, I'll never
forget this, I remember shooting
the video, coming home, and within an hour of being
home he asked to see the video. I was like, "I haven't even looked
at the footage myself." And I remember starting, I was editing it and I had
so many ideas on what I wanted to do
for this video, edit techniques and stuff, but he was like, "Yo, we
need to drop this tomorrow." I stayed up all night, finished
the video probably 8:00 AM, and then I had my
editing class actually, funny enough, at 10:10 AM
in The Loop downtown. It was my first video to
ever hit a million views, and when that hit
a million views, I didn't even, I mean, I didn't even know
what to think. I never thought in my life that I would have a video
that hit a million views. I never thought it
was even possible. It was a removed idea
from my mind. I was talking earlier
about having big dreams and you just, you know, you have realistic goals
leading up to them. That was one of those
big dreams that I didn't even look at
or think about because it felt, you know, out of this world. So when it did happen,
I was like, wow, you know, this is a thing,
we're here. We'll see what happens next, but incredibly and
immensely thankful for Dex, and you know, all of our times together, and working together, and he taught me so much, and you know, I can
never repay him. I'll never find way to
repay him. He's one of the most
special people. Man, oh man. Mac was an idol of mine
when I was a kid. He had a fun side, he had
a deep side, he was profound and articulate, but he was funny and
goofy at the same time. He was just inspiring in
a lot of ways. Getting to work with Mac, it was a crazy full
circle moment 'cause life moves so
quick sometimes. You never get to really stop,
and pause, and be like, "No, this is
happening." You know, I have these
moments sometimes where I stop and I'm like, "I can't believe I'm here, I can't believe I'm doing this. I can't believe this is
how my life turned out." One of those moments was after I got done
shooting a video with Mac. We were in Mac's backyard and he was just sitting
there, it was sunset, and he's just smoking
a cigarette, he was sitting by himself, and I remember just
walking up to him, I was like, "Well, it's
my time to go." 'Cause I was with him a
couple of days before, we were talking about the video, and we'd obviously been
on the phone and all these things, but
you want to be professional. You don't want to be like,
"Oh, I'm your number one fan." You know, you're supposed
to be there. You want to be, you know, do your service, and
do your job, and you know, that's
what you're there for. But at the end of the day, I was like, this is my
time to really express my appreciation for him and
everything he's done for me. I just walked up to him
and I was like, "Yo, I just want to let you know you're one of my biggest
inspirations, and today was surreal
in so many ways, and I just want to tell you,
thank you." And he looked at me and he said, "Man, thank you so much." He said, "That means more
to me than you know." And he's like, "I've been
watching your stuff too." He's like, "I'm a fan as well." From there, you know, we would just talk often and we had built a friendship, and it was really special 'cause he would call me
in the middle of night and crack a joke or whatever
it would be, and every time he would do it, like it became a normal thing. It became natural, but I'd be like, "Yo, that's
insane. That's Mac Miller, that's
my idol," And you know, sometimes these people
will become your friends, and your peers, and you
know, frequent collaborators, and it truly is a blessing. - [Newscaster] Fans and
neighbors leaving flowers, candles, notes on rapper Mac Miller's doorstep. - [Cole] I'll never forget
when Mac passed and how I felt. I just broke down bawling. I was crying, I remember like, that's most I've cried in
a long time. I remember crying throughout
the week. When I was crying I wasn't
thinking, or I was going through these
moments, I wasn't thinking about
our times that we had spent together, or working with him or,
you know, I was thinking about when I was
a kid listening to his music and what it did for me, and how his music had got
me through hard times, and the feeling before
I even knew who he was, and that's the power of music. That's how deep it can
drive into you. I valued it more
than I realized. Rest in peace to one of
the most talented and special people that
I've ever gotten to meet. - Alright man, we're about
halfway through the first day. So far, so good. A little bit of stress,
lot a bit of fun. I think we're doing
good right now. The Summer Smash Festival
started off as the Lyrical Lemonade
Summer Bash, which was actually an
indoor event that held about 1,300 people, and I did two years of that, and the dream was always
to have a festival one day. You know, an outdoor festival,
a real life festival. Not an indoor gathering,
a show, big concert, no, an outdoor festival. We thought Douglas Park
would be a good place to bring this festival. You know, it's just a
beautiful thing because we're independently
funded, you know, and a lot of these artists
who are involved and stuff, it's just a call away,
and it's just, you know, a lot of direct relationships, and just people wanting to
be a part of something cool. So, it doesn't feel forced. It doesn't feel anything
but natural - Let's get it! - [Cole] It's about
bringing artists from all over the country
together here in Chicago. Giving Chicago something
to be proud of, you know, 'cause this festival
was staying in Chicago and not leaving Chicago. We've been offered to have it be a traveling festival around
the country, but it's important to
me that it stays here. Chicago, you know, this city
is what made me who I am. If I didn't stumble
across this music scene, if I didn't move here
when I was 17 years old with, you know, a dream, if I didn't go to every one
of these shows and connect with every
person that I could, and work with, you know, all these incredible,
you know, local artists and just people within
this community, I wouldn't be where
I'm at today, and you know, that's very,
very important to me. Yeah, I'm a little overwhelmed, but I'm very happy. I'm happy more so than
I'm overwhelmed. - The money thing is
crazy because, like, I mean, I really, really
genuinely don't care about money, and there's been two 30
million dollar offers, everything in between
over the years for just, even brand
partnerships, and just things that don't even
involve selling the company. Obviously, it's flattering
hearing, you know, a 30 million dollar offer, a 25 million dollar offer,
a 40 million dollar offer, but you know, when you really
believe in yourself, and you really understand
what you've built, and you understand what
your potential is and what you can become, none of that stuff
really matters. It's just crunch time,
it's fourth quarter. You know what I mean? I'm like Brett Farve
or Tom Brady right now just trying to make my
way back into the game. Hopefully we get this W, but wait, we always get the W. No L's unless it's double L, and what they call that? Oh, Lyrical Lemonade, you know. Lyrical Lemonade is
an experience. Music videos, merchandise
and clothing, beverages, the blog,
and events. You may know the company
for one of these things, you may know it for all of them. You may have a favorite, you
may have a least favorite, but it's a widespread company that I want to continue
building avenues, and avenues, and avenues. I want to keep seeing
where it can go. Maybe one day I'll no longer
be having fun with it, and then at that point
I'll be done with it, but for now I'm having a blast, and I'm inspired, and I'm excited to see what
else I can grow this into, and where this empire could go, and I think that I have
these moments where I stop, and I think,
and I look up, and I'm like, "I cannot
believe that I'm here. I cannot believe that these
things are happening." And if I can always find a
way to feel that, you know, be able to pause and have those
moments, then I'll be good. A fellow student of
mine reached out to me, he's was like, "Yo, I remember
being in class with you and seeing you sleep every day, and thinking you were just the laziest student
in the world." He said, "I never expressed
that to you, but I just want to say,
I'm so sorry, I had no idea that you
were building this." And that made me happy
because, you know, you kind of need, not that we search for
validation, but you know, I remember feeling like
a real, you know, outcast in school because
I was so disconnected, because I was working so hard
on my Lyrical Lemonade stuff. You just gotta get
behind something, and we all stood for something, and it was Lyrical Lemonade, and outworking anyone
and everyone.
