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Burning Joker? What the heck does Urban-Muse mean?
Photo via Greg Doyle (Los Angeles Fire Department)
Photo used under Fair Use. - Joaquin Phoenix in Warner Brothers Pictures "Joker" (2019)
Oh…
I’ve been trying to name these editorials with something short and bold that highlights some big things that have either happened to me or in the world the past few months. And right now Los Angeles is on fire, and Joker has figuratively set the world on fire with Joaquin Phoenix’s masterful portrayal of this beloved character. So I feel it works well.
Major Website Re-Design (In Progress)
These past two months have been pretty crazy. Urban-Muse has gone through some big changes!
You may have noticed the background for Urban-Muse is now WHITE!? This is something I alluded to in the last editorial but wasn’t sure if I was actually going to go through with…I did! I love it. It was more work than it seems. Its a whole new customized skin and has about 30 new wordpress plugins to play with. I think it looks great. For the past 10 years Urban-Muse had a background and looked like this (Several versions all black background).
And now it looks like this. I think it looks a lot cleaner and makes the writing presented here more visually appealing while making the art pop similar to the way it does on a white wall at a gallery. So overall very minor change but a big effect. Very happy about this.
How will Urban-Muse continue to Re-Invest into the Artist Community?
During the past couple months I have been thinking of ways to help the company grow, and to make good on my promise that Urban-Muse’s primary goal is to reinvest into the artist community by providing Commissions, Licensed work, and other paid short term contracts. In addition to this Urban-Muse will always encourage you to support the artists you like directly through their personal stores, patreons, Ko-Fi’s etc.
So far Urban-Muse is scheduled to do these paid editorial covers six times a year with these Editorials which feature one of our favorite artists of the period.
This time it is by our friend the Great Aleksei Vinogradov! Aleksei was the artist I chose to launch Urban-Muse Magazine #1 with their art on the cover. And I think he was perfect.
Paying Aleksei for his work on this editorial felt very much like a small gesture of thanks for all the support that great man has given Urban-Muse over the years. And over a long enough period I would like to do similar things for each artist featured in Urban-Muse.
I have several ideas of how I am going to create more paid opportunities for artists.
The first is the most obvious. Instead of doing a Editorial every other month, do it every month, this will be 6 more artists paid a year. . I may start doing this in January. December would be redundant because there will be a best of the year feature in December. Although I will also offer to pay the artist chosen for that cover. So that’s 11-12 opportunities to pay artists a year.
URBAN-MUSE ARTIST TAKEOVERS
The next idea I have is a new feature/format that I’ve really never seen another art website do.
I call it the “Urban-Muse (paid) Artist Takeover”
I wanted to start by incorporating it into these editorials but I think it just makes things confusing and I should keep them seperate.
Urban-Muse operates daily by the strength of it’s social media reach and the traffic it generates to the website and patreon. For the past 10 years all the posts have been chosen by me, 1 man. Urban-Muse is now without a doubt one of the biggest art websites in the world so I think I’ve done a damn good job. However this would be my own biggest personal criticism. I feel that the feed on Urban-Muse should be more diverse and reflect other great art sensibilities that I just may not even be aware of. In Urban-Muse Magazine #3 I hired fellow Art Blogger Misha Lianne to help address this issue. Misha runs a blog “Random Mishaness” which primarily focuses on African American art and artists. Having her input I feel was really valuable, I would like to do that same thing but with various artists with great taste around the world.
The Urban-Muse (paid) Artist Takeover would work like this:
I contact an artist and offer to essentially give them the keys to Urban-Muse for a small short term contract.
Over the next day to a week. (Depending on how much the artist wants to use the takeover)
Urban-Muse’s social Media posts will be completely curated and chosen by this artist. For that period of time that artist will be in control of Urban-Muse and what you are seeing on your feeds.
These will be BIG name artists. Artists you know and love.
This will give them an opportunity to shine a light on other fellow artists they love, causes close to their heart, or even highlights of their own work. Hell they can post about their patreon nonstop if they want. Urban-Muse will be under their control.
I think the effect this will have will be profound. The social feeds for Urban-Muse will take on a much more diversely textured feel and will feel fresh. Ideally people who in the past didn’t feel Urban-Muse had their kind of Art will say “HEY! This is new and what I like!”
Initially I can start off doing this a couple times a year, but if it’s successful I could potentially do it 52 times a year, with a different artist every week.
At that point Urban-Muse would be essentially completely artist run with me only overseeing the payroll and providing key social updates and editorials, features, etc. At that point it would free me up to take on other projects I want to do like starting a film production company. (While still overseeing Urban-Muse Indefinitely)
Paid Community Chosen Artist Fashion Lines Sold Via Amazon
So if I’m paying all these artists, where is the money to do that coming from? Well right now it’s coming out of pocket. The amount of money coming in via Patreon is not enough to support something like this.
My idea is to go back to Urban-Muse’s roots where it’s made the most money in the past. T-Shirts. Pretty much everyone loves t-shirts.
Urban-Muse’s previous fashion lines have been completely designed by me. I think in order to be truly successful I have to acknowledge that I need to hire the best talent available that can create the best and most attractive product that will generate the most revenue for Urban-Muse. Very similar to what I want to do with the Artist Takeovers.
How would this work?
I see this potentially working like this:
Urban-Muse hires, and pays about 4 TOP TIER artists to design a shirt for Urban-Muse.
The art direction to them would be probably pretty vague. Something beautiful and incorporates the branding for the company somehow.
I would then take these four commissioned artworks and present them to the Urban-Muse community through a series of polls, where we could ask for input and if there are jarring issues the community has with it we can change it.
The final shirt chosen the artist will be paid an additional flat fee, kind of a prize/award, and will also be offered percentage of sale points on each t-shirt sold. Probably in the neighborhood of 5-10% depending on how the numbers crunch out.
Because the artist will have an incentive to help sell the shirts I think this could help the social media reach of the project as well.
Amazon runs this planet. Better jump on board.
The next part is where it gets interesting. For the past 10 years, I have handled all the order fulfillment personally. I have shipped literally thousands of Urban-Muse shirts all over the world. This has been difficult for a lot of reasons, the biggest one being scalability.
I envision these products having mass appeal, and I would like to sell them exclusively through…amazon.
I feel like EVERYONE is spending most of their money at Amazon, including me, and the “One Click” is king for easy online shopping.
Getting a product on Amazon is both easy and difficult. Anyone can set up an amazon merchant account and essentially sign a lease for shelf space in their fulfillment hangers. But in order to actually be feasible you have to sell a lot of product because listing on Amazon is not cheap. But if you have a HOT product you can potentially do very well.
This will make shipping globally and domestically so much easier, and when I need more sizes for a shirt I can just have them shipped directly the the fulfillment center. This will allow me to potentially have hundreds of designs for sale.
This is going to take a substantial investment so I don’t have anything firm to announce at this time. But this is likely the future of Urban-Muse.
Completely Ad-Free Urban-Muse Experience?
Another idea I have is making Urban-Muse completely ad free. But offering certain content that is also on patreon, early but with LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of ads. That way you can support Urban-Muse just by keeping your Ad Blocker on for a minute, You don’t have to login to Patreon etc. And if you don’t want to do that, just wait a week or two and you can enjoy that content completely ad free. Sound good?
We will print…something…someday
I would still like to print the magazines at some point but getting the math to work is difficult. 1,000 pages full color? Yeah what was I thinking? That’s going to cost around 50k$-100k$ depending on how many we make. What may happen is I may compile all the issues into a book. I really don’t have anything concrete to announce about this. It’s likely going to take a large personal investment, and if I do that I want to be sure I don’t mess up my life, I want all my ducks in a row so to speak. Another option may be trying to find an external publisher to take on that burden. I don’t really want to be a publisher, just a writer.
Current Ideas to put more $ in Artists pockets
So to summarize::
Urban-Muse Paid Opportunities
Current:
Paid Editorial Cover Artist (Yasar Vurdem, Noveland Sayson, and now Aleksei Vinogradov)
Paid Best of 2019 Cover Artist (Not necessarily the best piece of the year, just chosen for that cover)
Planned/Upcoming:
Paid Urban-Muse Artist Takeovers (5-10 times a year initially, eventually 52 times a year)
Paid Artist T-Shirt commissions with the final design chosen by the Urban-Muse Social Media community. (That’s you!) Easily available to buy worldwide using Amazon One Click.
Changing the Subject (Fun stuff Below)
I feel like this editorial is already getting too long, and much more and people will just scan it looking for pictures.
But I want to mention some things quickly.
Got real Sick.
I was very ill and had to be hospitalized twice this October, I had a bad GI infection, that was pretty scary, I am ok but it was rough. I don’t want to go into detail. But let’s just say the past 2 months have been rough for a lot of reasons.
(Ceiling of the ER at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in Compton, I won’t subject you to my selfie but I looked ROUGH)
I ran into Brad Pitt (Really)
The past few months I’ve had lots of random adventures like I always do. But I had a really impressive one when I went to the movies randomly, to see MidSommar again, and realized I had stumbled into the premiere for Ad Astra, and I even saw Brad Pitt himself. Very “Once upon a time in hollywood” that night felt magical.
A week later I took a date to the Cinerama to actually watch the movie….and….I actually didn’t like it much. The first half was awesome but the second half gets a little weird.
Skolstrejk för Klimatet! Greta!
There was a major kerfuffle when we posted this Greta Thunberg piece from Cyarin. I love it. And I fully support Greta. I try not to take a political stance on Urban-Muse so everyone can enjoy it no matter their views, but Climate Change is something I cannot and will not deny and I think kids like Greta are going to save this planet and we need to help and support them to do it.
Greta Thunberg by Laura Browers (Cyarin) (Link)
Irakli Nadar continues to impress
Can we just take a moment and admire these? Wow.
You can read our feature with the man here:
Hussle and Motivate
Throughout the past few months as I’ve been wrestling with personal issues, romance, fitness, and business through this site I have been relying heavily on the music of the late Nipsey Hussle. Nipsey was a legendary self made rapper who made most of his money through his T-Shirt line(s) Undefeated, and CRENSHAW. He sold the shirts through his store “The Marathon” at Crenshaw and Slauson in South Central Los Angeles, along with his business partner Herman Douglas.
He then took his T-Shirt money and re-invested it into himself and self produced his albums and retained ownership to all the songs so all the profit went directly to him and not a record label. Which is BRILLIANT. This is exactly what I’m trying to do with Urban-Muse. Make a lot of money selling T-Shirts, and re-invest it into my community, just like Nipsey did by opening his store in South Central and becoming a prominent black business owner. If that’s not inspirational I don’t know what is. When people say “The Marathon Continues” this is what they are talking about, taking these big concepts Nipsey preached and putting them into action long after he’s gone. TMC
A couple weeks ago, I had some time to spare and drove into South Central to see what was going on, I hadn’t been there since paying my respects after he passed. The Marathon store is now closed and completely gated up. But south central has EXPLODED with love and murals for the late fallen hero. While I was there, I happened to meet a interesting man in a cowboy hat, Herman Douglas, Nipsey’s business partner for the Marathon store.
He told me a new Marathon store will be opening up on Melrose Ave. I expressed how deeply hurt I was and shook his hand and said god bless you. There was…deep, and unbearable sadness coming from this man. I don’t know what he was doing there, but it just seemed like he wanted to come back to this spot and look at (and protect) the murals so he could feel close to his friend. It was really sad. You could feel it in the air. It was a powerful experience. It made the tragedy of Nipsey Hussle all of a sudden seem extremely real.
As I drove home listening to Nipsey, thinking about his friend who I had just met, and seeing beautiful murals everywhere, I was overwhelmed. I cried. I feel like losing Nipsey was like losing a good friend I never met. Nipsey and I would have gotten along, we are the same kind of guys.
RIP to Ermias (Nipsey Hussle) Asghedom.
TMC – THE MARATHON CONTINUES
Basketball is Big in LA. I’m a Baller now.
In Los Angeles all eyes are on the 2 best teams in the NBA, the Clippers and the Lakers. I was blessed enough to go to the Clippers Vs. Lakers NBA Season opener at Staples. It was a madhouse. My team the Lakers lost, but what Kawhi Leonard did that night was undeniable. That man was Jordan-esque. The most impressive performance I’ve ever seen in person.
Oh! I sat by Snoop Dogg!
I am working HEAVILY on my fitness, for a lot of reasons, health, looks, and longevity.
I LOVE Basketball. I eat sleep and drink Basketball. I watch all the laker games, most of the major games, watch all the news debates, actually go to games, and am a BEAST at NBA 2k…But ever since High School I don’t even play baketball? That doesn’t sound right. Yesterday I bought a basketball and visited my local park and balled the fuck out!!!!! (alone lol)
It was a really great exercise I didn’t realize how much I would be running around just chasing my own ball. I hope to keep practicing, using it instead of a gym session somedays and eventually I’d like to join a casual older mens basketball league. I can’t think of something I’d rather do. I’ve always wanted to be a baller. And now I am. 😉
LeBron James, Anthony Davis and the Lakers motivate me, and keep me focused and make my life in Los Angeles much more enjoyable. These past years I’ve really been isolated with few people to talk to and my love of basketball is one of the things that really kept me going.
I would encourage those of you who may be struggling with their mental health, sleep, weight, energy, and motivation to take the big leaps, not be afraid, and try to live a more active life, as long as you are out of the house and moving it’s a win. The past year I have been so active every single day and all aspects of my life have improved and this website is improving too because of it. My life is better now than it was.
Chillin out Maxin Relaxin’ all cool
Here’s just kind of a fun thing. When I was in Beverly Hills/Brentwood I had a urge to see the house from Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It’s easy to find, just type in fresh prince house on your map app. It was really fun to see this old familiar house I had seen so many times. I’ve been doing lots of random stuff like this lately. This was one of the best.
Death Stranding is coming!
I am so looking forward to this (and Cyberpunk 2077)
I will have more to say on it once we’ve played it and we no doubt see hundreds of new fan art pieces.
Kudos to Hideo and Kojima for finishing the game after basically having to start over from scratch after being let go from Konami! So Impressive! The greatest Video Game Comeback story of all time?
I have lots more to say but I’ll save it for the next editorial. I will leave you with this SUPER VIRAL comic from System 32 Comics.
Until Then.
THE MARATHON CONTINUES.
