Explain who you are to me as if I were a complete stranger.
I am Amoré King. American rapper is what google defines me as. I also write R&B. I run the label known as The Immaculate Ones AV (audio video). I have a few dope artists on the roster. I also run the Dope Tho platform, and I have some amazing writers.
Are you an artist (rapper, singer, etc.) as well as CEO?
Yes.
What made you decide to assemble a label/coalition?
I truly like to help others, so it came from that. Also, there’s strength in numbers. I might have a skill that someone else lacks and vice versa, so when we come together, we’re much more powerful.
That seems like a big task to take on. What are some of the challenges?
There are different challenges when talking about the label and Dope Tho itself. As far as the label, typically artists are very sensitive, male or female because they’re creatives. A lot of times, they’re sensitive about their art, so it’s a delicate balance of positive critiques that can help them get better at what they are trying to accomplish, but at the same time, being firm and not just letting them get by with slacking or not bringing their best effort or just not making a conscious effort to continue to get better. It's a fine line there.
Then just working with different egos. Everybody’s different. Sometimes you have to treat them a little bit differently. Maybe a little nicer or more encouraging, but some other people don’t respond to that at all, and you gotta kind of put your foot in their ass, for lack of better words, and they like that. They actually thrive off that, like “Man, watch me prove this person wrong.” So I guess just finding the balance is the short answer to that. Finding the balance to the personalities so that you can help them all reach their goals.
The challenge of Dope Tho is that most of my staff are not artists, which is actually the way I wanted the team to be assembled. They’re music lovers and people that just genuinely like to kick back and enjoy whatever they’re listening to, enjoy whatever their genres are. So, by them not being artists, I did have to get them acclimated to some of the terminologies, get them acclimated to the actual scene in their cities, which they have done a really good job of learning who the artists are and what type of genre of music they do by comparison to the national artists. I think the biggest challenge was just getting everybody up to speed and then making sure that everybody had the proper tools that they needed. Also, developing a system that works for everyone. And trying to make sure my feature writer turns her articles in (haha).
How would you deal with current artists/ team members feeling entitled like you should do everything for them or like you need to coddle them?
As far as the label, I don’t think I would have to deal with that currently. What I’ve learned over time is to teach artists to be self-sufficient. I am a resource, not a babysitter, so I teach them as much as possible, as early as possible, and then they can come to me to help implement the things that I’ve taught them. I believe people become entitled when they get stuff that they don’t have to work for or when they obtain the knowledge they didn’t have to do anything to get that knowledge or get that stature with their music. Then they assume that it's just supposed to be given to them, but when you work through the process, hand in hand with them, you let them grind it out with you on their stuff, then they understand how much work you put into it. They understand how many hours and what you’ve been doing. They understand the process and that typically leads to them not being entitled because they know how difficult it is.
For Dope Tho, my writers are really, mostly all business people. They have their own additional side ventures that they are doing, so I think they all understand what comes into it. I don’t think I’ll have to worry about them being entitled because they understand from the boss's perspective what goes into the daily operation of running a business. But if I ever had to deal with that, you know, someone being entitled, I’d sit down and talk to them about what it is that they’re feeling entitled about and explain the process of it so they see what the undertaking looks like, that way they can be more appreciative of it.
How would you deal with a current artist/team member feeling like they know the game better than you and challenging your ideas?
I kind of welcome that. I’m not very egotistical, honestly, so I don’t mind them feeling like “Hey. I know a better way to do this.” What I would do is, we’d sit down and talk about what their idea is. If their idea is better, let’s do it. If it’s not, at the same token, we sit down and I explain to them why it’s not better. If I say it’s not better, it wouldn’t be off emotion, it would be based on some sort of numbers or stats that we can pull. I don’t really like to deal with emotion in that way. You have to take that out of the equation in business and just break it down to numbers. So if their idea makes sense, it makes dollars, and if mine makes sense, it makes dollars. That’s how you handle that.
Tell me about a few of your artists/team members.
All my artists are incredible artists. They’re very talented. They’re very versatile. I love their music. Shout out to the team. So let’s see. BruteLife is on the team. He’s a great rapper and our resident in-house producer. He’s a big guy, he’s a funny guy, and he’s a very colorful rapper, very colorful with his wordplay. Kleyn Kutt is more of a conscious rapper. He is focused more on his lyricism and storytelling. He’s a very dope artist. We got SIX-5 out of Kinston, NC, a very dope MC that makes a lot of dope trap records. He’s also a songwriter, a multi-genre songwriter. And, Virgil Cash, aka Methodical Wun, is a part of our team as well. He’s known to drop a verse here and there, but he’s mostly our team resident engineer, so he mixes a lot of the records that our team puts together. Lastly, but certainly not least, my dog, El Suggs, is not an artist, but he handles a lot of our day-to-day operations. Pre-Covid, he would help set up shows and help make sure the artists are getting their projects put together. He actually plays about three different instruments.
On Dope Tho, I’ll start with Methodical Wun since he’s on both teams. He is a member of our Dope Tho Podcast. He is great with hot takes and one-liners. Of course, we got King Acklin and DJ Suspence that cover our indie album reviews, R&B, and hip hop or any sub-genres. They rate the albums on a one to ten Dope Tho scale. Acklin keeps it fair and balanced but definitely gets his fair share of hate because he’s very firm on his reviews. If he thinks it’s a three, the album’s gonna get a three. But by the same token, if he thinks the albums a nine, he will applaud the album and praise it for everything that it's done well, champion the album and help promote the album, even if he’s never met the artist before. DJ Suspence is our newest reviewer and he's a big music head and a tough critic. I really like that both of them are balanced in their reviews, and they’re real-deal hip-hop music heads. They love music, so they’re very knowledgeable.
In addition, we have DJ Deuce, who is gonna help us head up our multimedia side of things. He’s very knowledgeable on the music side of things being a DJ, but he helps us with filming any of our projects that you see, and he’ll be a very big part of our youtube and everything that we’re building out right now. Now, also, we have Big Chels, aka Chelsey. She’s the host of the Dope Tho Podcast. She’s been helping out as far as the website and things like that. She’s going to be a host for a lot of the events we’re going to start having, including the Dope Tho ciphers, she’ll be a part of hosting those as well. She has a great personality, very easy to get along with, doesn’t mind hosting things and jumping in that spotlight, which a lot of people are terrified of. We also have El Suggs who runs the 21 Questions section on Dope Tho's website. Just like the name implies, it's rapid-fire 21 questions directed at the subject about various topics from music trivia to celebrity crushes and more. Berran is the newest member of the Dope Tho Podcast. He has a big personality and a lot of strong opinions and we love having him.
And lastly, we have our feature writer, Bri Renee. She’s very smart, very well-read, very opinionated, and very slow to turn in her articles, but that’s neither here nor there because when she does turn them in, they’re very Dope pieces. And the object of her articles is almost always super excited and super pleased with her work. I haven’t had any complaints. I like her writing style, it’s fun and inviting, and I think she helps round out our team. You put them all together, you’ve got a pretty good group of people.
What makes your label/organization different from similar indie labels/ organizations?
What makes my label different is that we don’t put any boundaries on where we can go with our music. We let the music speak. The music is genuine. There’s no cap in our rap, no lies, and no fairytales. We give it to you real and we’re very passionate about this craft.
What makes the Dope Tho team different is I don’t consider them an actual staff. I consider it more like a Dope Tho family. Everybody is pretty cool with each other. We talk on a regular basis. We build with each other and talk about stuff pertaining to Dope Tho and we talk about things that have absolutely nothing to do with Dope Tho. I think we all genuinely want to see our platform grow and reach new heights, and in 2021, it definitely will.
Who are your favorite 5 indie artist not a part of your label?
I’m not gonna make a terrible Dylan joke, that’s for sure. I don’t really have a lot of artists that I listen to. Being an indie artist and running Dope Tho puts me in a very unique position, and I’d hate to pick out or single out artists as favorites because I want everyone to win equally. Whoever puts in the most work are the people I would love to see succeed. I don’t really care about anything outside of people being genuine, putting out dope music, and working their ass off to reach their goals.
What’s next for your label/organization? What are some realistic and maybe not so realistic goals you all would like to hit?
What’s next for my label is, god-willing, we take over the game. I don’t think that’s unrealistic. I don’t think there are any unrealistic goals for my label because the artists are all incredibly talented. That’s why I sought them out or I agreed to bring them on when they sought me out. Our goals for 2021 are to drop a zillion more visuals because we’re in a visual era and take the game by storm.
As far as our goals for Dope Tho, it's very interesting because it's also very similar. We need to drop way more visual content. I want us to reach as many indie artists as possible across this country, as many new fans across this country as possible. I think we’re going to build up a lot of fans through our social media, our youtube channel, and our Patreon. Unrealistic goal for Dope Tho is that we become the new MTV, take over TV.