Culture Shifters
By Bri Renee
Explain who you are to me as if I were a complete stranger.
I am Damien Woodard, 39 years old, from Temple, Texas. I am an entrepreneur. It’s bigger than music. I have a media company also. I mean, we do a lot of stuff, music being the main thing for a very long time.
Are you an artist (rapper, singer, etc.) as well as CEO?
I used to be an artist back in the day. I started rapping probably in my teens, but I started taking it seriously by 21 years old. And then I was rapping, doing my thing, making songs with this guy named L Boogie. He was my producer. He was like my Timbaland. We clicked. I had a different type of flow and he liked it. We made dope music together for a long time. Probably from 2001 to like 2007 or 2008. I started making beats around that time, producing. Then I started thinking, like, you know what? I kind of want to fall back from the artist thing and be a producer. So then, I got me some artists. Those first two artists I had, I produced for them. We put out an EP called Taste Test. I think that came out Derby 2007, back when Derby was Derby. That didn’t work out too well with the two artists, so I started rapping a bit more. Around 2009 is when the Breadboy thing kind of took off. I slowly started to step back from being an artist and started being more like an executive.
The artist stuff was fun, especially as a youngin’. It was fun creating, listening to beats and writing rhymes. There was levels to it because it started turning to a business. You’re thinking like “Man, I’m trying to get this money, I’m not just making songs.”
What made you decide to assemble a label/coalition?
I like being behind the scenes better. I orchestrate the play like I’m the coach. I’m Pat Riley out here. There’s nothing like seeing something that you thought of happen successfully. Ain’t nothing like it.
That seems like a big task to take on. What are some of the challenges?
As far as the record label goes, artists can be a pain in the butt. Some of them don’t want to work as hard as you. Like, this is YOUR music. You should be going a million times harder than me. Why am I gonna be going harder than you and you’re the one on the song? Then you have artists that aren’t difficult to work with, but they want things to move fast. Sometimes in this game, things just don’t move fast. I’m not a millionaire. I’m funding this from my nine to five so we have to move accordingly. Some artists understand and some of them don’t. Now as far as the media side of things go, it’s pretty fun coming up with this content. We’re pretty new at it but we have people in place that know what they’re doing, that went to school for this. So for me, I’m still learning. But building and putting out this content is a lot.
How would you deal with current artist/ team members feeling entitled like you should do everything for them or like you need to coddle them?
I’ve been doing this for so long, dealing with artists, especially with the younger guys that don’t know too much. They have to learn to do work. But working with guys that have been doing it for a while, you can’t tell them nothing because they’ve been doing it for so long. I’ve dealt with both, so how I handle things is like, just let me know what you want to do. I’ll follow your lead. That’s where I’m at with it at this point in time. Old Texx used to go harder for you than you, new Texx is only going just as hard as you do. You not gonna mess up my money.
Unless it’s my project. I’m working on a project called The Motive 2. It’s my album but I’m basically like a DJ Khaled on this. I picked all the beats, booked all the studio time. I basically Quincy Jones-ed this mug. I put all the songs together with different artists, kind of like what y’all are doing with the Dope Tho compilatiom. It’s a compilation album. They came in and laid the songs down, but its my project.
How would you deal with a current artist/team member feeling like they know the game better than you and challenging your ideas?
Like I said, I let them show me how much work they want to put in and I match that.
Tell me about a few of your artist/team members. On the Breadboy side, we have artists but now it’s more of like a management thing. I don’t have anybody signed anymore. I didn’t want to sign anybody anymore. Say you’re an artist that wants to do a project. What we would do through Breadboy is we’ll come in, put you a project together, put you a whole package together. So your project, studio time, album release party, album listening, whatever. We’ll put you a whole package together and we’ll break bread. So that’s what we’re doing now when it comes to artists. But we still deal with our old artists, Berran Lee, Cam Dollaz, all of them, but we’re not like the traditional record labor.
As far as the media side goes, with the podcasts, we have a show called Through My Eye with One-eyed Willie and it’s doing pretty good. We have another show called Chuck TV where she discusses current events. We have another podcast called Conversations with a King with Tamika King. She’s a brilliant lady that’ll be talking about a lot of real stuff like mental health in the black community. We have a show called The ComeUp Corner where we interview people on the come up. Artists, chefs, people that do hair, anybody that's coming up out here.
What makes your label/organization different from similar indie labels/ organizations?
It’s not a traditional label, we don’t have artists. We consult. We just helped an artist. She had all the songs but didn’t know what order to out them in or how to put them out. We picked the best 5 or 6 songs, put them in order for her EP, had a listening party, all of that.
Who are your favorite 5 indie artist not a part of your label?
I like EST Gee a lot. He’s like the Louisville trap artist that we needed on a national level. I listen to so many people. They gonna kill me. I’m having a brain fart. Soon as this interview is over I’m gonna think of everybody’s name.
Who are your favorite DJs not a part of your label?
I like DJ Butta
What’s next for your label/organization? What are some realistic and maybe not so realistic goals you all would like to hit?
This album. Getting these streams. Video. Everything. But then there's everything beyond the music. The music was the stepping stone for everything else.
We’re branching out into different things in the entertainment realm as far as the media side of things as far as podcasts, current event shows and we’re developing a home improvement show. We’re trying to do it all. It went from Breadboy Entertainment which is the record label to 25/8 studios, which is basically the home of Breadboy, and 25/8 Network, which is the podcasts and the shows. We’re trying to get more content. We said 2020 was gonna be us building the foundation. 2021 is going to be us hitting them in the head with this content. Like I said, it's bigger than music right now. we're trying to touch all the things.