November 29, 2021 • 12 mins
An up and coming artist who has managed to find financial success by turning his art into NFTs. At 24, he sold his first art piece for 200 dollars, and a year later, he sold his first NFT for 100 thousand dollars.
Artlanta is using technology and his art to build his wealth. He discusses using social media to find clients, his music WavePop, and how he has been making moves in the NFT market with his Dumb Alienz line.
Host IG: @itstanyatime
Guest IG: @artlanta__
Guest website: https://artlantanow.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey money Movers, Welcome back to Money Moves, the daily
podcast determined to give you the keys to the kingdom
of financial stability, wealth and abundance. Hey money Movers, Welcome
to another episode of the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood.
(00:23):
Our next guest is an up and coming artist who
has managed to find a way to turn his art
into n f T s. At twenty five, he sold
his first art piece for two hundred dollars and a
year later, he sold his first n f T for
a hundred grand Money Movers, let's welcome to the podcast
the artistic and tech savvy straight from Decatur Ar, Atlanta.
(00:44):
Hey Atlanta, how are you? Hey? How's it going, y'all? Man?
Nice to meet everyone. My name is Atlanta. I'm an artist.
I also make music. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia
Indicator and my parents were both from Nigeria. They moved
out here there where we had nothing, struggled our whole life.
I lost my father at five years old, and that's
(01:06):
what made me start painting, because he used to be
a painter, and that's what made me pick up the
paint version because I want to leave his legacy on
and continue his name to grow. And so I actually
dropped out of high school at eighteen years old, moved
out to l A at two years old. I was homeless.
I didn't didn't know anybody out here. It was homeless, broke,
(01:26):
had no money, but I also had faith though. I
just kept kept building my relationships, building connections to make
my music pop because I was more so focused on
my music before my art. Maybe my music part pop.
I joined a group called Wave Pop. We have over
millions of streams Spotify, Apple Music, We've been on tour,
(01:48):
performed at Coachella. So that's what it really gave me
the momentum to be like, Okay, I can actually do
it's I can make it out here. And recently last
year I sold my first art piece ever for two
d all lose and now I'm selling n F T
s and for over a hundred thousand dollars and it's
just like, man, it's amazing, anything is possible, Like this
(02:11):
is crazy. I mean, that's what I love about this
moneymus podcast. You just get to meet so many incredible
people and I feel like you might be one of
our youngest right now. And it just already had such
great success. But like you say, it's not easy. So
let's talk about just the music. You know, you've been
a musician. Um, I also want to say shout out Nigeria.
I'm gonna and so we're brothers and sisters. But um,
(02:33):
I mean even you casually mentioned listen, I performed at Coachella.
I've had all these music streams. Um, talk a little
bit about how you got into the music industry, and
then we'll go deep into art. Yeah. So I mean
I've been making music my whole life too. When I
moved out here to l A, the way I got
myself in the door, I just I didn't take no
(02:54):
for an answer. I used to just go places and
just tell the DJ, you'll play my song. I'll throw
you ten dollars, you know, play my song, and he
would do it. And our first big performance was Coachella.
We literally snuck on stage at Drake's party. It was
like three thousand people. This is seventeen. We snuck on
stage at Drake's party. You know, we told the sound guy,
(03:16):
You're like, yo, give us the mics. He just gave
us the mice. You didn't know what's going on. We
took the mic and we told the DJ play our song?
What our song? We ran up on the front of
the stage and just performed our whole song. Everybody was like, whoa,
who are these movie these guys And that's what it
really took our career. Like okay, now that's pretty bold.
That's I've heard of and I love it. Talk about
(03:38):
guts and taking your career into your own hands. You
gotta take risks. Did they throw you off or what happened? Now,
they didn't even throw us off because our performance are
so good. They're like, okay, they can stay. Like everybody
was shocked, but everybody was amazing, like, okay, they're actually good. Wow,
I love that. Okay, So art, you said you've always
been a painter and you've used art throughout your life,
(03:59):
you know, and following in the footsteps of your dad.
Talk about this first painting that you sold two yes, yeah,
my first painting. It was a painting of It was
a painting I made like a little It was a
galaxy painting and it had my logo on it and
one of my music fans bought it for two hundred dollars.
That's when I didn't even realize you can make money art,
(04:20):
Like I didn't know, and I didn't know anybody would
buy my art at the time, and then they just
bought it for two hundred dollars in that showed me like, Yo,
it's possible, I can have my art in galleries and everywhere.
And then some lady named Karen Um she hit me
up on Instagram like, yo, I want to have your
art in my gallery. This was like six months ago
(04:40):
and that was my first piece in in first ever
gallery ever so ever, since then, my art just been
going up and crazy, people like yo, I've been seeing
an art here and there, people hit me up for pieces,
and yeah, my arts been going crazy. So I feel like,
you know a lot of young inspiring artists, they're they're
(05:00):
driven artist a passion, they're driven to it. But you've
actually managed to leverage social media for people to see
your art and have a platform. So that first two
d dollar piece, they found you on social media? Or
how did you find that first client? How did they
find you? It was on it was on two Instagram
They found me on there. It's so funny because I
feel like people get d m s all the time,
and you know, when this lady message, he was like,
(05:22):
I'd like to put you in a gallery where you
like this is a joke or is super real. I
was like I couldn't believe it. Uh honestly, I was like, oh,
let's do it. Made it happen, Okay. So like, because
this is the Money Moves Podcast, and I want, you know,
young people like yourself to be inspired. You know, listen,
we're Africans, Like we know how to hustle, we know
(05:43):
how to work, but sometimes, you know, we just don't
see the stories. And you're a perfect example of this.
Like how much money do you think you've made in
total off your art this past year made? I've made
over a couple of million. I just dropped. Wow. I
mean that is really really incredible. Okay, um, let's move
(06:04):
because I really fascinated on what brought you into n
f t S. Like, I'm really big in cryptocurrencies and
I've loved following this boom of n f t s
and I think like anybody who's an artist needs to
really understand the power of what's happening in a n
f T S. And I saw you sold You've sold
a couple n f t s. How did you really
pay attention and understand that n f t S would
be really important for you as an up and coming artist. Yeah,
(06:27):
because I've I've heard I've first heard about n f
t S two years ago. This was before like anybody
was even on n f t S. So I just
I just doing a little bit of studying and studying
and really with n f t S. N f t
is a non flegible token, and it's like it's a
digital asset where it represents art, can represent music, game videos,
(06:49):
and it's just like it's sold online on the block chain.
So all you have to do with enterties is create,
create your own like style and find a niche. So
once I've on my niche that I was going with,
because there's there's a lot of niches out there, like
with certain type of styles, so you can just mimic
a style, but created with your own type of style
(07:10):
and when you find that niche. And and it's also
about the people you market you too, because n f
T is like it's mostly the wealth of rich people
behind its, right, like those crypto punks that are going
for half a million, one million dollars exactly. You you
just have to market to the right people and once
they're in the right people of faces, they will buy. Yeah,
So talk about your collaboration. What is your collection called.
(07:33):
My n f T collection is called dumb Aliens. Dumb Aliens.
I love it, and you guys make sure you check
it out. So you decided you created this gendre. I
guess you call it this collection, um dumb aliens. It's
it's really brilliant. Actually the work is really really good
and they're all sort of different. What was it that
spoke to you about dumb Aliens that you knew you'd
be able to capture an audience about. So when I
(07:57):
when I first dumb and it wasn't even a n
f T head painted like like six months ago. I
painted the alien on my wall, like I just spray
painted alien on my wall. And then I just created
dumb Aliens a month ago, and I was just trying
to find like, yo, what is my n f T
gonna be? So I'm just looking around the house. I
look at this wall. I'm like like, oh, snap, it's
alien and it didn't kind of look dumb. So I'm like,
(08:19):
I'm gonna just call it dumb Aliens and I'm just
create these n f T s as this art piece
and it just came to life and now like it's
it's just it's prosperous. Nowity it's it's it's prosperous. So
in creating that, because now you've kind of moved, I
want people to understand, like you're typically we're doing spray
paint art, graffiti art. You grew up tagging the streets
(08:40):
of Atlanta as well. Now you're in this digital medium.
How did you sort of make that work? Are you
drawing using an Apple iPad? Do you have someone who
creates these n f t s for you? Tell us
how you did it. Yeah, I'm actually used in the
Apple iPad with a Apple pencil, so it's basically like
a pencil for the iPad and I just draw it
on there and it it makes it simple. It's just
(09:02):
like drawing on a regular canvas or piece of paper.
Simple for you, brother, I can't draw a stick man,
So don't downplay your art there, Like there's some pretty
great pieces. Okay, So now you've done your research, you've
learned about n f T s, You have this collection
of drawings. What was the next steps for you? Next steps? Well,
(09:22):
right now I'm planning on opening my own art gallery.
That's that's my next big step right now for my
art and for my music. I'm I'm about to release
a new album. It's gonna be our third album we've
ever released. So those are those That's what I'm more
so focused on right now. But I'm gonna always continue
(09:42):
to keep making more n f T s. I'm gonna
do another n FC drop probably next month. And I
also create n FT for other people, so people just
pay me to the thousand dollars just to make them
an n f T collection. Of course, of course the
other way artists can make money too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I saw you sort of did a little take on
certified lover boy Drake's Dumb Aliens. That was really funny. Okay, so, Atlanta,
(10:08):
you have created some great art and music as well.
You were definitely multitalented on the way to the trajectory
to the Sun, Moon and Stars. Can you tell our
audience where they can find you on social media by
your art, where your n f T s are for sale? Okay,
you can find me on on any social media platform,
Atlanta Underscore underscore my n f T s. You can
(10:31):
find them Dumb Aliens with a Z instead of as end,
and for my music, you can find me anywhere. Wave pop,
wave pop. All right, Thank you so much. N f
T s are still new and confusing to understand, but
it's been such a pleasure having you on our podcast today.
Would you mind sticking around to be part of our
deep dive segment to educate our audience at more about
(10:52):
n f T s and ways that artists can profit
from creating and building an n f T portfolio. I
will grow awesome. Thank you so much for tuning in
Money Moves audience. If you want more or a recap
of this episode, please go to Bank Greenwood dot com
and check out the Money Moves podcast blogs. Stay tuned
(11:13):
tomorrow and every day this week. From very special Money
versus Moves, seems like only one of them is doing
all the financial heavy lifting. It sounds like a dream
was jumped into without a plan for execution or from
our expert. Hey are Atlanta, It's great to see you again.
Donald Tory Lanes. He just made made a million dollars
in under a minute of selling his music on n
(11:36):
of teams. That doesn't tell you, and you won't want
to miss the incredible spiritual hitler Debbie Brown I was
in middle school with the self help book, you know,
like I've always been fascinated by transformation, fascinated by the
human spirit and human emotion. Money Moves is an I
heart Radio podcast powered by Greenwood Executive produced by Sunwise Media, Inc.
(11:59):
From more podcast on i heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts from
Hey money Movers, Welcome back to Money Moves, the daily
podcast determined to give you the keys to the kingdom
of financial stability, wealth and abundance. Hey money Movers, Welcome
to another episode of the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood.
(00:23):
Our next guest is an up and coming artist who
has managed to find a way to turn his art
into n f T s. At twenty five, he sold
his first art piece for two hundred dollars and a
year later, he sold his first n f T for
a hundred grand Money Movers, let's welcome to the podcast
the artistic and tech savvy straight from Decatur Ar, Atlanta.
(00:44):
Hey Atlanta, how are you? Hey? How's it going, y'all? Man?
Nice to meet everyone. My name is Atlanta. I'm an artist.
I also make music. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia
Indicator and my parents were both from Nigeria. They moved
out here there where we had nothing, struggled our whole life.
I lost my father at five years old, and that's
(01:06):
what made me start painting, because he used to be
a painter, and that's what made me pick up the
paint version because I want to leave his legacy on
and continue his name to grow. And so I actually
dropped out of high school at eighteen years old, moved
out to l A at two years old. I was homeless.
I didn't didn't know anybody out here. It was homeless, broke,
(01:26):
had no money, but I also had faith though. I
just kept kept building my relationships, building connections to make
my music pop because I was more so focused on
my music before my art. Maybe my music part pop.
I joined a group called Wave Pop. We have over
millions of streams Spotify, Apple Music, We've been on tour,
(01:48):
performed at Coachella. So that's what it really gave me
the momentum to be like, Okay, I can actually do
it's I can make it out here. And recently last
year I sold my first art piece ever for two
d all lose and now I'm selling n F T
s and for over a hundred thousand dollars and it's
just like, man, it's amazing, anything is possible, Like this
(02:11):
is crazy. I mean, that's what I love about this
moneymus podcast. You just get to meet so many incredible
people and I feel like you might be one of
our youngest right now. And it just already had such
great success. But like you say, it's not easy. So
let's talk about just the music. You know, you've been
a musician. Um, I also want to say shout out Nigeria.
I'm gonna and so we're brothers and sisters. But um,
(02:33):
I mean even you casually mentioned listen, I performed at Coachella.
I've had all these music streams. Um, talk a little
bit about how you got into the music industry, and
then we'll go deep into art. Yeah. So I mean
I've been making music my whole life too. When I
moved out here to l A, the way I got
myself in the door, I just I didn't take no
(02:54):
for an answer. I used to just go places and
just tell the DJ, you'll play my song. I'll throw
you ten dollars, you know, play my song, and he
would do it. And our first big performance was Coachella.
We literally snuck on stage at Drake's party. It was
like three thousand people. This is seventeen. We snuck on
stage at Drake's party. You know, we told the sound guy,
(03:16):
You're like, yo, give us the mics. He just gave
us the mice. You didn't know what's going on. We
took the mic and we told the DJ play our song?
What our song? We ran up on the front of
the stage and just performed our whole song. Everybody was like, whoa,
who are these movie these guys And that's what it
really took our career. Like okay, now that's pretty bold.
That's I've heard of and I love it. Talk about
(03:38):
guts and taking your career into your own hands. You
gotta take risks. Did they throw you off or what happened? Now,
they didn't even throw us off because our performance are
so good. They're like, okay, they can stay. Like everybody
was shocked, but everybody was amazing, like, okay, they're actually good. Wow,
I love that. Okay, So art, you said you've always
been a painter and you've used art throughout your life,
(03:59):
you know, and following in the footsteps of your dad.
Talk about this first painting that you sold two yes, yeah,
my first painting. It was a painting of It was
a painting I made like a little It was a
galaxy painting and it had my logo on it and
one of my music fans bought it for two hundred dollars.
That's when I didn't even realize you can make money art,
(04:20):
Like I didn't know, and I didn't know anybody would
buy my art at the time, and then they just
bought it for two hundred dollars in that showed me like, Yo,
it's possible, I can have my art in galleries and everywhere.
And then some lady named Karen Um she hit me
up on Instagram like, yo, I want to have your
art in my gallery. This was like six months ago
(04:40):
and that was my first piece in in first ever
gallery ever so ever, since then, my art just been
going up and crazy, people like yo, I've been seeing
an art here and there, people hit me up for pieces,
and yeah, my arts been going crazy. So I feel like,
you know a lot of young inspiring artists, they're they're
(05:00):
driven artist a passion, they're driven to it. But you've
actually managed to leverage social media for people to see
your art and have a platform. So that first two
d dollar piece, they found you on social media? Or
how did you find that first client? How did they
find you? It was on it was on two Instagram
They found me on there. It's so funny because I
feel like people get d m s all the time,
and you know, when this lady message, he was like,
(05:22):
I'd like to put you in a gallery where you
like this is a joke or is super real. I
was like I couldn't believe it. Uh honestly, I was like, oh,
let's do it. Made it happen, Okay. So like, because
this is the Money Moves Podcast, and I want, you know,
young people like yourself to be inspired. You know, listen,
we're Africans, Like we know how to hustle, we know
(05:43):
how to work, but sometimes, you know, we just don't
see the stories. And you're a perfect example of this.
Like how much money do you think you've made in
total off your art this past year made? I've made
over a couple of million. I just dropped. Wow. I
mean that is really really incredible. Okay, um, let's move
(06:04):
because I really fascinated on what brought you into n
f t S. Like, I'm really big in cryptocurrencies and
I've loved following this boom of n f t s
and I think like anybody who's an artist needs to
really understand the power of what's happening in a n
f T S. And I saw you sold You've sold
a couple n f t s. How did you really
pay attention and understand that n f t S would
be really important for you as an up and coming artist. Yeah,
(06:27):
because I've I've heard I've first heard about n f
t S two years ago. This was before like anybody
was even on n f t S. So I just
I just doing a little bit of studying and studying
and really with n f t S. N f t
is a non flegible token, and it's like it's a
digital asset where it represents art, can represent music, game videos,
(06:49):
and it's just like it's sold online on the block chain.
So all you have to do with enterties is create,
create your own like style and find a niche. So
once I've on my niche that I was going with,
because there's there's a lot of niches out there, like
with certain type of styles, so you can just mimic
a style, but created with your own type of style
(07:10):
and when you find that niche. And and it's also
about the people you market you too, because n f
T is like it's mostly the wealth of rich people
behind its, right, like those crypto punks that are going
for half a million, one million dollars exactly. You you
just have to market to the right people and once
they're in the right people of faces, they will buy. Yeah,
So talk about your collaboration. What is your collection called.
(07:33):
My n f T collection is called dumb Aliens. Dumb Aliens.
I love it, and you guys make sure you check
it out. So you decided you created this gendre. I
guess you call it this collection, um dumb aliens. It's
it's really brilliant. Actually the work is really really good
and they're all sort of different. What was it that
spoke to you about dumb Aliens that you knew you'd
be able to capture an audience about. So when I
(07:57):
when I first dumb and it wasn't even a n
f T head painted like like six months ago. I
painted the alien on my wall, like I just spray
painted alien on my wall. And then I just created
dumb Aliens a month ago, and I was just trying
to find like, yo, what is my n f T
gonna be? So I'm just looking around the house. I
look at this wall. I'm like like, oh, snap, it's
alien and it didn't kind of look dumb. So I'm like,
(08:19):
I'm gonna just call it dumb Aliens and I'm just
create these n f T s as this art piece
and it just came to life and now like it's
it's just it's prosperous. Nowity it's it's it's prosperous. So
in creating that, because now you've kind of moved, I
want people to understand, like you're typically we're doing spray
paint art, graffiti art. You grew up tagging the streets
(08:40):
of Atlanta as well. Now you're in this digital medium.
How did you sort of make that work? Are you
drawing using an Apple iPad? Do you have someone who
creates these n f t s for you? Tell us
how you did it. Yeah, I'm actually used in the
Apple iPad with a Apple pencil, so it's basically like
a pencil for the iPad and I just draw it
on there and it it makes it simple. It's just
(09:02):
like drawing on a regular canvas or piece of paper.
Simple for you, brother, I can't draw a stick man,
So don't downplay your art there, Like there's some pretty
great pieces. Okay, So now you've done your research, you've
learned about n f T s, You have this collection
of drawings. What was the next steps for you? Next steps? Well,
(09:22):
right now I'm planning on opening my own art gallery.
That's that's my next big step right now for my
art and for my music. I'm I'm about to release
a new album. It's gonna be our third album we've
ever released. So those are those That's what I'm more
so focused on right now. But I'm gonna always continue
(09:42):
to keep making more n f T s. I'm gonna
do another n FC drop probably next month. And I
also create n FT for other people, so people just
pay me to the thousand dollars just to make them
an n f T collection. Of course, of course the
other way artists can make money too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I saw you sort of did a little take on
certified lover boy Drake's Dumb Aliens. That was really funny. Okay, so, Atlanta,
(10:08):
you have created some great art and music as well.
You were definitely multitalented on the way to the trajectory
to the Sun, Moon and Stars. Can you tell our
audience where they can find you on social media by
your art, where your n f T s are for sale? Okay,
you can find me on on any social media platform,
Atlanta Underscore underscore my n f T s. You can
(10:31):
find them Dumb Aliens with a Z instead of as end,
and for my music, you can find me anywhere. Wave pop,
wave pop. All right, Thank you so much. N f
T s are still new and confusing to understand, but
it's been such a pleasure having you on our podcast today.
Would you mind sticking around to be part of our
deep dive segment to educate our audience at more about
(10:52):
n f T s and ways that artists can profit
from creating and building an n f T portfolio. I
will grow awesome. Thank you so much for tuning in
Money Moves audience. If you want more or a recap
of this episode, please go to Bank Greenwood dot com
and check out the Money Moves podcast blogs. Stay tuned
(11:13):
tomorrow and every day this week. From very special Money
versus Moves, seems like only one of them is doing
all the financial heavy lifting. It sounds like a dream
was jumped into without a plan for execution or from
our expert. Hey are Atlanta, It's great to see you again.
Donald Tory Lanes. He just made made a million dollars
in under a minute of selling his music on n
(11:36):
of teams. That doesn't tell you, and you won't want
to miss the incredible spiritual hitler Debbie Brown I was
in middle school with the self help book, you know,
like I've always been fascinated by transformation, fascinated by the
human spirit and human emotion. Money Moves is an I
heart Radio podcast powered by Greenwood Executive produced by Sunwise Media, Inc.
(11:59):
From more podcast on i heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts from
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